Hakutulokset

I used to play on NT4 Pentium 3 650Mhz with an actual AGP 2x video card on AoHell Dialup. Things have certainly changed a lot in TF2 since then.

I vote for Half-Life 2: episode 2.5
There is no 3!

Instead of a checkbox how about a library icon or the words "You have this already" on the store page?

Java just works... everywhere, every OS. And its backward compatible with stuff written in earlier versions of java. Also all the dev tools are free.
As a developer though you can get sloppy with memory leaks since the JVM will protect you, but thats no excuse, the profiling tools are free too.

Be sure to remove your actual email from the text of your post... I think you may have invited some unexpected spam.

"Your Disk" is whatever hard drive you installed steam onto.
Windows computers have a main "C:\" disk.
The instructions are to extract the zip file and then copy the contents (one folder simply named "zombie") to the correct location (within the Half-Life folder).

Half-Life(thefirste's) store page still does not have a hard drive size(we all know its reasonably small). The "you are about to download" size is different from the properties panel after download, which is different from how big it is examining the size directly through windows explorer. Left4Dead2 had 8GB for the longest time even though it was 13GB(including the free automatic DLC). Glad to see someone fixed that.
Also, Doom3's store page demands Windows2000/XP (says Vista/7 not supported). Steam itself yells at me (a dialog, but then works normally) if I use that OS. Whomever is in charge of getting the correct info onto the store pages needs a little nudge... B^)
(By the way, all these play fine on Vista)
If you guys(Valve) find a game to fail stated minimum requirements are you allowed to talk with the publisher/devloper and fix it? I used to play TF2 on my NT4 machine (when it was new) and quite a few improvements have been made, yet to the best of my recollection it seems to be the original stated requirements.

Upgrade to Linux... or a Mac, use WiNE. Sure, fonts may look crappy, but copy those from a real windows machine before you switch over and its slightly better.

Actually for most (older) games you can still play on Win2000(and probably NT4) but steam itself will yell at you with a dialog every time you start steam. That seems to be the extent of the incompatibility. I'm sure they'll use the same dialog to scare the XP users into upgrading. Its only those games that specifically read the OS version number directly (rather than any kind of capability or feature check) and then throw a fit, that I have an issue with. These are all still win32 based machines, so if it doesn't work, its the programmer's fault for using something non-standard. Example: Left 4 Dead 2... I bought vista only to satisfy this stupid check, I'm sure it would have worked on 2000, and under WiNE, it does. Not great, but it does.

The description on that page says where to put it.
where it says YourDisk:\Steam\steamapps\YourUserName\Half-Life\
you may be putting the contents into this folder
C:/Steam/steamapps/example@example.com/Half-Life/
Also, since they said Half-Life and not Half-Life 2 I think you need to have Half-Life(theFirste) installed and run once so the folder gets created.
The contents of the zip contain folders, drop the folders themselves right into that Half-Life directory. It shouldn't overwrite anything you already have in there.

"...if people bought thousands of dollars worth of games on Steam..."
Sounds like a good deal for Valve, makers of Steam.

Keep on purchasin' and not only will they survive, they would flourish.