Counterstrike / Half Life licensing?

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fannypad

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Feb 18, 2004
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I've recently set up a small internet access/gaming network at a charity youth project, with Quake 3 and GTA Vice City installed for the gaming side.

However, as expected, I've had many kids asking for Counterstrike. Unfortunately my experience with Half Life extends to playing through the single player game in 1999 and making a few spray decals for a short stint online.

What I do remember is each copy having a CD key, without which online play was impossible.

Now, I still have my original Half Life CD with key, and was wondering how to go about installing Counterstrike for online play on each of the six machines we have here. Would each copy require a valid CD key in order to work, even when Half Life itself is never used? I don't wish to break any copyright laws, but the budget here is almost non existent and I'm sure the internet cafes I have been to don't all have separate licenses for each copy of Counterstrike.

Any info would be much appreciated.
 
I am going to warn you that just having a key for each copy of the game may not be enough when it comes to half-life and valve. They are notorious for their licensing when it comes to LANs. I would suggest checking up with valve on the subject. However, seeing as how this doesn't seem to be for-profit then you might be ok.
 
Charity/youth + counterstrike... hmmm... Do you want to be held responsibile when those kids get caught for something and the parents (or whoever takes care of them) blames it on your having cs there? :p In this day and age of stupidity and everybody passing the blame (especially stupid parents) i would avoid anything that has to do with "violence" and that is anything with weapons ESPECIALLY cs!
 
Tazman2 said:
Charity/youth + counterstrike... hmmm... Do you want to be held responsibile when those kids get caught for something and the parents (or whoever takes care of them) blames it on your having cs there? :p In this day and age of stupidity and everybody passing the blame (especially stupid parents) i would avoid anything that has to do with "violence" and that is anything with weapons ESPECIALLY cs!
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heh, I think if he already has Vice City, that's the least of his worries. :D
 
If you plan on playing cs 1.6 via Steam, not only will you need a unique, unused and valid cd key for each person who wants to play, each of those people will have to register that cd key through steam to an email account, which will then be used as a login id.

Although, to tell you the truth, there are ways you can play cs w/o steam, and to just play on a LAN and not online you may not need the cd keys (except to install maybe)
 
ehZn said:
If you plan on playing cs 1.6 via Steam, not only will you need a unique, unused and valid cd key for each person who wants to play, each of those people will have to register that cd key through steam to an email account, which will then be used as a login id.

Although, to tell you the truth, there are ways you can play cs w/o steam, and to just play on a LAN and not online you may not need the cd keys (except to install maybe)
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False. I read over the cyber cafe info, and you pay a monthly fee per computer that you want to be able to play at the same time:

Am I required to license all of my computers?
No. There is a 10 license minimum, but you are not required to have all your systems licensed. As an example, if you have 50 computers but only have 30 users playing our games concurrently then you only need 30 café licenses.
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I don't know how much the monthly fee is. Valve says you have to contact them for that.
 
Seems I misunderstood the question. Thought he meant for home LAN, not for a cyber cafe environment. My bad.
 
ehZn said:
Seems I misunderstood the question. Thought he meant for home LAN, not for a cyber cafe environment. My bad.
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Well, it depends on how many different people are using it, but it seems like for multiple users, the cyber cafe type thing would work better. That is, unless Vivendi tries to charge him a ton. I think that's why they don't have set pricing; depends on the amount of traffic on each license.

edit: I thought about this some more and here's my suggestion. Shoot Vivendi an e-mail using their cyber cafe thing and see how much they want to charge you per month. If it's a ungodly amount, which it very well could be, and since you're not making any money off this, go buy 5 more copies of Half-Life, install them, and don't tell anybody. :D
 
m1dg3t said:
Well, it depends on how many different people are using it, but it seems like for multiple users, the cyber cafe type thing would work better. That is, unless Vivendi tries to charge him a ton. I think that's why they don't have set pricing; depends on the amount of traffic on each license.
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Vice city with hookers, gangs, and submachine guns + Kids = Pissed off parents

Would watch that one.
 
Thanks for all the replies, will have to look into their cafe pricing structure. Seems like overkill for what we've got here though...

Would simply getting hold of 5 more individual Half-Life copies as midget suggested work for simple online CS play? I've never heard of Steam, I take it it's a server indexing system; is it necessary?

And about the violent games concerns, fortunately I don't live in the USA where I would already have had my arse sued all over the shop ;) Parents come in all the time and couldn't care less. Here in the UK parents buy their kids GTA for Christmas.
 
by the end of the summer, steam will be absolutely required for playing valve's games online(legitimatey). steam is the gateway software to valve gaming. it provides authentication, game content etc..

if its a non-profit deal, i dont see why valve needs to get involved, i mean you just get some valid cdkeys, register them with steam, and then its all good, as if a bunch of friends were playing CS together.
 
just buy a couple halflife cds for $15 or so. Its not a cyber cafe casue he's not charging anything. Don't get involved with the cyber cafe issue of money raping valve's customers.
 
How would valve even know if you just went out and bought many copies of HL and installed em without a license from them? Is it just the honor system which makes people pay valve for licensing?
 
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