Quote:Anticipating a massive onslaught of piracy, Valve Software (the creative talent behind Half Life 2) is looking to mitigate their financial losses. Valve hopes to accomplish this by requiring individuals during installation to verify and create an account - even for single player. The move is in response to the apparent leakage of several major games, such as Halo 2 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Doug Lombardi of Valve Software spoke with GameSpy PC about the new single player account. "During installation the user will be prompted to authenticate the copy and create a Steam account. After that is complete, the single-player and LAN games do not require an Internet connection."

Last October, Valve Software was the victim of a serious security breach which allowed unknown individuals to download a large segment of Half Life 2's source code. While it was not enough to actually play the game, it marked a new era of multimedia finding its way online.

Conversely, it appears that some gaming software companies are moving in the exact opposite direction. Impressed with the extensive media coverage of prereleased games, inXile will intentionally prerelease "The Bard's Tale." Although this title is not very well known, it will be interesting to see how this gamble pays off for inXile.