sasukemisi

Steam is free to sign up for, you pay for games like you bought them and then they download to you. So you'd buy HL1 (or get it in a store and enter the cd key you got) And then whammo you have HL1 and you can play it offline. You don't need to pay a subscription fee for most retail games, MMOs are sold on there and have subscription fees, but that's not the norm. In general you buy a game and its yours to keep, your steam ID can be transfered from computer to computer and you keep your games along with you. It's a great service for those in areas with good broadband and it is the wave of the future in my opinion. I try to buy all my games through steam because of its simplicity and the fact I don't need to do CD checks. It auto-updates my games, removes the need for intrusive cd/dvd-checks, it's great.