Possible. Ive finished all of these games several times now, never had any single glitch.

Maybe that is a sign that GameStop/Impulse is outsourcing their DD services to Valve? Maybe Valve will buy/run their DD service in the future?

The appeal of Gamestop/Impulse has never been that big, maybe they wanna ditch it for good.

why?

so you want to buy their games but don't want to give them money? doesn't make sense.

GG maybe but certainly not on GoG when the whole point of GoG is the fact that their games don't have any kind of DRM, unless you expect Steam-free editions of Half-Life to be released digitally, but i don't see that happening.

the whole thing is really quite an item of non-news. if you want the HL games you can get them directly from Valve on Steam. why jump through hoops with Impulse?

the only thing this does is it takes away from critics the argument that Valve are selling their own games exclusively on Steam.

This might be farfetched yet. There is not much information to support this theory.

Up to now they are still competitors in a growing market but with a big fish (Steam) and several small fish. From Valves perspective it just makes sense to maximize their sales of licenses of their games since this increases revenue while at the same time the games are still adding customers to their steam client using customer base. Once these new clients have the steam client running they are likely to buy more stuff directly from Steam. The customers who already are with Steam are unlikely to switch to Gamestop however. The OP might be the only one. All ind all, sounds like a good strategy.

Shame Valve's games will probably never be on GOG.

so? GoG's not the only place to purchase games digitally.

No, Steam games don't need Impulse.

Funny. I wasn't even aware I implied that.

Don't really understand all these posts about 'Giving Valve less money' In my opinion Gamestop and Impulse are much worse, why would you even want to give them money at all?

Don't get me wrong i'm not a fan of steam either (Offline Mode is dodgy, steamworks required) but let's face it, it's the best digital distrubtion for current games and unfortunatly if you want to play the latest and greatest (Skyrim, Deus Ex HR) then you have no choice but to have steam installed.

If you really want to buy steamworks games and give Valve less money, buy from Gamersgate. It's probably the best competitor to steam atm and offers games like Bastion DRM Free.

GameStop doesn't exist were I live so I don't have any ill-will against them. I dislike Stardock but since they sold Impulse I don't have any reason left to avoid it (other than regional restricions). On the other hand, Valve's influence and the mandatory Steamworks integration of non-Valve games does impact me as a PC gamer so I'm within my right of not wanting to give them money if I can avoid it (even though I like some of their games).
That's what I'm saying, you have no choice in those cases but at least you can decide where your money goes. In my case it won't go to Valve unless it is a Valve game.
I'm already doing that.

I see your point, if Gamestop doesn't exist where you are then how are you to know how bad/evil they are? The only way of knowing is other peoples experiences so i can see why you don't mind buying from them.

I do fully agree on the steam thing though. I honestly wouldn't use steam if i had the choice but literally every game nowadays requires it. Buying from gamergate like you said you do is certainly the best way of buying steam games but giving as little money as possible to Valve.

I'm hoping that some digital distributor, be it Gamersgate or a new one can actually come out and compete with steam without needing a client to run games and providing most if not all games completely DRM Free. Steam is too much of monopoly and has been for a few years now.

You didn't, Fred inferred that.

I hope he doesn't infer any more from that post then. As it is, I am already confused enough about my identity.

You sure about that? Gamestop is the largest video game retailer in the world. They actually own EB Games, Babbage's, Software ETC, Micromania, MovieStop, Planet X and FuncoLand in addition to the Gamestop storefronts and have stores pretty much everywhere except Asia and the Mid-East.

None of those exist here either. There aren't any dedicated videogame stores where I live because piracy is rampant. Some of the big department stores have a videogames section but they are almost exclusively for console games and the ocasional Diablo 2 or WoW box collecting dust. Retail games cost $100 or more if you want to buy them legally so almost nobody bothers with that. You can get original console games that are brought by contraband easily instead and they are priced almost the same as in USA ($50 to $65) but they stay at that price for a longer time because it takes them a while to sell all of their stock.