The fact that none of the people you've talked to have suffered the same problem since then should be proof enough, given that it's impossible to prove a negative. If I cared, I might record a video of me starting up HL2 without my computer exploding (I could even do it in offline mode), but you're really not worth that kind of effort.
DPsx7 posted...
License be damned, it's my copy on a read-only format. They can't do anything about it.
That's not what the EULA says. "License be damned" isn't really an attitude that would hold up in court, if it ever came to that. There's some debate about whether or not EULA's are actually enforceable, but that debate applies equally to both digital and physical copies. All that differs is how easy it is to enforce a license revocation.
I think we've confirmed Steam users aren't that knowledgeable. They don't understand the problem.
They would literally need to come here and take the disc. That's the only way. An offline console certainly wouldn't know the difference. The license is just so you don't profit off their work. The hard copy will not be failing anytime soon.