It was never difficult to play CS for free, and that's probably the reason for its success. I remember getting into CS because you could play online with basically any Half-life product key and by 2000 you could buy bundles that came with like 3-4 keys.
I think CS, in that era, was free if you had a HL product key. It was a community mod and even when it transitioned to a boxed standalone product you could still download it if you had a HL key. CS: Source was also a free upgrade.
A counter question: why do you care? Do you believe someone waited all those years to not buy it and play for free in browser with massive lag? Is this an attempt to enforce bullshit corporate-centric policies that are copyright laws simply for the sake of enforcing them?
You're projecting a lot on my comment. I spent most of my youth pirating CS and Unreal Tournament so no I don't care at all if people can do it from the comfort of their browser, besides such old games might as well be in the public domain as far as I'm concerned. I was just surprised that a website like this one managed to operate for more than a few days before getting shutdown for obvious piracy, that's all.
I guess there's precedent for Valve being pretty lenient with that stuff though, after all they embraced the Black Mesa HL remake when most other editors would've ceased-and-desisted it into oblivion.
Does it? It has been over 20 years. Should a creator be able to profit indefinitely off a single work? 20 years is long enough for a patent to expire. The fact that copyright outlasts patents is really just a corruption bug in our legal system.
Patent does not apply here, copyright does. And the US copyright lasts 70 years after the death of the author, and for companies, 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever is shorter.
Yes it does. The creators also maintained that code, and the other intellectual property, by expabding on it with source and csgo. While I am nobody to poopoo piracy, this is a piss poor justification.
