Half Life authentication servers steam up

THE WORLD has come crashing down around Half-Life 2 players today, as Steam's authentication servers in Europe have died.

Players who have rushed out to buy the game today and have tried to activate this afternoon have been greeted with the message, below, that they cannot complete the authentication process and so can't play the game. Many of the gamers that we spoke to were outraged. One told us that he "... Waited ****ing years for this game to come out and now can't play it? I've got the damn discs in my hands! It's outrageous! I want it now!" Similarly strong-worded conversations were had with other gamers.

A technical support engineer at Vivendi said that it could be three hours or longer before the servers are fixed and games can be played.

Early birds up this morning activated the game at 8am with no problem. If this subsequent monumental crash is anything to go by, however, we can only expect all hell to break lose when the USA comes online in force.

Retail players are being made to activate their copies of Half-Life 2 online with Valve's servers to prevent piracy and leakage. You can see the message of doom below. µ