Valve and Nvidia Give "First Slice"

[CSN NewsBot]

Valve and Nvidia are teaming up to give all Nvidia card owners a little taste of Portal.

Effective immediately, all NVIDIA gamers may receive a free copy of PortalTM: First Slice, a special version of the award-winning new game from Valve, by visiting www.steamgames.com/nvidia1 and "Taking the test." Steam will then auto-detect the presence of NVIDIA hardware and make Portal: First Slice available immediately, free of charge. To make it easy for all NVIDIA customers to redeem this offer, a link to the Steam offer will also be included in all NVIDIA drivers.

This offer allows Nvidia users to get Peggle Extreme, Portal: The First Slice, Half-Life 2: The Lost Coast, and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch for free. More information can be found right here.

[FLeK0]

I suppose this means the automatic driver update for ati cards project is cancelled.

[Zips]

What project? Last I knew, Steam gave notices whenever there was a new driver release for either Nvidia or ATI cards. At least that's (sort of) been the case with me.



Also, I'd say this is worth going for just for Peggle Extreme alone, a title previously only available with a purchase of the Orange Box.

[Zom-B]

Time to unplug my ATI card then, i've got Nvidia onboard.



Or is this another one of those "Only in country x" deals?

[FLeK0]

Zips wrote..

What project?

This one.

[-:Nighthawk:-]

So I'm curious... will these titles be inextricably linked to nVidia cards, to the point that if you upgrade to an ATi card later, you'll find your copy of HL2M no longer working?



The reason I ask is this: I don't see any way of avoiding having ATi owners from simply going to a buddy's house with an nVidia card, loading up their Steam profile, "taking the test" and then activating the games on their account, logging out, walking back home and playing the activated games on their ATi-based computer. I'm not a proponent of exploitation, but it seems like these games are going to have to be special "nVidia only" versions which will (sadly) later die if their owner decides to switch video cards...

[diamon12]

What is Portal First Slice? How does it differ from the original Portal?

[Zom-B]

I think it's just a demo.

[kerosine99]

FIRST SLICE OF CAKE, GET IT?

[Zom-B]

OH LOL I GEDDIT



¬_¬

[orion]

-:Nighthawk:- wrote..

So I'm curious... will these titles be inextricably linked to nVidia cards, to the point that if you upgrade to an ATi card later, you'll find your copy of HL2M no longer working?



The reason I ask is this: I don't see any way of avoiding having ATi owners from simply going to a buddy's house with an nVidia card, loading up their Steam profile, "taking the test" and then activating the games on their account, logging out, walking back home and playing the activated games on their ATi-based computer. I'm not a proponent of exploitation, but it seems like these games are going to have to be special "nVidia only" versions which will (sadly) later die if their owner decides to switch video cards...

To be quite honest, with the price war and lack of cutting edge products being produced by the house of AMD/ATI, I don't think many people will be switching over to them soon (less a budget system, which even then, the prices are not drastic)

[Zips]

-:Nighthawk:- wrote..

So I'm curious... will these titles be inextricably linked to nVidia cards, to the point that if you upgrade to an ATi card later, you'll find your copy of HL2M no longer working?



The reason I ask is this: I don't see any way of avoiding having ATi owners from simply going to a buddy's house with an nVidia card, loading up their Steam profile, "taking the test" and then activating the games on their account, logging out, walking back home and playing the activated games on their ATi-based computer. I'm not a proponent of exploitation, but it seems like these games are going to have to be special "nVidia only" versions which will (sadly) later die if their owner decides to switch video cards...

If you're really going to go through that much trouble for what is basically free already in various capacities (save for the Portal stuff, which is essentially a demo and the special edition Peggle game), then they deserve to keep them. But really, having to remove one card, install another, drivers etc... Just for a few small, essentially free titles already is just a bit much, no?

[Threeboy]

Portal itself is just a slice, they should have called the demo "first crumb"

[scud]

The problem is once you actually register and it says it's starting the download, nothing happens.



I've restarted Steam, gone into Portal itself to see if there's something there, but so far there's nothing about any First Slice.



Methinks someone at Valve screwed up and someone's going to be working late tonight.

[mad1]

Same problem as #13. However I wonder if this is going to be like HL2 episodes...