Like I said earlier, I installed my copy of half life on several friends machines, along with esf. Thus they are using my cd key. Note: they do not have internet connections.
What makes it so hard is just for a good lan fest, with less hassles.
If everyone had to bring they're own copy of half life, and share a 56k connection, And download the steam updates... (Y'know all those updates after you have installed steam? - They would be painfull if 6+ people just wanted to game for an hour, Country of south australia we are talking here, no such thing as cable or dsl). Things become quite irritating. -.-
Still, I found a way around the need for steam.
And if something goes wrong with that in the future, I guess people with have to resort to sticking with evm.
"And those "legal" people can simply activate their account with the serial key on the cd-case. I no longer see why WON is needed."
We are talking about LAN Won or steam should not affect something like that. - Some people rather game, and not have to worry about the internet, and patches, updates, cd keys, versions, extra programs etc.