I never knew that Half-Life 2 was supposed to save the struggling PC gaming market of the early 2000's.
What happened that almost killed PC gaming?

Microsoft focusing on Xbox for gaming, and devs deciding not to release PC versions of games, using shit excuses like "Muh sales", "PC gamers pirate a lot", or "Too much of a support headache (makes up tiny fraction of players, yet accounts for 90% of problems reported to tech support, and probably all stupid shit like 'why doesn't this run on my pentium II shitbox?')"

>>11831810 (OP)
pc gaming was never really alive
you had some doomfags, some civ fags, some warcraft/starcraft fags and some diablofags
pc gaming just wasnt that big of a thing

your image isn't saying that at all

Not reading all that but there was a legitimate fear that soon consoles would be able to provide the same level of quality with an FPS that a PC could reach, if not just provide the same exact games on a console opposed to a PC.

The backbone of PC gaming, CRPGs and Adventure games, were both dead, and now the last remaining popular gaming thing that PCs had in their corner qas the first-person shooter... and games like Halo brought it to a wider audience on the Xbox.

>>11831810 (OP)
>What happened that almost killed PC gaming?
PC gamers didn't reproduce, and normal sex having people played well-designed console games.

Then those console games became available on PC.

>>11832023
PC chads simply pirate new offspring
Only plebs have sex

>>11831810 (OP)
PC gaming was always more of a niche hobby back then due to the costs involved. Tehre was a small boom in 99-2001 when budget friendly GPU's tarted coming out that were good enough to play the classics: Unreal tournament, Quake 2 and 3, etc. But the 6th gen console market rendered PC gaming irrelevant and ignored for a few years as why spend $300 on a GPU for your PC, taking on all the installation, driver issues, game bugs and fixes you might encounter, when you could just buy a PS2/GC/Xbox and get better graphics for less money with zero issues.

>>11832037
Nigger, in 99 you could still software render most games.

>>11831810 (OP)
Reminder HL2 started the first ever mainstream DRM that future games would follow.

>>11831810 (OP)
>le heckin death of PC gaming
>le heckin dark ages before Steam
Never heard of this meme before I visited this board. Everyone was playing CS and MMOs. If you didn't like those, there was GTA, Morrowind, Warcraft 3, Max Payne, Diablo 2, and a gazillion of other games. It was maybe only a little spoiled by HL2/D3 delays, and the gradual demise of strategy games that weren't so impressive in 3D.
It was the peak time for PC games, sorry you grew up with whatever console shitbox you owned

>>11832076
W Polsce może tak, ale ja pamiętam jojczenie na brak lub kiepską jakość portów. "PC Master Race" to było ironiczne określenie.

>>11831810 (OP)
>What happened that almost killed PC gaming?
GPU market moving from a dozen different brands to nvidia's dominance (with radeon pacing behind).
Windows 9x starting to get phased out for 2000/ME/XP despite most PC gamers still using 9x for the compatibility and support.
The big thing however was the next generation of consoles. Dreamcast showed that consoles could in fact match PC in graphics as well as provide online services, then PS2 came out and there was legit fear that it could replace PCs entirely because of all the 'stuff' you could do with the PS2. That fear was enough for Microcock to make the Xbox, and with that PCs were no longer the top of the line gaming platform they used to be, and more and more of their games were seeing console releases that arguably were better.
That's okay though, 2007 happened and PCs went back on top again, and once Kojima visited Valve they became the de facto platform for all games until the Switch came out.

>>11832076
People forget that PC gaming was the American/European equivalent to how Japan would have 3 alternative consoles to Sega/Nintendo homogeny. Like, how many of the most important Western titles were PC titles? Doom, Ultima, Wizardry, Maniac Mansion, King's Quest, it was incredibly important.

What happened was a DECLINE in significance, sure, but that was due to publishers fucking over the PC market.

>>11831858
>PC gamers pirate a lot
This was actually true.

>>11832098
>2007 happened
What happened in 2007?

>>11832141
All the transitory points in that post wrapped up and PC gaming became akin to what it is now. Everybody uses the new Windows.
Everybody uses either an nvidia or AMD GPU.
Most importantly, consoles were no longer the powerhouses they were in the previous gen. The HD era demanded rapid hardware improvements but you can't upgrade a console. 2-3 years after the 360 and PS3 came out they were already considered underpowered, and PC stopped getting sloppy second ports because of this.

>>11831810 (OP)
>struggling
valve made this up to justify pushing steam

>>11832193
The industry as a whole struggling? Maybe, but they themselves were kind of running out of money when developing Half-Life 2, which is why a lot of ideas were cut or scrapped.

>>11832076
You never heard it because you clearly weren't part of the PC gaming scene in the mid 2000s. The Triple A publishers tried to kill off PC gaming and had their media shills putting out articles with these sorts of titles incessantly.

>>11832206
Yeah they tried to kill it until heckin based gaben™ saved PC gaming with his DRM platform

>>11832256
Whining about DRM in a meme filled post while in your previous post bragging about how everyone was playing MMOs.
No actual thoughts going through your brain, are there?

>>11832263
You really thought that was some gotcha didn't you? Retard.

>>11831810 (OP)
>What happened that almost killed PC gaming?
Journalists looking for clickbaity shit to write about.

So, there are lots of reasons why PC gaming was harshing its vibe back in the day, not the least of which was indeed PS2 and Xbox eating its lunch. Since console hardware is stairstepped in terms of power, but PC hardware has incremental improvements, it's easier to look at games like FF X and Silent Hill 2 and go "whoa, that looks amazing" compared to PC exclusives of the time (and let's not forget that the PC port of SH2 was kinda borked on release).
Also back in that time PC hardware was not only quite prohibitively expensive, it was always in a near constant state of upgrading, which made it a rich man's toy (even though back then most were still using 4:3 CRT monitors) if you wanted to keep up with the latest specs.

Let me just remind you that it's THIS era of PC gaming that the "hurr durr but PCs have always been better" crowd hold onto when they complain about consoles even though nowadays it's basically a moot point where you play your games since they all look awful and run like shit regardless. It's because it was an era where PC hardware, if you bought the best and brightest, was indeed capable of more if you really squinted, and they can't get an erection unless they're putting someone down for not groupthinking hard enough with them. Personally I've always just been in the camp of play what you want however you want and be happy in whichever way works for you, that everyone is stupid except me.

Also Half Life 1 is a better made game but Half Life 2 is more fun to play.

>>11831810 (OP)
HL2 was a trojan horse for the state of shit drm hell pc gaming became.

People bitch about how "steam is bad!", but I'm at least happy that the overwhelming majority of games that come out now have a decent pc version.

>>11832273
>overwhelming majority of games
*console games

>>11832282
>more games and variety is... bad

>>11832019
I remember at breif period before HL2 where almost all of my PC bros were only playing RTS's, Tribes, RTCW and Unreal Tournament. Consoles were king for a while.

>>11832292
console games shitting up the pc platform is in fact bad

>>11832381
>NO!! NOT MORE GAMES AND MORE VARIETY! THIS IS HORRIBLE!

>>11832385
There's less variety if the entire gaming ecosystem is homogenized

>>11832402
If you're perusing todays AAAslop, sure.

>>11832409
What I'm saying has nothing to do with game budgets

A huge problem for this time were ports to PC. Some of the most popular console games to get ported were usually broken are the worst reviewed in the case of multiplats since at this point game devs were developing for consoles first.

I remember starting at GameStop in like 2002 w a big pc wall and less than 2 years it was relegated to a small moveable kiosk w anime dvds taking up the same space on the other side. It did feel dire for pc at the time as far as gaming goes. Smartest decision blizzard ever made was making their MMO w graphics that a potato could run.

>>11832193
What the fuck...

>>11831858
>using shit excuses like "Muh sales", "PC gamers pirate a lot"
Another mindbroken weeb revisionist history with the usual Xbox bad boogyman, the sole reason why the Crysis sequels are shitty dumbed down console games is cause everyone played the game and yet barely anyone bought it.

>one game releasing from one dev will revive the entire industry
Videogame journalists were always hacks who didn't know anything about anything, nothing new here.

>>11832864
PC gaming was fairly dismal before Half-Life 2 and Source. It was all strategy games and MMOs that took a long time to get good enough at to have fun in multiplayer.

HL2, Source mods, and Counter-Strike Source did a lot in building up an early community around Steam that exploded with the release of the Orange Box. At that point, the "PC master race" talk truly kicked off because the console gaming scene became dominated by CoD.

>>11832960
Yeah, there were no popular FPS games before Half-Life 2.

>>11832980
If you say so

>>11831810 (OP)
>What happened that almost killed PC gaming?
Nothing happened, literally. PC gaming was fine and you had your console for mainstream gaming and your PC for super quality niche gaming.

It's the meme marketing devised by Valve to PR themselves into mesianhood.

>>11832864
>Videogame journalists were always hacks
Journalists were always hacks.

>>11831858

The butthurt pc gamer summary on a single post.

>>11831810 (OP)
Most pc game devs sold out and started dumbing down their games hard to fit them on to consoles with their limited memory and limited control schemes.

Deus Ex Invisible War was the canary in the coal mine. Thief Deadly Shadows was also consolized shit. Then all at once Epic Games, Bethesda, BioWare and a whole host of formerly pc game devs started shitting out games made primarily for the Xbox and Xbox 360.