Don't copy that CD How a nephews CD burner inspired early Valve to embrace DRM Valve's Harrington: Unchecked CD duplication "put our entire business model at risk." Kyle Orland Mar 24, 2025 1:16 pm | 6 Dude, you got Half-Life? Can you burn me a copy? Credit: pm-me-your-clocks / Reddit Dude, you got Half-Life? Can you burn me a copy? Credit: pm-me-your-clocks / Reddit Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreBack in 2004, the launch of Half-Life 2 would help launch Steam on the path to eventually becoming the de facto digital rights management (DRM) system for the vast majority of PC games. But years before that, with the 1998 launch of the original Half-Life, Valve cofounder and then-CMO Monica Harrington said she was inspired to take DRM more seriously by her nephew's reaction to the purchase of a new CD-ROM burner.PC Gamer pulled that interesting tidbit from a talk Harrington gave at last week's Game Developers Conference. In her remembering, Harrington's nephew had used funds she had sent for school supplies on a CD replicator, then sent her "a lovely thank you note essentially saying how happy he was to copy and share games with his friends."That was the moment Harrington said she realized this new technology was leading to a "generational shift" in both the availability and acceptability of PC game piracy. While game piracy and DRM definitely existed prior to CD burners (anyone else remember the large codewheels that cluttered many early PC game boxes?), Harrington said the new technologyand the blas attitude her nephew showed toward using it for piracycould "put our entire business model at risk."Shortly after Half-Life launched with a simple CD key verification system in place, Harrington said the company noticed a wave of message board complaints about the game not working. But when Valve cofounder (and Monica's then-husband) Mike Harrington followed up with those complaining posters, he found that "none of them had actually bought the game. So it turned out that the authentication system was working really well," Harrington said. Harrington (left) poses with Scott Walker. Credit: Monica Harrington / Medium Harrington (left) poses with Scott Walker. Credit: Monica Harrington / Medium In a post-talk interview with PC Gamer, Harrington noted that her ex-husband remembers the authentication scheme being in place before they discovered their nephew's newfound love of CD copying. Regardless, Monica said their nephew's experience definitely cemented a new understanding of how everyday players saw game piracy."He was 19 years old. He wasn't thinking about things like companies, business models, or anything like that," Harrington told PC Gamer. "He wasn't thinking about intellectual property. He later apologized profoundly, and I said, 'Oh my God, you have no idea how valuable that was.'"Unfortunately for Valve, the CD key system used in Half-Life DRM was pretty easy to bypass if you knew the right code to use (as our own forum members circa 2001 can attest). Still, it's easy to see how the extra layer of protection Valve put on Half-Life helped inspire Steam's somewhat more robust DRM system for Half-Life 2 years later.The rest of Harrington's GDC talk includes a lot more insider information about the early days of Valve, including a discussion of how rights issues with retail publisher Sierra almost caused Valve to abandon Half-Life 2 in the middle of development. VentureBeat has an incredibly detailed write-up of the talk in its entirety, which serves as a great follow-up to Harrington's own lengthy blog post remembrances from last summer.Kyle OrlandSenior Gaming EditorKyle OrlandSenior Gaming Editor Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper. 6 Comments