so ive heard people saying get mw2 cheap from somewhere then activate it on steam and download it, and mean thats great, you get the download it anytime anywhere factor. was wondering tho can this be done with any new games? like i have just cause 2 on pre order from a shop and steam has it too, so does this mean i can activate it on steam when i get it?
buy a game not from steam and activate it on steam question
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Soldato
You can add any game to steam, but they wont activate. Only valve games activate as far as im aware
You can certainly add a non steam game to your steam games list, but I'm not sure you can convert a non steam version to a steam version (In otherwords I think all you can do is have it appear on the list, but it doesn't know what game it is, it's just allowing you to add a shortcut to the my games list). If I'm wrong I'd like to know how as well 
Soldato
You can activate certain retail games on steam
The Valve collection obviously being one of them I am also sure MW2. I am 100% sure Warhammer: Dawn of War 2 is as I bought the game from a shop and it is now on my steam which I can download
There is a list on the steam forums. I cannot access it from work but there deffo is a list. Its not a huge amount of games mind.
The Valve collection obviously being one of them I am also sure MW2. I am 100% sure Warhammer: Dawn of War 2 is as I bought the game from a shop and it is now on my steam which I can download
There is a list on the steam forums. I cannot access it from work but there deffo is a list. Its not a huge amount of games mind.
Soldato
MW2 works, because it was activated over Steam even if you bought the retail copy. The new AvP will do the same. All Valve games do this.
However, most don't. If a game uses Steamworks (for achievements etc) then if you buy it retail, it will activate one Steam.
If it doesn't use Steamworks, then a retail copy will not activate on Steam at all.
Caporegime
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Beat me to it Kenai! I was just about to say that. There's that list and anything on that list you can open Steam and choose to activate a product, you can then have it appear in the list and it behaves totally as if it was bought using Steam, automatic updates etc.
Adding shortcuts to non-steam games in Steam seems to be a bit inelegant in my opinion.
Adding shortcuts to non-steam games in Steam seems to be a bit inelegant in my opinion.
Bear in mind it wouldn't really be in the interests of Valve to let you activate any old game on Steam, as then they'd be hit by the bandwidth costs, despite not having received any money from the original sale. I'd imagine that for the (non-Valve) titles where this is possible, they probably have some kind of additional arrangement with the Publisher.
Permabanned
Actually is is just positive pr for steam. People will appreciate it and buy through steam in future.
Soldato
not if they can get all the steam services for a tenner cheaper.
Look at BC2, aload of people pre-ordering from play, because its a tenner cheaper, theres quite a few that prefer the no-hassle of steam so have got it for £35 on there, guaranteed most of those people would buy from play if they could just activate it on steam though.
Associate
What are the bets people will try them keys haha
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