Portal Forum

The only version supported here is the Steam version, but the disk costs only half as much. Does anyone know if it works?

I'm sorry nobody has answered you before.

I think you should be okay buying the disk. Worst case scenario: you install Steam, and then register the disk as a Steam game. Chances are the disk will try to install Steam for you.

However, if you still haven't bought the game, it's on sale at the Steam store right now.

It's not really worth buying the disks from valve. These are subject to exactly the same constraints as the downloads. The only advantage of the disks is lowed download time but with wasted space and more pollution.
If you already have Half life or couterstrike from steam buying Portal on steam is advantageous as a part of the engine is already downloaded and installed.

slawo wrote:

It's not really worth buying the disks from valve. These are subject
to exactly the same constraints as the downloads. The only advantage
of the disks is lowed download time but with wasted space and more
pollution.
If you already have Half life or couterstrike from steam buying
Portal on steam is advantageous as a part of the engine is already
downloaded and installed.

Hi,

This is slightly misleading/incorrect -- while it is true most Steam games retain
the same DRM as the original disc_based release (of a game), the big difference is
that the DRM negotiation is done online -- with disc based releases of games, the DRM
component is 'on the disc media' which requires low_level (scsi) driver access to the
disk -- at present, this will most likely fail on the Mac case due to limitations in
the Mac scsi drivers....the short is, at present on the Mac, Steam is the way to go.

Cheers!