IMO, YES.

It doesn't just stink, it sucks.

Alright. When HL2 was released, some people with old comps complained about a sound stuttering problem. I bought the game in December of 2006, in a Holiday Pack that contains HL: Source with Deathmatch, HL2 with Deathmatch and Lost Coast and HL2: EP1. First thing I did was play HL. I completed it with absolutely no technical problems. Then I started HL2, and got a nasty freeze. Not a regular freeze though, because I couldn't even CTRL+ALT+DEL out of the game. Nothing worked. I had to restart the computer.

Next time I tried, got yet another freeze. But this time when the game was loading the first level. Another restart.

I left the game until February. It runs almost perfect. 2 freezes in some months. Then I was able to finish it.

I remembered that the pack included EP1 too so I started to play it. Well, at least TRIED...

At first, I couldn't even start the first level. I watch the intro do weird things (the G-Man was purple, the white door thing appeared miles away, and so on) then I get a freeze. Tried again. Same. Then I started playing. And the problems started to happen.

Dog not showing up, AI freezing completely, random complete freezes, continuous stuttering...

I contacted Valve and they told me to update the drivers of my graphics card. I updated its drivers, also the drivers for the sound card and the CD drive. No results. Then they told me to buy new hardware (yeah, I'M GOING TO BUY NEW FREAKING HARDWARE JUST FOR A FREAKING GAME), wich, in case you didn't read the message in caps, didn't. They told me to lower the overall graphics setting and disabling the sound. I put the game at the lowest resolution, with the lowest detail, and disabled the sound (it was like playing Pac-man but in 3D). No results.

Then came this. They told me that they're working on a fix since a "reduced" number of players were suffering the same problem.

That's funny because:
1.)There's a thread in the OFFICIAL Steampowered forums about this problem, with +780 replies and +34000 views.
2.)There's people that suffered of these problems since the original launch, and Valve promised a fix for them too.
3.)They told me to lower everything graphics-related, yet most of the problems revolve around the sound.
And 4.)They told me to lower everything graphics-related, yet having told me that my comp is OK.

I'm SO FU**ING SICK OF THIS. I'M A COSTUMER AND I'VE RIGHTS. I BOUGHT THE GAME LEGALLY, RETAIL VERSION, SENT THEM THE BUYING TICKET, A PHOTO OF MY DVD CASE, THE DVD AND MY SERIAL NUMBER; I TOLD EVERY SINGLE SYSTEM SPEC TO THEM, I TOLD THEM THE BACKGROUND APPS I HAVE RUNNING, I EVEN SENT THEM A 3-MIN. VIDEO MADE WITH CAMTASIA AND SOME HOTKEY MACROS PROGRAM SHOWING THE FREEZE, AND WHAT DO I GET? A STUPID COPYPASTED REPLY FROM THE FAQ WITH SOME POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS THAT I TRIED BEFORE.

Phuck Valve.

I hate to break it to you, but you might need to upgrade your system a little. Could you post your specs? (it's kind of strange though, because I could run hl2 on my laptop at a low framerate, and it had integrated graphics)

At least they didn't treat you like ♥♥♥♥ before you even got the game.

Same with XBox 360 tech support. You call them, and you get on the phone with some guy from Asia who can barely speak two words of english.

No joke.

Yeah i hate em, I got a damn French Update for my css the other day... FRENCH... IM NO WHERE NEAR FRANCE... Now all my ingame text and radio commands are in french...

OOO, well that sucks...
And those ♥♥♥♥ Valve made this IP protection something so im no longer able to order official copies of Valve games from Russia and play them here! I have this ♥♥♥♥ message that says "Your IP adress isnt blah blah blah"... Although games I already registered beofre work fine
Theyre tech support still sucks though, when I was playing HL2, I always had this crash with "Blah blah 0000000000x0 blah blah 000000000000x1 blah. Memorey cannot be "read" "...
They told me to do something with my bios... Stupid ♥♥♥♥ why the ♥♥♥♥ with my ♥♥♥♥ bios give me bull♥♥♥♥? ITS ONLY ONE ♥♥♥♥ GAME!!! After that... I just reinstalled it and it worked.... Stupid ♥♥♥♥ RAWR ♥♥♥♥!

Strange, I bought the exact same pack 2 weeks ago and they all work perfectly, including GMod 10 which I bought 4 hours after getting the pack XD

Meh, Episode 1 crashes all the time for me, nothing helpful from vALVE. I wanted to play the game for the story... Ugh.

i have nothing against valve personally, none of their products crash on me and they made one of my favorite FPS's

Screw valve get pacsteam!

Notice that all the good games is getting killed by them?

TBH its not all that bad, they have a good idea, its just the devplovers who make the game, fail. Think of stalker, its crap becasue the lack of patchs , if value took on stalker, it would only be that we get the patchs more offen,

Steam works fine for me... Gmod and Episode 1 crash a little too much to be taken lightly, but I'm sure that's caused by Garry (gmod10) and the speed at which they made it (Episode 1)

Strange GMOD 10 never crashes on me even when im on a large cracked server.

I sometime get the odd crash on CSS or HL2...

Gmod 9 was just Humpty Dumpty to me though