My brother is in college again (and with him went CS:S)... so does Steam or Valve ever give this game away for free like it has doe with Portal? I really want to get back into it but cannot invest in buying it right now (I know, it's really cheap, yada yada yada, I'm saving up for a new build here!)

No chance on getting it for Free.
However Steam is going to have their Winter sale very soon and you can probably get it for 50%-75% off. Among many others games. Their Winter sale is usually quite large and will hopefully be better then their Thanksgiving sale.

I would highly recommend taking advantage of that, because CS:S is still one of the most popular shooters out and they probably won't reduce the price until CS:Go comes out, if ever.

i don't think so

yeah i would like a free copy too.

aequitas28 said: No chance on getting it for Free.
However Steam is going to have their Winter sale very soon and you can probably get it for 50%-75% off. Among many others games. Their Winter sale is usually quite large and will hopefully be better then their Thanksgiving sale.

Thats true. They have daily deals now. So just wait for to go on sale if not I would probably go for a steam game trade if it is possible.

I doubt it will go completely free, but it might go for around $2.

Yes, they often do great deals like -75%, but it never was free (yet)

For Portal 1, yes it was free several times, and i really enjoyed the game :D

Hopefully this game is one of the deals, I'll be sure to buy it.

Yeah what for the christmas sales, Steam really goes crazy on those. Valve games always go on sale!

This game has been given away for free. For those who obtained all 36 potatoes during the Portal 2 ARG received Valve Complete Pack for free, which includes all of Valve's games. I am one of those lucky recipients.

Unfortunately, I don't think there has been any other such opportunities. The lowest I've seen CS:S is about $5. I'm pretty sure it'll appear as a Daily Deal. That's not too bad of a price.

definewikipedia said: This game has been given away for free. For those who obtained all 36 potatoes during the Portal 2 ARG received Valve Complete Pack for free, which includes all of Valve's games. I am one of those lucky recipients.

Unfortunately, I don't think there has been any other such opportunities. The lowest I've seen CS:S is about $5. I'm pretty sure it'll appear as a Daily Deal. That's not too bad of a price.

I'm so sad I didn't get to take part in that, my account was hacked at that time.

I have a feeling they'll do something similar for DoTA 2.

Unfortunate that you got hacked. Even if you didn't, I don't know if you would have wanted to participate. You had to spend $30ish on 13 indie games and play those games and unlock achievements to get certain potatoes and some of them were insanely difficult. It was really time-consuming.

You think so? DOTA 2 isn't really a single player game. Not sure what type of ARG they can create. Portal 2's ARG was based on the story and the whole point of the ARG was to eventually make Portal 2 release earlier, which was only 8 hours earlier. Hmm, I guess they could do another ARG, we'll see when the time comes. I do have a feeling that there would be a HL3 ARG though.

watch the christamas sale on steam! there ossum deals i think you can get css now for min. 50% lower

I got this game for free during this holidays :)
Actually I got 2 games for free, picked them from great gift pile, L4D2 and CS:S :D
Totally happy about it :D