If you can find the later update packages elsewhere, I'd say to avoid Steam totally.
But that's just me.
When I installed HL-2, it helpfully "updated" HL-1 to "current status" (note that it did not give any CHOICE, it just DOES IT) and the result of this was that from then on, HL-1 would crash on startup.
Of course after about a year, HL-2 wouldn't work anymore either. When Steam tried to log on, suddenly it says "incorrect password", even though there were no other indications that my PC ever got hacked, I only ever played from my home PC and nobody else ever played it.
Valve would not answer any emails.
Valve's rules say that they can kill ANY user account/serial, if it is caught using cheats. It doesn't matter if your account info was stolen or not. I can only assume that was what happened. I never got any info at all out of Valve.
No more money for Valve, and no more user info for Valve, they can go suck a dick.
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