Non-steam MW?

[Capt Marvelous]

I bought this game way back when it first came out... before steam even had it. I basically can install and play the game online without steam. All the patches and DLC maps I got off of gaming sites. It's been a couple of years since I lasted touch it. If I were to install and play today, can I log onto and play on servers with other players who requires steam? I know there are dedicated servers for it, but do these serve steam as well? I rather not "activate" my copy with steam and prefer to give it to family or friends if I ever got tire of it.

[Laptop]

Nah, you can connect to people using Steam version and the same vice versa. It doesn't matter whether or not they have Steam or not you can always connect to them. However I still prefer to use the Steam version as it just downloads all the DLC + patches for you. Oh and, you can't activate your old retail copy of COD4 with Steam.

[Capt Marvelous]

Thanks! I guess with server administrators and the use of punkbuster, the cheaters and hackers aren't as rampant as they are with the horrible matchmaking system Activision uses today?

[Laptop]

Na, the cheating is very low on COD4. Any cheaters that come in on popular servers just end up getting banned by the server administrators. Punkbuster is useless, I still prefer VAC over that. But yeah, the only annoying things about COD4 is stuff like grenade spamming, not really a cheat, but can get annoying to hell.