Bought the game 90+ days ago (Score 1)

I bought the "Game of the Year" edition of Half-life in 2002. Now I can't use my CDkey to set up a Steam account. They say any key older than 90 days is invalid ... of course I could send in $10 and my CDcase to Sierra to have my key reset, but I still see that as not quite fair. I paid for the game expecting online multi-player ability, and I had it, for 2 years, but now I don't.