Before i start let me make it clear that this is NOT a guide on pirating section 8 or any other game or media, nor do i endorse or encourage pirating, copyright infringement, or other illegal activity in any form.

Now that that's out of the way lets get on with the guide.

TimeGate studios, the company responsible for bringing you section 8 went out of business back in 2013, which is why you can no longer buy Section 8 on steam.
you can read more about this on wikipedia if you wish

Thus, the original game is now abandonware. "When no owning entity of a software exists, all activities (support, distribution, IP activities etc.) in relationship to this software have ceased. If the rights to a software are non-recoverable in legal limbo ("orphaned work"), the software's rights cannot be bought by another company, and there is no company to enforce the copyright."

That being said some dedicated folks over at myabandonware have preserved the original Section 8 demo game in all its early 2000s glory, and made it available to download again.

Once you've unzipped your legal copy of Section 8 you will need to download some patches and fixes to get it running properly.

You will need:

*NoDVD for version 1.1 patch

*Patch v1.1

*Xliveless

Once you've unzipped these drop the contents of them into the main folder containing the executable for the game. it will ask you to overwrite one of them, click yes. once you've done that run the two new updater executables. if you get an error during the update process its probably fine, thats what mine did and my game runs fine.
Thats it.
You can now launch the game using the s8 executable.

If the game wont launch open the directory with the game and find S8.exe. Right click on S8.exe - Properties - Compatibility - Set "Run this app in compatibility mode with Windows Vista" and "Run as administrator"
If the game doesn't work in compatibility mode with Windows Vista - try to launch it in compatibility mode with Windows XP Service Pack 3