Half-Life 2 Delay

CygnusZ · October 8, 2003, 01:38

Gamers' worst fears were confirmed this morning when Vivendi Universal announced that its eagerly awaited Half-Life 2 will not be released until April 2004.

In a brief statement to the French daily Les Echos, VU Games president of international operations, Christophe Ramboz, blamed the now-infamous source code theft for the delay. "A third of the source code was stolen," said Ramboz. "It's serious because it forces us to delay the launch of the game by at least four months--to April 2004."

Doug Lombardi, Valve's Director of Marketing, told GameSpot today, "We are still assessing the effects of the attack. At this time, we have no further details we can share regarding the theft [or] its impact on the release of Half-Life 2."

A Vivendi Universal Games spokesperson informed GameSpot that it would release a statement regarding the game later today.

The Half-Life 2 delay couldn't come at a worse time for VU Games. So far, 2003 has seen the publisher's relationship with Baldur's Gate publisher Interplay disintegrate, while its much-hyped Hulk game fizzled, just like its big-screen counterpart. Analysts cited Hulk's failure in the firm's $61 million operating loss in the company's two most recent quarters. However, the delay announcement today didn't greatly affect the stock price of VU Games' parent company, Vivendi Universal.

Steady stock prices are cold comfort to the millions of gamers who had hoped to help Gordon Freeman save the world--again--this holiday season.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/ha...s_6076466.html

DrSpike · October 8, 2003, 05:29

Hmm, are they just blaming the hackers, or did the hackers really cause the delay? :suspicious:

Skanky Burns · October 8, 2003, 05:56

Possibly. Workflow would be disrupted by investigation, and they may need to restructure certain MP components to combat cheats made possible by the source code being available.

DrSpike · October 8, 2003, 06:09

That's certainly true, but there were mumbles about more delays anyway, and it seems a good idea to shunt the blame away from Valve onto the poor defenceless hackers.

Spaced Cowboy · October 8, 2003, 11:40

Yeah, like they did not have back-ups. This is a lame excuse for a delay. Why don't they say that it just will not be ready.

Asmodean · October 8, 2003, 12:31

Quote:

Originally posted by Spaced Cowboy
Yeah, like they did not have back-ups. This is a lame excuse for a delay. Why don't they say that it just will not be ready.

Back-ups actually have nothing to do with this.

There are, however, serious issues relating to the multiplayer parts of the HL2 code. I personally give a rat's ass about multiplayer (or about FPS in general) but I can imagine the outcry if weird scores or strange exploits begin to turn up on the gaming sites.

Too many pizza faced youngsters spend far too much of their time playing HL MP, for Valve not care about MP being flawless. And by that I really mean flawless. MP will make or break this game. Nothing less. And if MP is suspicious, for any reason, then HL2 will not become a success.

Asmodean

vovan · October 8, 2003, 23:17

Quote:

Originally posted by Asmodean
And if MP is suspicious, for any reason, then HL2 will not become a success.

It probably will be. If people find ways around MP security without the source code, imagine what they can do with it. Besides, according to one of the articles on Gamespot, the Steam code was also among the files stolen. That means that it is not only about cheating in the game any more. Steam being essentially an integrated distributed files system with built-in IM and other bells and whistles like that, the players' machines will be quite open to attacks as well. It is no news that a lot of MP games have problems with firewalls, so people either disable them completely or at least relax a rule or two to get to be able to play or host a game. If that isn't a perfect entry point....

Now, of course, I don't know why anybody would ever want to hack into a casual FPS player's computer, but you never know - I'm no expert on the mentality of the leet haxxor doodz.

Sarxis · October 9, 2003, 00:52

Sounds more and more like a cop-out. The game probably wasn't ready for a 2003 release to begin with.

As far as hackers creating cheats and exploits from the code- that's also malarky. They do that anyway! So I can't see a six month delay being caused by stolen code.

But I wasn't looking forward to this game anyway. Now, Max Payne 2, Thief 3, and Deus Ex 2 will have the spotlight, yay!

vovan · October 9, 2003, 02:04

Quote:

Originally posted by Anun Ik Oba
As far as hackers creating cheats and exploits from the code- that's also malarky. They do that anyway!

That's the whole point though.

Imagine how much more even an idiot could do with access to the source code. You essentially have all of the packet encryption, integrity checks and whatever other security measures VALVe might have included at hand. You don't need to guess at the composition of the packets with a sniffer - all of the algorithms are right there for the taking (assuming, of course, that part of code was, indeed, stolen). And while I couldn't care less about cheaters - I am not a big fan of FPS's any way - like I said, it's not really about cheating any more. Like you said, it is done any way, but with all the networking code at hand, it is really easy to compromise the security of any player's system. Imagine, some poor sod gets online to shoot some friends, and while he's at it, his comp is pumped full of virii. I suppose VALVe might be afraid of lawsuits because of that? ("Ahhh, your game broke my computaaarrr? Waaah" - you know, that kind of thing, though I am not sure that a lawsuit like that would have any merit - hey, this is America, where everyone sues everyone else with or without any reason whatsoever.) But any way, while it may or may not be true that they would have delayed the game further any way - after all, didn't they push it forward a month the very day before they announced the leak? While, I say, that may be true, I think a delay due to the leak, which would result from having to rewrite the networking code is still justified.

Traianvs · October 9, 2003, 06:13

Dude, I don't believe that bullshit story about some dude hacking Gabe Newell's computer...

This is Valve, I would think they take the necessary precautions so that wouldn't happen.

The game simply wasn't ready imo

i'm not waiting for it either; halflife is crap => Thief3 is my baby!

Asmodean · October 9, 2003, 14:50

Quote:

Originally posted by vovansim

leet haxxor doodz.

Asmodean

vovan · October 9, 2003, 14:58

Quote:

Originally posted by Trajanus
i'm not waiting for it either; halflife is crap => Thief3 is my baby!

Totally agree with you on that one.

What I don't agree with is that the whole thing is made up by VALVe... I'd be really amazed if it was. Quite a risky step, IMO, if it was a publicity stunt. I think the risk of loosing fans that will be worried about the security is much greater than that of loosing fans because of the delay in the game. After all, we all whine and cry when a game is delayed, yet when it is finally released, we go on and buy it any way...