An interesting development involving a Steam file...

[Axyon]

Thanks to Majestic XII's insight, it appears that everyone with Steam may have another Half-Life 2 direct feed video on their hard-drive!

The gcache.gcf file inside the 'half-life 2 movies' folder in the Steam directory has some interesting contents, one of them being 'hl2-docks.exe'. Currently we cannot get to it, but if anyone knows how to access it the .gcf file, it would be interesting to see if the video is real or not.

View the original topic posted here.

UPDATE: The file has been extracted, and is viewable. Instructions on getting it can be found here. Many thanks to Chris for working this out.

 

[nbk-brando]

Hmmm....I'm not sure that's a good idea broadcasting that information on a reputable fan/news site. What does that tell Valve about this site?

 

[Apos]

I tend to agree. Not only is it hacking into their files, but it doesn't actualy provide anyone with anything other than speculation about a word in a cache that may or may not signal that part of a video we may or may not get soon anyway is in an unreadable form on our hds. Not everyone coming to this site even knows what these files or Steam even are, and this seems a little over the head and outside the needs of the average fan.

But, if the topic is kept, then I'll add that when I deleted my g-man vid by accident, it was replaced again almost instantly as soon as I started steam running again. Seems that file really is some sort of huge cache.

 

[BWMASTER]

I replaced mine with my own bink encoding to run smooth. It didnt change at all.

 

[Apos]

When I replaced it, I meant that I actually tried to have bink copy the new compile into the old filename, and I hit the "allow overwrite thingie." I think what bink did was first delete my old file and then try to convert it... which didn't work because now there was no file to convert. Kinda silly, but thanks to 400M of cache, no harm done.

 

[Majestic XII]

Well...its hacked now

 

[Axyon]

Originally posted by nbk-brando
Hmmm....I'm not sure that's a good idea broadcasting that information on a reputable fan/news site. What does that tell Valve about this site?

It's free material that was going to be distributed by Valve (for free, let me remind you) at some point anyway. I don't see how they could have a problem with it. It's not costing them anything.

 

[Eternity]

Apos: it's big news. The average fan wants the videos.

/me shrugs.

EDIT: And I don't see why you're running wildly around because it's 'rude' or a 'hacked version.' It's the exact same thing as what will be released 'officially' -- just in a different file format. Valve put the video in the cache, for pete's sake -- it's obviously not some rough thing.

 

[Tee Kyoo Em]

.

 

[Apos]

It's free material that was going to be distributed by Valve (for free, let me remind you) at some point anyway.

This isn't something for which make up your own logic. You can't just decide to make decisions for other people just because it would be nice for you and not bad for them.

 

[Apos]

And I don't see why you're running wildly around because it's 'rude' or a 'hacked version.'

What is rude is hexing into someone else's program to get at content you want but they haven't decided to release, and then insulting them about the quality of it. That's just ridiculous, and trying to justify it is likewise ridiculous.

 

[Axyon]

Originally posted by Apos
This isn't something for which make up your own logic. You can't just decide to make decisions for other people just because it would be nice for you and not bad for them.

Jesus, look, I don't see how Valve could have a problem with this.. not to mention that it's their errors that has allowed this to happen. What do you expect people to do once they find out that there's a whole new movie inside a cache file? Just ignore it and wait patiently? Yeah, that's going to happen..

 

[Eternity]

Nietzsche, the cache contains a huge video file. It isn't going to be changed, and it wasn't put there randomly.

Thinking clearly about the issue, and I were to take your point of view, I would have said that it simply wasn't supposed to be released at that particular time. (Which it was anyway -- the real version is now out.) You simply can't say that the video file was inferior or of a special kind. (Besides the format.) It just isn't true.

Valve will be amused at the fans ingenuity. I doubt they are going to be even slightly annoyed.

Come on, kids. They put it in the chache, for pete's sake. Enjoy live, don't get in a tizzy about these things.

 

[Apos]

Jesus, look, I don't see how Valve could have a problem with this.. not to mention that it's their errors that has allowed this to happen.

There's no reason to argue about this. Whether they made an "error" (what error, exactly, anyway?) or not still doesn't justify hexing around with their stuff. Even if afterwards they say its okay, it's still unjustified to do without first making sure it's okay first.

I'm not trying to get anyone riled up here. But they have control over their stuff, they choose when to have it do what as part of whatever media campaign or tech test they want to run.

What do you expect people to do once they find out that there's a whole new movie inside a cache file? Just ignore it and wait patiently? Yeah, that's going to happen..

What people can or can't do isn't the issue.

 

[LoneDeranger]

Originally posted by Apos
There's no reason to argue about this. Whether they made an "error" (what error, exactly, anyway?) or not still doesn't justify hexing around with their stuff. Even if afterwards they say its okay, it's still unjustified to do without first making sure it's okay first.

I'm not trying to get anyone riled up here. But they have control over their stuff, they choose when to have it do what as part of whatever media campaign or tech test they want to run.

What people can or can't do isn't the issue.

Apos I think I would have to disagree with you here (thats a first )

Valve put the movies on our hard drive. Technically they did not have a legal right to do that without asking our permission first. But that's a different story.

Now, why is it illegal (or immoral, if you like) to view files on my own harddrive? It's not like a hacked into the steam servers or anything. They didn't even encrypt it, so it was just there for the taking.

On the other hand, posting all those 56 k avi's and sending the file to others IS WRONG. They said we can only do that once the movies are officially released. Whats gona happen now is that they might disable this feature or make it unusable. Our loss is their gain, I guess.

--------------

Another point is that Steam is a means of anti-cheating and anti-piracy among other things. Reverse engineering and modifying a proprietary file is in many cases an illegal activity. Simple actions that others cheeringly call "hacking" would be considered illegal, but i don't know VALVe's position on that.

Nietzsche, are you saying that Valve owns those 400 MB of my hard drive, and that I can't edit (or even look) at the data? I agree that the video should not have been distributed or shared, however I can do whatever I want with my own files.

 

[Tee Kyoo Em]

.

 

[papa jake]

Valve will be selling HL2 off of Steam. Maybe it was kind of a secret security test to see how long it would take before someone hacked it. They could lose a lot of money if people just hacked steam and got HL2 for free, so maybe they kind of tested the security with the video files.
Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. Does it make any sense?

 

[Tee Kyoo Em]

.

 

[Apos]

Technically they did not have a legal right to do that without asking our permission first.

Actually, legally, they did. That's exactly what Steam allows them to do, and what we agree to let them do when we installed it.

To be clear, my harsher words were not for those hacking into the files, but those doing so before the official release and then _insulting_ Valve because they didn't like the video they saw.

 

[Axyon]

Originally posted by Apos
Actually, legally, they did. That's exactly what Steam allows them to do, and what we agree to let them do when we installed it.

To be clear, my harsher words were not for those hacking into the files, but those doing so before the official release and then _insulting_ Valve because they didn't like the video they saw.

If that's the case, then I agree with you 100%.

 

[LoneDeranger]

Originally posted by Apos
Actually, legally, they did. That's exactly what Steam allows them to do, and what we agree to let them do when we installed it.

To be clear, my harsher words were not for those hacking into the files, but those doing so before the official release and then _insulting_ Valve because they didn't like the video they saw.

Yeah, no question that critisizing the hacked video is just nonsense. And so is distributing it to other people.

Nietzsche, I understand what you mean by a license, however I don't think it applies in this case. I don't think any agreement exists which prohibits me from viewing data downloaded to my hard-drive. Not hacking, reverse engineering, tempering, decrypting, but simply looking at my own data. You might think differently, but IMHO it's perfectly legal.