Half Life 2 in the New York Post

[ray_MAN]

I am reading the New York Post right now and in the Business section there is an arcticle about the "beta". Here it is:

October 9, 2003 -- The wait for this year's most anticipated video game just got shorter for some online thieves - and longer for everyone else.
Hackers have stolen large portions of "Half-Life 2," a shoot-'em-up favorite published by Vivendi Universal Games, and posted the programming code online.

In response, the company has pushed back the release date from December to early next year.

"Every game has a piracy problem," said David Cole, an analyst with DFC Intelligence. "But this is different. This was stolen right off their computers, and now other developers have the code. [Competitors] can come out with a similar-type game. All the legwork has been done."

Cole said software piracy, which rivals the theft of music and movies, often happens after a game's release. Players crack the encryption and make illegal copies.

In the "Half-Life" case, however, hackers exploited a flaw in Microsoft's operating system and snatched the game code from the developer, Valve Software. Programmers at Valve were posting messages online this week, asking for help in finding the culprits.

Officials from Valve and Vivendi declined to comment.

"Half-Life" and its spin-off, "Counter-Strike," are two of the most popular games for PCs, with fans often fighting each other over the Internet or in cybercafes. In the violent "Half-Life 2," players battle aliens in a dystopic Eastern European city.

"Half-Life 2" should sell at least a million copies, Cole said, adding that he didn't expect the theft to hurt sales. The online version is incomplete and of poor quality, and Valve programmers are expected to improve the game between now and the release date.

But others disagree. Marc Zwillinger, chair of the Information Security and Anti-Privacy Practice group at the law firm of Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal, says that video-game piracy could cause bigger financial problems than, say, the posting of pre-release versions of the movie "Hulk" earlier this year.

"The audience for video games are just the sort of highly technical, skilled person that knows how to find these things," Zwillinger said. "You can see this causing significant damage."

For Vivendi, it's more bad news for the firm's video game unit. In the first half of 2003, VU Games had an operating loss of $59.5 million and is sorely in need of a hit.

 

[nw909]

Cool.

 

[ray_MAN]

Originally posted by nw909
Cool.

That's right brother.

 

[SupaKoopa]

lol, counter-strike is a half life "spinoff."

i love the mainstream media:dozey:

 

[AnRowan]

Did you retype the whole article ?

 

[ray_MAN]

No copy+paste.

 

[nw909]

what program can I get that I can highlight and copy real world text on objects?

 

[zdub]

more publicity for valve....they sicken me

 

[Shuzer]

Originally posted by nw909
what program can I get that I can highlight and copy real world text on objects?

Alot of scanners have software that lets you do that, you scan it in, it translates it to ASCII, and you have a document Never tested the software that came with mine, though

 

[ray_MAN]

It's called http://www.nypost.com/business/business.htm

 

[jstaros]

Originally posted by SupaKoopa
lol, counter-strike is a half life "spinoff."

i love the mainstream media:dozey:

I remember one recent msnbc report that kept on referring to steam as "Stream".

 

[SupaKoopa]

Originally posted by jstaros
I remember one recent msnbc report that kept on referring to steam as "Stream".

lol:cheese: :cheese:

 

[IceMan]

yeah they better work out all the glitches and bad textruers and laggy ass shit in the beta!

 

[Benji]

iceman : first it's not a beta, it's a frankenstein, i.e. bits and pieces of half-life 2 put togheter. second, you can't even expect anything from this release since it was never meant to the public. third, it was never meant to the public because it's not FINISHED YET!

 

[IceMan]

ok its not called beta man its called lots of pile of shitty ass textures and misplaced things all added up to make one big piece of shit that a lot of ppl have!!

go on buggy if i can say anything else that thing has balls to the wallz m8s not joking from what i saw in the e3 demo showing

 

[jb2002smg]

Originally posted by ray_MAN
and Valve programmers are expected to improve the game between now and the release date.

LOL, I would hope so!

 

[jb2002smg]

Originally posted by IceMan
yeah they better work out all the glitches and bad textruers and laggy ass shit in the beta!

I've heard the engine is rock solid on all modern cards (ie. cards out since last fall) , just a few bugs for older cards. The main area of work is getting the actual levels, textures, and scripts done.