If it weren't for the leak, would we have HL2 today?

[fluke2k]

I think we would of had the game September 30th 2004 without the STOLEN build.

hehe... the stolen build was _everything_ that Valve had on their servers at that time. (around september 30th) The game was FAR from finished..

Valve certainly experienced a setback when the build was stolen, since they had to make some changes in their code. They had to do this because the source code was leaked as well.. If they didn't there would be far to easy to make cheatcodes for multiplayer etc..

BUT the game would NOT have been out yet, leak or not...

 

[ButtHoleMcGee]

Well, Mr "I don't read what you wrote but I'll reply anyway" what I'm saying is that the game wasn't finished AND the Source code leak happened.

Yes, I got what you were trying to say. What you're implying is that when Valve was broken into, the leak which consisted of Valves unfinished work, was a major setback. You act like the break in had such a major impact, it made Valve delay the game even more. They had their ambitions from the start, it was just that the game was just beginning to see the light of day.

Gabe Newell himself stated that when September 30th of 2003 came by, they knew that the had so much work to accomplish what they wanted to achieve with the game. Evidence in the video I linked to.

To Zeus:
Understand that the leak wasn't anything close to the final game. It was just a chunk of pre-e3 stuff so incomplete that it was obvious it shouldn't even be considered HL2. Valve is an innovative company, hell, their first game was extremely different from the rest of the pack. What makes you think they'll fail to deliver? Pre-E3 work that poorly represents HL2? Don't use it as fact.

 

[SEAL-1]

IMO Valve used the leak as an excuse for the delay. They probably weren't ready to release it at the time, and the leak/break-in (or whatever you think it was) was a convenient thing for them to jump on and say "we have to push the release date back because our code was stolen" instead of coming out and saying "we aren't ready to release yet..."

As far as the AI/scripted thing goes...even if the AI does something different depending on what you do, its still scripted. Its not like Valve actually wrote something that has decision-making capabilites...the best they can pull off is a fairly complex but otherwise straightforward decision tree that varies depending on what you do. Its not like the AI in the game is literally sentient and can make its own decisions or plan its attacks on the fly...its going to look at what you did, and then choose something from a list of scripted attacks/moves, etc.

 

[Feath]

hehe... the stolen build was _everything_ that Valve had on their servers at that time. (around september 30th) The game was FAR from finished..

Valve certainly experienced a setback when the build was stolen, since they had to make some changes in their code. They had to do this because the source code was leaked as well.. If they didn't there would be far to easy to make cheatcodes for multiplayer etc..

BUT the game would NOT have been out yet, leak or not...

I can't understand this. I mean, even if the Source code leak added an extra month of developement time (which isn't unreasonable), it would be out because we're stupidly close to going gold right now.

 

[Feath]

Yes, I got what you were trying to say. What you're implying is that when Valve was broken into, the leak which consisted of Valves unfinished work, was a major setback. You act like the break in had such a major impact, it made Valve delay the game even more. They had their ambitions from the start, it was just that the game was just beginning to see the light of day.

Gabe Newell himself stated that when September 30th of 2003 came by, they knew that the had so much work to accomplish what they wanted to achieve with the game. Evidence in the video I linked to.

What I'm saying is that both factors contributed to the delay. I'm not saying it was only the leak, and I'm not putting as much emphasis on the leak as you are making out.

 

[Brian Damage]

hehe... the stolen build was _everything_ that Valve had on their servers at that time. (around september 30th) The game was FAR from finished..

Valve certainly experienced a setback when the build was stolen, since they had to make some changes in their code. They had to do this because the source code was leaked as well.. If they didn't there would be far to easy to make cheatcodes for multiplayer etc..

BUT the game would NOT have been out yet, leak or not...

That's odd. The way I hear it, things were missing from the stolen build that were present at E3 earlier that year...

 

[Feath]

IMO Valve used the leak as an excuse for the delay. They probably weren't ready to release it at the time, and the leak/break-in (or whatever you think it was) was a convenient thing for them to jump on and say "we have to push the release date back because our code was stolen" instead of coming out and saying "we aren't ready to release yet..."

Valve came out and said straight away that the game was delayed because it wasn't finished. They haven't denied that. What I'm saying is that the leak also added time to this already delayed game. They never, even used it as an excuse to delay the game, but they have used it as a reason as to why the delay was so long.

 

[poseyjmac]

lol, dog carrot monkey!

 

[VodkA-HLC-]

Think about this. If the leaked source that was stolen was what valve had finished at the time, then theres your reason why it took another year to finish. It was not even half done. Now think about this. Valve being sued by ATI and VUG. ATI suing for all the money they lost in advertising thier super 9600card , which isnt that super, to be bundled with HL2 but wait no HL2. VUG suing for another year of wait time.......I know its a conspiracy theory but when you stand to lose all that money and time in lawsuits, the easy thing would be to put the source out there for any little hacker to come get it. If you do remember Gabe saying how they were attacked before the source was stolen and that they did nothing about it. Then a few days later the source and a lot of other stuff was taken, stolen, whatever, through a microsoft outlook exploit. OMG PWNED. Gabe reminds me of president Bush. Probably lied about the whole thing.

So my opinion or speculation is that the game would of never come out last year because it wasnt even half finished. Also the game was leaked, or at least available to be easily stolen by hackers, to cover up everything. That way all the fans and customers feel bad for Valve and take their anger and frustration on the l337 hackers............Theres always 3 sides to every story...Dont be a sheep, think for yourself, dont let people spoon feed you opinions and thoughts.........No the leak would of never delayed the game for another year, the game delayed the game for another year......Don't flame me for thinking outside the box rather just share your opinions and thoughts.....

 

[Feath]

Think about this. If the leaked source that was stolen was what valve had finished at the time, then theres your reason why it took another year to finish. It was not even half done. Now think about this. Valve being sued by ATI and VUG. ATI suing for all the money they lost in advertising thier super 9600card , which isnt that super, to be bundled with HL2 but wait no HL2. VUG suing for another year of wait time.......I know its a conspiracy theory but when you stand to lose all that money and time in lawsuits, the easy thing would be to put the source out there for any little hacker to come get it. If you do remember Gabe saying how they were attacked before the source was stolen and that they did nothing about it. Then a few days later the source and a lot of other stuff was taken, stolen, whatever, through a microsoft outlook exploit. OMG PWNED. Gabe reminds me of president Bush. Probably lied about the whole thing.

So my opinion or speculation is that the game would of never come out last year because it wasnt even half finished. Also the game was leaked, or at least available to be easily stolen by hackers, to cover up everything. That way all the fans and customers feel bad for Valve and take their anger and frustration on the l337 hackers............Theres always 3 sides to every story...Dont be a sheep and think for yourself, dont let people spoon feed you opinions and thoughts.........No the leak would of never delayed the game for another year, the game would of delayed the game for another year......

Erm, what? What a stupid theory. Badly written as well.

 

[VodkA-HLC-]

Your just a closed minded zombie, you couldn't even grasp what I was saying.......When theres millions of dollars involved, anything can happen. When you reply "What a stupid theory." back it up with some reasons why it's stupid. Anyone can critique.

 

[Feath]

Your just a closed minded zombie, you couldn't even grasp what I was saying.......When theres millions of dollars involved, anything can happen. When you reply "What a stupid theory." back it up with some reasons why it's stupid. Anyone can critique.

I could grasp what it was saying. But what it was saying wasn't really worth the effort of responsing.

I'm not going to argue why your lovely theory is flawed anymore than I'm going to argue against someone who says that elephants have 9 legs and only eat 2 day old cheese.

 

[VodkA-HLC-]

It wasn't worth the effort of "RESPONSING", but you did "RESPONSE" didn't you.....You didn't just "Responsed" but you also critiqued how I wrote it. Look Euro, chill. Go ummmmmmmmmm. Breath in through your nose out through your mouth. I was just giving MY opinion on the matter. If you didn't like what I said then don't "Response."

 

[Absinthe]

WHOAH, I THINK WE HAVE A GRAMMAR NAZI!

neat

 

[Feath]

Think about this. If the leaked source that was stolen was what valve had finished at the time, then theres your reason why it took another year to finish. It was not even half done. Now think about this. Valve being sued by ATI and VUG. ATI suing for all the money they lost in advertising thier super 9600card , which isnt that super, to be bundled with HL2 but wait no HL2. VUG suing for another year of wait time.......I know its a conspiracy theory but when you stand to lose all that money and time in lawsuits, the easy thing would be to put the source out there for any little hacker to come get it. If you do remember Gabe saying how they were attacked before the source was stolen and that they did nothing about it. Then a few days later the source and a lot of other stuff was taken, stolen, whatever, through a microsoft outlook exploit. OMG PWNED. Gabe reminds me of president Bush. Probably lied about the whole thing.

So my opinion or speculation is that the game would of never come out last year because it wasnt even half finished. Also the game was leaked, or at least available to be easily stolen by hackers, to cover up everything. That way all the fans and customers feel bad for Valve and take their anger and frustration on the l337 hackers............T.No the leak would of never delayed the game for another year, the game delayed the game for another year......

After having second thoughts, I'm going to respond.

Firstly, you are attacking a view I don't have, that the leak was the cause of the delay. I'm not saying that, I'm just saying it contributed to the delay.

Firstly, you are simplifying Vivendi's case against Valve. Whilst Vivendi are claiming that Valve haven't finished games to completion, It's more to do with the actual timeline of Valve's development of Games. The whole of it, not just an extra years delay. Vivendi is trying to gain control of the Half-Life IP, they have many issues and Steam is central their case,

Secondly, there is no evidence that ATi are taking Valve to court over the delay. ATi will undoubtedly understand game developement and the delays that can occur. You could argue that Vivendi would know that as welll, but they are still taking Valve to court, but ATi aren't trying to gain control of the Half-Life IP.

Thirdly, If Valve leaked the game on purpose, don't you think the FBI would've realised? Likewise, if they made it easily hackable, the FBI would've had something to say about that. Valve are the first company to suffer a leak on this scale, but just because they are the first doesn't mean that the security was any worse than at other developers. Also, are you just suggesting that they made themselves "Easy to hack" and then just waited and hoped that someone happened to come along just in time to leak the game?

Fourthly, Valve never claimed that the game was finished when they wer hacked, so there was no cover-up. And they couldn't hide that the game wasn't finished anyway (if they even wanted to), because the actual Source code would be out in the public.

 

[Feath]

It wasn't worth the effort of "RESPONSING", but you did "RESPONSE" didn't you.....You didn't just "Responsed" but you also critiqued how I wrote it. Look Euro, chill. Go ummmmmmmmmm. Breath in through your nose out through your mouth. I was just giving MY opinion on the matter. If you didn't like what I said then don't "Response."

I made a spelling mistake. Shall we have a look at your posts?

Think about this. If the leaked source that was stolen was what valve had finished at the time, then theres your reason why it took another year to finish. It was not even half done. Now think about this. Valve being sued by ATI and VUG. ATI suing for all the money they lost in advertising thier super 9600card , which isnt that super, to be bundled with HL2 but wait no HL2. VUG suing for another year of wait time.......I know its a conspiracy theory but when you stand to lose all that money and time in lawsuits, the easy thing would be to put the source out there for any little hacker to come get it. If you do remember Gabe saying how they were attacked before the source was stolen and that they did nothing about it. Then a few days later the source and a lot of other stuff was taken, stolen, whatever, through a microsoft outlook exploit. OMG PWNED. Gabe reminds me of president Bush. Probably lied about the whole thing.

So my opinion or speculation is that the game would of never come out last year because it wasnt even half finished. Also the game was leaked, or at least available to be easily stolen by hackers, to cover up everything. That way all the fans and customers feel bad for Valve and take their anger and frustration on the l337 hackers............Theres always 3 sides to every story...Dont be a sheep, think for yourself, dont let people spoon feed you opinions and thoughts.........No the leak would of never delayed the game for another year, the game delayed the game for another year......Don't flame me for thinking outside the box rather just share your opinions and thoughts.....

Your just a closed minded zombie, you couldn't even grasp what I was saying.......When theres millions of dollars involved, anything can happen. When you reply "What a stupid theory." back it up with some reasons why it's stupid. Anyone can critique.

I don't make a point of pointing out spelling/grammar mistakes but if you would like to try to be belittle me by pointing out mine, don't be a hypocrite. You make mistakes as well.

 

[VodkA-HLC-]

See thats all you had to say...

I don't make a point of pointing out spelling/grammar mistakes

.I wasn't making fun of your spelling. You belittled my idea by becoming a grammer nazi where as I type as I speak........I'm not doing an english paper, so to me no big deal....... And thats your opinion backed up with some facts just like my opinion. No one is wrong and no one is right. We will never know.....As far as the fbi deal. They wouldn't really be able to know if the source was made easily accessable to hackers or not. In my opinion, if you have something 5 years in development on a pc connected to the internet via high speed, then your asking for it to get stolen. At least use 56k.........It would take a year to dl the source on that connection. Um did you see any of the source. If you did then you would know that valve was lying for a whole year saying it was almost done. What I said is that the leak was a little too obvious to happen right when the game was supposed to be released and too coincidental. Yeah ATI had a huge amount of money to lose and they did. When hl2 was announced delayes, I'm sure the 9600 did not sell as was intended. I also like the fact that the 9600 can barely run cs.source on a 20 man server......I commend you on growing some balls and stating your opinion. Good day Sir. Anyone else?

 

[N0N1337H41]

While I try not to take sides in these types of things, Feath, you did knock on his grammar first and then you made a mistake yourself.

Anyway, I think you should both agree to disagree and get on with being chums :cheers:!

 

[VodkA-HLC-]

Yeah I agree.......

 

[CrazyHarij]

They have admitted themselves that the delay had nothing to do with the leak. It was "wishful thinking" and simply overseeing things needed to be fixed and dealt with.

 

[Feath]

While I try not to take sides in these types of things, Feath, you did knock on his grammar first and then you made a mistake yourself.

Anyway, I think you should both agree to disagree and get on with being chums :cheers:!

I said it was badly written. His argument was difficult to follow due to his writting style.

 

[Feath]

They have admitted themselves that the delay had nothing to do with the leak. It was "wishful thinking" and simply overseeing things needed to be fixed and dealt with.

And they also said it was a morale hit and

They've said both things, because both things are true.

But was the leak the main reason behind the game's delay? "No, the fundamental reason was because we underestimated the amount of work left to due and how long it was going to take, especially when the team were so demoralised after the leak."

My argument isn't "It's only delayed because it was leaked" my argument is "We could've probably seen the game last month if it wasn't for the leak". I don't deny that Valve said they hadn't finished the game, I'm saying that the leak also contributed to the delay.

 

[Feath]

See thats all you had to say... .I wasn't making fun of your spelling. You belittled my idea by becoming a grammer nazi where as I type as I speak........I'm not doing an english paper, so to me no big deal....... And thats your opinion backed up with some facts just like my opinion. No one is wrong and no one is right. We will never know.....As far as the fbi deal. They wouldn't really be able to know if the source was made easily accessable to hackers or not. In my opinion, if you have something 5 years in development on a pc connected to the internet via high speed, then your asking for it to get stolen. At least use 56k.........It would take a year to dl the source on that connection. Um did you see any of the source. If you did then you would know that valve was lying for a whole year saying it was almost done. What I said is that the leak was a little too obvious to happen right when the game was supposed to be released and too coincidental. Yeah ATI had a huge amount of money to lose and they did. When hl2 was announced delayes, I'm sure the 9600 did not sell as was intended. I also like the fact that the 9600 can barely run cs.source on a 20 man server......I commend you on growing some balls and stating your opinion. Good day Sir. Anyone else?

Well, my Geforce 5200 Go can run CS:S find on a 20 man CS:S server, so I don't know where you get "barely run CS:S on a 20 man server" from. Depends what you mean by "Barely run", really. I'd put that at about "15 FPS" (Playable but noticablely low framerate).

There isn't any evidence (that I know of) that ATi either lost money because of the delay or that they are suing Valve as a result.

 

[VodkA-HLC-]

I don't want to start hijacking...But if my frames dip below 30 during a firefight, then the game becomes un-playable for me. Back to the subject, what makes you think that the leak caused an extra month delay for us?

 

[razorblade kiss]

To answer the thread topic and get this thing back on track. I believe we would've had the game by now. If not months ago.

 

[Seppo]

I do think we would have the game by now, but I'm not saying it would've been released last year. I thi nk the source code theft only added to the delay, probably a month or two. Why? Because they had to rewrite parts of the code.

 

[Feath]

I don't want to start hijacking...But if my frames dip below 30 during a firefight, then the game becomes un-playable for me. Back to the subject, what makes you think that the leak caused an extra month delay for us?

Below 30 is unplayable? Hmm.

A month is just an estimate, it could've been any amount of time. You can't measure it. You can measure the amount of time it took to change the code so no one could use the leak to cheat. But how do you measure the effect of a morale drop? A month is like 1/12 of the total delay, so it's not a huge estimate.