The brighter side...

[droper]

Yes there will now be ability for individuals to exploite weakness in hl2.Though on the other hand there will be as many if not more helping to close them up or at least reporting many issues they find to valve. Some if not the majority of exploits in closed source software are found by users, not microsoft.

Yes this might hurt their licencing of the engine. On the other hand this will bring the game far more mods and a bigger interest in development from mod communities currently working in other game engines. This could actually raise the amount of content on steam by a lot, making it more attractive for subscribership, as well as building a larger game community around steam.

Yes valve could get sued by Havok. Do i think thats going to happen, No. Why ? simple havok would hurt its brand if they started beating on already injured customer who have been unfairly exploited. I think havok will be a team player on this one and not make it worse for themselves or others.

Personally its never crossed my mind not to purchase this game. Nothing has changed for me. I've played dioblo and diablo2 ... ITS DOES NOT get any worse then that. Cheating so what. Exploits .. going to happen anyways, always does. You got to roll with the punchs so to speak and get back a'movin. A few good ideas is all it takes to make a bad situation into a good one.

 

[commando]

what can the people with the source code actually do?

i mean they can't play the game...just look at the file and spoil it for themselves right?

 

[Joneleth]

Well, for one, Valve misses out on licensing their Source engine, because it seems like everyone interested would probably have the leaked code by now (unless they're a large company, then of course they're going to license the engine; most companies are fairly honest). There's also the bigger problem of security issues that Valve now has to deal with, but that will come in time. I'd rather they delay the game even more to fix up all these issues and problems, so that the game can enjoy a flawless release.

 

[MooCow]

Even a small company wouldn't get away with releasing a commercial product based on an unlicensed source engine. You may see it in a few free games but anything else is like painting sue me on your forehead.

The real problem is people taking code snippets from crucial parts of the game and re-expressing them for use in their own code.