Half-Life 2 delayed till April

[Hieremias]

Half-Life 2 has been <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2003/10/07/technology/vivendi_code.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes">delayed until April 2004</a>, apparently due to the recent code theft.

Dammit!!

Even if the delay has nothing to do with the thieves, Valve is blaming them. Which means they've made enemies out of millions of pimply-faced hackers that would LOVE to cancel all their credit cards, revoke their drivers licenses, and change their legal names to The Duchess of Kent.

To quote Bruce Willis, "If you catch him, just give me four seconds with him!"

[Aku]

Call me naive, but I have one simple question. Why do you put top secret source code on machines that can be accessed from the outside world? Why can't the code only be allowed on machines that are connected by LAN only?

[Hieremias]

<div class=\"smallfont\">Why do you put top secret source code on machines that can be accessed from the outside world? Why can't the code only be allowed on machines that are connected by LAN only?</div>

I've no idea. I work for the government (Canadian Passport Office, to be precise) and we write software on networks not accessible from the outside. I don't mean firewalls; I mean there is physically no connection to the outside world. Granted our software has national security implications (someone breaking into the government's passport system would be <i>really really bad</i>), whereas Valve is just developing a game. But when a mistake can cost them millions, you have to wonder.

[Renzatic Gear]

I think it had more to do with Valve not even thinking about the possibility of someone ganking the source code of their computers. They should've been a bit more prepared and secured, sure, but it's not something thats happened before...

[ShotgunShy]

It's going to be interesting to see what Valve does in the upcomming months and how things might ultimately affect Half Life 2, if at all. A third of the source code is out there and apparently, as part of their investigation, they recompiled that bit of code that got leaked and got a working program that they concluded to be more or less HL2.

Is Valve going to rewrite their code? Are they going to realize that there isn't much that they <i>can</i> do and pull back their release date? It's all up in the air I guess. I wonder how it will all turn out...

[moya]

So when's Doom 3 out again? Does this mean they'll be going head-to-head once again?