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Friday 3 October 2003

Valve lose HL2 source; what next for this troubled game? [brit]

So, Half Life 2 has been buggered in the worst possible way; the core physics engine source code, audio libraries and resource packs have been liberated illegally from the Valve network, and are now 'in the ether'.
This could bode extremely bad news for what promised up until this development, to be a revolutionary game in the genre; I've no idea who stole it (everything from script kiddies to industrial espionage will go under the spotlight) but it does leave the unpleasant notion that whoever has the code can now develop all sorts of patches, cheats and whatnot for it.
It also demonstrates just what sort of lengths people like this will go to to steal something; the covert nature of the hacking alluded to by Valve (and let's face it, their dev network will be pretty damn secure for obvious reasons) indicates a serious knowledge of what was what on the other side of the firewalls; and I can't but help consider that this may have needed inside help..
I do hope Valve catch the shit(s) responsible.

3 comments:

  1. I think from what they're saying, that they had pretty shit security. Hijacked email makes me think pop3, trojans on multiple pc's makes me think theres no intrusion detection, uploading of source and remote control from trojans makes me think of a very unrestricted firewall. It's a shit thing to happen, but I can't help think they've been a bit lax on security from what we've been told.
    I thought it was just engine code too, not libs ans resources?

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  2. Will you trust a company who can't even keep their desktops in line with Windows Update to install peer to peer and client-server software on your machine that handles billing (I.E. your credit card information).
    I'm now extremely sceptical about this, and may not bother with the whole thing because of my misgivings with Steam.

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  3. It doesn't really have ramifications for coded cheats and things like that because the whole Steam thing means they're able to patch the game at will. What it probably does mean, is more patches as they work around more cheaters until the cheaters get bored.

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