Half-Life 2 Code Leaked to the Net.

[Sylvatic]

Copied from HL2's official message boards from the head honcho himself.

Ever have one of those weeks? This has just not been the best couple of days for me or for Valve.

Yes, the source code that has been posted is the HL-2 source code.

Here is what we know:

1) Starting around 9/11 of this year, someone other than me was accessing my email account. This has been determined by looking at traffic on our email server versus my travel schedule.

2) Shortly afterwards my machine started acting weird (right-clicking on executables would crash explorer). I was unable to find a virus or trojan on my machine, I reformatted my hard drive, and reinstalled.

3) For the next week, there appears to have been suspicious activity on my webmail account.

4) Around 9/19 someone made a copy of the HL-2 source tree.

5) At some point, keystroke recorders got installed on several machines at Valve. Our speculation is that these were done via a buffer overflow in Outlook´s preview pane. This recorder is apparently a customized version of RemoteAnywhere created to infect Valve (at least it hasn´t been seen anywhere else, and isn´t detected by normal virus scanning tools).

6) Periodically for the last year we´ve been the subject of a variety of denial of service attacks targetted at our webservers and at Steam. We don´t know if these are related or independent.

Well, this sucks.

What I´d appreciate is the assistance of the community in tracking this down. I have a special email address for people to send information to, helpvalve@valvesoftware.com. If you have information about the denial of service attacks or the infiltration of our network, please send the details. There are some pretty obvious places to start with the posts and records in IRC, so if you can point us in the right direction, that would be great.

We at Valve have always thought of ourselves as being part of a community, and I can´t imagine a better group of people to help us take care of these problems than this community.

Gabe


This flat out blows. The release date for the game will undoubtedly be pushed back AGAIN. The idiots that got the source code for the game are probably getting ready to crank out their "1337 h4x0rZ" and cheat their way to winning. I was honestly looking forward to playing Counter-Strike on an even playing field, at least for a few months. But now it looks like hacks and aimbots will be ready as soon as the game is.

Ahh well...I guess I'll just have to settle with AO. *ducks*

[Oddysee]

That blows!


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[Jassel]

I sowwy....

Doesn't that happen with every game though? maybe they will find a way to get them out...

[Sylvatic]

No, Jassel. This is flat out theivery. It's the gaming (at least for us FPS dorks) equivalent of jacking the Mona Lisa. Whoever did this took the guts of the entire game. Everything that was supposed to be unique to HL-2 is now free for everyone to have and use.

Le sigh

[Jassel]

ohhhhh... I was thinking it was something like how AO has clicksaver or AC has decal and all its little things...


wel that sucks.. totally ruins the game.. and they can't do anything about it?

[Gridfan]

Yeah this blows! I actually have HL2 on preorder.
(mostly since I want a proper copy, I want those mod/machinima tools (and the game ofcoz). a longer wait I guess then *Sigh*

I hope Valve catch the peeps, I doubt this will hurt sales.
But it will def hurt development, theres prolly a few trade secrets in HL2 source code that Valve would have prefered to sit on for a few years more.

[Oddysee]

Man... It's BS, simple as that... I hope they get the pratt's, cus this will DEFINATELY f**k over the multiplayer part... AimBot and WallHack were a pain before, but they eventually came up with a "this sorta works" solution... They're in for it now, if the other peeps actually have the game codes...
Oh well, just glad they aint got those hacks in AvP II...



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[Sylvatic]

I've always been an Unreal man myself. UT2K4 better not get jacked...or I'll unleash my...uh...ranting skills?! *stares blankly into space*

[Ichyro]

UT2k4 might be called a milking opportunity..

Then call me Farmer McIchy.

Vehciles, open maps, more weaponry, bringing back ASSAULT.

BF1942 was the first taker of the path (Vehicles in an open enviroment, the "war" feeling, there were ones before it, but it pulled it off very well), and I welcome any "Trend followers", if it is good.

Sides.....Cliffy B is awsome.

[Oddysee]

AvP II for life!!!


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[Ichyro]

My brother is nuts about that, even if it scares the shit out of him.

Basetment room, dark, no real window, cold, and AVP II with surround sound and a subwoofer. The game has scratching aliens, plasmacasters and so on in the distance and up close...oh and scretches.

I love sneaking up on em.


But BF1942 is my FPS-route right now, after I hopped off the Operation Flashpoint car.

[Tacz]

I just bought Halo for the PC, and I do NOT REGRET IT!

Multiplayer rocks!!

[Ichyro]

HoU or Halo...Hordes of Underdark or Halo..

Bioware sucks, so lets go Halo!

[Mummu]

AvP ONE! 2 was kinda slow....

and the best mod besides DOD is U4eF!
that mod so totally rocks.

[Oddysee]

AvP I is good, but I like that fact that they've made the teams more fair in num. II... Although given, if I had my way, it would be 2oo% faster!
I just REALLY like the claustrophobic feeling you get from playing single player marine, and walkin down those small, dark corridors...
Also the paranoia is without equal, especially if you just heard a beep on your radar, and your flash light then runs of out batery... *snicker*

Tho I play Alien, so it's not really a prob for me... The world is my playground / lunchbox!



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[Sylvatic]

I'm a big fan of Natural Selection. Never played AvP2 but I heard they were sort of similar. On NS, I loved being the little dog looking aliens and going around biting people until they died. When I was on the marine side of things, the most commonly heard phrase was "Gimme a damn shotgun, Comm." Ahh...good times...

[Ichyro]

I loathed the aliens, since it was at first a complete unfair advantage to them.

However, I heard it got fixed, and now I gravatate to Predator or humans.

[Oddysee]

I never really cared much for pred's or marines... They're so... soft, and die so easily...
Nah, my main reason is, a gimp who plays an alien get's fragged... And badly! whereas a gimp who plays a pred, or marine, just uses an auto track weapon, and can actually get along quite well. Some of the weapons are just too easy to use as "whores", as it's called, and I hate playing those people.
They're usually the ones spamming "Stupid mofo" or "Die newb!" all over the screen, and yet, they have no gaming ability. They use auto track weapons, and insta kill weapons, because they simply lack the skill to use the finesse ones... It's the same in CS, you all know when a person who uses an avp is good... and when he's a sniper whore. It goes here too... The most common ones are:

Exo whore - People who can only kill when using an exo suit.

Disc whore - The predator auto aim, auto kill disc, it's an ok weapon, but when used with certain tactics, is a real no brainer that kills other newbs... thus making the player look good... which he really isn't.

And finally Smart gun whore - The gun auto aims for you... Although personally, I actually prefer it when people use this weapon, as it's tracker is a little slower than an alien at top speed, so it aims just behind it, and people who use it, get over secure and forget to take the necessary caution needed not to become my dinner... hehe

Alot of the bugs have been fixed, and the teams have been tweaked up, so they're more fair. But every now and then, you meet someone who can't do squat without auto trackers, and they really ruin it for ya... On the other hand, the meanest player I ever met was a marine, who used the standard issiue pulse rifle... HOLY #¤€&!!! He was a quaker, that's for sure, cus you don't play like that anywhere else... He jumped into a tightly packed group of aliens, about 6 or so... and before a sec had passed, they were dead, and he was jumping on, bobbing about like a headless chicken, which insidently, was also his name...

I've never felt like the pray when playing alien... but I did then... damn he was scary!



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