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Half Life 2 Source Code Leaked

Pyroman[FO] writes "Gamers with Jobs is reporting that the Half Life 2 source code is floating around the net right now. It looks to be about a month old. There's no official word from Valve on the source code leak yet. Unfortunately those who want to use it to cheat already have it, we need to get the word to legitimate customers to educate them about the situation." Update: 10/02 21:51 GMT by S : Valve's Gabe Newell has an official statement, via ShackNews/HalfLife2.net, indicating "infiltration of our network" and appealing for information on the culprits.

16 of 1,027 comments (clear)

  1. Full text of linked article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Full article from:
    http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/modules.php?o p=modlo ad&name=News&file=article&sid=665

    Half-Life 2 Source Code Leaked, Seriously
    Posted by: Pyroman[FO] on Thursday, October 02, 2003 - 11:02 AM EST

    So I know what you're thinking. "Yeah right Pyro, it's really just more suprise gay porn" but its the real deal. The source code for Valve's Half-Life 2 has been leaked to the net. An anonymous GWJ reader has verified this is real.

    I can confirm that this is indeed no fake ... The thing is available as a torrent download on the net. I don't know how much action they will take against people downloading this. ... The last edits are from a month ago (in the files). If this is fake, it is a damn good one. It looks very coherent. Over 100 megs unpacked source

    There's still no official word from Valve and I haven't seen any other sites pick it up. There isn't any word on who leaked it either and from what I have heard the source doesn't give it away. Hopefully when this gets out in the open Valve can work with its partners to figure out who did this. Let's also hope it doesn't delay Half-Life 2 any further.

    One things for sure, this can't be ignored. Those in the know already have it and they're probably working on their first cheat right now. Legitimate customers are the ones who need to know about this as they are the ones that will get their machine potentially broken into when they go online. You can't warez with month old source code, all it's good for is exploiting others in multiplayer and allowing crackers to make better cracks. Customers need to know that there are cheaters out there right now with the full Half Life 2 source code, if this is true.

  2. More info by redink1 · · Score: 4, Informative
    The staff at halflife2.net believe its real.

    There are also a few threads on steam, PlanetHalfLife, and arstechnica.

  3. HUGE BANDWIDTH LINK by Sir+Haxalot · · Score: 3, Informative
    --
    I have over 70 freaks, do you?
  4. Re:One Word: by Digital11 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ok... It's real. It looks very incomplete, pretty old, but real nonetheless. There's functional code for things that never existed in HL1. (I assume to be functional at least, obviously I can't compile it but if this is a joke played by someone who just wrote a bunch of code to try to make it look real then they spent a LOT of time doing it.)

    Now however, I have come to the conclusion that this IS an SDK, and not the full source of their engine.

    Err, I take that back. Its the engine. Just found the occlusion system and the node management.

    I feel for Valve about now. This sucks.
    I'm deleting the source just out of respect. :(

    --
    I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
  5. Not always a problem by mr_luc · · Score: 5, Informative

    A lot of that has to do with the particular game, as well as the design of the prediction in that game.

    For instance, in Starsiege:Tribes, since the rendering engine has been successfully hacked, people have been able to write some clever and EXTREMELY extensive cheats -- you can customize the visibility of the terrain, of individual objects (like buildings -- make them partially transparent to see people around corners), remove fog from maps, have pointers to the person with the flag, and most infamously, change the model for the flag into a twenty-story-tall red and green stick figure with a gigantic smiley face. This cheat is known as 'Happy Flag', and it makes it pretty much impossible to confuse the enemy team as to the location of your flag.

    Now, in any other game, with the graphics engine compromised to that extent, the game would be over. It would be trivial to write auto-aim functionality that centers your view on a particular model type and fires the weapon.

    But thanks both to the use of actual projectiles instead of instant (or 'hitscan') weapons, as well as a server-client model that DOES NOT TRUST CLIENT EVENTS (which you might think would make the game much more apparently laggy, but which in reality makes the game much less stuttery and much smoother for those on slower connctions; you just have to predict your shots more. But, since you have to do that anyways by design . . .).

    The stability of this system is such that even with one of the most rabid fanbases in gaming, the only cheats available are primarily informational in nature. A cheater can see mines better, can know where the flag is, can see people clearly that would be mostly obscured by fog otherwise.

    But this gives him very little actual advantage. The only hitscan weapon in the game is not a one-hit kill even on the lightest armor, and it needs to recharge, and the method used in both Tribes 1 and the Torque engine of the server not trusting the player for jack shit is actually EASIER on the server, since it processes client actions essentially as it receives them. Moreover, thanks to 'skiing' and the jetpacks and the visibility of laser rifle attacks, any advantage is quickly whittled down to a simple nuisance.

    Now, at the other end of the spectrum is Red Faction. :D I'm not much of a cheater normally, but the most fun I have ever had was back in the day before everyone was cheating, when the careful task was to cleverly design cheats that are almost undetectable -- like a specially powerful jump to get you out of difficult situations, etc. The most fun I had was giving my player ninjalike abilities by modifying the scripts myself, and reducing my fall damage, and limiting myself to the pistol. It's all about the mobility, baby!

  6. Re:One Word: by Digital11 · · Score: 5, Informative

    In the dlls directory is pretty much all of the equivalant stuff thats in the HL1 SDK. I thought it was fake at first after looking in there, then I started to look through all the physics code. All of the ragdoll type stuff that there's no way is in HL1 and the code isn't faked. Then I checked out the engine directory. Like I said in a post futher down, the full occlusion system and node management is all there, I didn't have time to check for the actual rendering code because I had to get back to work. But I'm thoroughly convinced that it's real. I even feel bad for downloading it now because I know if someone stole my code I'd be way more than pissed about it. Let em steal a binary all day, but when they have the code it's a whole new level. This is corporate espionage at its finest.

    --
    I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
  7. Re:IT COMPILES by W2k · · Score: 3, Informative

    Some early results from the picking apart of the source are here and here.

    I tried compiling the code, it won't work in Microsoft Visual Studio.NET 2003 (apparently it was developed in Visual Studio 6.0 and the version inconsistencies break the code. It's not exactly standard C++ :). According to unverified rumours, Visual Studio 6.0 with SP5 will compile the source.

    --
    Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
  8. Re:Look on the bright side by revmoo · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm not so sure it's an SDK.

    It's pretty complete, and weighs in at 100 megs unpacked, for this to be _not_ the source, I'd have to say it's a pretty damn good hoax.

    There is also the complete source to worldcraft in there.

    Most interesting thing though, is the presence of a linux/, *gets his hopes up*

    --
    I would expect such blatant racism on Fark, but on Slashdot? Mods please ban this asshole.
  9. Re:Screenshots by W2k · · Score: 4, Informative
    It's not, (unfortunately). Paste from LocalNetworkBackdoor.h follows:
    // This class facilitates a fast path for networking when running a single-player game.
    // Instead of the server bit-packing entities, delta'ing them, encoding deltas, then decoding the states,
    // it just hands the server entity's data to the client, which copies the data over directly.
    --
    Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
  10. Re:Contains GPL'd code ... by dnaumov · · Score: 5, Informative

    The HAVOC Physics engine has been recently licensed by Valve. There is no LGPL (it's not GPL) violation.

  11. Re:GPL code found in source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's LGPL, not GPL. There's a difference. LGPL is legal to use like this.

  12. Licensed Havoc physics engine by Overly+Critical+Guy · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's the legally licensed Havoc physics engine, dummy.

    --
    "Sufferin' succotash."
  13. Official Word by Str8Dog · · Score: 3, Informative

    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

    http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?s =& threadid=10692

    --


    Str8Dog
    using System.Darkside; public
  14. Completely legit, response from Valve by bobobobo · · Score: 5, Informative
    GABE NEWELL RESPONDS:

    From HalfLife2.net 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
  15. Re:Linux port by NitroPye · · Score: 3, Informative

    That is most likely the server makefile.

  16. Re:No it wouldn't by wantedman · · Score: 3, Informative

    IMAL.
    You'd just have to look at the notes. You cannot trademark / copywrite "look and feel". Well, with IP, its getting that way, but as of right now, you cannot.

    If I've looked at the source for opening a word document, but I do it differently, they have no case. If Word documents had a patent, then that would be different, but until they do, I don't believe they'd have a case.

    Of course, if I signed a NDA, it might be different.