Slashdot Mirror
Half-Life 2 Already Being Illegally Sold in Russia
freidog writes "A short blurb on GamesRadar reports Half-Life 2 is for sale, sort of. It seems the 'leaked' Half-Life 2 source has found itself nicely updated and packaged for sale, in Russia. Some work has certainly gone into this production, as 'Hackers have apparently even gone to the length of translating text in the fully playable code into Russian.' However, one would imagine the game's content would be pretty sparse, and stability and polish lacking on such an early build." Another reader points to a page with more information on the bootleg discs, although only the disc art and packaging is mentioned as being translated.
"The current version of the game is demo only and the distributor hold no responsibility for the operational capabilities of this product."?
So regardless of if its not legal, they aren't trying to pass it off as being the ACTUAL game.
The content was leaked a while after the source was.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
This "one third of the source" was just the publisher trying to put into layman's terms how much was actually copied. They said it was one third of the GAME, and that got twisted somehow. I heard it compiles fine, so there should be all of it...
And what's being sold is the E3 demo that had been leaked as well.
There is plenty of misinformation and hearsay in regards to the sales of HL2 in Russia. The best weapon to combat the rumours are the facts, and here they are.
1) The authors of the article on GamesRadar is stupid. The game was on sale in Russia basically since October, when it was leaked. And it wasn't sold in Novosibirsk only, but pretty much everywhere.
2) The author of the page about Ukraine is a complete idiot. I don't even want to comment on all the stupidity he wrote there.
3) The game has a couple of playable levels, including textures, models, AI, everything. Of course, it doesn't yet form a coherent story, but as far as I know, it includes all demoed levels, among others.
4) Here is one of several reviews of Half-Life 2 alpha version: http://www.3dnews.ru/games/half-life2-alfa/. It's in Russian, but you can look at screenshots, or use the fish. Among other things, the reviewer says that the graphics are not revolutionary, despite the hype and cool videos. There is no per-pixel lightning and no realistic destruction physics (like in Silent Storm), e.g. indestructable boxes, etc. Water is pretty cool, though. On Athlon 2500+ with GeForce Ti4200 the game runs at 22-35FPS in 1024x768x32 with average details and 4xAA. Overall the reviewer thinks that the final version would be good, but not as good as we were led to believe.
5) The game doesn't collect your CC numbers, Mr. Fortunato. Despite what one may think, pirates are not criminals.
6) Doom3 alpha also was/is on sale pretty much everywhere in Russia. Still, nobody risks buying it believing it's a real deal, because the most sellers would always specifically warn you that it is just an alpha and everyone would say that when asked.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Please, Gecko, put the numbers back where you took them from. :)
From here
Earnings Gap: Canada - 3.7, USA - 4.6, Sweden - 2.2. It is defined as the "ratio of the top to bottom 10% (i.e. top of 9th decile to top of 1st decile of earners).
As I said before, in Moscow it is 43. Russian average is 14.6, but if you exclude Moscow from the statistics, it will probably drop to around 5-8. But 43 is simply not right, especially when you consider that Moscow has 8+ million population...
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
I'm sorry, DEMO version? Last time I checked it was a leaked version of the game containing some of the source code. When did anyone say a thing about the leak being a DEMO? Even if salesmen outright told them the truth, consumers would raise an eyebrow when they notice what the truthful salesman and the back of the jewel case don't say the same thing.
You're right, they're not passing it off as the final version. However, they are trying to pass it off as a near completed version of it by claiming its a demo version.