Valve Announces Half-Life 2 Code Theft Arrests

Ant writes "GameSpot and other sources report arrests were made: Developer of the much-anticipated and delayed shooter sequel reveals an international wave of arrests has been made. The Half-Life 2 code theft saga entered a new chapter today when Valve Software announced a series of arrests had been made in the case. According to Valve, suspects in several countries had been taken into custody in relation to charges stemming from the theft of the Half-Life 2 code, distribution of the code, and breaking into Valve's network..."

Comments

"other sources"?

[ack154]

Not too many "other sources" available. The Google News search only lists the GameSpot article.

Re:"other sources"?

[Short Circuit]

Click on "and more" ...

Google attempts to group related articles.

Re:"other sources"?

[MetalliQaZ]

I assume more will eventually show up in the google search...overall it's probably just good practice to include links like that. Spreads out the /. effect...and you KNOW we slashdotters are too lazy to do the search ourselves =P

Re:"other sources"?

[Zathrus]

At the time I clicked there was also an article on Tom's Hardware. It managed to have less content than the GameSpot article.

Whole lot of nothing here... Valve says some people were arrested, the FBI is declining to say anything than that they arrested some people (the agent who was contacted was smart enough not to say any more than that... if the FBI wants to make a press splash on this then they will, but the desk agent in charge (or whatever their designation is) sure as hell can't make that decision).

I'm sure there will be the standard wild speculation, claims from various people that they know someone who was arrested, etc.

And, of course, the continuing claims from the looneys who say that there was no code theft and that the entire story was made up to hide the fact that the code just wasn't ready. I'm not disputing the second half of that -- the code wasn't, and Valve was stupid to say they were on target. But if they'd made the entire thing up, as the conspiracy theorists say, then the FBI would still have arrested people. Except that it'd be Gabe Newell and the rest of Valve management for filing a false report, lieing to a federal officer, and whatever else they could dredge up to charge them with.

Re:"other sources"?

[GoofyBoy]

I can't wait until Google news picks up this slashdot article.

Re:"other sources"?

[BostonRob]

Well, they now list /. as well. Of course, a source quoting itself does little good.

Re:"other sources"?

[hurfy]

Thats what i got. Slashdot reporting itself as the other source ?!? I thought we were the good guys.... ;p

Re:"other sources"?

[ericspinder]

I figured that the GameSpot site would kick off my company's web filter (don't want to do that too often!; "This site is catagorized as games, this has been logged") so I checked the other sources only to find this slashdot article as the top result. Recursive linking at it's best!

Tom's Hardware had a blurb:

"Within a few days of the announcement of the break-in, the online gaming community had tracked down those involved," said Gabe Newell, Valve's CEO. "It was extraordinary to watch how quickly and how cleverly gamers were able to unravel what are traditionally unsolvable problems for law enforcement related to this kind of cyber-crime."

Who needs security when you have rabid fans. Perhaps companies should post rewards for tips leading to convictions.

Re:"other sources"?

[Cobron]

Not too many "other sources" available.
Ehm, that's kinda the entire reason for these arrests. You should check out Kazaa, tons of sources to be found there.

Re:"other sources"?

[nexex]

Perhaps companies should post rewards for tips leading to convictions.

Just look how well thats worked for Microsoft & SCO. :)

Re:"other sources"?

[Anepthia]

Perhaps companies should post rewards for tips leading to convictions. They could have a special weapon in hl2 - "The Informant".

Re:"other sources"?

[john_anderson_ii]

Mail Fraud. I don't care what the case is about, if the defendant sent a letter during the period in question, mail fraud is always there.

Re:"other sources"?

[Anonymous Coward]

And, of course, the continuing claims from the looneys who say that there was no code theft and that the entire story was made up to hide the fact that the code just wasn't ready. I'm not disputing the second half of that -- the code wasn't, and Valve was stupid to say they were on target. But if they'd made the entire thing up, as the conspiracy theorists say, then the FBI would still have arrested people.

Plus it'd be hard to explain the source code that was floating around, I saw it myself.

Re:"other sources"?

[Goldberg's Pants]

Ah yes, that old stalwart. Mail fraud.

I just get pissed of with it being called "theft". Not sure WHAT it should be called, but theft is the removal of property from the person or persons ownership. To be theft, the item has to be out of the owners posession and entirely in the posession of the thief. Obviously making a copy of some source code means it never left the owners property.

When you get right down to it, this is probably what, copyright violation?

Not saying it's right or anything. As much the code being spread on the net amused the piss out of me (for the underhanded way the beta test of CS 1.6 was handled by Valve), it was wrong. I don't want anyone thinking I'm condoning it. I'm more commenting on how the legal definitions of crimes need to updated, since this clearly isn't theft when you get down to the actual definition of what constitutes theft. Hell, breaking and entertaing is probably a more apt charge.

You know I'm surprised no other company with a game ridiculously late has tried this route. "Honestly, the code was stolen." I mean really, the game is so damn late, blaming the system compromise for the delay of HL2 is the equivalent of saying "the dog ate my homework".

Re:"other sources"?

[nilbus]

And, of course, the continuing claims from the looneys who say that there was no code theft and that the entire story was made up to hide the fact that the code just wasn't ready. The HL2 source has been quite widespread, and isn't terrible to find. Several people I know have studied the code. It's definitely not made up.

Re:"other sources"?

[Eristone]

And, of course, the continuing claims from the looneys who say that there was no code theft and that the entire story was made up to hide the fact that the code just wasn't ready. I'm not disputing the second half of that -- the code wasn't, and Valve was stupid to say they were on target.

Hmm.. and how do you know the code wasn't ready unless you have a copy of it? :)

Re:"other sources"?

[fatboyslack]

Theft??

The obsolete meaning is property related that you refer to.

The more modern meaning is "The act or an instance of stealing; larceny." Which suits this ok. The alleged perps acquired something they had no right to, hence stealing, hence theft.

Check out the delightful dictionary.com

Re:"other sources"?

[nial-in-a-box]

Why would they spend money when people apparently take electronic law enforcement upon themselves when they care?

Re:"other sources"?

[nial-in-a-box]

Well that's interesting. This goes right along with the alleged leaked Windows source code. I have yet to even hear someone remotely reputable claim to have compiled and run even a portion of either of these sources. It would only seem natural that someone with the source code for something they have interest in would compile and test it, especially when it's something that is not yet available by any other means. Sure, the complaint is that the integrity of the game has been compromised because cheats and hacks can be developed more rapidly with the aid of the source code. This is all good and well, but these so-called cheats aren't just going to diddle around with the code until the game comes out so they can test it.

What I'm trying to get at is this: yes, I believe that something was stolen from Valve, and that it involved Half-Life 2. No, I do not believe that it was anywhere near the full source code of the game. Consequently, Valve's claims would then be essentially bunk, unless it was specifically the security chunk of the code that was stolen, which seems mighty convenient. What it all boils down to is that this all happened at a convenient time, which has been established. I didn't have to work yesterday because it was raining in the morning. The forecast said it would storm all day, but instead it really only rained for a couple hours early in the day. So while it was true that tree work would not have been the best idea in the morning, it later became a beautiful day. This is a bad analogy, but the point should be clear.

Re:"other sources"?

[sumdumass]

But if they'd made the entire thing up, as the conspiracy theorists say, then the FBI would still have arrested people. Except that it'd be Gabe Newell and the rest of Valve management for filing a false report, lieing to a federal officer, and whatever else they could dredge up to charge them with.

I don't neccesarily think it would have to be the valve management that got arrested. The supposed code in question was availible at several different locations on the internet and I even downloaded a copy (for novalty purposes). Distributing copy writen works of art is still ileagle and carries federal penalties. It is possible that the code was nothing important and purposely leaked to the internet and they are only going after those redistributing it.

The article didn't go into great detail about who was charged with what. This could mean that who ever originally got the code (hacked thier system) is still at large and it is just the distrobution network at risc. Also it might have been done as a publicity stunt to make a "presence" known and implant an image that those wanting to pirate the final product will be dealt with. Scary but possible. There are quite a few other conspiracy theories that can be tossed around and wouold hold just as much weight as the "it's just an excuse to delay the product".

Re:"other sources"?

[nilbus]

Sorry, I should have made it clear in my earlier post.

The leaked source compiles and runs. There are no maps, models or content, but the engine works. It wasn't finished, and there are bugs. That's why it wasn't released yet, right?
All people needed to do to create a working HL2 mod was create the custom models and maps.

Re:"other sources"?

[darc]

In fact, this has actually been done. People did indeed compile the HL2 engine, and insert HL content into it, generating a working sort of demo, including a port of some counterstrike files. Don't get all excited yet, it works, but not as well as a retail game. You can find it on suprnova, and related sites.

So, the HL2 leak is QUITE real, you can try it yourself.

Re:"other sources"?

[MrSin]

You have a copy? Funny....I have a liscence to have a copy, but I don't have a copy. I bought a 9800XT so I could own the game. I legally have a right to own the game. So if I get my hands on a copy then I'm right, right?

Right.

Re:"other sources"?

[sumdumass]

I couldn't say wether or not your in the right..Thats between you, your god, and the laws of the land were you live.

And yea, I never said I was in the right for having it either.

Re:"other sources"?

[Lord Kano]

And, of course, the continuing claims from the looneys who say that there was no code theft and that the entire story was made up to hide the fact that the code just wasn't ready.

Why must they be "looneys"?

LK

Re:"other sources"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I'm jelous. I've looked around for it but can't find it.

More power to ya brotha.

Re:"other sources"?

[Clockwork Apple]

This loonie wants to go on record as saying" there was no "significant" theft. What was stolen was not finished, fact of the matter is the game wansnt finished, and they used this minor theft of an unfinished source to stave off the criticism about the missed release date.

It adds up to about the same thing for us gammers, Valve did lie even if it was a lie about the scope of the theft. The said they couldnt release the game at that point due to online cheats. All fine and good but then not too long ago Valve stated that the game wasnt finished at the time of the theft and wasnt even really in a beta state of compleation. Makes no difference to me, they lost my confidence. I'll buy the game.....eventually, if the multiplayer is good. If not then I will play my friends copy for the single player mode, until I finish it and then just be done with it.

The lie wasnt the theft, the lie was that the theft forced the missed release date. The effect on my end is about the same.

Re:"other sources"?

[sarabob]

or "The action of a thief; the felonious taking away of the personal goods of another; larceny" as per OED.

I think your definition is somewhat lacking: "theft: the act of stealing". And then you go on to make up your own definition of stealing to suit your own personal feelings on the matter.

Re:"other sources"?

[golgotha007]

it was only about 2 weeks after the alleged theft when i started noticing Half Life 2 CD's in all the cornerstore CD shops here in Saint Petersburg, Russia. it cost about $1.50, so i picked it up to see what it was about.

basically, there were a number of maps, most of them from the HF2 demonstration given at E3 last year. it was a bit clunky but it worked. there were many missing textures and some of the maps weren't even finished yet.

i was really disappointed about the theft, as it hurts the relationship between Valve and gamers everywhere, but moreso because this theft taints both the Half Life and Valve's good name and track record.

i really don't see Valve releasing 'Half Life 2' anytime soon because of this. i think they will make some more modifications the HL2 and release it under some new title. maybe Half Life XP? hehe

Re:"other sources"?

[Anonymous Coward]

it's really not recursive linking. a recursive link would be a link to itself, and hopefully with a varying argument list. what you've experienced is a cicular traversal while traveling the information superhighway, or a cycle in the web.

Re:"other sources"?

[Divide By Zero]

When you get right down to it, this is probably what, copyright violation?

This is most directly covered by 18 U.S.C. 1030: electronic trespass, and does impose criminal liability for "whoever...intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access,". That the user likely falsely identified himself over a telecommunications device probably also makes it wire fraud under 18 U.S.C. 1343. Copying the software deprived Valve of the most important asset of a software company running a closed-source business model: the secrecy of its source code. It cost them whatever extra development costs they incurred, time lost tracking down the thieves, whatever. Sounds more like a civil suit than criminal, but I'm No Lawyer, so there might be something prosecutable there of which I'm not aware.

Re:"other sources"?

[Zathrus]

Hmm.. and how do you know the code wasn't ready unless you have a copy of it?

Er, because Valve themselves stated that it wasn't ready for the Sep 30 date a couple months ago?

Re:"other sources"?

[Zathrus]

I don't neccesarily think it would have to be the valve management that got arrested. The supposed code in question was availible at several different locations on the internet and I even downloaded a copy (for novalty purposes). Distributing copy writen works of art is still ileagle and carries federal penalties.

The theory the loonies were advocating was that there was no breakin and no "illegal acquisition" of the code, but that Valve leaked it themselves (which is so absurd at so many levels).

In that case, you can bet that the FBI would be jumping down their throats once the truth came out. And it'd be questionable if it would be copyright infringement -- at least for the Valve-sourced code (there were copies of non-Valve code as well, including the Havok physics engine) -- since they would've been the ones to leak it in the first place. Failure to properly defend your copyright can lead to it being ruled invalid, and leaking the code would certainly fall under that umbrella. Again, the idea that Valve leaked the source itself is patently absurd, and anyone who suggests it should be derided until they learn something about the real world.

Also it might have been done as a publicity stunt to make a "presence" known and implant an image that those wanting to pirate the final product will be dealt with. Scary but possible.

If it was a publicity stunt then it's a poor one. No word from the FBI, no press conference, etc. The feds are playing this one close to their chest -- they may not have arrested everyone they feel is involved yet (which may, as you and others suggest, include the original crackers).

As for scary -- I don't see why it's scary. This stuff is illegal, whether it's the illicit code or the final product. Anyone who pirates knows that there's a chance -- however remote -- that they'll be caught and that there's not much of a chance in hell for them in court.

Re:"other sources"?

[j-turkey]

i was really disappointed about the theft, as it hurts the relationship between Valve and gamers everywhere, but moreso because this theft taints both the Half Life and Valve's good name and track record.

Oh please. Valve sorta hurt themselves here. They must have been just aching to find an excuse to delay their release. If it was ready at the time of the leak, it would have been released (Holding back a release for a full audit? Why? Nothing was changed -- it was bullshit...the game simply wasn't ready for release.)

I asked a friend who works for one of their competitors who knows those guys. I asked him if he knew what the deal really was -- he said that basically any "next-gen" game could use a few extra months -- that releases are (for the most part) all timing. Now that HL2 won't be the most amazing thing out there (Far Cry sorta stole it's thunder), Valve is in a tricky position...release something now that's not the next great thing, or polish it a little more and wait...losing even more potential revenue.

This is mostly speculative, but I'm pretty sure that it was Valve who put Valve in the position that they're in...even though they're going to publicly blame the folks who stole their code (as well as ensure that they're crucified in the courts).

Re:"other sources"?

[Awptimus Prime]

Just look how well thats worked for Microsoft & SCO. :)
It actually seems to have worked "some". I don't see modded, optimized copies of Windows 2000 floating around on the P2P networks. I had though when the OS source was stolen, it would be only a matter of months before we'd see some Windows hybrid, or even a rogue application to better emulate Windows under Linux. Nothing came of this. :(

I guess they closed that leaky Valve?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ba-dum - cha!

Re:I guess they closed that leaky Valve?

[SuiteSisterMary]

Isn't it ironic that they've been arrested for stealing a game who's main character is named 'Freeman'?

Re:I guess they closed that leaky Valve?

[The Only Druid]

No, its not. Its not even funny.

Freeman, if anything, is a reference either to slavery or the 'Dune' series. There's no real relationship with the idea of a free game or intellectual property theft.

What might have been ironic is if the game were entitled "Unstealable" or something, but even that would be a stretch at best.

Re:I guess they closed that leaky Valve?

[Anonymous Coward]

...no.

Re:I guess they closed that leaky Valve?

[Anonymous Coward]

What would also be funny is a bunch of slashbots claiming that it can't be theft because taking it deprives Valve of nothing, "information wants to be free" etc.

Oh wait, that would only be if it were Microsoft's code. Valve doesn't compete with Linux so they're OK.

Re:I guess they closed that leaky Valve?

[alficles]

*looks around sheepishly* *slowly raises hand* It was a very bad joke, but sadly, still funny. :)

Re:I guess they closed that leaky Valve?

[orasio]

Hm.. there is no such thing as intellectual property theft, more like
copyright infringement.
The problem here is not that someone stole some CD or could break into some computer, but that the code was distributed.
There would have to be such a thing as intellectual property, from which its legitimate owner could be deprived, in order for theft to happen.

Re:I guess they closed that leaky Valve?

[The Only Druid]

I'm sure the thousands of lawyers in 'intellectual property' classes, not to mention the lawyers who practice in it, would disagree with you.

Someone either broke physically into their building, broke electronically into their servers, or illegally duplicated a legal copy (which is defined by law as theft), so no matter what Valve had something stolen from them.

Next time you want to make a snide comment about the lack of 'intellectual property', you do me a favor and suggest at the same time why any programmers should be paid. Is it for their labor? Then no programmers should ever have 'rights' to their code, right?

Re:I guess they closed that leaky Valve?

[Anonymous Coward]

You misunderstand. People who claim that there is no such thing as IP theft don't live in the same world as us; yes, the laws are the same, and they can still be fined or jailed for doing what they claim can't be done, but the thing is they just refuse to believe.

Such people don't have to think about earning a living as a programmer because they either can't do it in the first place, or would never be hired if they could - issues with reality are a significant drawback in most employer's eyes. And these nuts would never sign the confidentiality agreement anyway.

It's sort of like believing Benny Hinn can cure your blindness. Getting caught is the same as walking off the edge of Benny's stage and breaking your neck because you can't see.

Re:I guess they closed that leaky Valve?

[junkgrep]

I don't know, I think breaking into someone's private systems, reading through their emails, and helping themselves to code they don't own or have any right to is "a problem." But then, I'm not an asshole.

Re:I guess they closed that leaky Valve?

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Nah, theres still a lot of vaporware coming out of that valve.

Re:I guess they closed that leaky Valve?

[Anonymous Coward]

Note: To constitute theft there must be a taking without the owner's consent, and it must be unlawful or felonious; every part of the property stolen must be removed, however slightly, from its former position; and it must be, at least momentarily, in the complete possession of the thief. See Larceny, and the Note under Robbery.

Re:I guess they closed that leaky Valve?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a powerful argument - something found on a popup-farm on the Intarweb!!!111!!!1

But you forget - in accessing Valve's systems the thief rendered questionable the integrity of the code. Valve couldn't use it for some time until it had been checked. The thief did have posession, in that only the thief knew whether it was trustworthy or not. Valve had to waste valueable resources finding that our for themselves. Or maybe you feel they would have just said "looks like it's all there! let's ship!"?

Re:I guess they closed that leaky Valve?

[Trejkaz]

That reminds me, I always wanted to make a game called "steal this game", but for some reason I keep suspecting that no publisher will pick it up anyway... and calling it "steal this game" doesn't really work if you release it open source.

Re:I guess they closed that leaky Valve?

[sumdumass]

well actually, This "intelectual property argument" would depend on your definition and the use. you can't own an idea, you can however put the idea to works and own the works. Intelectual property is either the idea, or the works made from the idea. Technicaly it is the idea and not both.

To ilistrate this, think of putting icing on a doughnut, then try and pattent or take owner ship of this idea. You can't. Now think of making a pice of software that does a specific thing,in a specific way. You can own the device it created but not the idea of making the device.

In this case the device is a specific game that plays a certain way. You can own the game (a device or copy writen work) but not the idea of making a game. Once the game is made into a device or a work, it is physical and not intelectual hence the argument that always ensues trying to colorfully state the differences and as always, someone will goto the extream in one direction or the other.

If you noticed, the parent made the conection of it not being intelectual property and refered it to a physical object like copy right instead. Now the oposite extream has been made were someone can't figure out that copyright or physical property has value and then claims to make an argument about those that don't believe in the way they do live in some alternate reality. In short,the reality is when looking at the way it is being used, both are the same thing and aren't intelectual at all but physical instead.

Re:I guess they closed that leaky Valve?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Next time you want to make a snide comment about the lack of 'intellectual property', you do me a favor and suggest at the same time why any programmers should be paid. Is it for their labor?"

At what point did the parent poster say that copyright infringement isn't wrong? Just because we refuse to succumb to propoganda terms like "steal" and "intellectual property" it doesn't follow that we think that copyright infringement is okay.

"Then no programmers should ever have 'rights' to their code, right?"

For fucks sake. They have copyrights! Why is this so hard for people to understand?

Re:I guess they closed that leaky Valve?

[Anonymous Coward]

guess you don't know much about the law then? pity that you feel free to talk nonsense.

Re:I guess they closed that leaky Valve?

[SuiteSisterMary]

No, it's funny because they're going to jail, see, they won't be 'free.'

And I doubt it's a reference to either slavery or Dune, so much as, well, a name. Maybe a reference to Morgan Freeman. Morgan...Gordon...spooky.

Re:I guess they closed that leaky Valve?

[orasio]

Well, again, for the slow readers...

Of course there is a problem with breaking into someone's property, stealing stuff and breaking even electronic stuff. What I tried to say is that the fact that matters _in_this_case_ is not theft itself, (a small damage for the company, and maybe a big crime, punished with years in jail in most places) but copyright infringement (a big damage for the company, in this case) , which is not a form of theft, because no one is deprived of their property. You could say thet they are deprived of potential profits, and be right, but that is not intellectual property theft.

Intellectual property has no specific meaning itself, because it is usually applied to many concepts that have little to do with each other (patents, trade marks, trade secrets, copyright, property). Although it is actually used in many places, that term is confusing, because leads to the incorrect assumption that they are all the same, and that they are property, while they share little with each other, and with the concept of property. That leads to the general public to make assumptions about copyight by analogy to property, or to patents, while that would be wrong. Copyright infringement has its own laws everywhere.

Re:I guess they closed that leaky Valve?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm sure the thousands of lawyers in 'intellectual property' classes, not to mention the lawyers who practice in it, would disagree with you."

Problem is lawyers will say anything, as long as they can make money doing it.
Stop breathing, you're stealing my air!

Re:I guess they closed that leaky Valve?

[Anonymous Coward]

Still doesn't make it theft. What they did was wrong, but it wasn't theft. Get your terms right, otherwise no one will take you seriously.

Re:I guess they closed that leaky Valve?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure you are. You're a giant walking sphinctor. Arrogant too.

It's not THE problem, it's ANOTHER, SEPERATE problem.

Re:I guess they closed that leaky Valve?

[flynns]

Fremen. Dune characters were Fremen.

I wonder if...

[Short Circuit]

...Valve was waiting for the arrests before releasing the game.

Re:I wonder if...

[Lux]

Not a bloody chance. It's pretty clear that they just capitalized on the source code leak as an excuse to slip the release date. There's really no way they could sit on a game for nine months reworking the code to break compatibility with potential cracks for the leaked code. It's neither that long of a project, nor an justifiable use of man-hours.

The game is just way behind schedule.

Re:I wonder if...

[wahsapa]

one would hope... but i doubt it

Re:I wonder if...

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I hear, Gordon Freeman wanted 10 minutes in a room with them first. Something about a crowbar.

Re:I wonder if...

[AEton]

They kind of had to. You see, the code that was stolen composed most of the core of the game; and they had to find and arrest the thief so they could get their code back. Only once the stolen property is returned to its owner can the development continue.

Re:I wonder if...

[Anonymous Coward]

After all this buildup and extra work, it better damn well be able to jack me off while I play.

Re:I wonder if...

[Allen Zadr]

No, it's probably delayed because of the Creep Factor story from Earlier

Re:I wonder if...

[pilkul]

You might be right. But I wonder if the leak might not have caused a lot of chaos at Valve as well. I can imagine angry speeches from bosses, IT staff getting fired etc as a result of the crack. They may have had to realign much of their organization to have a stronger security focus. Certainly plain old delays are common in the gaming industry, but it seems also quite plausible to me that the leak may have played a part.

Re:I wonder if...

[ElForesto]

I'm with you. Prior to these arrests, I had even wondered if the supposed theft had happened at all. I don't see any reason for the theft to delay the game like it has. So far as I am concerned, they pounced on what they saw as a good excuse to fabricate a delay.

Re:I wonder if...

[revmoo]

I'm with you. Prior to these arrests, I had even wondered if the supposed theft had happened at all.

Coming from someone who played the Half-Life 2 Beta, I assure you it really happened :p

Re:I wonder if...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say that it is more likely they have held the release because it makes it easy to spot illegal copies. If you have a copy of an application that's not yet been released, it's illegal.

Re:I wonder if...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll keep that in mind next time I take a pee.

Re:I wonder if...

[Valar]

Or, if they wanted to delay the game... they could just announce a delay. It is their product, they don't need to fabricate a reason. Not to mention that missing the ship date is practically industry standard amoung video game makers...

Re:I wonder if...

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

And its not like HalfLife2 will be the first computer game in history that will never be cracked... with or without the source code leak.

Re:I wonder if...

[SphericalCrusher]

I just hate the fact that when developers do get behind schedule, everyfuckingbody jumps at them. Maybe Valve should just be more like idSoftware, with the motto of "It'll be finished when it's finished." That way, they won't have any annoying ass gamers bitching and starting hate crimes against them when they miss a release date. I just think all developers should be like that. Besides, so what if they miss a release date? As long as they are taking their time and make an awesome game, I'll be happy. Sure, I'd want it to come out faster, but I would drop that need over the chance that the game would be improved if kept in development longer. Look at Enter the Matrix... they rushed to hit the release date, missed it, rushed some more.. and made a very shitty game.

Re:I wonder if...

[joeljkp]

With the source out, potential cheaters have the means to create hacks before the game even comes out.

They're probably (they'd better be) delaying to refactor things so that anything gleaned from the leaked code won't be useful when the game is released.

Re:I wonder if...

[black mariah]

Don't you understand? The companies OWE the gamers games whenever they say they'll come out. I mean... we PAY FOR THEM, right?

I for one am sick of the dipshits that are saying Doom 3 and HL2 are 'vaporware'. Because, as we all know, the definition of vaporware is a game that exists in playable form.... right? Oh, no, wait, vaporware is software that NEVER reaches a playable level. Okay, but what about the release dates? Uhm.... id doesn't have one for Doom 3 except "Maybe later this summer. No promises.", and Valve missing ONE target date is hardly cause for concern.

I think I just need to pay less attention to gamers.

Re:I wonder if...

[junkgrep]

"It's pretty clear that they just capitalized on the source code leak as an excuse to slip the release date."

Cept, that's not what happened. The only thing anyone said about the leak delaying the game was that it would delay it more. They had already admitted that the game wouldn't be done on time, with or without the leak, just a few days after they admitted to the delay.

Re:I wonder if...

[Xugumad]

It's not the missing the release date that gets to me. It's that they didn't announce it was going to be late until a matter of days before the original release date. On top of that, for a game that was meant to be finished 4 months after announcing, we're now at 11 months, which makes me wonder if they ever really believed they'd make that date, or were just winding up the gamers to get them interested.

And that's what bugs me.

Re:I wonder if...

[SphericalCrusher]

That's why I'm saying it'd probably be better off for them not to have a set release date. Just continue to release info on the game until it eventually comes out. That's what happened with Quake 3 and look at it even today.

Re:I wonder if...

[mog007]

Here's a tip: If you're coding something that isn't meant to be open source, such as an operating system by Microsoft, or a game by Valve or Id, do NOT have the computer connected to the internet. Period. Set up a local lan that doesn't get access to outside the building, so they can hot-sync with each other. Put another computer on the desk and use a single monitor/keyboard and switch between the two. Gotta email the boss for an update, switch over to the internet ready computer, then switch back to the text editor and get back to work.

I'm not saying the break in was right. It was the shadow opposite, but it was also partly the fault of Valve for allowing their computers to be suseptable to the possibility in the first place. Tons of script kiddies play Counter-Strike, they've got an unhealthy obsession with Valve, so it's natural to err on the side of caution.

Re:I wonder if...

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd best read up on your software definitions. Half-Life 2 was just made beta a few days prior to E3 of this year. The leak was an alpha. Let's go through this again:

Alpha: Heavy bugs, much ironing needs to be done. Incomplete.

Beta: Game is playable from start to finish, all maps and textures are finished, code just needs polish.

Gold: Ready for mass production.

Re:I wonder if...

[Sebadude]

Nerd! ;)

Re:I wonder if...

[the-build-chicken]

being able to project and hit predetermined deadlines is one of the many attributes that seperate professional developers from moronic time wasters who think they might try their had at 'coding'.

Being able to program doesn't make you a programmer...being able to project and hit deadlines, build in reusable blocks, well document your code...these are the things that make a programmer.

so...if you can't hit a deadline...move aside and stop giving the rest of us a bad name.
</rant>

Re:I wonder if...

[Vengeance_au]

To build on this point - I've got a coupon for Half Life 2 that came with an ATI video card. That coupon is about 7 or 8 months old, as is the (at the time bleeding edge) Radeon 9800. I'm jacked that I'm waiting for a game I've paid for is not in my hands. I'll be even more ropeable if the video card has ANY troubles with the game at all, but thats another story.

Serves me right I suppose.... repeat after me boys and girls, never pay for something that is not available yet. Preordered games fall into the same category.

Ah well, I guess Far Cry will tide me over :-).

Re:I wonder if...

[johnnliu]

I think you are missing the point.

The point is, if it isn't ready, they shouldn't have made it sound like it's ready back in E3 2003. I remember _they_ say it'll be out in September 2003. It's more than a year late, lots of others have beat them to it.

If it should be released when it's done, they shouldn't have lied to their fans and say it's going to come out on so-and-so date. And then break that promise.

Re:I wonder if...

[SphericalCrusher]

So you're saying that John Carmack, the guy who single handedly transformed the PC gaming industry, is not a programmer?

Re:I wonder if...

[the-build-chicken]

I doubt very much whether he has personally missed any deadline

Re:I wonder if...

[SphericalCrusher]

No. If you actually read what I said instead of jumping to comment on it, you'd see that I said it would be a better idea for companies just to be like idSoftware... with the "it'll be done when it's finished" attitude. I know that Valve cannot do that right now, because they already gave a release date. Same for a lot of other companies. It's just the general idea of it...

Re:I wonder if...

[TejWC]

Which reminds me of a penny arcade strip here . Gotta love Penny Arcade ;)

Re:I wonder if...

[GeckoX]

Um, it's believed that it was an inside job and that the code stolen could not have been stolen directly off of the internet.

Re:I wonder if...

[SphericalCrusher]

Haha. Want to know why? Because he never set any. That's why I keep bringing up his attitude of "it'll be ready when it's finished."

Re:I wonder if...

[AviLazar]

How do you know the hackers did what they did because they were disgrunteled about the release date? Unless you have some inside knowledge that nobody else has, you made a presumptuous statement. Sometimes hackers do what they do for no other reason then to just do it. They may want a copy of the game before everyone else. They may want to sell it. THey may want to give it, find cheats, brag, and a plethora (yes I am using plethora dammit):) of other reasons. Though I do agree, that I would rather have a higher quality game then have it faster and "half" assed :) Heh half life...half assed I'm funny ;)

Re:I wonder if...

[sukotto]

Like 3D Realms is doing with Duke Nukem Forever?

The answer is somewhere in the middle. Too little time results in a crappy game. Too much time results in vapor.

Re:I wonder if...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course not, they're going Duke Nukem Forever Style.

Re:I wonder if...

[SphericalCrusher]

What the fuck? Since when did I say that the hackers stole the source code of the game just because it missed the release date? I know what hackers do, because I am one. But what you're describing is more of a cracker and a vandal.

Reread my comments before you make presumptuous statements.

Release Date?

[FesterDaFelcher]

Does that mean they can release it on time now? Oh wait...

Re:Release Date?

[Surt]

Ok, i'm dying of curiosity now.

Are you a truck?

Re:Release Date?

[FesterDaFelcher]

Nope.

Re:Release Date?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope.
--
Ask me if I'm a truck.

So, uh... are you a truck?

Re:Release Date?

[Anonymous Coward]

Noooooooo!

Re:Release Date?

[alficles]

goto 9392014

Re:Release Date?

[Anonymous Coward]

Im guessing he is.

Heh

[metlin]

The Google News link just shows the link again to the Gamespot link.

Do the submitters (or the editors) ever check to see what's in the links?

Re:Heh

[BandwidthHog]

Do the submitters (or the editors) ever check to see what's in the links?

You must be new here.

(sorry, couldn't resist)

timeline

[notbob]

Wow, well looks like half life 2 should be out any second now that they caught the perps....

o' wait no this is an excuse for another 2 year delay!

Half Life 2 Timeline:
(Presale)
(Delay for break in)
(Presale)
(Delay for prosecution)
(Cancel Project)

Karma Karma Karma Karma Kameleon

[Anonymous Coward]

He comes and goes... he comes and goooooeeess...

The Half-Life 2 code theft saga entered a new chapter today when Valve Software announced a series of arrests had been made in the case. According to Valve, suspects in several countries had been taken into custody in relation to charges stemming from the theft of the Half-Life 2 code, distribution of the code, and breaking into Valve's network.

Valve CEO Gabe Newell credited gamers with providing the information that led to the arrests. "It was extraordinary to watch how quickly and how cleverly gamers were able to unravel what are traditionally unsolvable problems for law enforcement related to this kind of cyber-crime," he said in a statement. "Everyone here at Valve is once again reminded of how much we owe to the gaming community."

However, while Valve announced the arrests today, it was unclear when they actually occurred. Valve's statement on the matter--e-mailed to the press today--quoted Newell as saying, "within a few days of the announcement of the break-in, the online gaming community had tracked down those involved."

The FBI's Northwest Cyber Crime Task Force, the law-enforcement agency overseeing the code theft investigation, also divulged little information. When asked by GameSpot if it had made any arrests, media contact at the task force's Seattle, WA, headquarters said simply, "we did." However, when pressed for more information on the case--i.e. how many people in the US were arrested, where were they apprehended--the agent declined to say anything other than arrests had been made. "Beyond that we can not comment," he said.

News of the Half-Life 2 arrests comes after months of rumors about law-enforcement activity on the case. In January, a number of computer experts in the San Francisco area reported having their hardware seized by FBI agents on the grounds they were involved in the theft. Several weeks ago, unconfirmed reports from Germany said the author of the Phatbot Trojan worm was also involved in the theft. In both instances, neither Valve nor the authorities offered any comment.

GameSpot will have more details on this developing story as they become available.

Re:Karma Karma Karma Karma Kameleon

[davidsyes]

"Several weeks ago, unconfirmed reports from Germany said the author of the Phatbot Trojan worm was also involved in the theft. In both instances, neither Valve nor the authorities offered any comment."

For a moment, this made me wonder if Valve and others, including microsoft (lower-casing/deprecation intentional) routinely insert trojans into their source code so that it can lie dormant, awaiting the "Wake UP! Report your location" code.

Is it plausible that companies paranoid of losing their IP during or after development cycles would insert code that has to be "shut down" to prevent "sounding the alarm"?

This is what I mean: Rather than inserting into beta or gold or release software some passive code that waits to be polled, instead the code has to be periodically shut down.

Of course, if a technical person ran a packet sniffer to find out what or whether their copy of the software was leaking burst signals "to call home and report its location", there'd likely be some serous, umm, serious hell to pay.

On the other hand, I guess I don't personally have a problem with such a scheme, since I'd rather have a legit, unique, assigned-to-me authorization code. But, if the software does NOT enforce a unique code, then I have to suppose the maker or disributor secretly wants maximum diffusion or user exposure in the hopes that the users will "come clean" or go legit.

Re:Karma Karma Karma Karma Kameleon

[Anonymous Coward]

Culture Club

loading, please wait...

[mr. methane]

Loading "Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison Level" ......

Re:loading, please wait...

[Caedar]

What about the Conjugal visits?

Re:loading, please wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Prison rape is not a joking matter. Really. Suppose your brother had been raped in prison. Suppose you had been?

Re:loading, please wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well first off, I'd be wondering why I was in prison in the first place...

Re:loading, please wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy solution is not to go to prison of course.

Re:loading, please wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy solution is not to go to prison of course.

Because no one is ever sent to prison for a crime they didn't commit. Good Thinking! You should be proud of yourself.

Re:loading, please wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Blame the writers of Office Space. If they hadn't included that joke, you wouldn't be hearing so much of it. While you're at it, blame Monty Python for writing that stupid Spam sketch.

Re:loading, please wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

federal prison's don't have conjugal visits. i know this for a fact. and, yes, i'm getting tired of taking care of this by hand. can't wait for my girl to get out.

Re:loading, please wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

She just told you that, the guards are doing her

Re:loading, please wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it is.

Any loser who winds up in jail deserves what they get. Once they are behind bars they cease to be a person without any rights.

That should be just another deterrent from going back to prison if they get out or it should be enough of one to not wind up there in the first place.

Re:loading, please wait...

[mrchaotica]

You know, you'd think they'd just charge the rapist with rape, and send him to prison!

...oh wait

But really, do you have any suggestions to fix the problem? All I can think of is

• private showers (a little ritzy for a prison, don't you think?)
• or guards in the shower with the prisoners (I can imagine how badly that would work)

Re:loading, please wait...

[Ithika]

Once they are behind bars they cease to be a person without any rights.

At least there's somewhere in the country where people have rights thten, eh? :)

Re:loading, please wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

No they don't! They absolutely still have rights. They have lost the right to liberty, but they still have the right not to be killed, tortured, raped, etc. We continue to recognize these rights not only because it's moral, and because we hope to rehabilitate them, but perhaps most importantly because we recognize the fact that innocent people end up in jail. You fucking idiot.

Re:loading, please wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about not being the country with the highest relative prison population?

Re:loading, please wait...

[mrchaotica]

That would help a different problem.

It stands to reason that the people that rape others in prison are there for violent crimes to begin with (i.e. actually should be there.

Even if you removed all the people who "shouldn't be there" (exactly who that should be is a different discussion), you'd still have the problem of the violent criminals raping each other. Before you say "but they deserve it!" remember these things:

• The U.S. forbids "cruel and unusual" punishment. It's been established that rape qualifies.
• Neither you nor the rapist gets to decide who "deserves it"!

Re:loading, please wait...

[NDPTAL85]

Actually yes it is a joking matter. Its fucking hilarious. My brother would not be a filthy lawbreaking felon and if he was I'd laugh at him anyway.

Re:loading, please wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh? Perhaps it's preferable to live in a country like England with a low relative prison population and much of the country expects their flat/home to be robbed by the time they get home from work?

I'll take putting people in prison for $400, please, Alex.

Re:loading, please wait...

[Frogbert]

Can someone please tell me why anal rape is so funny to Americans? Jesus Christ think about it for a second.

Imagine being raped in the arse repeatedly for "Stealing" some source code... doesn't seem like fair punishment to me.

Re:loading, please wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who decides what's fair? You? Me? Valve? The rapist?

Re:loading, please wait...

[black mariah]

Suppose you sucked off a donkey. It would still be funny. As for me, I don't have a brother and I'm not going to jail. So I'll continue to laugh at people that get their assholes reamed out because their child-molesting ass got tossed into Federal Pound-me-in-the-ass Prison for fucking kids.

Re:loading, please wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

typical fucking american... denies any problem. When someone talks about obesity do you say "at least we're not ethiopia!"? when someone talks about U.S. soldiers buggering iraqi prisoners do you say "at least we're not saddam!"?

i'll laugh at the moron so obviously brainwashed by television. there's no alex here...

Re:loading, please wait...

[Tackhead]

> Can someone please tell me why anal rape is so funny to Americans? Jesus Christ think about it for a second.
>
> Imagine being raped in the arse repeatedly for "Stealing" some source code... doesn't seem like fair punishment to me.

Yeah. If the HL2 source code theft was in any way responsible for the delay in the HL2 release cycle, prison rape is too good for them.

Grind off their genitalia with the solder side of a rusty 8-bit ISA VGA card. Only then shall the ass-pounding commence!

Re:loading, please wait...

[Minna Kirai]

Can someone please tell me why anal rape is so funny to Americans?

Sexual assault is now a major component of the US criminal justice system. The understanding is that the strongest prisoners will rape the others. It's an unspoken additional punishment that law-enforcement winks at.

This is related to the way that the Iraqi prison scandal got started (the US MP who was court martialed was a New Jersey prison guard in civilian life, remember). Of course, in Abu Ghariab the prisoners didn't start on their own, and needed some prodding to get the idea...

Imagine being raped in the arse repeatedly for "Stealing" some source code...

Or for growing marijuana... no, it's not fair, is it?

Re:loading, please wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

The U.S. forbids "cruel and unusual" punishment. It's been established that rape qualifies.

Unless you're a soldier, in which case Rummy doesn't mind what you do as long as you get a confession out of that filty sand-nigger.

Re:loading, please wait...

[mr. methane]

it was a JOKE. I don't think getting slammed in the head with a hammer is funny either, but I still laugh when I watch The Three Stooges.

If these guys are guilty, I do hope they get sent away for long enough to serve the purpose: To punish them for the harm that they caused, and to discourage others from similar acts.

If they are not, then I hope the courts determine that quickly and allow them to resume their lives as quickly as possible.

Yeesh.....

Re:loading, please wait...

[disntrstd]

This is also a good reason why not to question the status quo. Sit down, shut up, and do as your told.

Re:loading, please wait...

[zangdesign]

It's funny because it's happening to someone else.

As for fair punishment - what is the fair punishment? It's the electronic equivalent of breaking and entering, theft, and distribution of stolen goods. If they had done this with physical items of high value, they'd be heading to the pokey, so why not treat it exactly the same?

I suppose the other alternative would be to force them to pay up for the economic losses to the company, but that would take most of the rest of their life.

Re:loading, please wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

"it was a JOKE."

Actually son, it wasn't a joke. People get raped in prison. It's a very serious problem which, as evidenced by their apathy to the problem, the US government aproves of.

Please read about this topic before commenting on it. You clearly know nothing about it.

"Yeesh....."

That's what I'm thinking. If you insist on viewing the US legal system through rose tinted spectacles then I'm glad I don't live in your godforsaken country; there's too many people like you who are content for the government and the media to treat you like serfs. I want to be sure that my fellow countryman is well educated and prepared to stand up for my liberty as well as his own. I can't risk having imbecilic pawns being anywhere near me once the revolution comes.

Re:loading, please wait...

[Lord_Dweomer]

If I ever go to prison for whatever reason, I wonder if they'd accept a request to be put immediately into solitary confinement. I can deal with that much easier than I could deal with being ass raped.

Re:loading, please wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know I am.

Re:loading, please wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

If I ever go to prison for whatever reason, I wonder if they'd accept a request to be put immediately into solitary confinement.

Watch the beginning of "National Security." Not that it's anything to go by, but the idea was to just punch the guards and they'll put you in solitary.

Re:loading, please wait...

[sindarin2001]

And how about the case of minor drug use, or even people who are wrongly convicted?? According to the white house drug policy factsheet, the average sentence recieved by marijuana offenders was 38 months. Granted child-molesters deserve punishment, as do marijuana offenders, is it correct to put people who have a relatively minor offence (such as smoking marijuana in one's own home i.e. not driving while affected, not committing any other crime) in with violent offenders and possibly subsequentially prison-raped?? I don't know about you, but I think that's not right. Maybe I have a little more compassion than you for my fellow man (even if they are criminals).

How can anyone be arrested....

[Anonymous Coward]

...when the code wasn't even stolen? I mean, come one, this supposed "leaked" source code is harder to find than the Loch Ness monster!

Re:How can anyone be arrested....

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I was offered a copy of the code. It was right in front of me and I could burn it if I wanted. I just browsed through it and left well enough alone.

Re:How can anyone be arrested....

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah and Britney spears is giving me a blow job right now while Lindsay Lohan watches...

Re:How can anyone be arrested....

[nukka]

your either a retard or dont have a computer and you made this post using esp.

Re:How can anyone be arrested....

[Anonymous Coward]

Say hi from me. - Elvis

Thanks!

[NitroWolf]

Valve CEO Gabe Newell credited gamers with providing the information that led to the arrests. "It was extraordinary to watch how quickly and how cleverly gamers were able to unravel what are traditionally unsolvable problems for law enforcement related to this kind of cyber-crime," he said in a statement. "Everyone here at Valve is once again reminded of how much we owe to the gaming community."

Thanks Gabe, glad to be of service! How about a free copy of HL2 to make up for the debt you "owe" me. No? WTF?

Re:Thanks!

[Short Circuit]

How about a Linux release?

Re:Thanks!

[sterno]

Hell, I'd settle for them shipping the game at all :)

Re:Thanks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux users are not gamers. They just drive around in a stupid car and think they are penguins.

Re:Thanks!

[Anonymous Coward]

but you girlfriend said she likes penguins

Re:Thanks!

[obeythefist]

Free copy of HL2!?

Why don't you just download the source?

Oh wait.

Can we just play the fecking thing?

[Delphis]

.. come on people, we've been wanting to play it for months.

I know I have ever since I saw the 600MB or so MPEG of the demonstration at a computer fair (I forget which).

Oh the agony.

wonder how it will all pan out....

[emphatic]

i wonder how the punishment's will align themselves, across countries and across the different charges... surely the "code theft" charge will be handled a little different from kevin mitnick's? ;) time to sit back and watch, i guess... should be interesting.

My idea of justice

[Giant Ape Skeleton]

I have the perfect punishment:

Send them to XEN.

Re:My idea of justice

[kin_korn_karn]

no, just make them play that level all day 6 days a week for a year. 7 would be cruel and unusual.

Re:My idea of justice

[nih]

make them play Daikatana!

Re:My idea of justice

[kunudo]

make them play Daikatana!

No, make them watch someone else play Daikatana.

Re:My idea of justice

[Coneasfast]

i don't understand why xen was unpopular! i sure liked it! no seriously. it was cool, the bouncing around and the healing thingy.

Re:My idea of justice

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

I liked xen, but I think people dislike xen for the same reason people hate the quake3 space levels -- Falling to your death and dying. Some of those xen levels were really just time based jump puzzles which got old if you feel all the way back down.

Aside from that though, I liked the xen lights (imagine those raytraced..) and the 'feal' of it all.

Re:My idea of justice

[Moofie]

If I want to play Mario 64, I'll play Mario 64. I never want to play Mario 64, so I hate it when the game that I'm loving loving loving turns into Mario 64.

Jumping puzzles suck. Jumping puzzles in POV shooters suck a lot.

Re:Ray Charles dead at 73

[Anonymous Coward]

it's funny because it's true!

It was announced...

[Anonymous Coward]

That those arrested would be released the same time Half Life 2 is. Personally I think thats a pretty harsh sentence!

Re:It was announced...

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? My sources say they'd be released when Duke Nukem Forever was on the shelves.

Would any of this happened if...

[Anonymous Coward]

the source was shared? Love that egoboo thing. -rms

Points of interest

[Concrete Nomad]

1. Bad that people steal code.
2. Good for Half-Life 2 cause that means the fans really like it.
3. A possible sign that Valve should hire more people so they can release it sooner.
4. What moron allows an email to install a keyboard sniffer on his computer. Anti-virus and patches take care of a lot of that. Not to mention the network guys should have caught that one quick.
5. Fire the retarded programmer that lets sniffers get installed on his PC and fire the network guys that didn't stop it.
6. Release the game already

So THAT's who stole it . . .

[vizualizr]

Police are reporting that one of the suspects, Douglas "Duke" Nukem, had, in his words, been trying to get his hands on some source code like this "FOREVER".

Re:So THAT's who stole it . . .

[ForsakenRegex]

That was hysterical.

Re:So THAT's who stole it . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Now see guys, that almost makes up for all of the bad DNF jokes I've been hearing since 1999. Thanx, vizualizr, I salute you.

I

Likely plea...

[jemenake]

"But, your honor.... we were just trying to help Valve meet their release date!". :)

Re:Likely plea...

[Anonymous Coward]

and help the linux "gaming" comunity

Details on FBI raid of the Hungry Progammers

[Anonymous Coward]

Remembered as the crew who created LessTiff, the Hungry Progammers were raided by the FBI in order to obtain evidence in the Half-Life 2 case. Details of the raid are a real eye-opener.

Re:Details on FBI raid of the Hungry Progammers

[Mark Gordon]

Bear in mind that the programmer who was raided hasn't been arrested. He got his machines back a while ago.

Re:Details on FBI raid of the Hungry Progammers

[etymxris]

Here's a link for those too lazy to search.

Re:Details on FBI raid of the Hungry Progammers

[Anonymous Coward]

Did he ever say anywhere in his post he was innocent or deny any wrongdoing? Seems like it was all about "My crappy day".

I can't wait!

[Thud457]

When will the "IP police raid" mods be out?!!!!

I wanna play Jon Johansen!

Re:I can't wait!

[Deraj DeZine]

They're already out, actually. Aren't code leaks great?

new level....maybe?

[toolshed7]

Once we find out who those thefts are, maybe halflife was waiting to add a "kill the perps" level or something. Hurry valve...halo 2 is coming...aint got all day.

Use your words carefully

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, editors, don't use words like 'theft' in the same way that the RIAA etc. use them. No-one was deprived of code in this incident and so it wasn't theft.

Re:Use your words carefully

[JustNiz]

but valve were deprived of something:
total control of their own software
so it IS theft

Re:Use your words carefully

[Anonymous Coward]

Even by your argument, the thing that wasn't stolen wasn't the code. So 'code theft' is still an inappropriate description.

Re:Use your words carefully

[Minna Kirai]

deprived of something: total control of their own software so it IS theft

Ok then! So we only need one word to replace every kind of crime!

Tresspassing is now "theft of control of your own real estate borders"
Rape is "theft of use of your own genitalia"
Murder is "theft of your life"

It's all theft!

Re:Use your words carefully

[rilister]

and you would say what? ... liberated? ;)

Re:Use your words carefully

[servognome]

So by your rationale, I can use your car while you are out of town because nobody is being deprived of use.
The definition of theft: 1. The act or instance of stealing
Stealing: To take (the property of another) without right or permission.
There is no mention of depriving somebody of use.

Re:Use your words carefully

[vxvxvxvx]

Your argument would have been a lot stronger had the parent actually said "depriving somebody of use" -- it didn't, it said "deprived of code"

The guilty offenders

[Timesprout]

Can expect to have grey goo releasing valves surgically attached to various parts of their skulls.

So this means..

[dai]

that there actually exists some code!?

Re:So this means..

[stor]

that there actually exists some code!?

Yes! It's available here.

Cheers
Stor

Re:put them "in the game"

[Short Circuit]

Wonderful publicity. Way to encourage them.

We've been waiting for you Mr.Code Theif...

[TouchOfRed]

IN THE TEST CHAMBER Eye for an eye I say, and in this case, it would be a blunt force castration... leaking the game was one thing, the source, tottaly uncalled for, and nothing but pure malice.

Re:Points of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

Adding people to a late project makes it later. What planet are you from? Naboo. Because only in Naboo adding proggies to a game makes it sooner, only in Naboo, because the force is strong with them. Yes siree, I'm gonna live to be 103, you play safe for you and me cause I'm no fool, I only smoke too much crack.

things valve should be worried about

[Da_Slayer]

I hope that Valve did not put all their efforts into just catching the people who did it. I admit that those people did break the law and need to be caught but Valve is a company that relies on it's products.

Seeing as this game has been delayed since before this incident I wonder exactly as to the calibur of the game. If they shifted too much focus off development they might have shot themselves in the foot when they release a sub-par game.

So if anyone from Valve is reading this or you know someone who works there just give them a gentle nudge and remind them that we care about the quality of their games and the promptness in which they are delivered. Not that Half Life 2 is vaporware or anything but people are losing interest just because of the delay.

Re:things valve should be worried about

[Anonymous Coward]

No, people are not losing interest. People are getting frustrated, but they're definitely not losing interest. I guarantee that when it comes out, you will be buying it. No ifs, ands, or buts.

Re:things valve should be worried about

[bonch]

I hope that Valve did not put all their efforts into just catching the people who did it.

Why would Valve do that? Are they a law enforcement company? Do you think they left memos on all the desks of the programmers and designers saying, "Cease all activities and report to the weapon room for a debriefing on Operation Perpkill?"

Re:things valve should be worried about

[Monkey]

..and then they handed out AWP's and Colts and yelled "Storm the front!" at the team.

Re:things valve should be worried about

[default luser]

Just kindly point out that an entire generation of new super-fast video cards, processor and memory sales are entirely dependent on the release of Half-Life 2.

Unfortunately, Longhorn won't be around for another 3 years, so Gabe, you've got to do your patriotic duty and make those minimum system requirements skyrocket!**

** NOTE: Minimum System Requirements: DirectX 6.0 32MB graphics accelerator, Pentium II or equivilant.
RECOMMENDED: GeDeon Rage Pro Tix000 Ultra PE, PentiumFX EE XP20000. Cold cathode accented case and nuclear power plant optional.

You have eliminated the staff.

[Mz6]

Yeah.. so whos left? Perhaps the lead programmer and a few cronies under him? Yeah.. that'll get the game released sooner.

Re:You have eliminated the staff.

[Doogie5526]

that was the joke.... Gabe Newell was the one who's computer the code was stolen from

(so, no, the lead programmer would not be the only one left)

did they just arrest some people distributing..

[gl4ss]

..it or did they actually found the guilty one's?

however.. does a game developer house have any responsibility over LYING about the state of the game? to investors, to publishing partners, to customers doing pre-orders... when they had no realistical hope of meeting the deadline(a deadline that they should have set and met 2 fucking years ago anyways).

sure they might have been under pressure to do so but what the hell, they told that the game was basically ready just few weeks before the whole hacking shesbang, in which case the hacking would have been a very big deal obviously. however, pushing the delays reason on it is just.. well, it sucks. they suck. getting hacked makes them suck anyways(would make me think twice in investing).

I'm not intrested in them catching the guys who did the hacking.. I'm intrested in if VALVE can get the game out or not! so, what i'm really intrested in is that if they have or have not coded the revolutionary AI they said they had coded already a friggin year ago(must have really been a kick in the nuts to see that the whole world saw that the demos were scripted, when you said that they werent..).

oh well, I could always buy that strategy guide from amazon.

Re:did they just arrest some people distributing..

[Anonymous Coward]

when they had no realistical hope of meeting the deadline(a deadline that they should have set and met 2 fucking years ago anyways).

The first the general public knew about the existence of Half-Life 2 (beyond a few rumours) was not long before E3 last year, a bit over a year ago.

Everyone's a security expert when it's somebody else's computer system that been broken into. Can you honestly say you've never done anything that might have potentially allowed a determined individual access to your private network?

The original Half-Life was over a year late; that year transformed the game from a probable also-ran to being something memorable. Yes, it sucks that the sequel is delayed too, but I'd much rather they had the guts to go against what they've said and fix the problems they obviously saw in what they were creating.

People are endlessly complaining about games being rushed to market, with horrible gameplay bugs or terrible hardware requirements, necessitating a series of patches to make the game halfway playable. I gather a good deal of what Valve has been up to is playtesting the game, making sure it's worth playing and is as good as they can reasonably make it. Weren't there complaints recently about the savegames in Thief 3 being broken? Perhaps that's the sort of thing they're trying to avoid.

Then there are claims of 'scripting' in the leaked demos. Believe it or not, some things have to be scripted. Decent AI might get a simulated soldier to behave realistically and evade or attack the player at appropriate moments, but higher-order behaviours (like, say, breaking a door open) need to be scripted. It would be impressive for a human player to instantaneously figure out all the interactive aspects of a map, let alone a computer-controlled enemy. The scripting for such complex behaviours needs a lot of work to take account of many different possiblities, and it's obvious that Valve didn't include all of them in the demonstration map. But it's not as if the whole lot was faked, like the E3 2000 Halo demonstration...

I've done a bunch of single-player mapping for Half-Life. One of the hardest things is the scripting - not the obvious, scripted sequence stuff, but the behind-the-scenes mechanics which makes the world come alive. AI works for the moment, while scripting is needed to set the scene, and to make the enemies more than simplistic automata. AI drives the scripting, and scripting drives the AI.

But then, everyone's an armchair expert, and AI can do everything, release dates are always reached, and networks are impervious. I'd like to see these experts create a game...

Re:did they just arrest some people distributing..

[Anonymous Coward]

did they just arrest some people distributing it or did they actually found the guilty one's?

Come on now. You don't think the people distributing stolen code it are quilty as well?

"Sorry officer, I was just transporting the stolen car. It's not like I'm the one who popped the lock or anything bad like that."

Posting anonymously because I know a lot of people here think "sharing" is ok.

Re:did they just arrest some people distributing..

[cheekyboy]

maybe it requires the AI bots to play 24/7 constantly to learn, after all, human inteligence takes years to train/learn. Computer bots are faster, but still take time. Training nuron network code could be tedious but the only way to make smart bots, 1000000s of hours of the bots 'watching' human play.

Re:did they just arrest some people distributing..

[viperblades]

if you want nice non scripted AI play far cry. The AI in the demo is not as good as the ai in the game. also there is a mod called aissmod ( i think. its 2:30 am or so) that improves the AI. their devs communicate with the community alot more too, as in they're on the farcry irc channels and you can actually talk to them. so yeah check out far cry.

Re:did they just arrest some people distributing..

[gl4ss]

I played farcry through.

the AI wasn't that spectacular(not to the level of hyping it has gotten), and in the later levels the level design doesn't give them much room either and the monsters just get into the "will take several rockets straight into head".

also, if you just start hiking too far from the levels focus area a mysterious chopper will come and shoot you. that's in the game the reviews said that "see that mountain far far away? if you wish you can just walk there and climb it! farcry is so free", in reality farcrys level design was anything but free - heavily scripted spawns & etc.

Re:did they just arrest some people distributing..

[gl4ss]

yes, some things need to be scripted.

the thing is, if you say that it's not totally scripted and it then is.. shame on you.

I never said anything about rushing & etc, rushing sucks so why the hell make deadlines they can't meet obviously(well, they could have met - with better setting of goals).

what I was merely saying is that THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN FUCKING UPFRONT ABOUT IT.

PC games feel rushed most of the time because they set their goals very badly.. trying to reach something they can't get to.

Let's just be honest here...

[bigdady92]

They aren't saying anything more than "Yup we got somebody"

They aren't saying for sure it was the people that stole it.

They aren't saying how they got them.

They are't saying what they took from them.

They are only saying they got SOMEBODY but who knows if it's really the guys or someone that downloaded a copy of the game from some warez IRC site and just redistributed it.

Besides, until we get full details that the game is released/on schedule/delayed it really won't matter too much.

Re:Let's just be honest here...

[ThisIsFred]

It's not like anyone needed any leads. Heck, myg0t had it hosted on their site for a while.

Re:Points of interest

[MikeXpop]

1. Bad that people steal code.

Why is it on stories like these we see the word "steal" everywhere, but if someone uses the word "steal" or "theft" on a discussion about music piracy people go nuts? Is there a difference? Not trying to be a smartass, I'm just wondering

The truth is in here!

[nazsco]

It's all part of the show.

The tutorial campaing in half life 2 will be the arrest, by swat, of 3 filty hackers living in some college dorm.

If you've been to an E3 then you know what people at the gaming industry are capable of... bunch of reviewer whores...

Harder penalties for Pirates?

[untwisted]

I wonder what this means for the people who got arrested. It sounds like these guys come from all around the world, is this a chance for the pirate community to unite? By publically chasing these guys, there will be someone who tries to support them, or try to top them. As an open source supporter, I can see some pirates trying to make themselves martyrs by saying they were pushing open source, but even as the supporter of open source that I am, I see reasons for games to be closed source, and sold. Are these guys going to be made poster children for punishing pirates? It seems like a really good time to get some PR in the "If you pirate, you get your ass kicked" department. I'll be interrested to see what happens.

Re:Harder penalties for Pirates?

[Minna Kirai]

As an open source supporter, I can see some pirates trying to make themselves martyrs by saying they were pushing open source

Um, OK, "piracy" (meaning the unauthorized copying of computer software) has nothing to do with Open Source.

Open Source and "Software Pirates" are enemies! They're competitors for the same user-demographic: people who want computer software for free. The free availability of "pirated" Windows and Windows applications is one of the major forces holding back the success of Linux and other Free Software.

Why learn The Gimp when you can grab PhotoShop warez?

Are these guys going to be made poster children for punishing pirates?

Seems likely. Although their offense is much greater than what normal "software pirates" do (because they weren't just copying a published work, but infiltrating computer systems to access an unpublished product), the BSA will probably run some ads warning that any "pirates" may face the same harsh punishment.

Re:Harder penalties for Pirates?

[untwisted]

I guess open source was a bad term to use, I guess I should've said freeware, or free software supporter. I was merely referring to the idea that open source is free (generally), and I think that the pirates could really negate the fact that they've done something wrong by trying to sound like they were being righteous.

Someone dropped a dime

[Supp0rtLinux]

Notice that M$ hasn't made similar announcements about their recent source code theft problems? Probably cause they realize that for every hacker who use it to try and exploit a vulnerability, another hacker will rewrite part of the code and make it better, more stable, and more secure. Heck with Microsoft source code out there, Windows could one day be a stable, secure platform for people to migrate to instead of from

Re:Someone dropped a dime

[The Bungi]

I take it you get your news from Slashdot. I never would have guessed from your nick. Oh, and someone modded you up. Shocking!

Score one for non sequitur opportunities to use "M$" in a discussion that has otherwise nothing to do with Windows or Microsoft. Mad propz.

Make sure you post some "M$"-related thing in the next article about genetically modified Burmese Vampire Hedgehogs.

Re:Someone dropped a dime

[mt v2.7]

My bet is that M$ doesn't want the world to know that they caught them. Remember the quote from Oceans 11 that when something like this, "Run and hide. Run and hide. If you should be picked up in Miami buying a sports car with cash, I will be most dissapointed, because I'm hoping our people find you first. And if we do, we won't turn you over to the police."

Sucks to be them :)

Re:Someone dropped a dime

[Supp0rtLinux]

Well since you seem so intent on speaking in foreign tongues to show you obvious superiority over a technical dweeb that gets most of his news from slashdot, here's something for you:

gluteous maximus orafice

Re:Someone dropped a dime

[Anonymous Coward]

yes does. make sure you read the part called "market capitalization".

Re:Someone dropped a dime

[The Bungi]

gluteous maximus orafice

Well, your hovercraft is full of eels, too.

The responsible parties were caught when...

[shakamojo]

...they went into Fry's to try to buy an ATI Radeon 99000 XT+ video card, Intel P5 1.2 THz processor, and a Terabyte of RAM. The arresting agent was overheard saying, "I knew they weren't using that much computing power to play Unreal Tournament"

Re:The responsible parties were caught when...

[nazsco]

Yeah.. they're obiviously trying to run the new version of steam! ...Ah! and don't forget the T3 they hired from AT&T to download HL2 with. The final prove FBI needed is that the T3 was at 100% usage for 2 months, and then went to 0%. Two months, just enough time for steam to get the new HL2 patchs.

Re:The responsible parties were caught when...

[Anonymous Coward]

>>...they went into Fry's to try to buy an ATI Radeon 99000 XT+ video card, Intel P5 1.2 THz processor, and a Terabyte of RAM.

Longhorn shipped?

Re:Points of interest

[ihaddsl]

If I'm not mistaken, it was not a 'retarded programmer' but Gabe himself that got keylogged

If you are targetted, virus scanners and patches won't stop a keylogger, perhaps a trojan scanner would have, but we don't know what keylogger was installed. After all if I go and code up a keylogger now, and install it on your PC, your virus scanners/ trojan scanners won't detect it.

but yes they should have released the game already

Steaming pile of...

[telemonster]

After the whole Steam fiasco and the lost time troubleshooting their crap, I have no sympathy for valve software. It would suck if it happened to ID software though. Nothing like buying software to join in on games with friends, then being forced thru 8 months of beta test to be able to run a stupid game that was working originally. But at last, they fixed the advertisement delivery engine.

Re:Steaming pile of...

[TheTrueGStu]

That's the reason i'm still on CS 1.5. I tried playing DOD the other day and couldn't connect, and I decided I cannot stand steam.

Re:Steaming pile of...

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't have to install Steam.

As far as I'm aware, the previous WON-driven multiplayer Half-Life is still up and running. If you don't want that, you could always run LAN games.

Re:Steaming pile of...

[sir99]

It has happened to iD.

Id Software, though, knows a few things about source code leaks. Several of the company's biggest games, including all of the Quake games, have seen their source code leak out. Last year, a playable build of the still-in-development Doom 3 hit the Internet.

From here. I don't think they're confusing it with the GPL source releases, either.

Good

[pilkul]

I'm glad police cyber-crimes units are taking care of real criminals instead of wasting their time going after petty file-sharers. These people (if they are indeed the culprits) are the real problem --- illegally breaking into servers and stealing private information. They directly hurt the community of Half-Life fans by causing disorder at Valve, and they probably had a negative effect on the entire gaming industry as companies were forced to tighten their security policy.

I'm a supporter of open source, but "forced open source" by cracking developers' computers and making their data public is just unethical. These people were real black hats; IIRC, they wrote cracking programs for their private use, specifically to crack Valve --- every sysadmin's worst nightmare. I hope crackdowns like this will get more prominent media attention in the future.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad police cyber-crimes units are taking care of real criminals instead of wasting their time going after petty file-sharers. These people (if they are indeed the culprits) are the real problem --- illegally breaking into servers and stealing private information

Oh sure, the ones who illegally make copyrighted material that does not belong to them available to the entire planet for free certainly aren't part of any 'real' problem.

Parent Insightful +4? Oh, I'm reading /. again...

Re:Good

[MMaestro]

they probably had a negative effect on the entire gaming industry as companies were forced to tighten their security policy.

So in otherwords, its BAD that companies increase their security? Thats like saying its bad to buy new locks for your doors AFTER you've been robbed. What next? Are we gonna send little kids to jail for 'stealing' money which someone left unattended on a table? With the internet you're bound to get hacked sooner or later, no matter how big or small you are. Just don't expect someone to rob a bank and then return it saying 'well next time you should be more careful.'

Re:Good

[defile]

I'm a supporter of open source, but "forced open source" by cracking developers' computers and making their data public is just unethical. These people were real black hats; IIRC, they wrote cracking programs for their private use, specifically to crack Valve --- every sysadmin's worst nightmare. I hope crackdowns like this will get more prominent media attention in the future.

Don't be ridiculous. The typical open source advocate does not support compromising networks to copy private information. Almost everyone can agree that it's "wrong".

What you will not find a concensus on is how to punish the perpetrator of this crime because there is such a variance of opinion on two basic questions: 1) how has the 'victim' been injured by this? 2) what was the perpetrator's intent?

It's a huge can of worms to argue injury, because, well, the code wasn't destroyed or altered, it was just copied. You'll have a difficult time arguing that the trade secrets that have been exposed through this are so valuable that they constitute real damage.

There's also a debate as to the perpetrator's intent. None of us really know. If the perpetrator was a competitor who was trying to gain inside information, that's an entirely different case than if it was a bored teenager who wanted to have some fun.

My belief is that Valve hasn't suffered at all besides maybe having to have a serious evaluation of their network security, and that the perpetrator didn't intend for any serious harm. If anything they gained value from this--an excuse to miss their deadline.

If you ask me, the punk should pay restitution in the form of whatever it cost Valve (within reason) to perform a security audit, a suspended 1 month jail sentence, and that's the end of it.

Re:Good

[sindarin2001]

I agree. I tend to think that, in the case of many hack attacks, the convicted are treated too harshly. Things like web-site vandalization are frequently done by bored teenagers, just like breaking into a building and vandalizing, but get treated much more harsly because they never had to leave their computer to do it. The amount of damage done to the victim should be taken into consideration as should the perpetrator's intent.

Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for valve?

[jb_02_98]

I dont know... maybe I am just a little backwords in my thinking, but Valve could have used this to an advantage. Think about it. If they open source the engine but not the content, wouldn't that allow everyone to make a better engine (hence, easier patching, more features) but not have the content unless they bought it? To me, that looks like the way to go anyway. I can find a bunch of sourceforge projects that do just that. You need the content, not the engine. Valve should sell the content, not the engine. Stealing the code was wrong, and the theives should be punished, but sometimes a business needs to find an advantage to these things.

Perhaps a show of appreciation...

[miketang16]

"Everyone here at Valve is once again reminded of how much we owe to the gaming community."

As a show of appreciation, how about taking the not so difficult step of porting HL2 to the Linux platform? I could understand if the game was written completely in DirectX, but it supports OpenGL which is fairly portable from one OS to another. Oh well... wishful thinking...

Re:Perhaps a show of appreciation...

[th1ckasabr1ck]

UT2k4 and the upcoming DOOM3 both ship with Linux binaries.

Re:Perhaps a show of appreciation...

[Zathrus]

I could understand if the game was written completely in DirectX, but it supports OpenGL which is fairly portable from one OS to another.

Er... HL2 is written in DirectX. To my knowledge (I never looked at the source leak) it does not support OpenGL whatsoever.

You must be thinking of HL1, which was based on a heavily modified Quake1 engine. That did support OpenGL.

Re:Perhaps a show of appreciation...

[miketang16]

Wow... I really did not know that. Thank you for the clarification. The future is looking more and more dismal...

Re:Perhaps a show of appreciation...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, they are doing the gaming community a favor by focusing on the Windows release.

And yes, it is Windows only. I guess that could just start over to make everyone happy, or just plod along with what they already have and make 90% happy.

Re:Perhaps a show of appreciation...

[LurkerXXX]

As a show of appreciation? How do you know the guys that helped catch the guy use or even care about Linux?

Re:Perhaps a show of appreciation...

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF do the gaming community and Linux users have to do with each other? Apart from the odd bone we get tossed, us Linux users have damn few commercial games available, and certainly none by Valve, who were after all ex-Microsoft employees.

Re:Perhaps a show of appreciation...

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Eactly. We don't need no stinkin' Halflife2, and we especially don't need Steam.

Just gimme Doom3 and Quake4. That's all I need.

Re:Perhaps a show of appreciation...

[time4tea]

I thought it was written in C++, and simply used a DirectX API.

Dont suppose it would be too much to rip out the DirectX and pop in some OpenGL.

It would be completely possible that they had abstracted away the directX API anyhow, meaning they just need to implement the AbtractionLayer->OpenGL bit.

I wonder what percentage of the code is devoted to the rendering anyhow, 5%?

Re:Perhaps a show of appreciation...

[Anonymous Coward]

I looked at the source leak. Yes it supports opengl. (I know, I know, but curiosity got the better of me).

We have a winner!

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations! You just made the first humorous Duke Nukem Forever joke in 2 years. Quit now, while you're still ahead!

Re:Points of interest

[Sajma]

3. A possible sign that Valve should hire more people so they can release it sooner.

(standard mythical man-month rant elided)

Bottom line: more people at this stage == bad idea.

Re:Points of interest

[happyfrogcow]

3... yeah, throw more people into the project who have to take considerable time learning the system. good idea!

5... developers shouldn't admin their own systems. game developers are not admin, admin are not game developers.

Re:Someone. Different thing

[maggern]

A game and an operating system are not the same thing.

The hackers can use the stolen hl2-code to make aimbots and wallhacks, which will be bad for all the online gamers!

And lets face it, the multiplayer part is by far the most important for HL2. I'm sure the game itself will be good, but once you have played it, it's not interesting anymore.

Online gaming just goes on and on and on, like counterstrike has done with half-life 1.

Hackers make cheats for free, and someone will probably have to pay in order to patch those hacks.

It's too bad

[RegalBegal]

I already pieced together the stolen source and beat the game in 10 minutes, it was easy.

Outstanding.

[dilweed]

More bullshit Halflife 2 news that doesn't involve a release date.

Has to be said...

[FerretFrottage]

If found guilty, suspects may get anywhere from 6 months to half-life in jail.

Re:Has to be said...

[LabRat007]

If found guilty, suspects may get anywhere from 6 months to half-life in jail.

Thats barely half-funny

Re:Has to be said...

[mibus]

half-life... 2. Half-life, x 2. Life!

Life imprisonment! :)

Re:Points of interest

[CodeBuster]

Absolutely...generally programs such as key stroke loggers, Trojans, and the like are designed specifically to be difficult to detect and remove. If it doesn't show up in the process list when running (which is possible in windows although I am not sure about Linux) then how will you know that the Trojan/keylogger is running? If the developer was shrewd enough to write the code in hand optimized assembler then you would never notice the performance drain on the system imposed by the Trojan/keylogger. The point is that programmers are not all powerful supermen, they make mistakes too and are duped sometimes just like the rest of us.

gaming community raped!

[nazsco]

Valve is once again reminded of how much we owe to the gaming community

oh the great gaming community. The only entity in the world that can endure 3 weeks of download for a download engine that will rape your system and make you wait more 3 weeks every time you want to play a simple game online while it download some simple "patchs"

And now, with news that the creator of bitorrent (yeah, you all know who he is, i bet you've seen his face some ten times already) have been hired by valve, we can count on the system-raping-download-program to make you use your bandwidth to make others users waste their times downloading more patches! (not to mention seeing the guys face everytime you play CS)

Now, the final question.. if every week you have to get 100mb or more of patches... why the hell they take so long to release the damn thing?!?!
It's not like they're finishing it...

Re:gaming community raped!

[junkgrep]

Way to exagerrate. Steam was buggy at the start, but pretty much everyone now likes it. And they haven't just been fixing bugs with it, but also adding new features and games.

Day of Defeat

[dangerz]

Feel free to delay Halflife 2 as long as you'd like.

As long as that is delayed, my free subscription to Day of Defeat is on. As soon as it comes though, I lose :(

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[stienman]

Valve should license the engine and sell the game. At least if they want to make any money.

They have a great piece of technology here. They are likely to make as much money (possibly more) licensing the engine to third parties as they are selling HL2

This is how fisrt person shooters have always worked. There are really only three or four good engines licensed underneath a ton of games.

-Adam

debt

[pergamon]

how much we owe to the gaming community

all the gaming community wants is F'ING HALF LIFE 2

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[th1ckasabr1ck]

Yeah, except they are planning on making some $$$ off of engine licenses.

The way id does it is the way to go. They make a game/engine, license it for a while, and then when their next generation technology is out, they release the source code for the previous generation. So when Doom 3 comes out, we'll get the Quake 3 source reasonably soon thereafter.

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[ajiva]

Except that Valve SELLS the engine to other companies so that they can make their own games. ID did this with the Quake engine.

Re:Points of interest

[hawkbug]

Yes, there is a difference. For one thing, somebody hacked into the guy's computer to get it. He didn't *share* it with anybody.

Is this the Hungry Programmers (Motif compatible)?

[Anonymous Coward]

They were raided and nine computers and lots of disks and documents were taken. Kind of strange to think that they would have had anything to do with it. My opinion at the time was that the FBI or SS was probably too stupid to realize HL2 fan boys talking about Hungarian programmers who stole the code weren't the same people as the "Hungry Programmers". Or maybe some of the fan boys overheard others saying that and it got distorted like a rumour chain. But anyway, if there were arrests there was probably some evidence they were involved. Too bad there are no details about the arrests. Maybe it wasn't the same people. If so I wonder if they will ever get their computers back.

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[minus_273]

seriously, every time code is stolen, someone mentions that it could be good because having it open source is better. How on earth can you make a complicated game, have it open source and still maintin the quality, speed of development or even recover the costs of the game. If it were really that easy, there would be as many open source games as there are open source applications of other types. Plenty have tried this approach and have produced little to show for it

More sources...

[pegr]

Here's a BBC story about a raid in SF... and here's a blog post about a geek in SF getting raided and having his gear taken by the FBI...

Re:More sources...

[rplacd]

The SF geek was never charged, and eventually did get all his equipment back. No, these arrests are other people.

Re:More sources...

[georgewilliamherbert]

The SF geek was never charged, and eventually did get all his equipment back. No, these arrests are other people.

Just to confirm that, "The SF geek" is online right now / today, presumably not from jail, so it does appear to be someone else completely different busted.

Re:More sources...

[Anonymous Coward]

the "hungry programmers" raids (toshok et al) were erroneous... they got their gear back (but no apology)

http://squeedlyspooch.com/blog/archives/000144.h tm l

duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody is less interested because the game slips. If it slips another year, the sales will be just as good (or perhaps better because the required hardware will be cheaper)

And they don't need a nudge to tell them to make the game good.

No biggie..

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only source code

Let the guys go....

/quickly swipes hard drive

Is it me or...

[ioexcptn]

...does this story abstract seem a bit redundant. Wait, you mean to tell me that "arrests have been made," a "series of arrests have been made," AND individuals were "taken into custody?!?!?!" And do you mean to tell me that they did all of these things at once?!?! No....

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[Dwindlehop]

The reason that Valve doesn't do this is because they make a significant amount of income by licensing their engine to other developers. You're unlikely to find a developer with game engine that's commercially in-demand who wants to profit solely from the game content.

A lesson learned, folks...

[stienman]

Just having read about the fbi raid, I can't help but think that everyone should keep a few hundred small and/or dead hard drives around. Gotta keep them busy finding your 'stash'. They'd have to use a ream of paper to document all the computer equipment I have at this location.

Of course, I didn't do anything illegal.

-Adam

Re:A lesson learned, folks...

[ikekrull]

"Of course, I didn't do anything illegal."

What has that got to do with it? You can still be raided by the FBI, your computers taken, and never returned.

It doesn't matter even slightly if you have done anything or not.

Re:A lesson learned, folks...

[elviscious]

Encrypted filesystem would be a better idea. You get your password/private key put onto a usb thumb drive that you have on your keychain. Everything works if you have the keychain in your usb port at boot. If not... it doesn't boot.

Fairly easy to do too.

Re:A lesson learned, folks...

[Zed2K]

And then the judge asks for the key. You don't provide it you go to jail and sit there until you give it up. All it buys you is time. And during that time you get to become close friends with your cellmate and your equipment is sitting in a storage area.

Re:A lesson learned, folks...

[elviscious]

I'm not sure what the penalty is for destroying evidence (accidentally laundry mishap should do it)... but I'm sure I'm guessing that it's a hell of a lot less than the $300 million and 5 years in jail that they'll try to pin these guys with.

Re:A lesson learned, folks...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you say "I plead the fifth."

And then they're sad, but then they fish the key out of your thoughtlessly unencrypted swap file and are happy again.

Re:A lesson learned, folks...

[Anonymous Coward]

A perfect suggestion for making them keep your hardware much longer.

Re:A lesson learned, folks...

[Lord_Dweomer]

This is the dumbest thing I have ever heard and I can't say I'm shocked you got modded up.

People, do NOT follow this advice. When the FBI raids you, they keep your equipment (all of it) for as long as they damn well please. If you give them a reason to keep it even longer, such as having to search through hundreds of dead drives...well, you're being a moron because they will just keep your equipment until they're done.

Re:A lesson learned, folks...

[sql*kitten]

Fairly easy to do too.

You're assuming that failing to hand over a key isn't actually a crime, when requested to do so by a court of law. You are mistaken.

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[aslagle]

Yes, they could do that.... IF they wanted to give up any hope of licensing the engine for other games!

Stupid git.

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[VirexEye]

You are forgetting that there is much profit to be made by licensing your brand new spiffy game engine to other developers. Just look at all the companies that have licensed the quake engine in the past (Valve included).

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[Xaroth]

Considering that a large portion of the money they will make from all of this will be the licensing of the underlying engine, no. Turning it into OSS would not only destroy their chances to make some *real* money off of the engine, it would also mean throwing years of work and untold sums of R&D money to the wind.

Besides, there's no reason for a company like Valve to give away what is obviously worth a (perhaps not so) small fortune on its own. Now, maybe if their R&D work on the engine had come for free, *then* they could justify open sourcing it all. But, until the cost of developing such an engine approaches $0, don't expect anything like that to come any time soon.

Back to work everyone ...

[OverDrive33]

"Good job catching those crooks Valve team, now you can all stop being detectives and go back to work as programmers for HalfLife2 again" - Gabe (After announcing arrests, but before announcing Sept. 30th 2004 HL2 Release date).

Re:Points of interest

[0racle]

Its quite simple really, people who wish to do something they're not supposed to, ie download music illegally, do not want you to think of it as stealing or theft because then they're theives, which is wrong. They attempt to justify this position by saying nothing *physical* was taken, they still have the original to release, therefore it was not stealing. Under these circumstances this use of the word 'steal' becomes important:

Idiom: steal (someone's) thunder
To use, appropriate, or preempt the use of another's idea, especially to one's own advantage and without consent by the originator.

Anything taken, copied, downloaded and such without the owners permission is taking something you have no right to. That is Theft, plain and simple.

Steal: To take and carry away, feloniously; to take without right or leave, and with intent to keep wrongfully; as, to steal the personal goods of another.

Re:Points of interest

[Minna Kirai]

Is there a difference?

No, there isn't really. In both the HL2 case and P2P music-trading networks, the word "steal" is incorrect. You can be sure that whatever charges spring from these recent arrests, "stealing" and "theft" won't be amoung them.

By definition, if something has been stolen, the victim no longer has it. It's technically possible to steal source code, but only if the original owner is then unable to use it (either because all copies are gone, OR because a criminal has fraudlently transfered copyright to himself)

Some people will claim that the HL2 "code theft" is different because it involved intrusion into the company's computer systems. That does mean there was another, more serious crime involve, but is irrelevant to the correctness of the word "steal".

Damn that Valve!

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll do anything (or arrest anyone) to prevent Half-Life from ever seeing the Mac. >:(

Re:Points of interest

[Mr Smidge]

I'm not quite sure if "stealing" implies removal of the target object (steal a kiss, for example), likewise "taking code" almost certainly includes making a copy (for instance, "take some photos").

But this is not theft. That is clear.

Bloody mass media.

This was a surprise!

[u-235-sentinel]

After reading the Valve blurb on HL2 I panned down the page and was shocked to see DNF mentioned

Half way down on the right side

DNF to be released in 2005? Wouldn't that be a shock. Personally I would be curious to see if it's any good compared to HL2 or Doom III. I may purchase it.. then again maybe not. The excitement isn't what it used to be for DNF :-)

Re:This was a surprise!

[Nasarius]

DNF to be released in 2005? Wouldn't that be a shock. Personally I would be curious to see if it's any good compared to HL2 or Doom III. I may purchase it.. then again maybe not. The excitement isn't what it used to be for DNF :-)

I'm betting it'll be a repeat of Daikatana. Hyped, delayed, hyped, delayed, delayed some more, then finally released and it's crap.

Re:This was a surprise!

[Forkenhoppen]

Duke Nukem Forever? I'll bet you anything that the team made a prototype, looked at it a year in and said "cool, we can do this." Then they went ahead and started the "real thing" without increasing the size of the development team.

Betcha anything that they're either stuck with only three working, tuned levels and a whole bunch of crappy ones. Either that, or they're all sitting staring at their screens, repeating slowly to themselves "we're screwed.. so screwed.." as they try to get one-just one-level working.

Chop features at the start, dude. That's what they should've done. That game's never coming out, because they had the "vision" at the start, and they've never been willing to compromise. Now as the money runs out, they'll need to compromise, and it'll cost them even more time and money to change things..

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't argue about the usefulness of releasing the engine of open source or the lack thereof, but I don't think Valve had some sort of plan to reap the bugfixes from anyone who got the HL2 source and patched it. How would they get a hold of these patches? Some guy is not going to send the following e-mail:

hey d00d, sorry about the leaking man. dont worry tho, i gots t3h source and have fixed bugs!!!!11 rofl but dont arrest me!!1
Attatched: 1337patch.zip

I hope the thieves

[Brie and gherkins]

have beta tested it by now

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[jheidebr]

Presumably Valve has invested millions into the game engine. They'll recoup that investment through two primary revenue streams. First, selling the Half Life 2 game (the content). Second, licensing their game engine to other game developers. Open sourcing their engine removes the second revenue stream which means they won't be able to invest as heavily into their next generation engine.

For the strength of Valve and the industry the approach that ID Software takes makes much more sense. Open Source your game engine after 2 years or so. That way you've made money off of your investment and the industry as a whole benefits by your gift to others.

there's some bash.org logic for you ;)

[Fo0eY]

http://bash.org/?104052

<NES> lol
<NES> I download something from Napster
<NES> And the same guy I downloaded it from starts downloading it from me when I'm done
<NES> I message him and say "What are you doing? I just got that from you"
<NES> "getting my song back fucker"

Re:there's some bash.org logic for you ;)

[maggern]

hahaha, thats really funny!! hehe

Re:there's some bash.org logic for you ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

...

Flamebait?

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[LostCluster]

The current business model is that when the first game for the new game engine comes out, the mod tools to go with that engine ship as part of the game package. Anybody who has bought the game can create new levels or whole new game concepts.

Once you have a good mod thrown together, you can release it however you want... but in order for your mod content to be playable your users are going to need a licensed copy of the game engine and that for the most part will mean purchasing the original game.

If mods are really good, they can enter the retail channel by striking a deal with the original game writers. At that point, the original game content is replaced with the mods and sent into retail stores as its own box. Profit for all involved.

It'd be nice if there was an OSS gaming engine of record to make the commercial game engines obsolete, but let's face it... those things are not easy to come up with. Furthermore, I'm not sure a "fair" multiplayer environment can ever be done with open source code... what would there to be to block people who have hacked the engine code to give them an autopilot shooter?

Re:Points of interest

[maxpublic]

Its quite simple really, people who wish to do something they're not supposed to, ie download music illegally, do not want you to think of it as stealing or theft because then they're theives

That's because they aren't thieves. They're in violation of copyright. Copyright violation and theft have nothing whatsoever to do with each other. Perhaps the people violating copyright are a bit more clued into this distinction than you are.

The theft of valve code was an actual theft, not a copyright violation. The people in question hacked the system (or rather, idiots at Valve pretty much hacked it for them), then stole the code before the owners themselves had released it for publication. Legally, this isn't any different than bashing in a window at Valve Central, sneaking in, and stealing a disk with the code on it.

You might want to check to see if you know shit about the laws in question before spouting off on the topic.

Max

yeah dude...

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah dude, source code got stolen so Valve assigned all of their programmers, artists, and management to capturing the thiefs instead of working on the game...

Re:Points of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

The dictionary doesn't make any distinction between the victim having possession of anything. The language simply makes a distinction of acquisition without permission of owner. That's at least the linguistic definition.

As for the legal defintion, it's similar.

Please point to any authoritative source that defines stealing that involve the victim no longer in possession of some good.

Re:Points of interest

[autopr0n]

1. Bad that people steal code.

Right, because good people never get arrested.

3. A possible sign that Valve should hire more people so they can release it sooner.

It don't work that way, son.

After all

[bonch]

There's really no way they could sit on a game for nine months reworking the code to break compatibility with potential cracks for the leaked code. It's neither that long of a project, nor an justifiable use of man-hours.

After all, you have inside knowledge that people working on the project would have, and you just happen to know how long reworking all of Steam from scratch due to its leak would take, not to mention redoing Half-Life 2's network code.

Seeing as how Counterstrike is such a bastion of non-cheating, there's no way Valve is taking a long time making sure the net-based Steam client is up to snuff after a source code leak on the Internet!

Thanks for enlightening us, Miss Cleo.

Re:After all

[Shonufftheshogun]

OR...

Could it be that they were lying about the source code delays and really were just behind schedule in the first place?

Thanks for enlightening us, Dr. Phil.

Re:After all

[drinkypoo]

After all, you have inside knowledge that people working on the project would have, and you just happen to know how long reworking all of Steam from scratch due to its leak would take, not to mention redoing Half-Life 2's network code.

Anyone with a web browser, ftp client, p2p client, irc client etc can have inside knowledge that people working on the project would have. It's called source code.

If HL2's security depends on obscurity, then it's not secure at all. Changing the way it works won't solve that unless they started with an inherently insecure network system, and are replacing it with an inherently secure one, such as one that requires a lot of server side processing.

Re:After all

[dnoyeb]

IIRC, Steam is the graphics engine, it has nothing to do with transmission of data across the network which is the part you want to secure.

Perhaps if they had used punk buster it wouldn't be an issue. And I still feel its not an issue but a lame-ass excuse.

BTW, just because someone knows the security protocol, does not mean he should be able to violate it. Unless its a lame-ass protocol.

They should know that the crowd of people capable enough to track down these criminals are capable of comprehending the nature of the lameness of their excuses.

Re:After all

[joeljkp]

Steam has nothing to do with the graphics engine, and everything to do with networking. It's Valve's content distribution and matchmaking framework. Click me.

Re:After all

[bonch]

They never even announced the reason for their delays. What "source code delays?" Nice try.

You honestly believe they're not going to rewrite Steam and the networking code after it was leaked? Counter-strike is rife with cheaters as it is. Give me a break.

Re:After all

[abandonment]

actually steam is their 'auto update', server browser, master server, and license key authentication system.

if this was leaked, yes it would take a long time to rework, but it wasn't THAT broken, they decided to release counterstrike:conditionzero via it and no one seems to have said anything.

flat out they are simply behind on their game - BUT they are paying the bill for it, not their publisher remember. valve pays 100% of development costs out of their pocket and gets really good royalty rates from their publishers as a result. This is the trick.

by looking at their E3 2004 video, it is pretty easy to see how the game could be behind schedule - it could be called 'biting off more than you can chew' ;}

Re:After all

[neocrono]

IIRC, Steam is the graphics engine...

Well, you do not RC. Steam is Valve's proprietary DRM (OOH BAD WORDS) content delivery system, relying upon a great many other people to provide bandwidth and servers for things like game updates, updated modules for their anti-cheat (yes, think PunkBuster), and more recently, entire games. They even have Bram Cohen working on it.

If the protocols were to be blown too wide open--and source code theft will do that--it would arguably be (even more) trivial to fake the authentication process as you connected to a "secure" server, running as many cheats as you wanted.

Of course, ask most Half-Life players, and they'll say VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat) is worthless in its current state anyway. Let's hope they have something up their sleeve that'll coincide with or preempt the Half-Life 2 release, even if it's just extra effort doing updates to the modules. Somehow I think their attention has been elsewhere for a while.

Re:After all

[AK Marc]

So instead, rather than relying on good code, they are going to rely on security through obscurity. And you think that is a better solution?

Re:After all

[black mariah]

If HL2's security depends on obscurity, then it's not secure at all. Changing the way it works won't solve that unless they started with an inherently insecure network system, and are replacing it with an inherently secure one, such as one that requires a lot of server side processing.

This is fucking stupid, and quite frankly is just a mantra for people that don't know a fucking thing about security to use to make it look like they know something. *ALL* secure systems depend on a level of obscurity. Ever heard of a private key? You can't go spoogeing every bit of information you have on the general public's face and expect them to not do anything with it. The worries here aren't about people taking down servers, the worries are about people cheating. If the code is out there before the game even releases, you'll have all manner of wallhacks and aimbots before the game goes gold.

BTW, there is no such thing as 'inherently secure' as long as your computer is connected to a network. You take that attitude, you get fucked hard by some 12 year old with a subseven.

Re:After all

[pilkul]

That's easy to say, but it's in the nature of games that they can't be both efficient and perfectly secure. Obscurity is the only option in this case.

Re:After all

[junkgrep]

VAC is actually pretty darn good right now. The thing is, even if it is slow to update, the punishment (permanent banning from all secure servers) is harsh enough that it has a pretty major deterrent effect.

Re:After all

[junkgrep]

You're clueless. There is no such thing as "good code" that is unhackable. Fact is, if hackers get to see everything that's going on behind the scenes in a program, it makes their job LOTS easier, no matter how well it is written.

Re:After all

[drinkypoo]

So what you're saying is that there was a private key in the HL2 source which was compromised by the code release? And somehow, someone is expected to not have pulled this from memory? Your example doesn't make any sense, and certainly doesn't justify calling my comment "fucking stupid". But, I guess you know it all.

If their goal is just to prevent wallhacks and aimbots before the game goes gold, and not to prevent them in general, then there is already no point whatsoever in buying HL2 unless you plan to play only on LAN or single player, because that means it will likely be hacked up just as much as half-life. Their goal should be to devise technologies that proactively prevent wallhacks and aimbots.

BTW, there is no such thing as 'inherently secure' as long as your computer is connected to a network. You take that attitude, you get fucked hard by some 12 year old with a subseven.

Thinking that there is no such thing as inherently secure is absolutely ignorant. There are ways to do things which are inherently insecure, and there are ways to do things which are inherently secure. Another way to put it is secure by design. We see endless security updates for microsoft products because they are legacy code bases and they need constant band-aids because they are doing something inherently insecure. The same is true of buffer overflows on Unix systems, if you don't use/create functions which are vulnerable to buffer overflows, you won't have buffer overflows. Yet, people keep doing it. I am at a loss to explain it, but I can at least explain the results of their failure to take security into account.

A secure cryptosystem is secure even when the source is released. A game should be the same way, and it is; if having the uncompiled source code makes the game insecure, it doesn't - the game was already insecure.

True, the need for security means moving more processing to the server. It may even mean the end of games which can use a non-dedicated server. Further, the server may need to be as CPU-intensive as the game itself, and maybe even moreso. But, that is a price which I (and millions of others) will be willing to pay if it actually brings a game resistant to cheating. You can rent time on professional gaming servers, and people all over the world have enough money to run full time servers. A game with no cheating will itself likely have allure enough to draw in business to replace any lost through people not willing to pay for the anti-cheating features.

There is no such thing as entirely secure. There are, however, right and wrong ways to do things.

Re:After all

[ThisIsFred]

I'm just wondering how well Steam is going to work. Valve felt they got the shaft from Sierra, so they design this content distribution network to eliminate the middle-man (big corporate publishers). Smart move. But wait, what exactly is the advantage to the small developer and the consumer?

Well, dial-up users are still going to have to go through regular retail channels, which means the product has to be published by a big corporation that has the resources to print the CDs. What publisher is going to step on board when they don't know for certain which distribution method the majority of consumers will choose? An uncertain return on investment compared to traditional content delivery. Uh oh, that's going to be a problem.

Small-time developers can sign up and distribute their stuff through Steam. Therefore Valve is now the "middle-man". Who pays for the bandwidth? How exactly is this an advantage to third-party developers over publishers?

So I see on my Steam games menu the first ever product delivered through Steam, a Counter-Strike single-player game. The price? $40 US. Uh oh. That's what I paid for the complete HL Platinum Edition on 4 CDs. How exactly is Steam an advantage for the consumer?

Re:After all

[Minna Kirai]

Obscurity is the only option in this case.

Well, no. There is one other option: strong hardware DRM, with severe criminal penalties for anyone producing a DRM circumvention device...

And actually, that's the way online gameplay is going. Half-Life2 would NOT have obscurity anyway, regardless of the code leak. The hackers would just need a few extra days to reverse-engineer the machine code before writing the cheat-modules.

Instead, most shooting games today are moving towards a solution like PunkBuster, which requires the player to allow a "trusted" 3rd party to remotely inspect your computer's memory to hunt for cheats. (In fact, Punkbuster now requires you to log in as the Windows "administrator" account before playing online!).

But, Punkbuster is doomed to eventual failure. Someone will manage to run it within a completely emulated environment that looks legit, but still allows wallhacking or aimbotting. The only way to prevent that will be strong hardware DRM. (Which is already happening with X-Box and similar)

Re:After all

[iserlohn]

But steam still sucks. I have spent countless hours fixing CS because steam gets broken almost everytime it updates itself. Additionally, there really isn't any advantages for the end-user. Ut seams that that the effort valve is putting into steam would be better spent of other things, like building their own distribution channels.

Re:After all

[black mariah]

So what you're saying is that there was a private key in the HL2 source which was compromised by the code release?

Since your brain apparently has trouble parsing English, I'll walk you through this.

PGP and GPG are both 'public key' encryption schemes (more correctly, they're both implementations of the same scheme). You have a public and a private key. When someone sends you a message, they encrypt it with your public key. You then can decrypt it only with your private key. Security through obscurity. If anyone finds out your private key, you're boned. You have to rely on nobody finding it out to ensure the system is secure.

A secure cryptosystem is secure even when the source is released. A game should be the same way, and it is; if having the uncompiled source code makes the game insecure, it doesn't - the game was already insecure.

This is all either totally irrelevant or remarkably dumb. A secure crypto system is not a game. There are no public and private keys. There is no encryption. You CAN NOT guard a proprietary software based system by spewing your source code everywhere. Look at id's source releases. How many cheats appear when they release the source for their games? A LOT. This isn't an argument against open software, but with proprietary software, at some point, OBSCURITY IS A NECCESITY.

Re:After all

[freddyq]

After all, you have inside knowledge that people working on the project would have, and you just happen to know how long reworking all of Steam from scratch due to its leak would take, not to mention redoing Half-Life 2's network code.

It's pretty clear that it doesn't take nine months just to re-write *some* of the network code. The only way it could take 9 months is if valve has chosen to re-write stuff that need not be re-written. Only the sensitive stuff need be (or likely can afford to be) re-written.

If it was really up to scratch, not many changes should be needed anyway. Linux is secure, and it's open-source, as are the cryptology algorithms that protect important data.

You will probably find that in less than nine months theres ppl cheating again anyway.

That said, I agree valve should take their time - it's not like there's any shortage of games like that atm (thinks call of duty, halo). Nor are good games easy to create.

Re:After all

[Trepalium]

A game can never be secure against aimbots and other automation techniques. The only way to make it secure would be to enforce it via hardware (TCPA, Palladium, etc). Aimbots don't alter the game like hacking yourself invisible or invulnerable would, but only change your reactions from being as accurate as your eye, and as fast as your reflexes, to as accurate as the machine, and as fast as the machine.

Re:After all

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

Love,
bonch (aka Overly Critical Guy)

Re:After all

[HFXPro]

However, If the private key was in the source code.. then it would have been in the production code. Thus the private key could be siphoned off of a running machine. That is not a secure system. Public key private key has nothing to do with what is going on here.

Re:After all

[junkgrep]

Well, I don't agree. I like steam now. It was a mess when it first went out of beta. I have no idea what "fixing CS" means. The only such problem I know of is the one where the maps don't have enough spawns for 32 people. Whatever your issue is, think: is it really a problem with steam as a concept, or is it a bug they could fix if you alerted them to it?

As for end-user advantages, they can release tiny patches and new features far more often without users having to constantly patch things. The integrated system for managing all your games works pretty darn well.

Re:After all

[Chandon Seldon]

"Security through obscurity" is a phrase, in english, that refers to a specific class of security designs - where the system is secure because the attacker doesn't know how it works. That type of system is frowned upon by security experts because of one or more of the following:
A.) The user needs to know how the system works to operate it, thus making the system insecure to anyone who has ever been a legitimate user.
B.) The system can be reverse-engineered, at which point the attacker will understand the system - thus breaking any security.
C.) Obscuring the method of security prevents any security review, therefore making it impossible to know if the system is secure or not.

In an obscurity-free security system you create a system where even if how it works is known security hasn't been comprimised. A good example of this would be key based cryptography. If two people who are communicating using a key based cyrptosystem (such as RSA, Blowfish, DES, etc) keep their keys safe, their message cannot be read by an attacker - even an attacker who knows how RSA works. If they reveal their keys, then anyone can read their messages - but the cryptosystem itself won't be broken; other people who have not revealed their keys will still have security.

Now you seem to be claiming that since the keys have to be kept secret that key based cryptography is "security through obscurity". That's misusing a well-defined english phrase - which properly refers to the first class of security systems that I describe above.

Re:After all

[Chandon Seldon]

It depends. If they are writing an aimbot that works entirely off of the I/O drivers, then you are correct - there's no answer to aimbots on general purpose computers.

On the other hand, the aimbots actually work by reading and manipulating the program's memory state, and therefore have more information to work with than the user would have. Given that, there are a number of ways to secure games from that class of attacks, the simplest with current technology being PunkBuster.

An example of another technique that can be used is having server-controlled constantly moving enviornments. If there is grass everywhere blowing in the wind, and insects flying around, and birds, etc, and there is no difference in the in-memory data structures between a bird and a player, then anyone who kills every bird in thier LOS in twitch-time is obviously using an aimbot.

Re:After all

[Trepalium]

Given that, there are a number of ways to secure games from that class of attacks, the simplest with current technology being PunkBuster.

PunkBuster is just an arms race against the cheaters. It's just a database of known cheats, and nothing more. A cheater that just snoops on the memory of the game, and then sends the appropriate I/O to the game to aim appropriately would be undetectable to the game itself, and without a signature in PunkBuster, to it as well. A cheater implemented as a kernel driver might even be undetectable to something like PunkBuster.

If there is grass everywhere blowing in the wind, and insects flying around, and birds, etc, and there is no difference in the in-memory data structures between a bird and a player, then anyone who kills every bird in thier LOS in twitch-time is obviously using an aimbot.

Not really possible. If there's no in-memory difference, then the game can't possibly know how to render it on-screen, either. The only way this would work is if you were doing server-side rendering, and that's only appropriate for a very limited number of games (not FPS, for example).

Anything the game developer can design as a counter-measure, the cheaters can counter, and in usually far less time than the counter-measure took to design. Signature databases, like PunkBuster, are the first and last line of defense against cheaters. And it's not a very good line of defense, either.

Re:After all

[sarabob]

I think he knows how public-key encryption works - he was saying that if the private key was compromised they'd just change it before release.

The "obscurity" we talk about isn't obscurity of the private key - the private key is the single secret of the whole thing. But everything else should be publishable without compromising the code.

You are making flawed assertions. Id's games clearly weren't secure by design, hence the cheats. But the biggest flaw in your argument is that by allowing people to buy the game, the source code *has been released*. OK, so it's in x86 code not C and is therefore harder to make sense of, but it is *not obscure*. The *only* way to secure something on a x86 computer is using public key encryption, as at some point your computer will have the decryption algorithm in memory, and will have the decrypt key in memory.

Obviously it's possible to make life difficult for crackers by having multiple layers of decryption and self-modifying code, but ultimately the code has to be readable and executable by the computer. And unless the computer is entirely secure, that code can be intercepted. Emulation, single-stepping, whatever.

Re:After all

[makomk]

Now you seem to be claiming that since the keys have to be kept secret that key based cryptography is "security through obscurity".

It is if the keys are hidden in something widely-distributed, like a game, and you are just relying on no-one managing to dig them out. Or at least, it has the same problems for the same reason.

As you said, in a key-based system the keys have to be kept secret - and putting them in a widely-available program isn't exactly an effective way of doing that.

Re:After all

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

> You can't go spoogeing every bit of information you have on the general public's face and expect them to not do anything with it.

Course: NETWORK SECURITY 201
Instructor: Asia Carrera

Re:After all

[jred]

Well, I'm a relatively new player/customer. I like Steam. When Condition Zero came out, I wouldn't have known about it if I didn't have Steam. Then, did I have to schlep on down to the store to buy it, and hope I didn't get distracted by the sale on petunias? Nope. I just clicked on it, entered my payment info & boom! I could play. No install, it was predownloaded, everything. I also no longer have to wait to start getting rejected by servers for having the wrong patch level. Steam automatically notifies me of patches, and installs it automatically if I so choose.

Steam does have it's issues (pls fix the friends network), but overall it is a huge advantage, at least for *this* customer.

Re:After all

[drinkypoo]

So what you're saying is that there was a private key in the HL2 source which was compromised by the code release?

Since your brain apparently has trouble parsing English, I'll walk you through this.

It's really not necessary. You have nothing to teach me on this matter, regardless of your unfounded beliefs. The fact that you consider obscurity to be a meaningful deterrent is ample proof thereof. It slows people down, but it does not stop them.

the reason I said what I said above is that you tried to draw a parallel between situations which are simply not comparable. A secret code like a private key being kept secure is not the same as protecting source code when you're going to release binaries based on it. The private key must be kept entirely secure, whereas much can be inferred about the source code from the binary - especially with a good working knowledge of the compiler.

Additionally, I pointed out that a secure cryptosystem is secure even if source is released to further underline the speciousness of your argument. A game will not be significantly less secure if the source is released unless poor programming and/or design practice were utilized. Even then the game is no less secure if the source is released, it only makes the path to an exploit shorter. It might slightly raise the bar between desire and exploit but it does not change whether a certain "feature" can be exploited.

Re:After all

[drinkypoo]

Frankly I don't feel bad about consoles with strong DRM to protect me from cheaters. You can rent games to preview them (as opposed to warezing) and it prevents cheating more or less completely.

In fact, what I think console makers should do is universally provide linux (For $50 or whatever games cost) with all of them, with good documentation, and sell them at a profit, and have the included kernel function as a boot loader so you can run other kernels on it. From what I understand this is basically how the PS2 goes except that some parts of the PS2 are poorly documented.

Unfortunately there is still one thing keeping me playing games on PC: Controllers. On the PC I can use any kind of controller I want with any DirectX game, which is basically all of them now, except for some free as in beer (and usually speech as well) games using SDL, mostly ported from linux. When I can use keyboard and mouse in Halo and arbitrarily remap controls in games with the same flexibility I have in the average DirectX title, I won't need to play games on my PC any more. Which means I can run Linux on my desktop :)

Re:After all

[Chandon Seldon]

Using some key based cryptography scheme improperly could result in a security through obscurity style security model.

You could set up an office building where every door used the same key - which happens to be the size and shape of a standard BIC cigarette lighter. That would be pretty insecure too - even though it uses "secure" door lock technology.

Re:After all

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude - can it - you're making a fool of yourself displaying your own ignorance about how software security works. Software can be "secure by design" EVEN WITH FULL SOURCE CODE RELEASE - look at webservers like Apache as an example. Hacks are the result of BUGS in the design, not the result of the release of 'obscure', 'secret' information in the source code.

Re:After all

[dustmite]

Indeed, it seems to be an increasingly common misconception amongst an increasingly less technically literate /. audience that the release of source code inherently allows hackers to then know how to 'break into' the software. Clearly they don't understand software very well or the software development process. All that releasing the source code might do is help hackers to find flaws in the design faster, but those flaws are just that, flaws, a door accidentally left open which can simply be fixed by the vendor and a binary patch released.

Re:After all

[satans_advocate]

Thinking that there is no such thing as inherently secure is absolutely ignorant. There are ways to do things which are inherently insecure, and there are ways to do things which are inherently secure.

Actually, your statement would be correct if you said "there are ways to do things which are NOT inherently insecure." The problem is that the known means to subvert the security of something is not a finite set. In other words, we don't know what we don't know about insecurity.

A secure cryptosystem is secure even when the source is released.

A secure cryptosystem is secure until it isn't. That is, until a system is broken through crpytanalysis, it is secure, but not after.

There is no such thing as entirely secure.
That depends on what level of granularity you mean. A one-time pad is entirely secure at the level of encryption and decryption. However, it is still possible for the operators of one time pads to lose the key to the attacker through carelessness, theft, stupidity or betrayal.

Re:Points of interest

[codexus]

The only real way to protect against such attacks is to keep the confidential data on a separate network not connected to the internet. If you don't do that it takes only one person being tricked into installing a trojan and it's over. And I can think of a lot of ways to trick someone other than sending an email with a clickmeifyouredumb.exe file.

Re:Points of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that programmers are not all powerful supermen, they make mistakes too

Lies! All lies I tell you! Filthy, scurrilous lies! *runs away weeping*

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[TheTrueGStu]

Almost sounds like how Tribes and Tribes 2 are available for free download, because some new Tribes game is due out this summer. Yay free games

Answer

[bonch]

See my sig.

Re:Answer

[mkro]

See my sig. People who don't buy Evian are freeloaders who get bitter when their tap water becomes undrinkable.

Re:Answer

[kirun]

Which kills people faster, lack of water or lack of warez?

Re:Answer

[bonch]

After all, paying a water bill is "freeloading."

Re:Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

See my sig. People who check out library books are freeloaders who get bitter when their free ride is taken away.

Idiot.

Re:

[andy55]

(standard mythical man-month rant elided)

MOD PARENT UP.

Finally, someone with sense has reminded the manger/rookie/non-veteran type of this paramount principle. Glad to see everyone here isn't a slashbot.

However, I fear the lesson of the mythical man month will continue to go unlearned by most and history will repeat itself, as it always has.

Press Release

[GarfBond]

Swiped from halflife2.net:

ARRESTS MADE IN RELATION TO HALF-LIFE 2 THEFT
Online Community Tracks Down Hackers
June, 10 2004 - Arrests have been made in several countries related to the break-in to Valve's network, theft of the Half-Life 2 source code, and release of the source code on the Internet.

"Within a few days of the announcement of the break-in, the online gaming community had tracked down those involved," said Gabe Newell, Valve's CEO. "It was extraordinary to watch how quickly and how cleverly gamers were able to unravel what are traditionally unsolvable problems for law enforcement related to this kind of cyber-crime."

Thousands of tips were received related to the criminal activities, with a core group of people who were able to analyze and backtrack from these clues. Subsequent to these individuals being identified, Valve has been working with various national authorities to prepare cases against those involved, leading to these arrests.

"It was very uplifting to see how the community rallied and tracked these people down. Everyone here at Valve is once again reminded of how much we owe to the gaming community," added Mr. Newell.

Re:Points of interest

[kirun]

It's really quite simple. There's two ways you can interpret the word "steal".

One is the "strict legal definition". Under that definition, copyright infringement is not stealing. The way the argument is often presented can come accross as a semantic rather than a moral one.

The other definition is the "guy in the street definition", which vaguely comes down to "taking stuff without paying". If you make *this* kind of definition, you'll also get the semantic argument made along the lines of "what about stuff that *is* free?"

People are defending their corner, but badly. The reason it happens more in other discussions is probablary because people hate RIAA/MPAA/media megacorps more than Valve, so any posting appearing to agree with them to some extent gets pounced on.

The debate would be improved if people argued with the *message* of what was being said, not the *wording*.

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that Valve SELLS the engine to other companies so that they can make their own games. ID did this with the Quake engine.

Small correction. id licensed the Quake engine (and every other engine they've created). I can only assume that Valve did the same thing.

Selling implies they sold all rights to it, and don't control it any longer, which is false.

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[GarfBond]

Considering the REAL big money in this game is from licensing the engine, I doubt it. I once heard somewhere that a majority of id's revenue comes from licensing the engine, not the actual game itself. Somewhat explains why not everyone is always enthralled with the gameplay, but the Q3A engine is still in use today by a whole lot of games (call of duty, BF1942, RTCW, the list goes on). Heck, HL1's engine can be traced to Quake 1 and Quake 2.

Software companies get away with this all the time

[t35t0r]

When a software company reverse engineer's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering) another's product and assimilates that code into its' own products the most that happens is that they get sued but most of the time they just get away with it and make money off their product.

When hackers find exploits/RE/forcefully take code they get sued (possibly) and then sent to prison .

Anyone see anything wrong with this?

Oh, please

[bonch]

If you take intellectual property without paying for it, it is theft--intellectual property theft. Obsessing over semantics because you have a beef with Hilary Rosen doesn't change the immorality of the crime.

Re:Oh, please

[mrchaotica]

Sure, copyright infringement is wrong, but that still doesn't make it theft! That's like saying rape and murder are the same thing, because they're both immoral too. Or like saying that Black Panthers and Neo-Nazis are the same because they're both militant racists. Or like saying apples and oranges are the same because they're both fruits! Or.... [continue ad nauseum]

They're both wrong. They're both perhaps equally wrong.
BUT THEY'RE STILL NOT THE SAME THING!!!

Re:Oh, please

[That's Unpossible!]

Yeah, honestly!

It's like comparing pedants with meaning-Nazi's.

Two COMPLETELY different things!

Yeah, but those SF raids were in January...

[Kelmenson]

Information from them may have led to these arrests, but they definitely are not the same arrests.

Re:Points of interest

[kirun]

by 0racle ...
Its quite simple really,

That'll teach me to spend five minutes perfecting my wording, somebody else goes ahead and uses them first...

Why is this even news?

[Cornflake917]

This is no surpise considering the FBI have conducted raids to seize equipment that might have been used in the theft months ago.

Re:Why is this even news?

[Anonymous Coward]

You understand that conducting raids is different than making arrests, don't you?

What an incredibly stupid question.

Re:Why is this even news?

[Cornflake917]

Yes I do...

do you also realize that conducting raids and seizing lead to arrests rather quickly?

I suppose that's another stupid question.

I doubt they arrested the real culprits

[defile]

They probably just rounded up people who happened to have the source code on their machines (ratted out by friends/enemies, etc.) and asked them where they got it. If they couldn't name names, they were further scrutinized. If they can't name names (practical joke gone awry?) have the "capacity to commit the crime" (ie, they're techies) they get charged. Follow the names that were named. Repeat until the number of people you've arrested sounds impressive.

This makes great headlines and eases the PHB's nerves, but doesn't really solve anything. The original perpetrator may get away with it scott free, even.

Just inventing details...

Re:Points of interest

[Minna Kirai]

Legally, this isn't any different than bashing in a window at Valve Central, sneaking in, and stealing a disk with the code on it.

Oh, yes there is a difference. Legally it's the same as climbing into a window and taking pictures of the place.

But a crime is only theft if something of value is removed. The crook must take it with him. If the object was left behind in the victim's possession, then it wasn't stolen and there is no theft.

If they had downloaded the code and then (somehow) deleted the originals, that might be theft.

(If a photographer sneaks into your house and takes naked pictures of you, is that "theft"? Of course not... it's some other crime)

So...how can you be arrested for stealing vapor?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't realize you could be arrested for "theft of vapor"...

Re:Points of interest

[Minna Kirai]

Anonymous Coward says:
The dictionary doesn't make any distinction between the victim having possession of anything.

Before you claim "the dictionary doesn't", try reading dictionary.com, at least.

As for the legal defintion, it's similar.

The legal definition you just linked to says "Stealing is the same as larceny". And that dictionary defines larceny as "The wrongful and fraudulent taking and carrying away, by one person, of the mere personal goods, of another, from any place"

Please point to any authoritative source that defines stealing that involve the victim no longer in possession of some good.

With pleasure:

1. \Theft\, n. [OE. thefte, AS. [thorn]i['e]f[eth]e, [thorn][=y]f[eth]e, [thorn]e['o]f[eth]e. See Thief.] 1. (Law) The act of stealing; specifically, the felonious taking and removing of personal property, with an intent to deprive the rightful owner of the same; larceny.
2. 
   
   Note: To constitute theft there must be a taking without the owner's consent, and it must be unlawful or felonious; every part of the property stolen must be removed, however slightly, from its former position; and it must be, at least momentarily, in the complete possession of the thief.

So what are they going to do with them?

[GeekyGurkha]

Send them to Black Mesa?
Let's see how their '1337 hacking skills' hold up against those things that resemble a roast turkey gone bad.

Slashdot didn't report on it

[bonch]

Notice that M$ hasn't made similar announcements about their recent source code theft problems?

They tracked the leak to a break-in on a Linux computer at Mainsoft. It was reported elsewhere--but not on Slashdot. That doesn't mean there was never an announcement made.

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[SgtClueLs]

Good for the community? Yes. Good for the company? No. They want to sell their engine to other game companies, just like how id does. Money makes the world go round.

is that it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Valve was gonna have a "take no prisioners" approach with the code thieves.

Maybe all the rush to take them down was to avoid others to see whether or not they used "shared code" from other companies or to stop the development of better-than-the-original mods.

Well is the wooden knife at the blacksmith house.

After all...

[bonch]

After all, illegally downloading someone else's intellectual property from their hacked server and downloading someone else's intellectual property from a random stranger are two totally different things!

Re:After all...

[drinkypoo]

Walking in someone's door and stealing their TV is legally different from breaking down someone's door (or otherwise bypassing their lock) and stealing their TV, at least here in the USA. Why should so-called piracy be any different?

Re:After all...

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

Love,
bonch (aka Overly Critical Guy)

Breakin' the Law

[Myolp]

At this very moment, Judas Priest (including Rob Halford) is performing a couple of miles from me.

The true crime tonight is that I am missing this...

The delay is justified.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see a reason for a lengthy delay here. Say they were almost done coding the entire thing. Now, they get cracked, someone takes their source, and distributes a few copies.

Can this code be deemed secure without a full audit of all the code? Could the crackers have reasonably included a backdoor in the program?

If they were able to include some malicious code in HL2, and Valve were to distribute it without checking every last line, that would not only be a PR nightmare, but a rather serious security risk for their customers.

Now, this may not be difficult, they could go to their last backup (if they have a recent one). They'd still have to rewrite quite a bit of code, which also takes more time.

Not to mention the time it takes to lock down what appears to be a fairly insecure network before continuing (so it doesn't happen again during development).

I can see how something like this could knock back the project a month or two easily. If they're already behind schedule, this just makes things worse.

Re:The delay is justified.

[jamesangel]

Why would crackers distributing/editing their own copies of the code affect Valve's copy?

Downloading Music != Stealing

[Psymunn]

I'm not even talking about the fact that the owner still retains a copy. Infact, if, everytime i downloaded a song, the owner lost his copy, no one would have a problem with downloading music. This isn't a semantic loop hole, it has to do with taking something give to you.
Let me explain. Everytime i download a song, who am i getting it from? Some guy who is saying 'hey everyone, i am allowing you all to have something of mine.' So am i stealing from him? He wouldn't say so. Therefore the issue has nothign to do with obtaining soemthing of someone elses, because it is with consent.
What you are saying is that soemone doesn't infact own a cd if they purchase it and this is quite ludicrous. If that was the case, libraries would have been banned years ago beacuse, essentially, they are a large data warehouse distributing information to everyone without compensating the authors after the initial cost of the material
So where is the issue. The issue arrises of course from teh copying of the material.
What i find intersesting and confusing is, in British Columbia, I am forced to pay a tax on all writabel media that goes towards music companies because tehre is teh assumption i am going to use it for mp3s. Not only is this rediculous (i use my hardrive for a lot of thigns, nto simply to piss off Virgin Records) but it essentially means i have payed for teh right to copy music. Therefore, (provided i'm downlaoding canadian content) i realyl shouldn't feel perturbed about the downloading or sharing of information that i own.
Of course, where i to go to your cmoputer Oracle, and copy all your source code, that would be stealing (even if the code was open source)

Re:Downloading Music != Stealing

[0racle]

Which is why the RIAA is not charging downloaders, but people who are sharing, since they have no right to do so.

If I steal a car, and sell it, does the person to whom I sold it to become the legal owner of the car simply because they weren't the ones who took it? No they aren't but neither are they charged with the theft.

So possibly technically, downloading music isn't wrong IF you really can prove you had no idea getting free music that you usually had to buy was wrong, the person sharing on the other hand, is illegally distributing it. This ignores the fact that the warning that unauthorized copying is prohibited has been printed on every CD and tape that your not allowed to copy, and copying a copy is still unauthorized copying.

As for the extra charge on recordable media, possibly soon to be extended to MP3 players, it is not open season on distributing that music, but was to placate some who were hoping that people would be lazy enough to buy one tape, it predates cd's, for your home and another for your car and yet another for who knows where, it was stupid, but does not make it legal to distribute out side of personal use. Unless a person or site is authorized to distribute the material, then downloading from them is simply taking material that they have no right to share so you have no right to take in the first place.

Of course around here there is no shortage of people to tell you you have the right to do anything you want.

Re:Downloading Music != Stealing

[Minna Kirai]

Which is why the RIAA is not charging downloaders

Wrong. They do file lawsuits against downloaders. If they do that less, it's because it's harder to prove.

So possibly technically, downloading music isn't wrong IF you really can prove you had no idea getting free music that you usually had to buy was wrong, the person sharing on the other hand, is illegally distributing it.

No. To transfer music requires cooperation from both the uploader or the downloader. (Unless someone is sending MP3s attached to unsolictied emails or something unusual like that).

It is equally illegal for both of them. If the uploader could really prove that he had no idea sending music for free was wrong, then he'd have the same level of defense as your hypothetical downloader.

it is not open season on distributing that music,

Depends on your legal jurisdiction. In Canda, it nearly IS open season.

Re:Downloading Music != Stealing

[sumdumass]

Wrong. They do file lawsuits against downloaders. If they do that less, it's because it's harder to prove.

Wrong.. RIAA hasn't ever filed a suite against someone for just downloading. i was just looking for that the other day and it hasn't happened. Also the laws pertaining to copyright have nothing to do with the person reciving the property, it is all the person copying and distrubuting it. title 17 of the U.S code will tell you more then enough about it.

No. To transfer music requires cooperation from both the uploader or the downloader. (Unless someone is sending MP3s attached to unsolictied emails or something unusual like that).

your wrong here too, transfering music or files requires only the person that is puting into a place of distrobution that a normal person would be expected to find a file without charge. If i copy my latest music cds and then sell them in a store, you cannot be held acountable for going in a buying them. The same with P2P places. You go there expecting to have files availible for downloading free of charge. Also most of the P2P networks have touted a busines model were companies could release files without having to pay large bandwidth bills.

Even when you nit pick about it, the copying is only being done on the computer allowing it to be downloaded. so uunder the curent law, the downloader isn't breaking any laws.

Re:Points of interest

[Minna Kirai]

The other definition is the "guy in the street definition",

To interpret "guy in the street" (or "pedestrian") word meaning, we must compare with commonly accepted uses of the word.

Here are two sentences that are widely acceptable uses of "steal" regarding intellectual property:

1. "He stole my invention"
2. 
   
   "She stole my song"

In both cases, it is implied that something similar has happened: the victim was working on a project, and was spied on by another person, who went on to publish that idea and claim it as his/her own (preventing the actual author from getting credit for the work). "He/she stole my $INTELLECTUAL_PROPERTY" is an accusation of plagiarism, not theft.

And the Half-Life 2 incident never included any attempt to claim authorship of that code.

comes down to "taking stuff without paying".

And then you get into what "taking" means. Ask a pedestrian if something has really been "taken" if the victim still has it... no, that's not "taking". It's more "taking a copy", or even just "seeing".

So it becomes "seeing without paying". And the street guy will think "Oh, I see stuff on TV all the time, and never pay"

The debate would be improved if people argued with the *message* of what was being said, not the *wording*.

It's the MPAA/RIAA/BSA that causes that problem by using by basing their argument on that wording: "Stealing is obviously wrong. Copyright infringement is actually stealing. So copyright infringement is wrong too".

Reminds me of the logic of a certain US president... "Terrorists are obviously evil. You guys are actually terrorists. So you are evil too"

Re:Points of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

Software is more substantial than music.

It takes no talent to produce music; most "music" today is actually a by-product of evil recording companies. By contrast, it is a fine art to produce software.

Re:What the hell does that mean?

[katarac]

No need for the blown gasket, Charlie. He wasn't saying he was "tight" with Valve. He was just saying that the code must've been leaked since he played it.

He was making an off-the-cuff remark, indicated by the smiley.

Re:Points of interest

[0racle]

Theft is taking without permission. Colloquially, the words theft and stealing mean the taking of anything, whether an object or ideas and has done for a very long time, therefore in informal speech it is quite correct to refer to it as stealing. If on the other hand, I was speaking as a lawyer, then the terms 'Copyright Infringement' or 'Larceny' or who knows how many other terms for a very specific set of circumstances, depending upon what and the value of what was 'inappropriately taken.' would be used. In either case, whether 'Copyright infringement' or 'Larceny' and its many degrees, something was taken that you had no rights to. That act of taking that which is not yours, and you have no right or permission to is encompassed in the word Theft.

Yay Valve

[greymond]

Now give me my fucking Half-Life 2....PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

Re:Software companies get away with this all the t

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah but the difference is, they didnt reverse engineer the half life 2 code.. they hacked into the machines and stole it

Hmm, TF2

[Rob.Mathers]

It's interesting to note that on the last page of the search warrant, they note Team Fortress 2. Sounds like it isn't dead after all...

Gee, you mean like...

[gosand]

I dont know... maybe I am just a little backwords in my thinking, but Valve could have used this to an advantage.

Gee, you mean like using it as an excuse to push out the release date?

Re:Software companies get away with this all the t

[t35t0r]

I see no difference, you are forcefully taking the code either way, its not from scratch, that was the whole point of the similarity.

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[(startx)]

perhaps you should check out The Torque Engine. Non-free, but for $100 you get the source + tools to build whatever type of game you want.

Re:Points of interest

[Drawkcab]

Agreed. And furthermore, not all programmers are systems administrators or even particularly above average users when it comes to network security. I would think that any internet user should know to run a firewall/virus scanner, install os update patches now and then, and not to open attachments, but none of that is enough to avoid every possible hazard. Just because someone is a programmer doesn't mean they should need to know any more than average about advanced network security, unless their job actually involves it. Programming itself is abstract, and you can be quite good at your job without knowing everything there is to know about computers other than what relates to your area of focus. In this case, they're writing a FPS, and except for the few people actually involved with multiplayer infrastructure, there is very little overlap between the skills the developers need and computer security, so they shouldn't be held to a higher standard than other office workers. open while going away for the weekend.

MOD PARENT UP!

[Pvt_Waldo]

mod parent up! Smart post!

Re:MOD PARENT UP!

[88NoSoup4U88]

If he only had the 'courage' to not tick that AC-box, he would have actually earnt mine :/

Hey ....

[Anonymous Coward]

After reading ALL of the dam posts here it seems that anybody who says anything witty about this gets modded to 5. OK here it is Valves code got stolen cuz it was a leaky valve.... get it !!!!! OK so sue me... i'm no comedian !!! Dammit Jim Ima a doctor not a comedian !!!!

I for one,

[aixou]

am looking forward to the HL2/Duke Nukem Forever doublepack.

coincidence?

[Man in Spandex]

I find it funny that they had "all of a sudden" their source code stolen a bit after the date when they were suppose to release it (late september IIRC). I thought back then "ok this is just an excuse so they can finish the game".

In winter time, the news about half life 2 ceased completely (nothing on planethalflife, etc.) and then we heard about the X800 & GF6800 cards. BOOM all ofa sudden, for the E3 (perfect moment), Half life 2 appears in full strenght! Now, in the month where half life 2 is suppose to come out, they say they finall caught those guys.

I'm not sure what I should believe anymore but all I know is, they better not postpone the game again cause they're killing us!

Anybody else here who thinks or thought like me on some points?

Those blog link is not referring to HalfLife

[nacs]

The blog link is not referring to the Half Life raid. If I remember correctly, this blog post was made for a /. story posted a couple months ago about a different matter.

Re:Those blog link is not referring to HalfLife

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the search warrant, it specifically states that it is related to Half-Life 2.

Re:Points of interest

[DragonMagic]

How is it different?

Valve still has the code, the music companies still have their audio.

How on earth is there a distinction? Because one needed another illegal means to get the files, while other it just downloading?

If you call one theft, you have to call the other theft.

Re:Points of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the MPAA/RIAA/BSA that causes that problem by using by basing their argument on that wording: "Stealing is obviously wrong. Copyright infringement is actually stealing. So copyright infringement is wrong too".

Reminds me of the logic of a certain US president... "Terrorists are obviously evil. You guys are actually terrorists. So you are evil too"

Nothing is wrong with that logic. What you've got there are a couple of ordinary syllogisms. The validity of the logic has nothing to do with the actual truth value of the premises.

"He who lives by semantics, dies by semantics."

Re:Points of interest

[kirun]

It's the MPAA/RIAA/BSA that causes that problem by using by basing their argument on that wording: "Stealing is obviously wrong. Copyright infringement is actually stealing. So copyright infringement is wrong too".

It's interesting you highlight the point that way round. It's often made the other way round, i.e. "You called this stealing, it isn't stealing, therefore it isn't wrong". Which, of course, doesn't make sense. It can still be wrong, just have a different name for it. Much better to state why something isn't wrong independent of what it's been called.

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure a "fair" multiplayer environment can ever be done with open source code... what would there to be to block people who have hacked the engine code to give them an autopilot shooter?

This problem has been solved for some time. Look at bzflag.

Re:Points of interest

[mconeone]

4-5. Here you have your facts wrong. It was no ordinary virus, it was a new one designed to take advantage of an outlook flaw that hadn't been patched as of that time. Anti-virus programs had weren't able to catch this, as no definitions existed yet.

As for the network guys, you have no idea exactly how the source theft took place and how long the theft was discovered after it occurred. It was Gabe Newell, the head of Valve, who's laptop got hacked into. Once the hacker assumed his identity, he/she/they could access almost everything on the network.

Re:Software companies get away with this all the t

[hendersj]

Reverse engineering is quite a bit different than stealing code. For one thing, proper reverse engineering does not involve forcefully taking the code, because it doesn't involve the original code at all - just the end results of what that code does.

Using reverse-engineered technology also has some pretty specific rules involved. If you look at the history of computer-based reverse engineering, look back to the days of Compaq's reverse-engineering of IBM's BIOS. The way they accomplished that was by looking at how IBM's BIOS worked, and then writing up a specification.

Then they passed that specification to developers who had never seen IBM's BIOS and said "Give me something that does what's described in this documentation".

I imagine it'd have been a hell of a lot easier if Compaq had just stolen the IBM BIOS code. True reverse engineering takes a significant amount of time, and shouldn't be confused with theft. When done properly, it's not theft.

New malicious code! A trojan worm!

[TheDarkener]

Several weeks ago, unconfirmed reports from Germany said the author of the Phatbot Trojan worm was also involved in the theft.

Wow, a trojan worm?! I gotta re-take history class...

Re:New malicious code! A trojan worm!

[PaulK]

Talk about rewriting history. Everyone knows that it was a rabbit/

Re:New malicious code! A trojan worm!

[Grayswan]

No, No, it was a badger. A big, wooden, badger.

Re:Points of interest

[Laetor]

I'm afraid I cannot agree here. You require physical substance in order for theft to occur. There are quite intangible assets, just as "rights" and "justice" and "choice" and "freedom" which can be stolen from you very easily. It might come down to sematics, because you left the loophole open that "it's some other crime" if pictures are taken of you without your consent. But it could be argued (and often is through the use of the idiom "the government is taking our rights away") that taking pictures without someone's consent does take away their right to privacy, essentially stealing their privacy from them. Intellectual property exists in terms of the law. What someone knows has value, can affect things, can be implemented, can be turned (sometimes) into physical objects. It is intangible, because it resides (in theory) in a specific configuration of neural tissue which cannot be replicated easily or without effort. So, if someone takes that intellectual capital (via bits, or pieces of paper it's written down on, or whatever) no matter if a copy is left the intellectual property has been stolen. A person who was not supposed to know it or possess it (there's that idiom again) now does. And that is theft -- theft of an idea, theft of an intangible asset.

Theft?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was under the impression that the source code had been copied, not stolen.

Please explain this to me.

[Aqua OS X]

Alright, I'm a developer, and I don't understand how HalfLife 2 became delayed.

Did Valve decide massive rewrites were necessary after their code was stolen? If so, why? I can see where security for multiplayer and network play might have been compromised. However this was a -huge- setback.

It seems like their source code was illegally copied, and "theft" became a scapegoat to cover lagging development. Stealing source code isn't like stealing a car. There are always multiple current copies of large projects.

Points of interest that you missed

[Tim Browse]

7. What moron thinks there's such a thing as 100% security?

8. What moron thinks you can ship software faster just by hiring more people?

9. Maybe the 'retarded' programmer was actually trying to do his job and get the work done as soon as possible, and not reading bugtraq all the live long day or modelling attack trees so he wouldn't get owned.

10. Cut Valve some slack. They are the victims here, despite what some might think.

Re:Points of interest that you missed

[gribbly]

8. What moron thinks you can ship software faster just by hiring more people?

This is actually EA's game development model, just FYI. Seems to work for them...

grib.

Re:Points of interest that you missed

[Tim Browse]

EA's idea of 'work' may differ from Valve's.

you know what this means! EASTER EGGS!

[UltimaL337Star]

like the head on a stick at the end of doom 2, maybe hl2 devs will have a chance to torture and skin the naked thieves where we'll be able to test out some source engine and beat their ass with a nice non-pixely stick

Re:Points of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you are wrong.

Legally - as in "in the eyes of the law" - this is exactly the same as breaking in and stealing something.

Morally - as in "your own fucked-up beliefs that exist to allow you to justify taking anything you want without having to pay, even if programmers etc. do have families to feed" - this is something completely different and nobody should have to pay for software at all, because you live in fantasyland where magic pixies hand out free money to those souls who are pure of heart and who work on Open Source projects.

Theft in the legal sense is, fortunately, not defined by you. You can think about it any way you like - but taking unreleased source code from Valve, or anywhere else, is theft. Don't know where you got to talking about cameras - why didn't you just say "copied all the files to an external hard drive" or something? Either way - it's theft! - both in the legal sense and to any normal person without a communist political agenda to push in these arguments.

Re:Points of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no distinction, and here slashbots have to face up to their intellectual dishonesty. Either copying music owned by bad guys is wrong, or copying code or software from good guys (like Valve, Loki (during their short existence) or RMS) is right. They can't have it both ways but they're sure as hell going to try!

Re:Points of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

What is clear is that you still want to pretend that when you copy software you are not a thief. That's not the case, though you may find the facts uncomfortable.

Taking code from Valve is theft. That is undeniable.

terrorists?

[mcguyver]

If arrests were made outside of the US then it makes you wonder if some sort of terrorist type approach was used. I sympathize with Valve because someone hacked into their network and created problems for their product however at the same time it's uncomfortable to see the US's arm of the law go overseas, especially if the US turned this issue into an act of terrorism.

Re:Points of interest

[AK Marc]

Why is it on stories like these we see the word "steal" everywhere, but if someone uses the word "steal" or "theft" on a discussion about music piracy people go nuts? Is there a difference? Not trying to be a smartass, I'm just wondering

One organization took specific precautions to prevent people from accessing an item. That item was accessed and coppied by someone violating multiple laws not related to the copy itself. The item in question was private and purposefully hidden from others.

The other item was freely released into the Public Domain for the consumption of all (with some limits on who may copy and why for a limited period of time). This information that is easily and widely available and broadcast freely numerous times during the day in hundreds of locations and legally coppied thousands of times a day has a copy made from a widely available release in a manner inconsistent with the limits on copies made by others than the one the released it to the Public Domain.

If you honestly can't see any difference between these two scenarios, then I don't think there is anything I can say to explain it.

Re:Points of interest

[Minna Kirai]

It's interesting you highlight the point that way round.

That's directly from the MPAA's advertising campaign...

It's often made the other way round, i.e. "You called this stealing, it isn't stealing, therefore it isn't wrong"

Do you have any example of that?

Re:Ray Charles dead at 73

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite the gravity of the quote, it has to be the funniest -1 post on slashdot... ever.

Congratulations to whoever wrote this. Your timing was impeccable.

Stop the hype

[ae-valkyre]

Companies shouldn't release any information on upcoming games until they've already gone gold, then there would be no more "delays". Anyone remember Duke Nukem Forever?

Re:Points of interest

[Minna Kirai]

Legally - as in "in the eyes of the law" - this is exactly the same as breaking in and stealing something.

No real need to argue with a coward. In a few days when the prosecutors announce charges against the arrested individuals, and "Theft" isn't one of them, you'll see that I am right.

Ounishment must fit the crime...

[Anonymous Coward]

They stole a game prior to release. They can rot in prison till Duke Nukem Forever comes out.

Oh yeah?

[teknokracy]

The valve development staff should be arrested for denying a basic right to the human race - the right to play an awesome game!

Re:Oh yeah?

[LouCifer]

The valve development staff should be arrested for denying a basic right to the human race - the right to play an awesome game!

If that's the case, they should've been arrested a LONG time ago.

Re:Points of interest

[Eric Savage]

IANAL, but actually it is different. If they broke in and stole a disk, then Valve has one less disk and a broken window. Many anti-RIAA slashdotters have repeatedly claimed that music copying isn't stealing because they didn't actually take or deprive someone of anything, they just copied it, which to me seems like what happened here.

I'd have to say that copying (and subsequently distributing) the source code was a copyright violation just like downloading an unlicensed mp3. The network intrusion is also a crime. There are probably also laws which might consider unreleased source code to have "trade secrets", which would be yet another crime. Therefore the entire operation is far more serious than sharing a copied music file, but the root event is probably similar.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think that the mythical man-month would be perfectly obvious to anyone here who has ever worked as an engineer for a real company making real products... errr...

I guess that makes three of us.

Re:Points of interest

[Fallen_Knight]

valves code wasn't published, and to get it they had to hack (well trick) valve to get it.

I would be the charges laid on the hackers would not be theft, corporate espionage, hacking, copyright violations, and such.

Downloading music is much diffrence as its published, someone is offering you a copy (witch is why downloaders are kinda safe and uploaders are not)

Also the money lost by each act is diffrent, vavle has taken a BIG hit in the $$ department because of the "theft", how much (if any) money the RIAA and co lose when a song is copied is debatable and might be a gain.

That is why poeple get all up in arms about P2P being called tehft, but when it comes to valve and sounce code theft they tolerate and join in in calling it theft, its much more like theft and it did cause damage to valve in many ways, unlike P2P.

and it STILL isn't theft, it is a multitude of other crimes, but NOT theft at all.

if this was theft, there would be no such charge as corporate espionage. because all corporate espionage is is "stealing" information and ideas.

Neither is theft. One is copyright violations, the other is corporate espionage/hacking/copyright.

Re:Points of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that if you have to prefix your post with IANAL, you are exactly what you claim: I ANAL. Despite what you (and all the other that post on slashdot that are ANAL) the fraction of lawyers that post to slashdot is exceedingly small.

Re:Points of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

No real possibility of arguing with this coward. You're wrong and you know it. Why defend an ill-considered comment you made in haste at all?

Re:Points of interest

[Minna Kirai]

You require physical substance in order for theft to occur.

No. I require something to have been removed, which is in accordance with both the English and legal defintion of "theft". If an intangible like a computer program is taken away (copied and then deleted), that can be theft.

Theft is illegal because it deprives the victim of something he had. At no time did the "Half-Life 2 theft" cause Valve to be unable to access their source code.

There are quite intangible assets, just as "rights" and "justice" and "choice" and "freedom" which can be stolen from you very easily.

That's absurd.

You're claiming that if I infringe your rights, that's theft? Nope, sorry, that's "injustice", an entirely different word. And you also claim that if I take your freedom, that's theft too? Wrong again, that's "kidnapping" or "slavery"- different things both in the English language, and in the eyes of the law.

If your position were valid, it would mean that every concievable crime is a form of theft. That might work for poetry ("Cruel assasin; thou thief of life"), but has no place in serious discussion. If you redefine "theft" that broadly, then it's lost all practical meaning.

Re:Points of interest

[Minna Kirai]

You require physical substance in order for theft to occur.

I don't, and the English language doesn't, but the legal system does.

Re:Points of interest

[Minna Kirai]

You're wrong and you know it.

Look, moron: Was Kevin Mitnick ever charged with "theft" after he downloaded all that AT&T source code? NO. He was charged with "computer fraud". END OF STORY.

The only allegation that he was a "thief" came because of physical, paper manuals that he took from a dumpster.

Re:What the hell does that mean?

[revmoo]

Are you saying that because you had access to the Half-Life 2 Beta, you have authoritative knowledge through some developer-fed channel from Valve that gives you verifiable information concerning the theft?

I'm saying exactly what I said, which is that I played the Hl2 Beta. The fact that people downloaded and played it should be enough "verifiable information" that it was leaked.

Re:Points of interest

[caryw]

Big difference.

Mp3's are already ready for public consumption. The public already has access to the song, be it on the radio, a cd in a store, in a friend's car, whatever. By downloading that song you are getting a copy of the finished product that many others already have.

Source code, however, is definitely not in a form for public consumption. Nobody should have the source code unless they're part of the project.

Stealing the source code would be analogous to stealing the band that makes the music, not the finished product.

band:mp3::souce code:binary

Re:Points of interest

[trawg]

I guess its because if you're stealing from one of them, you're just stealing from a two-faced, dirty corporation that is trying to use their market dominance to ream the audience. But the other - uh... the other... Nah, I got nothing.

Re:Points of interest

[kirun]

For example, this

Note the post asks "...make me understand why it's wrong to sue people who are stealing from you..."

Three of the four answers are based around the semantic point it isn't called stealing. Although the first of these ties this to the "it isn't really a loss" argument, tying it to the semantic argument weakens it. Simply stating "they wouldn't have made the sales anyway, so the fines do not reflect the effect" would have said what I think the poster meant, just much more clearly.

Note especially the fourth:

" Because they aren't stealing. They're infringing on the artists copyright."

In other words, it's not stealing, therefore it's OK.

Re:Points of interest

[black mariah]

It don't work that way, son.

Bullshit. Don't even try to bring up that fucking retarded "So nine women should make a baby in a month!" argument. There are NO absolutes, EVER. You can not say with complete certainty that hiring more people won't make the job go faster. If that were true, we'd still be stuck in the days of one guy being responsible for an entire game. After all, more people won't make things go faster, will it?

Re:Points of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

What Mitnick - definitely a thief is there ever was one - did or did not do, or was or was not charged with, is immaterial. You know how the U.S. legal system works - prosecutors and defendants sit down and horse-trade. Both parties have some idea of the odds and decide to bet on winning or losing in court depending on the stakes. Unless of course one party is obviously in a position of power, and then there is either a dismissal or a throw-the-fucking-book-at-him exercise.

You're still wrong, and your desparation is beginning to show. Couldn't you argue without getting all flustered? Oh well.

Re:Points of interest

[Minna Kirai]

For example, this

Random posts are not the same as an official legal announcement. If someone says it in published advertising, or as part of a legal defense (in one of the thousands of P2P trader lawsuits), let me know.

" Because they aren't stealing. They're infringing on the artists copyright."
In other words, it's not stealing, therefore it's OK.

You just twisted that quote far beyond it's actual (tiny) content.

The meaning was not ("Not stealing" -> "OK"). It was ("Not stealing" -> "Not as bad as stealing").

Many things are not stealing: kidnapping, rape, and murder for example. But they're still not OK. They're in fact worse than theft.

The RIAA, by conflating copyright infringement with theft, attempts to convince us that it's just as bad. It's bad, but not as bad.

The legal system works best when the punishment fits the crime. Casual copyright infringment is not as serious as theft, and should be treated less harshly. We have misdemeanors for a reason.
("Piracy" is actually much less damaging to society than driving your car over the speed limit, and that's just a $100 ticket.)

Well.

[Inoshiro]

Give us a new word to use which contains the concept that people are deprived of a copy of their work, which is indeed a fruit of their mental powers. We don't have such a word yet in the English language. Until one is made up, theft will still be used when dealing with copyright crimes because we lack the language to describe the actions.

If you want to change the usage, come up with a new word.

Re:Points of interest

[Minna Kirai]

You know how the U.S. legal system works - prosecutors and defendants sit down and horse-trade.

Yes I do, but apparently you don't. First they charge him with EVERYTHING. Then later they drop some of the charges in exchange for pleas on others. But they never even tried to charge him with theft.

Couldn't you argue without getting all flustered?

I can and did, in several other responses to this thread. I became frustrated, however, because as an AC you're able to go on baselessly attacking me without acknowledging the conclusive replies I've already posted.

All your arguments have come down to your own say-so, without recourse to any authoritative definition.

There's something odd about this.

[Phanatic1a]

Normally when the FBI or other agency busts a piracy ring, they're proud as hell about it. They talk about how many people they arrested, in however many countries they made the arrests, how many dollars in stolen software the pirates were responsible for, and so on, and so forth. Even when the FBI went after Skylarov at Adobe's request, the FBI was very proud of what they did, bringing such an eeeeeevul pirate to justice.

In this case, it's Valve, the company that did something very stupid that allowed their code to get stolen, and not an actual law-enforcement agency, that's releasing all the vague details of the arrests, whereas all the FBI has to say is that "Yes, we made some arrests." No details on who, or where.

That's very unusual. What's up with that?

Re:Points of interest

[Xugumad]

Would you care to elaborate on what the network guys should have done? None of the articles I can find have much detail, but it would seem that if they can keylog passwords, the network's going to be pretty much an open book.

actually

[laard]

I think you mean HL1 was on a modified quake 2 engine... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Life

Re:actually

[YodaToad]

Actually, I really think they meant HL1 was based on a highly modified quake 1 engine, just like they said. The site you link to even says Quake, not quake 2.
Valve added a ton of stuff on the q1 engine, such as 16 and 24 bit rendering and mmx support as well as a skeletal animation system.
If you want more info, check out http://www.planethalflife.com/half-life/guide/over view.shtm

Re:actually

[laard]

oops... guess I misread that, oh well my mistake

Re:actually

[Bloodshedder]

heh...actually, it was based on a heavily modified Quake engine, but used a little bit of code from the Quake 2 engine. A lot of the improvements that Valve introduced paralleled the improvements id made for Quake 2, but they were made independently.

Re:actually

[Zathrus]

It was Quake, not Q2, as you've already learned. It did, however, include the Q2 network code and various other bits and pieces, as well as a ton of stuff that Valve themselves created.

I distinctly remembering picking up HL when it came out and being rather royally pissed at the crappy network code. It still had bugs in it that had been fixed in the Q2 engine months prior (one thing I recall is elevators being jumpy). I must've been one of the few people who sent HL back to Sierra (Valve's distributor at the time) for a refund.

Re:Points of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

3. A possible sign that Valve should hire more people so they can release it sooner.

Yeah, and now i'm gonna make 9 woman pregnant tonight so i will get my kid in a single month!

The Phatbot-Half Life 2 Story...

[naimitsu]

was even featured on a site called Slashdot

Re:Points of interest

[Minna Kirai]

After all, more people won't make things go faster, will it?

Go tell it to Fred.

Re: Rar, Rar, You Dirty Theif!

[jesdynf]

Anything taken, copied, downloaded and such without the owners permission is taking something you have no right to.

Their right to it is based on constitutional law that balances their rights and mine.

This balance has been violated. This is wrong. I therefore treat it as I do any other bad law -- it affects me only so far as I can be punished for it. You want to talk /morals/ and "theft", you go fucking fix your law first.

This isn't rocket science.

Not that this has anything to do with the original topic, which is under any reasonable definition theft.

Re:Points of interest

[oliphaunt]

3. A possible sign that Valve should hire more people so they can release it sooner.

I bet Fred Brooks would have something to say about that. Oh wait, he wrote a book about it.

The last company that I worked for was behind on a project, and they started hiring people to catch up. They went out of business 4 months later becuase they couldn't make payroll.

sometimes hiring more people isn't the answer.

Re:Points of interest

[Mechanik]

5. Fire the retarded programmer that lets sniffers get installed on his PC

Well given that it was Gabe Newell's PC that was compromised, and given that Gabe Newell is the CEO, I think the chances of him firing himself are fairly small...

Then again, it would be the perfect excuse to buy them another year of development time...


Mechanik

Re:Points of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

Take your own advice

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=steal

1. To take (the property of another) without right or permission.
2. To get or effect surreptitiously or artfully: steal a kiss; stole the ball from an opponent.
3. To move, carry, or place surreptitiously.
4. To draw attention unexpectedly in (an entertainment), especially by being the outstanding performer: The magician's assistant stole the show with her comic antics.
5. Baseball. To advance safely to (another base) during the delivery of a pitch, without the aid of a base hit, walk, passed ball, or wild pitch.

Please note that in order to steal you need to deprive anyone of anything. Perhaps linguistically they didn't commit theft but they certainly did steal. Don't look at me. I don't make languages. I just use them as they were built.

Re:Points of interest

[stubear]

"The other item was freely released into the Public Domain for the consumption of all (with some limits on who may copy and why for a limited period of time)."

Then it wouldn't have been released into the Public Domain, it woudl have been simply released to the public at large to use under the terms of current copyright law.

"This information that is easily and widely available and broadcast freely numerous times during the day in hundreds of locations and legally coppied thousands of times a day has a copy made from a widely available release in a manner inconsistent with the limits on copies made by others than the one the released it to the Public Domain."

So when Valve ships Half-Life 2 it'll be OK to steal it? Thanks for the clarification, moron.

Source code theft and Half-Life 2 being late

[Gabe L. Newell]

One point worth clearing up is that the break-in and release of the source code is NOT why we didn't make the original September 30, 2003 release date, nor is it responsible for the fact that we haven't shipped yet. There were some significant costs associated with the break-in (not the least of which was the fact that everybody here was completely freaked-out and bummed), but the main reason we haven't shipped yet is that we have more work to do than we thought and it has taken longer to do than we thought. Gabe gaben@valvesoftware.com

Re:Source code theft and Half-Life 2 being late

[jr87]

Thanks for clearing that up Gabe. Quite a few people (including myself) felt that the break-in was a bad excuse for delaying the game. I post to hopefully get more attention to your post

anyway if I were you I would still buckle down b/c the linux /.ers are going to be flaming soon me thinks

Re:Source code theft and Half-Life 2 being late

[rallen911]

I am just as bummed about HL2 being late as anyone, but what I don't get is why so many people are ATTACKING the developers. They are making a game to sell. Don't you think they want to release it as soon as possible? They announced a release date last summer. It didn't happen. GET OVER IT!!! They don't owe anybody anything except a good product when it ships. If people don't buy it, because they have lost interest, fine. Valve doesn't make as much money, and probably takes steps to prevent this type of thing in the future. My guess is everyone who is bitching about it will buy the game, and be totally blown away. Do you think they will eat a little crow when the time comes? NOPE. They will just be bitching about the next thing.

Re:Source code theft and Half-Life 2 being late

[Anonymous Coward]

/me doubts if you are realy who you claim to be.
This seems to be your only post... ever! And you have a fairly new number.

Re:Source code theft and Half-Life 2 being late

[jamesangel]

Almost as if he spends his time running a software company rather than posting on /., and registered just so he could post this rebuttal.

Re:Source code theft and Half-Life 2 being late

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should get more security focused and you wouldn't have these problems....dumbass.

Re:Source code theft and Half-Life 2 being late

[Flingles]

As I remember the comic goes something like this-
"Hey I saw Gabe Newell up in first class!"
"Really? What was he doing?
"Not making Half life 2!"

Re:Points of interest

[zsau]

I don't necessarily agree with what I'm saying, however:

People who 'steal' music are taking something that was already released of a friend or something. Most music stealers are allowed to get the music if only they pay for it. The only thing they're doing that might be objectionable is copying the data.

The people who 'stole' HL2's code breached Valve's security and trespassed to get it. These people weren't allowed to get access to the source code. Also, Valve has apparently lost something inasmuch as they've had to change the code because they couldn't right it properly in the first place or something... In addition to copying the data, they've trespassed and done a few other things that make the word 'steal' slightly more appropriate to the situation.

Mostly, though, I think it's just too many people here like computer games but hate the RIAA. Personally, I don't give a damn about the former and would much rather see the source code out there...

Re:Points of interest

[MrScience]

What moron allows an email to install a keyboard sniffer on his computer. Anti-virus and patches take care of a lot of that. Not to mention the network guys should have caught that one quick.

What?? A/V patches wouldn't do anything if it was custom written. And how the heck are network admins going to catch a few tiny URL posts (assuming the logger sent packets via port 8000) in all the traffic a big corporation generates.

I mean, seriously... the moron may not even have had a good email client that let him know something was running-- and that is ignoring the various overflow bugs that could have been exploited.

Re:Points of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

So hang on a second. When Half Life 2 is released and I pay money for it, if I then _share_ my copy of the CD with a friend, is that then stealing? Yes? No? If it were a music CD and not a software CD would it be any different?

So, letting a friend copy a music CD is ok, but we're cool that copying a software CD is theft.

Funny how there's a double-standard there. Geeks get the software thing but view music differently.

Theft is theft kiddies. Unless the copyright owner authorizes you to copy their work, you don't have the right. You've payed for the rights to play the CD. You're free to not buy it at all. It's your choice. But if you do buy it, you should honor the contract and not copy it or let others copy it.

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[Gervaze]

I would prefer this as well - however, I don't think it's very realistic. Valve wants to make money, and a good way to make money is to sell both the content AND the engine. They sell the game and license the engine to other developers. From what I hear, the cost to license hot new engines is astronomical; Valve has no reason to turn that revenue down.

Can they also find out who really killed Kennedy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can they also find out who really killed Kennedy? That would be nice.

Re:Points of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

Your project for the day: learn about trolls.

Re:Points of interest

[damiam]

/.ers don't like calling copyright infringement "theft" in either case. The main difference, which probably leads to the use of the term "theft" here but not in piracy articles, is that this involves hacking and unauthorized access to a computer system, as well as the actual leak. Copying songs isn't criminal (IANAL, but IIRC copyright is a civil matter), but this most certainly is. That doesn't justify talking about it as "theft", though.

Re:Points of interest

[keyshawn632]

Good point, Mike.
The difference between 'stealing' of the valve code and mp3's on p2p is that the Valve code was not intently released to the public for consumption [game-playing].
MP3's, on the otherhand, [almost all] have been released to the public by the artist and available for listening/consumption.

Re:Points of interest

[secolactico]

But a crime is only theft if something of value is removed. The crook must take it with him. If the object was left behind in the victim's possession, then it wasn't stolen and there is no theft.

I know I'm splitting hairs here, but it was, at least, corporate espionage.

Something of value was removed: the secrecy of the code, wich has (had?) a comercial value to the company.

Besides that, there's also the breaking and entering a system to wich they had no right.

Points of interest part 2

[oliverthered]

Well, it's a good job I haven't been able to get hold of the code for linux, especially those pre-relase versions and dodgy inhouse patches.

Someone stole a hair from my head the other day, and that joke I told in the pub, now everyones ripping it off..

I was it first, no I did, well i've looked at it longer than you have...

Jesus when will these kids grow up.

Re:Points of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

"How is it different?

Valve still has the code, the music companies still have their audio.

How on earth is there a distinction? Because one needed another illegal means to get the files, while other it just downloading?

If you call one theft, you have to call the other theft."

Some of the story behind the leak and the arrests

[__aailob1448]

About the leak: some german guy (the same guy who created phatbot, let's call him Hans) hacked into Valve computers. Hans then proceeded to brag about it and give some information about it to some friend of his (let's call him randomdude) over an IRC server operated by some members from a group I will call Entity. Members of entity intercepted the conversation and used the info in it to plant their own trojans on valve's computers, they then proceeded to leak the source and maybe some other stuff. Hans decided that he wouldn't let them have the credit for this and proceeded to release other stuff. Fast forward a few months. Hand emails Gabe and explains that he never meant to leak anything, that he just wanted to take a look at how a game was developped and that he was an amateur game developper himself as well as an expert on network security. He's a big fan of valve, blah blah blah. He explains how he broke into valve's computers and implies that he would like to get a job at valve as a network security asministrator. Follows a long exchange of emails in which he tells them about vulnerabilities still existing in their network and reveals he is german. He then agrees to a phone interview as Valve's people bait him into thinking they are considering hiring him and ends up arrested. I read most of the emails he exchanged with Valve before the arrest and Hans pretty much threw prudence and common sense out the window when dealing with valve. He must be kicking himself now.

Fucking rediculous

[hypergreatthing]

The idiots at valve had their code shared with the rest of the world, defrauded investors and you fanboys are cheering an arrest of someone who might be responsible for taking the code? They deserved it.

Re:Points of interest

[fatboyslack]

Man, if someone crept into my house and took photos of *me* naked, that would be punishment enough.

Re:Points of interest

[disntrstd]

Well, a word is just a word. If we are going to be arguing ethics we should probably stay clear of definitions. Definitions are absolute. The real question: Is it ethical to duplicate another persons work? Under what circumstances? Should it be an absolute rule? Say I am a poor kid, is it ok if I duplicate software that is too expensive for me to afford? Lets say I am fourteen and my parents make 40k a year and I want to use Photoshop. Should wealthier kids have to work less to get the same product just because they are born that way? Should I be be excluded from certain activities because of my wealth? If I could not afford it and have other priorities, should I be considered a criminal? If life isn't fair, should I care whether or not I hurt the wealthier people? Odds are they are deprieving me more than I am deprieving them. Now, take for instance another scenario. I have the money to purchase an electronic copy of the good. The benefit of this product to me definitely outweighs the cost of purchase. Then, is it unethical for me to download it? I would say yes. Using somebodies work and not contributing as much as you have benefited from it is wrong. Whether or not something is the law is irrelevant in my opinion. Laws are made by the rich and for the rich. I will always ask myself, is this law in place for my own good? Who does this law benefit? We are always told not to steal, but frankly, what is stealing is very subjective. To me, owning lots of capital in the end deprieves the community and makes life much more difficult for the less fortunate (stealing from the community). We were not meant to live in a world where every day we work from 9-5 in a mundane job to survive. The protestant beliefs are rediculous and utter bullshit. 10$ in the hands of a poor man goes a much longer way than in the hands of a rich. You can go ahead and ccept the bootraps mentality; work your ass off in a 9-5 job and feel like shit every day just to have the lifestyle of some rich douchebag child. If the bootsraps mentality was applicable to everyone, we wouldn't have Bush in office. These are all just lies we are told so we can serve our rich overlords. In the end, the only person who gives a rats ass about my interests is me. To that extent, what benefits the community and makes the world a better place is what is ethical IMHO. Just because "stealing" is associated with bad does not mean it is. It's subjective and has to be placed within a context.

GABE NEWELL: Hey Fat Wad.

[Nikkodemus]

No game, yet you still get entertained, remember this classic newsgroup 'debate' :).

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8 &threadm=blnl8n%24h1i%2412%40kermit.esat.net&rnum= 1&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Dgabe%2Bnewell%2Bhey%2Bfatso%2 Bcancer%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26selm%3Dbl nl8n%2524h1i%252412%2540kermit.esat.net%26rnum%3D1

From: Your Slim Self (lessbutterf@tso.com)
Subject: I hope Gabe Newell gets CANCER
Newsgroups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati
Date: 2003-10-04 14:24:37 PST

Hey fat wad, I hope you get cancer, it'll tune your ' half-life ' aerial to what's important in life, instead of jacking off to a couple of thousand polygons floating around the screen. Having to listen to your messianic ramblings about a fucking computer game for the last year or so, from you and your company.. Christ, the joy of hearing that the source code had been compromised 'cause lardo was ' Freddy Fingered ' using Outlook, sweet.. Then using ' Community ' schmaltz to try and land a stool pigeon for your own stupidity.. Valve owes a lot more to the mod community than the community owes to Valve, you got lucky bitches.. One last FUCK YOU, 3 chins, c'est la vie. A fan.



Todd Howard wrote:
> Obviously written by someone who couldn't get off the tram at the beginning of Half Life .....psst.....you have to duck
> :)
> TH


Shove that smiley up your mothers fuck hole.. and if she's dead and buried, buy a shovel, lard ass. Get some exercise. Valve are treating potential customers like a joke, community, hah, THE BOTTOM LINE, the white lines on the scratched mirror.. cutting blade at the ready.

Oh look, whitey's bought a $600 graphics card to play a game, so many white 30 somethings reduced to pale mutton zombies.
This ' games 'industry gets shallower by the day.
From: Your Slim Self (lessbutterf@tso.com)

Re:Points of interest

[Trejkaz]

Replace 'retarded programmer' with 'retarded managing director' and you're on the mark.

The level of virus scanning is irrelevant (I have none at home, and never get infected.) The idiot still ran the file. :-)

Or even

[Trejkaz]

Or in fact, anyone at all who has heard the expression, "too many cooks spoil the broth."

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[88NoSoup4U88]

Nitpick : Afaik, and by the looks of it, BF1942 is not a Q3-engined game.

Re:Points of interest

[lavaface]

This isn't a proper analogy. Stealing the source to the game is more like stealing the master tapes for a music track. A closer comparison for downloading an mp3 (a finished product) would be downloading the game (a finished product.) The fact that the source code included copy protection measures only compounds the problem.

Copying or theft?

[Andy Smith]

I swear this isn't flamebait!

How come in Slashdot discussions about music/film piracy, we get hundreds of posts from people arguing that piracy isn't theft, it's "sharing". But in this thread, everyone's talking about how the source code was "stolen".

Re:Copying or theft?

[m1chael]

It really isn't being stolen because you still have it. It should be considered copyright infringement.

Re:Copying or theft?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hold on. Are you asking the difference between distributing source code and binary data? You know, pirates have been distributing binary application data for a *lot* longer than binary music data. This is source code. Do you really need an explanation of the difference? If Valve doesn't come after these guys, someone can take their code and essentially pull it into their own tree without consequence. In musical terms, it's like stealing lymerics or parts of other artist's music and putting it into their own... without consequence. This is a *lot* more obvious of an infringement in my eyes.

Re:Points of interest

[sumdumass]

actually, And once again i will post this plea for someone to show me wrong, downloading music is in no way violating the curent law as it is writen. The violations are the ones who share it. If you goto a store and buy a cd that was stolen from a warehouse, you as the consumer can't be held for it. Notice I said a store and not you friend down the street. P2P networks often offer files to be downloaded without cost and one of the marketing themes for them was to let companies distribute files without having large bandwidth bills.

U.S copy right law only covers the copying and distibuting of it. RIAA and MPAA have not went after users downloading and not sharing. ALL_OF_THIER_LAWSUITES have been about people sharing the files not downloading them. Technicaly you know it isn't right, as so do many others, but it is a loophole currently in the system (and thier working to close it).

So until it is theft it isn't stealing. thats a big difference unless you the one sharing and then you stealing.

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[Anonymous Coward]

More than half their money will be made from selling the engine. Game sales is not the driving factor but it does help them break even. The same thing goes for ID software and Epic (Unreal Tournament).

Engine sales and royalities is where it's at.

Everyone likes steam?

[emarkp]

Maybe because people who found it too much of a pain stopped playing HL games. I've been playing Halo instead. I'm sure I'll be interested again when HL2 is finally released, but steam was such a steaming pile when it was released, everyone knew that HL2 wasn't going to ship on time--it would have imploded.

Re:Everyone likes steam?

[junkgrep]

I agree it was pretty messed up when it came out: they never should have said that it had left beta (especially given that the beta was more stable). But now that there's plenty of capacity and a better trickle system, it's working pretty darn nice. Condition Zero and Codename Gordon both pre-loaded and released without any major hitches (and CZ featured almost 2G of content). The next version should have optional upload contribution feature as well as more features for managing bandwidth usage courtesy of BT's creator, which will help even more.

Umm... just on the legal side.

[Kjella]

Someone either broke physically into their building, broke electronically into their servers, or illegally duplicated a legal copy (which is defined by law as theft)

1) There was never any legal copy. There was one original held by Valve, and lots of illegal copies made.
2) Even though the result of stealing a CD and pirating a CD is pretty much the same (less the cost of packaging), they go under different laws.

Pirating is illegal. Stealing is illegal. That does not imply that pirating is stealing. This reminds me of a play by Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754): "A stone can not fly. 'Mor Nille' can not fly. Thus, 'Mor Nille' is a stone."

IP is a nonsense concept, because it doesn't say if it's copyright, patent, trademark or otherwise. Likewise IP theft has no meaning in any legal sense, it's a buzzword for the media. It's trying to ascribe attributes to copyright violations that simply aren't real.

Kjella

Re:Umm... just on the legal side.

[orasio]

Plus, pirating is robbery on the high seas.
Ask RMS :)

Copyright Infringement, unauthorized copying would be better, because when you speak of pirates you mean that someone strong is bulling someone out of their stuff, and that would not describe mp3 leechers with respect to record companies, but generally record companies with respect to artists and other record companies, and people who installed KAzaa.

Re:Umm... just on the legal side.

[Anonymous Coward]

Intellectual property is the right to exploit the work that the creators of a work, or their employers have done. Piracy takes this right from them by taking copys of their work beyond their control. Copyright violation IS IP theft.

Re:Points of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

"Stealing the source to the game is more like stealing the master tapes for a music track"

For the love of god, no it isn't. If you steal the master tapes then the music company would no longer have the tapes. Why is this so hard for people to understand? The HL2 source code was copied over a network, it wasn't stolen because Valve still have a copy too.

Re:Points of interest

[nmg196]

> 3. A possible sign that Valve should hire more people so they can
> release it sooner.

Err, clearly you're not a software developer if think it works like that...

> 4. What moron allows an email to install a keyboard sniffer on his computer. > Anti-virus and patches take care of a lot of that.

Anti-virus only work for viruses that are already in the definition files. Virues only get into the definition files after a few people have sent the virus to the AV labs. ie a *LOT* of people get a virus before it's in their definitions - no matter how good they are at keeping their definitions up to date.

I would expect that if a true hacker really wanted the source, they would write their *own* keyboard logger/trojan and release it ONLY to Valve. That way - no anti-virus program could possibly know it's a virus.

> Not to mention the network guys should have caught that one quick.

Yeah - they could firewall out e-mail. Great solution.

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[theanorak]

Don't forget that a massive part of Valve's revenue model (much like ID's, and Epic's) is the licensing of their game engine to 3rd party developers.

How many games are based on (perhaps modified) versions of the quake engines? On the Unreal engine? There's already one announced game based on the Source (HL2) engine - can't remember what it is right now but read about it in Edge magazine (UK) last week.

I don't know exactly how Valve's licensing model works, but I'd guess there's a fee for using the engine in a commercial product, and probably a royalty for each copy of the product sold. Open-sourcing the engine makes them utterly reliant on sales of HL2. Not an ideal situation for a business.

Re:Points of interest

[Lord_Dweomer]

I download music, I don't try to justify it by that argument, I know it is illegal. However, this is exactly why the difference between theft and copyright infringement are so important.

You see, this is a LEGAL matter, and legal matters use terms in different ways that carry very different meanings. In legal terms, theft is a criminal offence while copyright infringement is a civil one.

I don't DON'T want someone calling me a thief because legally, they would be wrong, and when it comes down to it, its a legal argument.

Re:Points of interest

[robnauta]

So hang on a second. When Half Life 2 is released and I pay money for it, if I then _share_ my copy of the CD with a friend, is that then stealing? Yes? No? If it were a music CD and not a software CD would it be any different?

So, letting a friend copy a music CD is ok, but we're cool that copying a software CD is theft.

Funny how there's a double-standard there. Geeks get the software thing but view music differently.

Yes that double standard is the license. It's ok to lend a music CD or a game CD to a friend. He may make a copy of it (at least in the Netherlands, if you have the original you may make a copy even if it's someone elses or from the library).

But he can't install the game from the CD copy, that would be an unlicenced and illegal copy on his harddrive.

Also you have the freedom to make a copy, not the right to make a copy. Those things are different. If you have a right, a company cannot stop you or take away your rights. A freedom means that if you can copy it, you can, but if you cannot (because your equipment or software is inadequate), they you're shit out of luck.

Copyright doesn't really protect against making a copy, it's meant to protect authors against unauthorized publications or people claiming they wrote your work.

Wishing for others

[The MESMERIC]

Strange why am I the only one who doesn't like Half-Life?
Again taste is a personal thing.
I guess the reason I don't like the game it's because the atmosphere rings so very true, I get too scared ... scary-cat me :)

But nice to know we have visits from Valve here like "Gabe" and on this opportunity -
not really wishing for myself but for others please attend to your fans!.

Unfortunately the arresting detective...

[Ingolfke]

was unavailable for comment b/c he was too busy playing Half Life 2.

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[drunkennewfiemidget]

After reading all these comments, the only thought that continually comes to mind for me, "WTF is the point in making an auto-shooter?" Isn't the point of the game to test your skill or to have fun TRYING to blow your friends away? ... I guess I just can't see myself spending the time writing software that would serve no useful purpose as far as I'm concerned.

Re:Points of interest

[musicon]

Working in the support group for programmers at my company, I would like to point out that many (most?) of the programmers intentionally disable anti-virus software because they say it slows down their compiles (we've benchmarked a total of 1-2% slowdown, which is negligible, but they still complain). Now, they're directly in violation of the company security policy, are a constant source of problems for my group, but the company tends to look the other way most of the time because the programmers are the ones creating revenue.

"RIDICULOUS" GODDAMMIT

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time I see someone type "rediculous", a part of me dies. R i diculous! As in, "worthy of ridicule"! Note the "I"! It's important!

Re:Points of interest

[hawkbug]

No, that's not what I'm saying at all - you obviously missed my point. I said it's stealing because somebody without permission gained access to the machine in question, and stole the code. He didn't give it to anybody. If he had, it wouldn't have been stealing. Period. End of story. As far as "sharing" music goes, which I didn't even touch on in my post, yet you choose to accuse me of backing music pirates - but seriously, if I let a friend have CD, that's perfectly legal - and anybody who says it isn't doesn't know shit about copyright law, or lack there of.

and they did...

[bednigo]

Amazingly enough the slashdot story was the second one listed. I actually got to this story by a link from google news and then proceeded to take the link back to google news. Don't you just love circular links

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[Anomalyst]

>people who have hacked the engine code to give them an autopilot shooter? Indeed, take a look at the issues that cropped up with BZflag on SourceForge
(http://bzflag.sourceforge.net)
cheat descriptions
http://bzflag.sourceforge.net/wiki/KnownCheats
http://bzflag.sourceforge.net/wiki/SubtleCheats .

Re:Points of interest

[sindarin2001]

I can't tell if you are serious or joking, but I'll assume the first. You obviously have done nothing but listen to music. It takes a whole lot of talent to produce quality music (and I will concur that a lot of what comes out of the recording companies is total crap). First you have to be able to play good music, that's an art in and of itself. Then you have to make good music (requiring creativity, especially in regards to things like effects, timings, and such). There is the recording phase, also requiring a delicate knowledge of sound and creativity. There's the mixing (ask any sound engineer if mixing is an art) to pull out parts to make it sound the best for achieving a certain effect. You can hardly say it takes no talent to produce music.

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[Anonymous Coward]

They already have licensed the Engine. I'm not a FPS player, but I am anxiously awaiting a Vampire game (from Troika, IIRC) that uses a modified HalfLife 2 Engine. But said Vampire game (which was supposed to ship this Spring at latest, to tie in with other mega-marketing schemes) hasn't appeared. Why? Current rumor in my parts says that the license dictates "You can't ship your product before Valve ships Half Life 2."

Free The Vampires! Ship Half Life 2!

"other sources"?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm sure there will be the standard wild speculation, claims from various people that they know someone who was arrested, etc."

You know, it's funny that you mention it. I'm friends with this guy who says he met this dude on IRC who was a subcontractor for the FBI's janitorial service. What HE said was that the halflife code was stolen by Al-Quaeda.

Which is interesting because if you look at how the Bush II administration has been cozy with Bill Gates it's not hard to see that the whole Patriot Act has been an excuse to invade foreign countries on the pretext of "stopping terrorism" only to send the US Army to search every computer in Afganistan and Iraq for the stolen Windows source code!

Al-Queaheada (who are a puppet organization controlled by ... ?) have obviously stolen both the windows AND the halflife 2 code in a mad attempt to create hybrid software. Why? Because the vehicle code in HL2 reacts exactly like the airplanes COUNTLESS Al-Qtfydfhgsguya operatives are TRAINED to use. Saddam Hussein is beside himself waiting for Al-QYFQtyqfgyqgyfTQYQTYR TERRORISTS to pilot warthogs at full throttle into emm386!

You may think that the motive for this whole operation is 'terrorism', and that Al-WQGQIUGFIEUYG is full of sado-masochistic madmen. But you're only half right. The terrorists are obviously insane (or under mind control from some THING we have only thus far glimpsed?!) - but rolling back American Cultural Imperialism (mind control of our own!) is hardly the motive! Quite the opposite!

AL-WF&Frfyc%^$345LA seek instead to center the HL2 vehicular attacks on emm386 on ISRAEL. It's almost as if they are trying to send a message. A message - through the Judaistic Quaballah to the jews in WASHINGTON DC. A message to tell senator DISNEY to BACK OFF! Al-FHWYEG trying to hold back the tide of western culture? Nay! They are trying to hurry it along by intimidating the US into repealing it's IP laws! That's right! The TERRORISTS want their NAPSTER and KAZAA!

Because these crazed lunatics want to analyze American Pop Culture to distill it's hypnotic effect on the human mind, and report it back to the shadowy figure(s) who pull their strings! AL-WFIUGFWUYFGA wants to download DAVID HASSELHOFF and JERRY LEWIS and MTV and NATALIE PORTMANN and use them to allow - who? aliens? bigfoot? Art Bell? - to CONTROL OUR MINDS!!!!!!!

You want PROOF?! HA! Ask the Queen Hive Mind Herself - Natalie Portman! When questioned about it by an informed individual standing off to the side at her entrance to the OSCARS she has been RECORDED ON VIDEO what can CLEARLY be lip-read as:
"The whole thing stinks of hot grits."

That. Is. My. Proof. Oh yeah. It's definitely time to change my identity and move to Argentina. Yer damn right I post this anon.

MOD PARENT DOWN! JUST PLAIN WRONG!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have yet to even hear someone remotely reputable claim to have compiled and run even a portion of either of these sources.

the source for HL2 has already been compiled and released on all major warez channels. that happened quite some time ago. just because it wasn't on C|Net, doesn't mean it didn't happen.

in fact, there are 3 torrents for it on suprnova right now. (although one's a dupe, of a dupe, based off the filename)

916 downloads
dupe of a dupe, but with 919 downloads
same tracker as previous

for, uh, educational purposes only. ;)

It was the boss who let them in...

[Anonymous Coward]

or so I heard.

My recollection is the a custom-for-this-hack virus (and therefor not detectable by AV sodtware)was written and one of the bosses was culpable in letting it get installed on his system. From there they had access to the intranet, and stole the code.

s/theft/unlawful duplication

[Rogerborg]

You do not get to have it one way for the bits making up a Britney Spears mp3 and another way for the bits making up Half Life 2.

Did the intruders delete anything from Valve's system? Then it's copyright violation, not theft.

All clear now?

Re:Couldn't this (the leak)be a good thing for val

[LostCluster]

The answer to that is simple... it would be done by somebody who wants to destroy the integrity of the multiplayer environment, basically to deny the fun to all of the legit players by making it impossible for them to get anything done.

It's the same reason why kids bully others in school... just to have the fun of making somebody else miserable.

The new word is "Copyright Infringement".

[Anonymous Coward]

Re:Points of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

1-2%? I'd love to know what antivirus that is. We used Symantec and it slowed down compiles by over 50% and slowed down SourceSafe operations by over 300% (that is with AV on both server and client, with server set to scan every file - which is dumb, but unfortunately due to the setup we didn't really have control over this). Now our progs were not small but not overly large by industry averages, under 200K lines, and recompiling all on a fast system would take nearly ten minutes. A 50% slowdown makes a recompile take almost 15 minutes. That is significant. The average compile of course does not need to rebuild all files but is typically in the order of several minutes, and needs to be done dozens sometimes hundreds of times a day, so the time different with the AV running is SIGNIFICANT. I suggest you check your benchmarks again, I have never heard of an AV that only created 1-2% slowdown.

Not so.

[Anonymous Coward]

>Intelectual property is either the idea, or the works made from the idea. Technicaly it is the idea and not both.

Not so. Intellectual (speled with two L's btw) refers to some entity or "thing" which the owner has legal "rights" to in some way. The problem with the use of the term "intellectual property" is that it is too vague, not that it is invalid or does not actually refer to something which an "owner" has "rights" over. so... to summarize;

1). If an owner's intellectual property "rights" have been violated, said party can take action using the law as it is now. (not saying that is right or wrong, its just the way it is)

2). If mere ideas could be claimed using a legal procedure it would be done, other things can on the other hand be "protected" by certain laws and those are in general called "intellectual property rights" which is clearly not refering to either copyright, or patents, or some other type of thing but the totality of them combined which an owner might be entitled to protect using the law as it stands. If you don't like it, try and get the law changed. :-)

Re:Points of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

Fire the retarded programmer that lets sniffers get installed on his PC and fire the network guys that didn't stop it.

If I'm not mistaken, I believe it was actually some executive or manager that was exploited. This makes a certain amount of sense, since that's exactly the type of person who would know fuckall about computers, thus making him a prime target.

Re:Points of interest

[AK Marc]

The other item was freely released into the Public Domain for the consumption of all (with some limits on who may copy and why for a limited period of time).

Then it wouldn't have been released into the Public Domain, it woudl have been simply released to the public at large to use under the terms of current copyright law.

I think you are mistaken. Such release is releasing it into the Public Domain and claiming Copy Right for the limited time and limited scope for the period defined by copyright law.

So when Valve ships Half-Life 2 it'll be OK to steal it? Thanks for the clarification, moron.

I never said that. I guess it is easier to lie about what someone said than actually address their points. The two scenarios are different. Period. As such, up until 10 years ago, they were seen quite distinctively under law. One was a criminal act, the other was one that allowed only civil enforcement.

Of course, no amount of the truth will sway the inbred views of the "throw them all in jail for civil offenses" crowd like yourself. I guess you think that 1 mph over the speed limit should result in jail time, too.

It depends on the story.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have not read any of the replies, but I would say that it is theft because in this case the people actully broke into Valve's network and took their source code.

In most of the others stories posts there are fewer posts against piracy. Those that do speak against it usually end up modded down, and usually have a lot of replys. Most of the replys and comments that get modded up are modded by those who also don't like paying for things, and want that stuff for free. A lot of those posts are people give reasons justifying their actions, mainly using excuses to remove any guilt that they have and reinforce the idea that what they are doing isn't wrong.

If you take a look at games section, you will still get a lot of the same "sharing" and "I wasn't going to play for it anyways" claims.

Re:Points of interest

[Laetor]

You should look into the origins of the word "justice", especially the Greek and Latin origins. It will enlighten you quite a bit. You have made a tautological argument using "injustice" to mean what I consider "theft". -Laetor

Re:Points of interest

[Laetor]

You also argue in a way conducive to defensiveness, agression and antipathy. As feedback to you, I think you should know it has the effect of making others reticent to continue enlightened debate with you in a polite, respectful way. You can convey your message in a much more effective method without calling others' opinions and thoughts "absurd", not providing any indication you found their thoughts of value or interest, and using such a derogatory tone in the debate. People will be much more willing to listen to you and engage you in friendly, empassioned and convivial discussion if you use more honey and less vinegar.

Re:Points of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

You haven't been following this story that closely have you? While the network admins obviously screwed up majorly, the retarted programmer/moron you're referring to happens to be Gabe Newell, chief programmer and CEO of Valve. While Gabe must be very pissed of at himself, I suspect, he never even contemplated firing himself...

Re:Points of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

The CEO is the chief/lead programmer. He was the one who got hit. However I suspect he knows a fucking lot about computers. At least I hope so...

Not surprising maybe that he got hit tho, he would be the obvious target...