Valve Interview Helps Reveal Details Of HL2 Code Theft

Thanks to The Guardian for its article providing further details on the arrest of the Half-Life 2 code thieves, with Valve's Gabe Newell explaining: "Through conversations with this individual, [we] had convinced him to fly out to us in Seattle for a job interview. The plan was changed so German authorities would do the arrests on German soil." These facts seem to coincide with allegations that the Phatbot trojan writer also stole the Half-Life 2 code, leading to "Axel G"'s arrest in May by German authorities following FBI tips. Although unconfirmed, one can also presume the previously mentioned smoking gun to be an "incriminating information" packed IRC log, revealing the source of the intrusion as the webservers of a wearable computing firm with links to Valve, on a machine likely housed in the same physical location as the Valve offices, explaining the hacker's comments that he gained entry via "a PC in Valve's net, that wasnt directly controlled by Valve."

Comments

Oops. Prematurely hit the "submit" button

[mbessey]

Like I was saying...

Downloading music from Zazaa while demonizing somebody else for stealing source-code from Valve is intensely hypocritical. So I don't do that (download music off the Net).

Anybody who makes their living off of creative work (art, programming, music, science) will, if they think about for a minute, realize that illegal file-swapping represents a real threat to their financial well-being.

Having said that, I expect the vast majority of Slashdot readers are not actually working programmers, despite the "New for Nerds" tagline of the website. Based on the comments you'll often see attached to discussions on Slashdot, the majority of these comment authors are students, or just folks that like to play with their computers as a hobby. Having never had a financial interest in a creative work, they're probably not as aware of the contradictory nature of their positions.

Or they're just jerks...

-Mark