Half-Life 2 Release Date Broken

NextWish writes "Despite being clearly marked, numerous stores have begun selling HL2. This guy even got a phone call from EB telling him to pickup his pre-order, so he did what any one would do - He picked it up. (Pic #1 / Pic #2)" Update: 11/12 19:30 GMT by Z : Thanks to the anonymous reader who sent us a link to The Inquirer story discussing Valve's savvy regarding cracked or advance copies.

Comments

That's great...

[Japong]

... but with out Steam registration you're not going to get very far. He can't play single player, multiplayer, or anything else but look at the box and manual. You're waiting until the 16th, get used to it.

VALVe Responds, EBGame's employee's fired.

[NextWish]

VALVe Responds http://img120.exs.cx/img120/4149/hl2receipt.jpg

Hello, We noticed that you just registered a Half-Life 2 key. Where did you come across a copy of the game? You're not in trouble or anything, but you're registered pretty early, and the game isn't activated just yet. Thanks, Erik Johnson Valve

EBGames Employee's Fired

In an E-Mail sent to all EBGames associates, the president of EBGames has stated that the persons who broke the street date at their stores have been terminated. As well, should anyone else break the street date the employee, manager, and district manager will all be held responsible. The e-mail was sent yesterday at aprox 5:30 PM EST.

HL2 store release also broken in germany! http://premium.uploadit.org/tork64/P1010087.JPG http://premium.uploadit.org/tork64/P1010088.JPG http://premium.uploadit.org/tork64/P1010089.JPG http://premium.uploadit.org/tork64/P1010090.JPG http://premium.uploadit.org/tork64/P1010091.JPG http://premium.uploadit.org/tork64/P1010082.JPG http://premium.uploadit.org/tork64/P1010083.JPG http://premium.uploadit.org/tork64/P1010084.JPG http://premium.uploadit.org/tork64/P1010085.JPG http://premium.uploadit.org/tork64/P1010086.JPG http://premium.uploadit.org/tork64/P1010076.JPG http://premium.uploadit.org/tork64/P1010077.JPG http://premium.uploadit.org/tork64/P1010078.JPG

Other sources of information: Rage3D.
HLFallout.

Re:What's the big deal

[Chyeld]

If you want your product to be carried in the big stores, they want something in return. If you are a big store, you might be able to bully your way into releasing the product in your stores earlier than other stores. Thus, driving sales to you. However, if you go and sign such a deal, you have a much harder time getting into the other stores, since obviously they can't release it earlier and since the people who really want the product will have gotten it from the one that released it early.

As a result, most of the time everyone has the same release date. Not only does this keep the smaller stores from just saying 'forget it, we won't be able to sell any' and still give the big stores a date to promote.

The reason these things are shipped so early, is that the date needs to be far enough ahead of the ship date to help clear up any shipping screwups. Otherwise, if something goes wrong and one store is left out on release date, they aren't going to be as willing to carry your games in the future.

The store agree to this for the same reason, if you don't agree to stick to the release date, then the product won't be shipped to you till the last minute. If something happens then, you've missed your best selling opportunity and probably lost a few customers to the stores that were carrying it.

This sort of scheme is used for pretty much any product that has a 'shelf-life' in terms of demand. You aren't going to ever see any release day parties for the newest version of the Swifter Jet Dry Rhomba Auto Mop, because it'll still be selling (or not) until the end of it's product life. But things like music, movies, games, and even (to a limited extent) books, all are considered to sell most of what they are going to sell in a short period right after they come out.