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Half Life 2 Available, Delays Not Valve's Fault
Evil Avatar has the word that even Best Buy is selling Half-Life 2 boxes at this point. If you're planning on picking this one up it should be available pretty much anywhere. Voodoo Extreme has news from Steam that in no uncertain terms are the delays in opening the game to customers their fault. From the article: "This is not Valve's choice. Vivendi is insisting that the game has not yet been released, and has threatened that Valve would be in violation of its contract if we activate the Half-Life 2 Steam authentication servers at this time."
It appears that Vivendi was somewhat suprised by the introduction of Steam in the first place, since they likely expected the game they were publishing to be like nearly every other game, where it's goes through just the normal retail chain. Whether Valve was legally within their rights due to whatever contract is something I don't know, but it seems like at the very least there was a misunderstanding, though I have some feeling there was some sneakiness on Valve's part. Now, I have no love for Vivendi, with most game contracts leading to relatively little of the revenues going back to the developers themselves. However... something was awry.
Now, in terms of where we are now with Vivendi supposedly not allowing Valve to authenticate the game... Vivendi would be sacrificing a chunk of their profits if they were to allow people to authenticate, including those with the steam version, since there are many potential boxed versions that would instead be sold online since the hardcore players will want the game as soon as possible. As well, they would be neglecting any deals they have with their distributors on the release date. Now... one thing Valve could possibly offer is the ability to only authenticate those boxed copies that somehow got into the market early. Valve is unlikely to want to do this though, since it would:
a) Require last minute programming of Steam.
b) Cause people to avoid ordering the Steam version in the hopes of finding an early release of the box.
All in all, I hope the fanboys can put their torches and pitchforks away and just wait another few days. It's really not that long!
So VU came up with a scheme to protect a release date. Good for them. I don't have time to get pre-release copies and hack crap anyway. I wouldn't have a life If I spent my time worrying about every game I ever loved. Time flies when you're pushin' 30 and trying to balance coding, family, friends, games, drinkin', smokin' etc. etc. Games come when they come. I'll play. I'll rake the leaves up in the fall. I'll get my drivers license renewed. Thanks Valve.