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Half-Life 2 Going Gold on Monday? [updated]

Posted by CowboyNeal on Sat Aug 28, 2004 08:46 AM
from the on-the-horizon dept.
First Person Shooters (Games) PC Games (Games) Entertainment Games
Warrior-GS writes "According to GameSpy, Gabe Newell has announced that Half-Life 2 is going gold on Monday. Numerous retail outlets have Sept. 1 or Sept. 2 as a shelf-date for the game, so a gold announcement now seems to mean those dates are fairly close to reality." Given that HL2 is already available on Steam, this doesn't sound too far-fetched. Update: 08/28 19:27 GMT by T : Kraiger writes "According to HL2 Fallout the announcement of the futuristic FPS, "Half-Life 2", going Gold is a complete hoax! According to HL2 Fallout, the announcement from Gabe Newell, a Valve Software employee, was created by someone who was able to guess the simple password of "gaben" for Gabe's forum account."
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Half-Life 2 Going Gold on Monday? [updated] 50 Comments More /

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  • Hoax (Score:5, Informative)

    by carlcmc (322350) on Saturday August 28 2004, @08:48AM (#10095715)
    As seen on the forums " UPDATE
    After a close scrutiny of Gabe Newell’s account history on the forums, we've come to the conclusion that the gold post is a fake. While we can't be 100% certain at this stage, all indicators point towards someone hacking the forum account. That said, all Gabe's previous posts on these forums are quite legitimate.

    We apologize for the confusion and will be investigating further. Theoretically, an IPB forum account should be very difficult to hack. Well, that was the theory at least. We'll keep you updated. "
    • though, how is it on preload if it isn't 'gold'?

      what exactly are they loading up from the network, good vibes & empty pr? /dev/random? datafiles?

      with their track record of 'staying on course' and making it on the deadline(and bullshitting abou the progress) it doesn't look too good either..

      • Re:Hoax (Score:5, Informative)

        by seizer (16950) on Saturday August 28 2004, @09:20AM (#10095851) Homepage
        what exactly are they loading up from the network

        All the textures, graphics, etc. That's what takes up most of the space, and most of them will have been finalized by now.

        The game engine can come along at the last minute, when they do go gold - it's probably only a few hundred megs at most.
      • Preload availability != finished. Valve has clearly explained that preload content for HL2 is comprised of things that won't change between now and the final release.

          • Re:Hoax (Score:3, Interesting)

            by EvilAlien (133134)
            Excuse me a sec, my Troll Detect-o-matic just went haywire...

            I think you have that backwards... the stuff I read suggests that ATI owners will be dancing in the streets (I get pretty decent framerates in CS:Source) while nvidia owners will be contemplating jumping from the nearest tall building. I also get pretty decent performance out of Doom 3.

            Of course people are going to rush out and buy this game! Its going to be the best thing since... er... Half-life. It'll make people forget about Doom 3 and

    • Re:Hoax (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ductormalef (260954) on Saturday August 28 2004, @09:44AM (#10095943)
      Bah!

      If Valve would just give a simple update on the release time-frame, they could avoid sending their POTENTIAL customers into fits again. They left the door wide open for a hoax like this by starting the pre-loading without any direction as to when people will be able to play. Now I am going to have a new(well it was new a year ago) graphics card AND a gigabyte of data wasting away on my PC.
      I guesss I'll be putting my $50USD into DOOM3. I'll see you in the dark!

      • considering the amount of females on this board, and the percentage of them likely attractive, I'd say it's safe to bet that you would have a fart-free cake.

  • This appears to be a hoax... (Score:5, Informative)

    by PimpBot (32046) on Saturday August 28 2004, @08:48AM (#10095716) Homepage
    The admins of HL2Fallout have already stated that they feel this is a hoax. The "Gabe Newell" post came from an IP which Gabe has never posted from before. For right now, they're erring on the side of caution.
    • Since the HL2Fallout forum seems to have less bandwidth than all the CS players in the world (and thus is currently unreachable), here [steampowered.com] is a link to the Steam forum's thread.

    • Re:This appears to be a hoax... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Klowner (145731) on Saturday August 28 2004, @11:22AM (#10096478) Homepage
      Wait, you mean.. The same Gabe Newell that uses Outlook Express, the same Outlook Express that supposedly contributed to the security breakdown a few months ago, which allowed the theft of th Source source code theft? IMPOSSIBLE! We all know that after that horrible incident, Gabe switched to using 3 letter passwords instead of 2.

      • Re:This appears to be a hoax... (Score:5, Informative)

        by randyest (589159) on Saturday August 28 2004, @02:21PM (#10097756) Homepage
        You're so close it's scary. It was five digits, which might be ok, were it not "gaben." Right. His first name and last initial. All lowercase. The guy doesn't learn after getting haxored? From here:

        An anonymous imposter guessed Gabe's password, "gaben", and made the false claim. Valve has confirmed that this is was a hoax on the Steam Forums.

        Update: After one crazy night of theories, server mayhem and IP tracing, we've finally gotten to the bottom of this mess. In a twist of hilarity, it seems that Gabe Newell's account password was set to 'gaben'. Person x guessed this and made the "going gold on Monday" post which we've heard so much about. The user (who we believe is the same person x) then made this post just minutes ago using Gabe's account [announcing that he guessed Gabe's pass as "gaben"]

        After a quick double-check, it seems that this was exactly what happened. Reminds me of the good old days. For an official response concerning the hoax, see Chris Bokitch's post on Steampowered. I think Gabe is going to need to start using slightly better passwords on accounts he uses to make public announcements on.

  • And the hardware to run it... (Score:4, Funny)

    by EvilCabbage (589836) on Saturday August 28 2004, @08:51AM (#10095726) Homepage
    ... will go "gold" in December... 2008.

    • You got it wrong (Score:4, Funny)

      by Sulka (4250) <sulka@NOSpAm.iki.fi> on Saturday August 28 2004, @10:23AM (#10096145) Homepage Journal
      You can already get the hardware - it just _priced_ like it's weight in gold. ;)

    • Re:And the hardware to run it... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by feidaykin (158035) on Saturday August 28 2004, @10:30AM (#10096189) Homepage Journal
      You just reminded me of a story... one that took place six years ago, on a dark and stormy night. Well I don't think it was dark or stormy, but it was involving hardware that would make anyone shudder. Half-Life had just been released, and all the gaming sites were raving about it... so much so that I decided to buy it when I saw it on a shelf at a local Best Buy. I sorta glanced at the min requirements, and I thought I was close enough.

      I was very, very wrong. I inserted the Half-Life disc into my 4x CD-ROM and started to install it to my PC... It had 24MB of memory, a "PR233" Cyrix Processor, and I believe the video card at the time was a 4MB card with "pretend" support for Direct3D.

      The pain.

      The horror.

      You know those Houndeye creatures I think they're called, the ones that create a blue circle of hurt? One of those would bring that computer to a complete standstill when it did its little attack.

      The poor Cyrix also over-heated often, so often that I renamed the short-cut to the game "Crash-Life" and felt better somehow.

      This story does have a happy ending though. After a few days of suffering, I got myself a Celeron 366 and clocked that baby at 550 MHz, I got a voodoo2, and i think a massive 96 MB of ram. If it hadn't been for Half-Life, I likely would not have upgraded for months, maybe even years. Behold the Power of a Computer Game!

      Of course, the question is, will HL2 be good enough to cause people like me to run out and do the same thing we did six years ago? Perhaps that will be the true measure of its success; not that it is hardware hog, any game can be that, but that a game can be good enough for folks to plunk down three or for figures worth on hardware to play it.

  • I'm looking forward to this (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Timesprout (579035) on Saturday August 28 2004, @08:52AM (#10095729)
    Its been on preorder for me for a month now. I'm not a big gamer but HL was such a gripping game to play and the mods are so good they definitely brought a new dimension to gaming for me. Heres hoping its as good as its predecessor.
    • month? dude, you're late! all the cool kids have had it on pre-order over a year! and been reading the strategy guide too for a good while.

      (with their track record, I would feel like preordering a valve product to be like preordering phantom)

      • Re:I'm looking forward to this (Score:5, Informative)

        by Fryed (205364) on Saturday August 28 2004, @11:40AM (#10096555)
        You may want to do a bit more research about Steam before you decide to pass up on Half-Life 2. First off, a lot has changed in the nearly a year since the article you linked to was written. For starters, Steam now features a "Start in offline mode" option. When Steam starts up, if it's not connected to the internet, it lets you do that. Then, you have access to all your single player games just fine. I imagine you can also play all your LAN games just fine as well, but I haven't had an oppurtunity to try that.

        Did Steam have an awful lot of problems when it was first released? Yes, it did. But, believe it or not, the people working on Steam at Valve are not some kind of evil sadists who enjoy making people jump through hoops to play their game. They've created a rather nice system for making sure your games are always updated, and giving you an easy way to purchase new games from them without having to run down to the nearest Gamestop. Problems do occur, and they try to fix them as soon as possible.

        And, I certainly doubt Valve is going to make it hard for mods to be created. They aren't stupid - they know that one of the big reasons Half-Life has sold so well over the past 6 years is because of fun mods like TFC and CS. How many other 6 year old games do you see with thousands of servers running right now? Currently, they allow really popular mods to be listed in the Steam gui, with a screenshot and a short writeup. Other mods can still be played (I remember at least once getting in a game of Pirates, Vikings, and Knights [pvkmod.com] over Steam) just as they always could.
  • The latest [amazon.co.uk] from Amazon UK is that it will be available from 1st November. It was being reported as 3rd September up until yesterday. (Needless to say, I've got a pre-order in with them).

    -MT.

  • Zero Sales? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There are so many coupons floating around, Do they really expect to sell any copies of this game? Seems to be they've already "sold" it when they took the money from ATI.

  • I, for one (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sheetrock (152993) on Saturday August 28 2004, @08:56AM (#10095743) Homepage Journal
    While I'd been looking forward to Half-Life 2 for quite some time now, am I the only one that thinks Steam represents an unprecedented level of intrusion in my computer activity?

    I may be a bit sensitive to this because one of the other games I looked forward to (Battlefield Vietnam) had a set of conditions to use the online anticheat system (to my knowledge mandatory for Internet gaming) that were intrusive enough that I just shelved it. I just want to buy it and play it, not open my use of the software up to unwarranted scrutiny.

    • While I'd been looking forward to Half-Life 2 for quite some time now, am I the only one that thinks Steam represents an unprecedented level of intrusion in my computer activity?

      Probably. What personal information (apart from your email address) has Steam taken? What personal details did you have to give up to install Steam? Answer: Nothing!

      I have to go now, I think Doom3 is stealing my credit card numbers...

      • The OP is talking about an in intrusion into his computer activity, not necessarily his privacy. (Although it does associate specific computer activity with an email address and IP address, which should be cause for concnern...) In this regard, Steam is extremely intrusive: It requires you to authenticate yourself to the game's manufacturer every time you start the game.

        I've never seen such a thing with *any* retail application. Even XP only makes you do this when you first install it, not every time

  • probably not (Score:4, Informative)

    by Betaman (561110) on Saturday August 28 2004, @08:57AM (#10095750) Homepage
    Info here:
    http://www.csnation.net/comments.php?id=7475 [csnation.net]
    http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3 4798&page=1&pp=15 [halflife2.net]
    http://www.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php? threadid=132122 [steampowered.com]
    All the info you need to know this is probably fake.

  • Steam (Score:5, Informative)

    by dfj225 (587560) on Saturday August 28 2004, @09:02AM (#10095769) Homepage Journal
    I think it will be interesting to see how long it takes for the release to be availiable on Steam once the game does go gold. Concievably, once they make the final build it could be up in a matter of hours. Since many people already have most of the game downloaded, this could mean that they could also be playing the game within hours of the final build being made.
    • they wouldn't know it's the final build in just hours after compile.

      at least of they care about testing at all(could be that they don't care, seeing the thing is already on preloading when they havent finished it..).

  • Yes, but did you ask if ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by toetagger1 (795806) on Saturday August 28 2004, @09:04AM (#10095779)
    ... that was Sept. 1 of this year, or next year? Just wondering.

  • And in related news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Stevyn (691306) on Saturday August 28 2004, @09:13AM (#10095819)
    Pigs have just flown. Details at 11.

  • Game Hype (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rh005 (765249) on Saturday August 28 2004, @09:14AM (#10095827)
    Let's hope that it's not as bad as Doom 3 in matters of interactivity. Do you remember that, after the first Doom there was Duke Nukem, where you could interact in a lot of ways with the 3D environment. There were more things to do, special weapons, cameras, holoduke etc. That was then. But now, in 2004, the level of interactivity hasn't increased at all. With some exceptions, like Deus Ex and System Shock, it's still the same game as 10 years ago. Has gameplay been replaced by hype [feisar.de]?

    • Re:Game Hype (Score:2, Insightful)

      by eddy (18759)

      It won't be as bad as Doom 3 -- just watch the videos.

      The real question however is; how scripted will the "interactivity" be. There's nothing I hate more than games that try to give the impression of freedom and "reality", but where no matter what I do, I will always find myself in the exact same situation in the end.

      "Medal of Honour" being a prime example of such scripted game.

  • Eh? Going Gold? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 28 2004, @09:23AM (#10095861)
    Just what does "Going Gold" mean?

    Pre-sold x copies?
    Code ready so CDs can be mastered?
    Available in shops to buy?
    Cracked and available on bittorrent? :)

  • Satan says: (Score:3, Funny)

    by zenneth (767572) on Saturday August 28 2004, @09:25AM (#10095872)
    "Brrr! It's getting cold down here!"

  • Even if it was real... (Score:5, Funny)

    by 00Monkey (264977) on Saturday August 28 2004, @09:41AM (#10095933) Homepage
    CounterStrike: Condition Zero went gold twice before it came out. HL2 is gonna be so much better, it'll pry go Gold 3 times!
  • I think the key to the success of CounterStrike & Half Life is that these are not Ultra new age , system hogging games.
    They run on moderately powered PC's as compared to Unreal and other system heavy games.Thats what created the mass apeal as a larger amount of people can play them.If they follow the same principle i think It should do better than the first part.
  • The only content on steam are things like textures, sounds and maps (things that wont change before the release). No executibles download. The point of this is so that when the game comes out, people can get it really quickly because they will only need to download maybe some scripts and the executable.

  • Well obviously its a hoax... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kelmenson (592104) <(kelmenson) (at) (yahoo.com)> on Saturday August 28 2004, @10:46AM (#10096259)
    "Going to go gold Monday"?

    Uh, clearly written by somebody who has never had anything go gold... Before something is going gold, you have release candidates. You test the release candidates intensely, and if you find no bugs, then it goes gold. So you can't say on Friday that you are going gold on monday, unless you already know you have no bugs, in which case you already should have gone gold...

    If this were real, he would say that they had a release candidate. The difference between an RC and Gold is testing, which is what will be happening between now and Monday...

  • Collector's Edition? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Fiz Ocelot (642698) <baelzharon@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Saturday August 28 2004, @12:35PM (#10096998)
    I haven't been able to get a clear idea on exactly what you get with the Collector's Edition. I've heard that it may contain HL1 redone on source engine and TFC redone as well. But no confirmation on that. I certainly would love that if they were included though.
    • I'm not too bothered about the eye-candy side, I'm just hoping the gameplay and narrative sides of the game live up to the original Half-Life. If they do, then I'll be a happy camper.

      -MT.

    • Re:Not looking so hot after Doom 3... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bogie (31020) on Saturday August 28 2004, @09:23AM (#10095860) Journal
      Well how do you know that until you play the game? HL 1 was very immersive I can only guess that it will be that much better. In fact playing Doom 3 feels very much like HL1 story wise. And yes I know Doom 1 had the general idea first.

      Regarding graphics its not D3 but it pretty darn good looking.
      http://media.pc.gamespy.com/media/492/49 2830/img_2 133273.html

      The thing is D3 is all about cramped indoor environments. Hallways and Offices etc. HL2 looks to be much more in the vein of cityscapes and outdoor areas which after D3 will actually be VERY refreshing. Don't get me wrong I'm still enjoying being scared by D3(and yes headphones are the ONLY way to play!) but I'm kind of over the whole walk into dark room, have imp jump out at me. The formula while still fun gets really stale 2/3 in. And fuck are those half-baby half fly things annoying.

      Anyway while Valve has really pissed me off with the delays I'm still very much looking forward to HL2. That and hitting people in the head with a crowbar. HL2 is looking to be pretty different from D3 and that's a good thing. My nerves couldn't take another creep and get scared jump fest.
    • I have to say that after looking through the screenshots from the link there, the engine behind HL2 doesn't look a patch on the Doom 3 engine. In fact, closer to GTA2! The vehicles look pretty angular, and the characters more "cartoony".

      You're confusing artistic interpretation with the ability of the engine. Either one could be used to render, for example, The Simpsons quite easily, but where it's limits lay are the real tests.
    • have you seen the facial detail and animation?

      it blows Doom 3 out of the water and over the horizon.

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