Half-Life 2 Already Being Illegally Sold in Russia

freidog writes "A short blurb on GamesRadar reports Half-Life 2 is for sale, sort of. It seems the 'leaked' Half-Life 2 source has found itself nicely updated and packaged for sale, in Russia. Some work has certainly gone into this production, as 'Hackers have apparently even gone to the length of translating text in the fully playable code into Russian.' However, one would imagine the game's content would be pretty sparse, and stability and polish lacking on such an early build." Another reader points to a page with more information on the bootleg discs, although only the disc art and packaging is mentioned as being translated.

It's a real social commentary

[Fortunato_NC]

That people who lived under communism for so long have mastered capitalism so quickly.

Must we really squash this beautiful flickering light?

Seriously, has anyone seen screenshots? From what I understand, only source code was stolen - no artwork or textures. Someone went to a lot of trouble to get this into a playable condition, I'd imagine. Of course, since we don't know who someone is, "Half-Life 2" could also be searching our hard drives for credit card numbers and PayPal logins while we amuse ourselves. I don't care how desperate you are to see Half-Life 2 early, I wouldn't take the risk of installing this "demo"

The uninformed masses

[MMaestro]

You gotta pity the Russians to buy/bought copies of those copies. Its fairly common knowledge on the internet (at the very least for gaming readers) that there was a leak and a delay. For the uninformed masses, they're buying a broken, beta that might not even run on their computer.

Re:Not News

[Goldberg's Pants]

I figured that whoever got in took the textures too. Whatever the case, there's a version been on the net for aeons now.

I have very little sympathy for Valve, and find their fanboys deeply amusing. Running a program that any monkey knows is full of security holes (Outlook) on a system with valuable code on...

It's like leaving all the doors open at the bank and using the honor system to keep people out of the vault...

Re:Not News

[log0n]

Theft is still a crime.