Halo 2 Available on the Net

syberanarchy writes "Gamespot reports that Halo 2 has already been leaked to the internet via French newsgroups and P2P networks, almost a month before release! Any chance this bombshell move could force MS/Bungie to push up the release date?" See also gamesindustry.biz and The Register.

So?

[FinestLittleSpace]

Exactly why would this delay it? It's not the source, it's the compiled game... that's all. It happens with nearly every high-profile game (journalists are always so trustworthy...)...

Amazing.

[ninjeratu]

It's not like ALL games end up on FTPs, torrents, DC, whatnot. :P

Why am I not surprised.

[SHiVa0]

This has been like this for years. For as long as the "scene" exists. Nothing to see here, move along. But frankly, the more intermediate poeple getting their hands on the Gold master before it's heading out to press, the easier it is to leak.

Information wants to be free?

[Trolling4Columbine]

Or is it that people want information to be free (beer)?

I suppose people would be downloading this as a backup to the product they already legally own, right? Oh wait, the game hasn't been released yet...

Re:Conspiracy

[HitByASquirrel]

You can't spell Conspiracy without piracy.

Re:So?

[Indras]

Nobody expects them to delay their release, the question was: "Any chance this bombshell move could force MS/Bungie to push up the release date?"

Knowing that it is available now on the internet, they would be wise to release it sooner to the public in order to turn would-be downloaders into sales. Halo 2 has such a high demand that the hardcore fans will download it if they can get it sooner, and once they have it, why bother paying for it?

However, the percentage of customers who have modded xboxes, a fast connection to download a DVD image in a reasonable amount of time, the means to get it running, and who also won't buy the game when it comes out on shelves (and can stand playing the PAL version with French dialogue) are probably too small to matter to MS/Bungie, and not enough of a threat to their profits.

I don't approve of this, of course...

[Pantero Blanco]

...but it's insanely amusing that it happened right before the "US Declared War on Intellectual Property Theft".

IP Theft pre-emptively attacked!

Gone Gold

[Dracolytch]

If I remember correctly, Halo 2 has already gone gold. It'll be difficult to increase the speed of a release at this point. There are a lot of logistical factors that they'll have to overcome to increase production for an immediate release.

If they DO release sooner, and there aren't enough copies, that will also cause a case where people will go to the 'net for the game.

~D

Re:Get it from here

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't want it

Hmmm..

[Gentlewhisper]

Any chance this bombshell move could force MS/Bungie to push up the release date?

Not to be a throll, but I think it will only push up the release date for more draconian laws

Come on! Why do they want to release things so early?! There is a difference between pissing people off, and really really pissing people off!

Re:Bittorrent...

[alatesystems]

PAL works just fine on a modded NTSC xbox. So does any other signal format. It's just digital video being rendered at a certain resolution and being pumped out in a certain way, depends on which av pack you have.

Chris

Re:Conspiracy

[orion41us]

I could see this happening to a game that does not have such a high demand/ratings for

- i.e. Company A spends 2 years on a new game - It's full of bugs and is not getting any good reviews - a flop. they leek it. Then turn around and claim that the leeked version killed their profits and write it off come tax season.

This is Sad

[shplorb]

Whether you like Microsoft or not, this is bad. Many people have poured their hearts and souls into making that game not just because they like making cool stuff, but because they like to bring happyness to people. The person who leaked this clearly has no respect for the creators of the game.

As a game developer, I urge you to show some respect for the creators of the game by not downloading or distributing it. My first game came out a couple of weeks ago on PS2 and XBox and it's both frustrating and disappointing to see it readily available on P2P networks. How would you like to see something you've worked on for 50+ hours a week for months on end being freely copied around?

If you're intent on doing it, at least wait until the game has been released and if you like it, please buy it to support the developers. $50 isn't much to pay considering the number of hours of entertainment you get from the tens of thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars that would have gone into producing it - infinitely better value than a movie.

Re:Amazing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just the good ones...

Re:Hmmm..

[The-Bus]

Come on! Why do they want to release things so early?! There is a difference between pissing people off, and really really pissing people off!

Erm, not quite. They set a date for November 9th based on a conversation much like this in June.

"Well, we can't get it to retailers any later than the second week of November. It may sell-out, there might be shortages, and we want the retailers to be able to sell it at full price for a few weeks before needing to bundle it with a calendar or a CD for Black Friday."

"Well, looks like Nov. 9th is it."

"Can we do that?"

"Well, shipping from the manufacturers will take about a week, so that puts us at Nov. 2. The actual manufacturer will need about 2 weeks to press the games and package them. We'll need two weeks before that to get review copies to the game magazines and finish the instruction manual. So that means we have to go gold no later than October 1st."

"So that gives us about 4 months to test?"

"Yeah... That should be enough right?"

"Sure"

****

Fast forward to a couple months later and Halo is done ahead of this deadline. By this time, everyone knows it comes out November 9th, and they've paid major bucks to buy ads from 10/15 to 12/20. They can still run the ads but they could change the date, should be easy enough.

What's not easy is setting a date that's too early before the game is done. But now it is, so it's OK to wait a couple of weeks.

Re:Bittorrent...

[SilentChris]

My question, though: who'd honestly want a pirate release they can play only on a modded Xbox, when the big draw of Halo 2 is Xbox Live compatibility (which automatically bans anyone who mods their Xbox)? I'll pony up the $50. It's worth it.

But what will the cost be, in Freedoms?

[Alzheimers]

As sad as it is, is anyone suprised that it happened? I mean, it's only the most anticipated game of the year (HL2 was the most anticipated game of last year, it's just coming out this year). I've got my preorder in, and I know a lot of other people who won't bother with it either. However, there are people who will always look to cheat the system, and as much as we hate it there's no use crying or screaming or starting flamewars that this will hurt 'the programmers'. But that's not the worst of it.

My main concern is the response and backlash from the Corps. It's not that I condone the behavior of these thieves, but I'm desperately afraid of the cure will be worse than the disease. Already we have games that can't work in everyone's PC, or disable programs you legitemately install. We have operating systems that require you to phone home every time you change your hardware, just so that the company can make sure you're not stealing .00001% of their yearly profits. What's next, that each copy will be biometrically tied to us, so we need to activate out consoles with a thumbprint identification before we can turn it on?

And what's going to be the target of the corporation's wrath, you ask? In this case, it's going to be USENET, BITTORRENT, and IRC. Three out-of-the-mainstream networks that corporations will try to convince law makers are nothing but havens for pirates and thieves. You'll hear the words "Terrorists" and "Child Pr0n" before this is over, too.

It's a tough world we live in. No matter which side you stand for, this much is certain: you're going to get screwed.

If anything

[antivoid]

On the contrary, I believe this occurence should force the release date forward - i.e. get it legally earlier; this would lighten the blow of piracy by making legal release concurrent to the leaked one, causing less copies to be stolen (people have a greater chance of buying games as opposed to copying when the game is actually available in the stores.)
Anyone disagree?

This happens all the time - with ALL games

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got news for you, it doesn't just happen with all high profile games. It happens with ALL of them. Even in the era of cartridge based games (NES, SNES, GENESIS...) the ROM data would end up on pirate BBSs and also in the form of counterfeit cartridges in Taiwan, South America, etc... That's just what happens.

For PC games, same thing. Game goes "gold", and it would appear on Warez sites before the first boxed copy ever hit store shelves. The reason this happens is there is ALWAYS going to be some low-paid shmuck working at the duplication factory who thinks it's cool to release the "zero day" warez to pirates, and/or selling it to the pirate groups.

Re:Bittorrent...

[llevity]

I'll pony up too, but I'll also be playing it a month early.

The big draw isn't Xbox Live. The big draw is it's a new Halo, and any Xbox Live support is just icing on the cake.

Halo 1 did fine without it. You can still play with your friends locally, or even use XBConnect to use it to play over the Internet.

Re:Hmmm..

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Actually, filling the channel takes about six weeks. The boxes will have been readied for the final CDs starting about two weeks ago, and the actual manufacture of the disks will have begun the morning the product went gold. The big delay lies in shipping the product to major distributors who must they reship to individual stores, which must then put up the displays, etc. Each individual step takes no more than a week, but there's not much parallelism in the distribution process.

Re:This is Sad

[Diabolus777]

I'm a game developper for a really small company and let me tell you this:

Once the game's gone gold, it's in the publisher's hands. They bought the title and now hold the rights to it. So, if they decided to send promo copies to journalists (where 99% of leaks come from), then only the publisher is to blame.

It's the business dynamic to send promos in order to get maximum exposure, make people drool by reading the reviews that are largely biased most of the time.

If I see my game leaked and available before it's time, I wash my hands of it. I got paid for my work, and we sold the title. I'm not saying it's ok for people to distribute, but it's beign made so easy and tempting for them that nothing I'll say will make a difference. . .

Re:This is Sad

[shplorb]

But what about royalties? Yes, a lot of studios essentially do 'work for hire' like that now - but what if something goes FUBAR and you run over budget and can't negotiate extra from the publisher, or the publisher decides to shitcan it?

That's when you need royalties from your games to keep you afloat. Royalties can also provide enough revenue to allow the studio to break-away from doing licenses, invest in improving and developing their technology and not always being beholden to the publisher and getting larger royalties because the studio is then taking the risk by providing their own funding.

I thought that was the dream of every developer - to have the financial security to do their own thing, but you seem to feel differently.

Re:Bittorrent...

[ifitzgerald]

I was going to mod this article, but I decided to post instead.

I hear a lot of people posting comments saying that most people with modded XBOXs are just going to download the game and put up with the French audio and UK subtitles rather than ponying up the $50. Having a modded XBOX, I take offense to that. I've played Halo for years now, and it is the best game I have ever played. I have spent so long waiting for Halo 2 to come out that another few weeks won't make a difference to me. The true diehard fans of Halo will not download the game. Rather, they will buy legit copies of Halo 2, and pay the developers the respect, and money, that they deserve for producing such an awesome game. People who steal from Bungie are not true Halo fans.

Come on, people will buy it anyway

[SuperKendall]

My guess is that a lot of people downloading it just want a shot to pratice early so they can kick butt online the day of release, or to check it out and see if it's worthwhile to buy at all.

Programmers should be more concerned with making sure paying customers are happy than worrying over the ogeyman of "lost sales" due to piracy.

Do you really think Halo sales will suffer as a result of this? My guess is that it will go on to record breaking sales, and this has like a .001% impact on sales in the end.

Re:Bittorrent...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently what you don't know is that modded X-box's can get on to XBLive. Your lack of knowledge in the subject is apparent since you obviously don't own a modded X-Box. You shouldn't talk about things that you don't know much about.

Re:Umm..

[funk49]

umm...because it ruins the marketing plan that they had designed for this launch. Bungie devises a plan around the launch date (print, television, video, etc) and they focus on the timing of the date and how all of the aspects of the campaign tie in together.

This is the same reason that U2 was going to release their album early if the stolen version made it onto the internet. It ruins that way the company can market the record and can effectively promote the singles in the correct order at radio. In effect, it takes all marketing control out of the hands of the company.

Re:This is Sad

[Anonymous Coward]

This is in response to the post before this one, to the words in italics.
Yes he got a check ( I think) but its the concept. It's someone saying to the developer "I don't see your work as valuable enough to pay for"
I have always been against the whole IP war thing (I hate IP laws) but as an author and a programmer I absolutely cannot stand people telling a creator that they should "stop whining".
You sir, have obviously never worked on something until hours in the morning god doesn't know about, made yourself physically ill working on it, and then had that glimmer of happiness when you realize that it's done. Please take your trolling elsewhere.

Re:Bittorrent...

[Pendragn_tk]

You make it sound as though downloading it today and buying it when it comes out are mutually exclusive. That's not the case. A "true Halo fan" could very easily download the game today because they are excited to play it AND pay for it when it becomes available. It does happen.

tk

Re:Bittorrent...

[Swampy0007]

How? I own a modded xbox and am curious as to whether you're actually telling the truth or you just decided to make up this "magical BIOS" that allows you to go on XBLive while still retaining the ability to play copies. A link to such would go a long way towards backing up your statement.

Re:Bittorrent...

[Anonymous Coward]

...except we aren't talking about "true fans", but Joe College who doesn't feel like paying for shit these days.

Re:Bittorrent...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not true. A modded Xbox can NOT play on Xbox Live while the mod is enabled.

If you disable the mod, you can play online. But then you can't play burned games.

Also, having a modded Xbox and using Xbox Live has the potential to get your Xbox banned if you accidentally leave the modchip on and it decides to check for updates (happened to me. I couldn't stop it because I was setting up a new TV and couldn't see what was on the screen).

I don't think I could resist this download if I see it, as I do have a modded Xbox (and a non-modded one).

I'm 100% going to buy Halo 2... heck, I'll probably end up picking up two copies for both of my Xboxes (for 8+ player sweetness). But I don't think I could resist the early taste of what is sure to be a fantastic single player game.

Re:Bittorrent...

[Various Assortments]

Isn't it a bit simple-minded to see a message board community as a single entity with contradicting views? It IS made up of individuals, who speak up at different times when different issues that appeal to them are being discussed.

bad policy

[ratiocinator]

I'm no expert on things like this, but if i ran this company, my policy would resemble something with alittle more common sense:

All copies that are distributed prior to the release date would always have a unique identification number imbedded within the image itself. Each id specifically represents the possessor of each unique copy. Furthermore, that fact will be made -very clear- to those who are approved possessors. If your number ends up on the pirated copy, we send goons to your house who will offer you a choice of three items: an eyepatch, a hook, or a pegleg.