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First Person Shooters (Games) PC Games (Games) Entertainment Games

Half-Life 2 Going Gold on Monday? [updated] 278

Posted by CowboyNeal from the on-the-horizon dept.
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] More

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

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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.
        • It doesn't matter if it's gold or not. Like Doom III, most people will rush out to buy this game. Owners with ATI cards will probably still struggle to get a decent FPS until Catalyst 5.0 or something.

          Pessimistic me, no? I am damn realistic. Check all the forums and customers screaming for help. Then compare it to the game company's marketing materials. It's always night and day! If anyone expect HL2 to work out of the box for most users, they're going to be terribly disappointed.

          • 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!

    • So the password to get into his account is gaben?

      I bet he uses that password for everything, time to see if I can use it to download a finished copy of HL2 from his machine. Then I can play the finished thing while Valve delays the game again for another year! Meheheheheh!

  • 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.

      • The password is probably 'ATI' ;-)

      • 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.
        • no kidding...for a company that has spent upwards of $50 million dollars on this game, it's a 'bet the company' deal, and gabe continues to have incident after incident like this.

          the guy's a hazard with a computer...does becoming CEO of a company just make people technically incompetent? so wierd. he might be a brilliant game designer or project manager or whatever, but these kinds of things are just inexcusable...

          if it was a lower-down on the totem pole, how long would they have kept their job?
          • Sigh... Let me explain this...

            All of this furious debate does nothing but boost the profile of the HL2 release (whenever it may be). They're getting free publicity with every article speculating, then refuting a release date. Every fanboi who complains that their life has no meaning until the release date, and whines that they're breaking promises, etc.

            Let me put it another way since I'm sure the skeptics are grumbling that it's all BS:

            Over the last couple weeks or so, people were frantically trying t
        • The guy doesn't learn after getting haxored?

          Not to touch off a flamewar, but he worked for Microsoft on the Windows team for quite some time in the past before forming Valve.

  • 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.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) 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 feel your pain. I had a flakey motherboard but didn't know it until I got Half Life. The game would start and go through maybe 3 minutes of the intro on the train and all of a sudden the game would crash.
        Updated drivers, bios, prayed to the computer gods, reinstalled OS. Did everything. Then decided it was time to get a new motherboard. Problem disappeared. Who'd a thunk
      • A cyrix? For games? Geez. Any game would have spanked that cpu.

        There also was a demo available for Half-Life (not sure if it was available before it was for me but holland is always slow with game releases) wich would have told you if it the game ran on your hardware.

        Your second machine ain't much better for games. Celerons are office machines. Not meant for games.

        This post isn't meant to put you down. I just want to point out that you have to buy the right hardware. Sure cyrix and celerons are cheap but

      • I played *all* of Half Life on a Cyrix P150+ (which actually was a 120MHz processor rated more or less like a 150MHz Pentium, pretty much like current AMDs) with a 2D card (so all the rendering was done in software) and IT RAN FINE. And I was grateful !

        Ok, so I got something like 8fps in 640x480 (or maybe I managed to push it to 800x600 by setting everything to the minimum, it still was about 8fps, that much I remember very well) but it still was fun and scary. And exciting (although not as exciting as the
    • This should be modded Overrated or Redundant.

      This game is nothing like Doom3; it is NOT graphics intensive. It's more cpu intensive due to greater use of physics and AI.

      This game was demoed last year on high end hardware at amazing speeds. The "leaked" source ran beautifully on my machine then (an Athlon 2000+ with a 9500 Pro and 512MB RAM). CS:Source is playing NOW at cybercafes around the country on normal hardware (I personally played it on athlon 2500+ with an NVidia FX something-or-other).

      I'm per
      • Doom 3 isn't nearly as bad as it used to be. You've got to give id credit with making the game scale back in a useful way. A friend of mine has a Geforce FX 5200 and he can run the game with a smooth framerate.
    • .. And I have a moderately-aged AthlonXP at 2100Mhz with a GeForce 4ti 4600. Game runs fine. I mean, sure, it doesn't run like Quake of course, but the game is so far beyond Quake 3 in graphics tech and it still runs fine. The great thing is, when I upgrade my computer it will look even better!

      If you play games, you must know that you'll need a fairly recent machine to play new games. But I'm sure HL2 will run just fine on my machine. Maybe not at maximum quality, maybe not at maximum resolution,

  • 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)
      • Hah, my kid has it on preorder and even my kid is on preorder, that's how cool I am !
    • I was looking forward to this too, then I started doing some research on what "Steam" is. I quit playing counterstrike over a year ago, back when WON was still being used.

      See: this link [yarbroughs.org]

      Let's just say I'm extremely dissapointed in Valve for where they have taken this. I wouldn't hold your breath on mods, either. This game is now DRM'd to the hilt... making and finding mods just got a lot more difficult, as did running a creative server.

      I didn't think I'd ever say this, but I may actually pass on this

      • 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.
    • 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.

      Like you, I'm not a big gamer, infact I've only ever bought Quake1, HL1, GTA VC, and I've had HL2 on order for over 12 months, and upgraded my graphics card 11 months ago in anticipation of a release in the Autumn of 2003.

      Now my 11 month old graphics card is looking a little d

  • Gold, perhaps, but not yet retail (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MonTemplar ( 174120 ) * on Saturday August 28, 2004 @08:53AM (#10095732) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • According to Valve's own hardware survey, there are 46,770 (4.89%) of gamers who responded to the survey AND have a Radeon 9800. Since the coupon only came with the XT, we can 'guess' that the true # of coupons out there is under 100,000.

      I think HL2 will easily sell more than 100K.
      • The coupon also came with gazillion 9600XT cards. So your number is completely false.
        • According to http://steampowered.com/status/survey.html:
          "ATI Radeon 9600 Series 58,022". That plus my original post = 100K.

          So your post is completely false.

  • 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.

    • Re:I, for one (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ozric99 ( 162412 )
      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...

      • Re:I, for one (Score:3, Insightful)

        by rubeon ( 301850 )

        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

        • 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 you fire it up.

          Quake 3 checks your CD key against a master server when you go online, and it's by no means the only game to do so.
        • Steam is extremely intrusive: It requires you to authenticate yourself to the game's manufacturer every time you start the game.

          wtf? This got modded insightful how?
          Perhaps in la-la land. In the real world I can happily play HalfLife and the rest without having a net connection.

  • probably not (Score:4, Informative)

    by Betaman ( 561110 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @08:57AM (#10095750)
    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? :)

    • Re:Eh? Going Gold? (Score:5, Informative)

      by way2trivial ( 601132 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @09:28AM (#10095883) Homepage Journal
      going gold means it's being mass produced, master version exists, and all remaing bugs will be dealt with via patches, not original distribution.
    • It means that the CD is mastered. Apparently the master CD is all shiny and yellow, so that's why they call it "going gold".
      • Acually, if I remember right, that comes from way back in the mists of the early to-mid 1990's, when CD writers cost thousands.

        The writable discs back then had gold faces, so the gold master was in fact a gold color. I dont know if any special discs are used for the master when its send to be duplicated, or even if it is, but the term has stuck.

        It would make more sense nowadays just to FTP the cd images to the plant, though.

      • The original CDR media was always gold-foil, no silver-colored stuff. Hence all the CDROM masters you saw back in the day were always gold. Gold is still one of the better colors, especially when it involves actual gold, it holds up a long time and tends to be readable in just about everything. However, we have gold/gold, silver/gold, and silver/silver media and it all reads about the same.

  • 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.
    • Half Life was a fairly rig-intensive game when it first came out, and CS was in fact even heavier on systems. In some cases, playing CS required special tweaking, if your computer didn't have enough memory:

      CS uses more RAM than HL and TFC, so those with 32megs of RAM are having problems. In your command line, set -heapsize 32000 -- or try other values, smaller or larger -- depending how much RAM you have. (from counter-strike.net) The reason CS is popular is because it is a great team mod with an appro
  • 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@@@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...

    • The RC was supposed to be delivered to Vivendi sometime in august, but I believe it was missed.

      I also agree with you that it is a hoax, as the post from hl2fallout.com has come from a proxy server, and the poster has also posted a message boasting about how he has the account.

      On a seperate note, valve included a second test with the preload, the text "password is nova/prospekt this is the second test" has been found in the EXIF information of a jpg inside the preload, more information at halflife2.net for

  • It's a fake (Score:2, Informative)

    by fresh27 ( 736896 )
    somebody guessed his extremely obvious password
    http://members.lycos.co.uk/lemmingzappa/Post.JPG
    http://www.hl2fallout.com/forums/index.php?showtop ic=4221&st=360
  • No, not my legs, the other thing - I can't feel anything from the tiny shrivelled part of my heart that still cared about HL2. It just doesn't look that great, and the sneak peek previews haven't exactly been raving. That, plus the near total silence from the developers other than the gfx card 'bundling' debacle, and it's two thumbs meh from me.
  • I have the preload already. It was only about 1 GB, but I can see where that's large enough to be at least the core game. As far as the game note being ready, there are a bunch of torrents floating around that are supposedly *not* the beta, but the final release. Those are almost 1.2 GB is size, so I'm doubtful that those are the real deal. But what I'm wondering is: Have any of you scurvy dogs grabbed the torrent and tried it?

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

    by Fiz Ocelot ( 642698 ) <baelzharon&gmail,com> 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.
    • You get the comforting feeling that you shelled out more than the regular price of the game for a box that says "Collector's Edition" on the front and some extra software that modders would have done for free anyway the second they started working with the new SDK.

      Enjoy your new collectible box. Maybe they'll actually include a cool manual in it instead of a tiny little booklet with 3 pages and an coupon for $1 off the Prima Strategy Guide.

  • from the story at Gamers.com [gamers.com]

    ...Half-Life 2 in stores around September 13th at the absolute latest.
  • ...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.

    What a dumb ass, you think Gabe would have learned at least something about security by now, espeically taking into account past events. Well, once a Microsoft employee, always a Microsoft employee.

  • This is a textbook publicity tactic:
    1. Create a hacked account
    2. Post an outrageous claim
    3. Wait
    4. Retract outrageous claim
    5. Profit

    Note that the above sequence will get your product listed *TWICE* in most major gaming news sites. It's just a publicity stunt. We all know Half Life 2 will not be released for another year atleast. Move along, citizens.

    I mean, seriously, you think with the huge number of script kiddie half life fans not a single one of them tried that simple password until now?

    • They could have been more creative then "HL2 goes gold monday?" How about "HL2 is getting pushed back 9 months and Counter Strike Source got cancelled due to lisencing issues."
  • So Gabe had a weak password on his forum account. Hmmm. It's quite possible he had a weak password on his PC, and that's why he got "hacked" and we had to wait so long for HL2. Nice. I bet the combination to his luggage is 1-2-3-4-5.
  • Doesn't it seem like a somewhat bad idea for HL2 Fallout to reveal Gabe's password to everybody? If he is the type of person to use the password "gaben" on one account, he is probably the type of person to use the same password "gaben" on all his accounts. Somebody should really advise him that the whole world now knows his password, and that he should change it immediately (preferably not to "gnewell").

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