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Gamers' worst fears were confirmed this morning when Vivendi Universal announced that its eagerly awaited Half-Life 2 will not be released until April 2004.
In a brief statement to the French daily Les Echos, VU Games president of international operations, Christophe Ramboz, blamed the now-infamous source code theft for the delay. "A third of the source code was stolen," said Ramboz. "It's serious because it forces us to delay the launch of the game by at least four months--to April 2004."
Doug Lombardi, Valve's Director of Marketing, told GameSpot today, "We are still assessing the effects of the attack. At this time, we have no further details we can share regarding the theft [or] its impact on the release of Half-Life 2."
A Vivendi Universal Games spokesperson informed GameSpot that it would release a statement regarding the game later today.
The Half-Life 2 delay couldn't come at a worse time for VU Games. So far, 2003 has seen the publisher's relationship with Baldur's Gate publisher Interplay disintegrate, while its much-hyped Hulk game fizzled, just like its big-screen counterpart. Analysts cited Hulk's failure in the firm's $61 million operating loss in the company's two most recent quarters. However, the delay announcement today didn't greatly affect the stock price of VU Games' parent company, Vivendi Universal.
Steady stock prices are cold comfort to the millions of gamers who had hoped to help Gordon Freeman save the world--again--this holiday season.
In a brief statement to the French daily Les Echos, VU Games president of international operations, Christophe Ramboz, blamed the now-infamous source code theft for the delay. "A third of the source code was stolen," said Ramboz. "It's serious because it forces us to delay the launch of the game by at least four months--to April 2004."
Doug Lombardi, Valve's Director of Marketing, told GameSpot today, "We are still assessing the effects of the attack. At this time, we have no further details we can share regarding the theft [or] its impact on the release of Half-Life 2."
A Vivendi Universal Games spokesperson informed GameSpot that it would release a statement regarding the game later today.
The Half-Life 2 delay couldn't come at a worse time for VU Games. So far, 2003 has seen the publisher's relationship with Baldur's Gate publisher Interplay disintegrate, while its much-hyped Hulk game fizzled, just like its big-screen counterpart. Analysts cited Hulk's failure in the firm's $61 million operating loss in the company's two most recent quarters. However, the delay announcement today didn't greatly affect the stock price of VU Games' parent company, Vivendi Universal.
Steady stock prices are cold comfort to the millions of gamers who had hoped to help Gordon Freeman save the world--again--this holiday season.
Imagine how much more even an idiot could do with access to the source code. You essentially have all of the packet encryption, integrity checks and whatever other security measures VALVe might have included at hand. You don't need to guess at the composition of the packets with a sniffer - all of the algorithms are right there for the taking (assuming, of course, that part of code was, indeed, stolen). And while I couldn't care less about cheaters - I am not a big fan of FPS's any way - like I said, it's not really about cheating any more. Like you said, it is done any way, but with all the networking code at hand, it is really easy to compromise the security of any player's system. Imagine, some poor sod gets online to shoot some friends, and while he's at it, his comp is pumped full of virii. I suppose VALVe might be afraid of lawsuits because of that? ("Ahhh, your game broke my computaaarrr? Waaah" - you know, that kind of thing, though I am not sure that a lawsuit like that would have any merit - hey, this is America, where everyone sues everyone else with or without any reason whatsoever.) But any way, while it may or may not be true that they would have delayed the game further any way - after all, didn't they push it forward a month the very day before they announced the leak? While, I say, that may be true, I think a delay due to the leak, which would result from having to rewrite the networking code is still justified.
Totally agree with you on that one.
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