Half Life 2 begins preloading on Steam!

[ixnay]

The game is definitely nearing completion now. For those of you unfamiliar with what is happening, here's what's going on:

Steam is Valve's content distribution program that you download. It gives you a central location to play and download Valve's games, mods, and updates.

Half Life 2 is beginning preloading - which means that anybody with steam can use it to download all of the static content in the game - art, sounds, textures, etc, regardless of whether you've preordered it or not. This is all locked away on your computer until Valve goes ahead and unlocks the game through steam - meaning at that point you just enter a serial number that you buy for the game and you can start playing it immediately.

So, it's looking like HL2 will most likely be out within a few weeks.

[Skanky Burns]

Hooray!

[DrSpike]

Seconded.

[ixnay]

According to Gabe the game will be going gold on Monday.

[Kassiopeia]

No it won't.

As far as I understand it, his account on said forum was compromised. (I also heard that his password was "gabe" or "gaben", but that might have been a joke.) That does make sense, AFAIK when you go gold you get the word from the publisher when it happens, not the weekend before?

Then there's the email from Newell saying it's fake, but then some are saying the email was fake.

Edit: Well, now there's word that someone else (Erik Johnson) from Valve has confirmed that it's going gold on Monday.

[FrostyBoy]

They're just playing with us

[Guynemer]

What a bizarre turn of events.

[reds4ever]

old news. hoax

[Maquiladora]

I cant even connect to steam now, probably because of everyone preloading HL2. I hope i dont have to play HL2 through steam, piece of ****e.

[RGBVideo]

Judging from the screenshots and hype, I'm not excepting much from HL2.

[DrSpike]

I expect it to be very good, or great.