Half-Life 2 Hacker Sentenced
Sunday, December 10th, 2006 - 9:22am
Just read it in the c't magazine over here. Two years probation for the crimes he commited. He was one of the guys behind the troyans Agobot and Phatbot. And while he'll always be known to us as the person to steal the HL2 code, that case wasn't absolutely relevant at all, funnily enough. When asked about the exact amount of damage that was caused by the theft, Valve didn't get back to the attorney. They also failed to file in a demand for penalty, which was required to make the case actually relevant for the trial.
Wow. Well, it must have cost them quite a bit of money, in lost time and sales, so I'm surprised they didn't bother to fight him.
Still, good that this moron is in jail.
The man wears a bucket of KFC on his head. I wouldn't expect anything less. - Pred
I think the probation part of that sentence might disapoint you, Mex.
Letters to the Internet
Was this the same guy they tried to trick into flying to the states?
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My guess is that it actually didn't cost them a lot - neither time nor sales.
Way back when the source code got stolen, most of the content wasn't anywhere near being final. There wasn't much content to begin with if I remember the records. I generally respect Valve since they take their sweet time to finish a product, but let's not forget that they were clearly lying about the state of game and even tried to put the blame for the delay on the thief. (To which he responded anonymously.)
They didn't charge him because he was a FALL GUY! They needed more time, so they STAGED THE WHOLE THING! He took the blame in return for money, and no possibility of jail time! OMG!
*Adjusts tinfoil hat and/or jock-strap*
"PEACE ON EARTH. GOOD WILL TO MEN. PUBLIC SHELTER. ADMISSION 50¢"
I agree with you Spunior. I haven't read up on the incident, but I don't see how it could have cost them time or money. Even if the code was deleted from the servers, surely they have a nightly backup.
Wait, Valve lied to me?
I seriously believed that the hacker had forced them to reprogram the whole network code or something, and he was the reason Half Life 2 was delayed for an extra year or so =P
But I don't know anything about programming, so...
The man wears a bucket of KFC on his head. I wouldn't expect anything less. - Pred
Not sure if you're being sarcastic Mex, but from what I recall, the sequence of events was...
After years of total silence Valve drops the bomb on the world during E3 that they are releasing HL2 that same year in September.
As August rolls in, they revise the release date and push it closer to X-mass.
November that year, the code is "stolen" and released into the wild. Rumors start circulating that the code is nowhere near complete.
Valve claims that the thief stole some older code, but that they'll need to rewrite network and security code now that the hackers have access to the source code. They use this as a carte blanche and proclaim that they will release the code when ready.
HL2 is released a year or so later. Completed. And good.
(@)
Dude, I'm not kidding, Valve did mention everywhere that the sole reason the title was delayed was the hacker. Oh well, the game was good, let's move on with our lives
The man wears a bucket of KFC on his head. I wouldn't expect anything less. - Pred
Well, it was kind of like this:
Spring 2003: HL2 gets unveiled, Newell promises that it'll be released in Fall - September 30th to be exact. Everybody goes "Oh man, how awesome is that?! Instead of hyping a game for years they simply decided to wait so long for the announcement!"
Spring - Fall: A few previews pop up, Valve remains silent about the release date.
Oct. 2nd 2003: News regarding the code theft appear on the net. And old-school Goodjers sure as hell remember which site it was to break the news first.
Valve responds and mumbles something about how it'll affect the release date, they just don't know. They also indicate that it might have been old code.
The hacker responds to that angrily, pointing out that the stole the current build, saying that the date he grabbed is the date they're working with right now. He also mentions that a scene demoed at E3 was fully scripted - Newell had claimed that it was fully dynamic AI.
Mex, sure, some parts may need to be reprogrammed, e.g. little tricks or security-related parts of the netcode and the like. However, it's not like you have to start from the scratch on. And whatever it is - never ever would it take a full year.
Let's do the math: news on the theft were published in early October, which means the code theft likely happened in late September. By that time the game would have to be gold already (early September to mid-September) to meet the originally promised release date. It clearly wasn't. I'd suggest reading this Gamespot article for more background information.
Of course, the game itself not being ready was one part of it. However, it's not forget about another aspect - Steam wasn't really ready either. Which was pretty obvious if you remember the launch of new Counter-Strike versions, you also might remember it nearly crushed under the load of the HL2 launch a year later. Due to the nature of it, it also wouldn't have been in Valve's interest to release the game when their online distribution platform is nowhere near being capable of handling that. HL2 was the one vehicle they had to establish it.
Yeah, sorry, they did. I'm a fan of Valve and I know they were lying.
Fedaykin98 wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
Wow Spunior, that's in-depth. You earn a cookie =)
The man wears a bucket of KFC on his head. I wouldn't expect anything less. - Pred
I just finished reading the Gamespot article that Spunior linked in his post above. Great article, thanks for the link and the explanation here. I stopped reading Gamespot long ago but that was a quality piece, if you have half an hour (or more) to spend reading it. (It's a 25 page article.)
MrDeVil909: I feel it necessary to point out that there are drug resistant strains of most STDs. Especially in developing nations.
Funkenpants: Great. Yet another area in which we're losing our lead to foreigners.
I really loved the theft. I got a good glimpse of how a game was made, and about the huge potential of HL2. It was barking beautiful and played like a charm. Loved to find placeholders at every corner, and to play with the advanced physics a year before I could for real. It was one hell of a PR stunt which really set alight the whole internet at that time.
I don't watch, I interact!
I just remembered that around the same time there was also an ongoing litigation between Valve and their publisher (Vivendi?) about Valve's rights to self-publish. There was speculation that HL2 wasn't coming out until that legal matter was settled.
(@)
Naturally, it needed to be settled ahead of the release or else things would have been rather messy.
I'm fully convinced that Vivendi totally underestimated Steam. And way back when the publishing deal got signed Valve probbably was like "Oh just btw., guys, you certainly don't mind us distributing the game through our own digital distribution channel, right?" To which Vivendi may have responded "Yeah, whatever, let's get the things signed now." I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't until 2002 or 2003 that they realized that digital distribution may actually harm their retail income.
Considering the scope of the project, HL2 was rather poorly advertised when it was released. I'm talking about real advertisment here, not reviews or word-of-mouth. Because why would you spend tons of money on advertising when people may end buying the game without you seeing a single cent?