Half-Life 2 was shaping up to be the year's most anticipated PC game. Ultimately, we're in the business of making games, not chasing hackers." Then there's not a damn thing you can do about it. The risk is they find out who did it and a resident of Russia. "My focus would be on doing the thing that's going to make the game great: Focus on finishing it. "From what I've seen of Half-Life 2, it looks like it's going to be a really fun game," he said. Hollenshead said he understands where the drive to find who was responsible comes from, but questions its usefulness. Valve has been actively pursuing the thieves since the hacking came to light, which is a different approach than other developers have done in previous instances of code theft. There are additional fears that the thieves could distribute other aspects of the game, which have not yet been officially announced. While it's possible to make a playable version of a game without its complete source code, doing so without a strong knowledge of game development is extraordinarily challenging. However, with the stolen game now out, it's possible a more complete version of the source code was taken. Ramboz told Reuters "a third of the source code was stolen". Today's release of a playable version of the game brings Vivendi's comments from earlier today into question. I don't mean to over dramatize it - I know its just a video game - but this is our lives here." "But whenever it happens, it's a sinking feeling. "It's happened enough that you think you'd start to get used to it," said Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software. Last year, a playable build of the still-in-development Doom 3 hit the Internet. Several of the company's biggest games, including all of the Quake games, have seen their source code leak out. Id Software, though, knows a few things about source code leaks. Valve did not name the other developers who might have been targeted. We've been providing other game developers with more detailed information about the exploits and evidence of infiltration." "There's anecdotal evidence that other game developers have been targeted by whoever attacked us," he wrote. Newell also mentioned in a Saturday update that it's possible other game developers might have been targeted by the same group. The company has asked the Half-Life fan community for assistance as it searches for the attackers. The company has since minimized its network connection to the Internet, as it was still finding infected machines on Saturday. He was unsure whether these were related to the code theft. In the same post, Newell said the company had been subject to "a variety of denial of service attacks" over the past year. created to infect Valve (at least it hasn't been seen anywhere else, and isn't detected by normal virus scanning tools)," said Newell in a message board posting last week. "This recorder is apparently a customized version. The invasion was methodical and seems deliberately aimed at the developer. Keystroke recorders were also installed on the computers of several other employees. Eight days later, they made a copy of the game's source tree. 11, hackers broke into the email of Valve founder Gabe Newell, possibly utilizing a security hole in Microsoft ( MSFT: Research, Estimates) Outlook. The hunt for the thieves is ongoing, but a rough timeline of events has emerged. Large independent game developers such as Valve and id Software typically decide when their games are released – not the publishers. (Calls to the developer were not returned.) That's an important thing to note. Valve, though, has not confirmed that delay. Hackers have leaked a playable version of Half-Life 2 onto the Internet. Earlier today, Christophe Ramboz, VU Games president of international operations, told Reuters the source code theft would result in a four month delay, pushing Half-Life 2 back to April 2004. It's the latest in a series of frustrations for Vivendi Universal Games ( V: Research, Estimates) and developer Valve. Also unclear is how current the assets used to create the game are. It is unclear whether the leaked version features the entire game or a limited number of levels. Some fan-based and hacker sites were even displaying in-game images. Message boards and chat rooms were buzzing Tuesday morning with word of the leaked game. Today, five days after the first leak, they have released that build. They also stole enough game maps and other components to put together a playable build of the game. When hackers broke into the computing system of Valve Software, they stole more than just the source code to Half-Life 2. Theft of game's source code was just the beginning.
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