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hackers are c0c*s uckers. SImple as that.

I think the best move for Valve right now is to release HL2 as a single player only game as soon as possible. Then work on the multiplayer as a subsequent update/release. Given the circumstances I’m sure the community would be happy to wait for a secure multiplayer release in a few months.

Maybe they’ve got some work to do in securing the Steam-related code that has leaked out? How would this have panned out differently if they weren’t releasing HL2 as part of a DRM platform?

Pity you aren’t on the HL2 team bruce because that has to be the smartest suggestion I have heard about this whole mess.

I think weighing all of this mess up bruce, your suggestion will be a high possibility, but then again it seems like the future of Half Life 2 and Valve is looking extremely bad right now.

Can you guys tell me why this is so bad?

Sure they have the source code, which is basically the engine does this mean they have delayed the release to change the code?

Appart from it being easier to create aim bots and other hacks, what else could they do with this code?

Not having any programming experience could someone enlighten me?

Thanks.

What you said is right paco paco about bots, hacks etc. A fair bit of the leaked code revealed secrets about Valve’s future projects, not just Half-Life 2 so that is a huge blow. Valve’s new engine is pretty amazing and other developers who are a bit immoral could learn and | or use their revolutionary algorithms and | or code in their projects.

In addition to the leaked source code, the hacker has released the working Beta and now the Half-Life 1 remake and also Counter-Strike for Half-Life 2 which is really rubbing it in Valve’s face. They banked on a huge surprise factor for those 2 things being included and what do we have now? No surprise and it is being circulated for free. I really hope Valve release the game still in the face of all of this and when they do, the idiots who have played it for months will probably be so bored with it they won’t even bother. That attitude is being adopted by many honest folks out there who refuse to damage Valve further by being in possession of their work illegally.

paco,

Having copies of this code leaked also has ramifications for Valve’s business deals. For one they’ve licenced 3D physics code from Havoc which should never be made public. I’m not sure whether they will be sued by Havoc but this is not a good thing.

Also, part of the reason they can afford to put so much time and money into developing such a great game is the future earnings from licencing their ‘Source’ game engine out to other developers. Troika has already licenced the Source engine for Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines.

Considering the hughly competitive nature of this industry I wouldn’t be suprised if there is a certain number of companies who will now balk at paying large sums for an engine which has already been publicly leaked.

I think this quote from Irrational’s Ken Levine really sums it up…

"Whoever did this is an enemy not only of game developers, but of gamers. I can understand anti-globalization protestors picketing the G8. I can understand AIDS activists shutting down the Golden Gate Bridge. I can even understand people who pirate shipped games. But I can only imagine the person who did this was a gamer. To him I say, ‘Congratulations: Thanks to you, developers are going to spend more time worrying about security and less time making fun games. Nice going, loser.’"

While we all feel sorry for Valve, securing a PC these days costs how much? $0 = ZoneAlarm if you are a stingy tightwad. And yes, good hackers can circumvent software firewalls but what if Gabe was running a software firewall? It mightn’t have made a difference but it also might have. How many e-mail clients are available for free that leave Outlook in its wake? Many such as Pegasus that are immuned from security holes and an Outlook security hole was to blame for a lot of this damn mess. There were really no excuses for all this to happen to Valve. While I feel sorry for them, I think too much sympathy for these guys makes people forget one thing … they dropped their guard thanks to some social engineering when the hacker e-mailed Gabe posing as someone else from a fan site, he gave over some information (why would Gabe give over such critical information to someone from a fan site, even if it was a legitimate e-mail) and he got bitten big time.

When we see a bank scam website now, aren’t we a bit more aware not to enter our account details? Same goes for Gabe Newell. Why on earth would he give over such confidential and personal information to a fan site owner, let alone someone posing as a fan site owner (the hacker)?

What about a router? Did they even have one? What ports did they have open on it?

They are one of the best companies in the business, they have money, jesus h christ, if it meant hiring 20 of the world’s best IT security staff, why the hell not do it to lock down 5 years worth of blood, sweat and tears!!?!?!?!?

Read this again and see if it makes you angry. It should never have happened:

http://www.shacknews.com/on…

Hmmm I was just reading up on this. Doom III is due in April 2004. HL2 new date is April 2004. Coincidence? I’d say not.

Who is to say that the source code that has been leaked actually works? Who is to say that it wasn’t a "plant" for the hacker story? For all we know, it doesn’t bear any resemblance to their code and they are just buying time using very cheap and deceptive tactics making out they are going to rewrite it. I don’t believe what Newell says either. Like it has been said, as if you would divulge sensitive information to a fan site owner who turned out to be a hackrer like Gabe did. What a stupidhead. He has admitted that he was prepared to tell personal information to a fan site which is a huge no no. What did he tell the guy, the exact configuration of valve’s network, their IP addresses, they don’t use firewalls, they use Outlook? The mind boggles.

Either way, I have lost entire interest in Valve and Half-Life 2 after all of this crap. I don’t care anymore. HL2 is going to be just another FPS that will become a gimmic in notime anyway (just what the games market needs, another FPS hahaha yer right). I put my money on Doom 3 anyways. I am playing heaps of cool games that I enjoy right at this moment in time and that is all that matters.

Guys thanks for the responses, much appreciatted. I wasn’t thinking of the whole engine angle.

Personally I can’t wait to play HL2. I enjoyed HL imensly, and the fact that it had an awesome multiplayer was a bonus. As much as ppl bag cs now, it is up there as one of the best multiplayer games ever.

I’m not looking forward to Doom 3, going around shooting things without a good story becomes boring pretty quickly. Quake2 was the same, and ID didn’t even bother with a q3 storyline. Any way thats my opinion, and it sucks that we have to wait even longer now because of shit haxors.

I think that Gabe Newell and his team need to release new updates and mods and crap that disable the older version of the HL2 engine that was stolen and find the persons responsible for these atrosities and make sure that they see the day of their reconsiling. Kill them all….Kill….them….all…….

Oh, bye the way, I was just kidding. I don’t think that they should realy kill them. But I do think that they should’nt release HL2 ever….

They should bypass it and just move on to HL3.

i think they deserve everything they get for having such flimsy security on their network. Who in their right mind keeps the source code of their number one game - the crux of their entire business on an externally acessible machine?

It’s like leaving your Ferrari with the keys in it in the middle of a bad neighbourhood and being suprised that someone took it.

Even worse is that they knew something was fishy with their network but didn’t do anything about it for days…

i wouldnt be suprised if it’s all a ploy to but extra time and extra publicity.

In either case, Gabe needs to have his arse severely kicked and is a major loser…

Loser for not securing his machine.

Loser for not doing anything until the code was gone.

or

Loser for creating such a stupid story

also, tell me how you steal a third of the game without being detected.

- tell me how you get only one third and not the whole lot.

- tell me how if you cut the connection one third through a transfer, how you dont’ know who was accessing it.

- tell me how you use the one third to create a playable version - two thirds of the code is redundant? wow, valve sure are bloating up their code.

sucks to be Gabe Newell and the valve sys admin…

I don’t agree with your analogy.

It’s more like leaving your car locked up in your own garage. Some dipsh*t breaks into your house, hot wires it then gives his criminal buddies rides in it.

Your fault for not having an alarm system on your house? I’d like to see that theory hold up in court.

So I’m sure you’d shrug your shoulders and think to yourself.. "well.. shoulda seen THAT coming!" next time some stranger walks up to you and punches you in the face for no god-damned reason. You should have been wearing a face mask - and you got what you deserved for not.

In the entirety of your dribbling post you only touch on one truth, and that is that your theoretical Ferrari is parked in a ‘bad neighbourhood’.. this implies the entire internet is a bad neighbourhood.. a point that I (reluctantly) must concede. But don’t feel righteous in your observation - It’s a sad damned truth and we all have to wear it.

Thank you rumoko, you saved me the trouble.

i guess the analogy was incorrect but it doesn’t change the fact that Valve are solely responsible for the theft. they didn’t take the security precautions they should have

having worked as a game developer and still working in an online field where our business revolves around our custom developed software, it’s inconceivable that we’d ever have any of that source code anywhere near a ‘live’ environment.

Their fault.

It’s their fault someone stole their work.

O_o

That would be an interesting legal defence, and belongs right alongside the view that a woman dressing provocatively deserves to be raped.

We live in different moral universes.

No, it’s not their fault somebody stole their work.

It’s their fault that they have might prevent it. The same, if I live in a bad neighbourhood and I don’t want somebody to steal my Ferrari, I’ll put on some alarm system. I won’t count on the people’s good will - becuase, they are, the hackers, who live in another moral universe.

See the point - they don’t deserve to have their code stoled (as the woman doesn’t deserve to be raped). They were just doing nothing to prevent such event. Same for your analogy with the provocatively dressed woman. Dressing this way and walking in the middle of the street in a bad neighbourhood, she is raising her chances to be raped. That DOESN’T mean she deserves or she’ll be raped. It is all about possibilities, probabilities, etc.

So, don’t confuse raising the chance for something to happen with they deserve, it must happen, etc.

It is f****ng poker game out there - if want four aces you don’t throw away the three you’re holding, hopping you’ll get a new hand with four new aces in it. If you don’t want to be hacked, you don’t just sit there, hoping that all hackers are good and nice people, who will just test you network for vulnerabilities and ‘ll send you a report, right?

You said ‘legal’. Then, don’t forget that:

Not knowing the laws is not a justification! If you kill not knowing that it is punishable by law, does it make you innocent?

Not knowing the laws of the Internet is not justification for not getting up you defenses.

Come on, the world is more bad these days than good. What you propose? Sitting all here, defenseless and counting not to be hacked?

Wake, up please!

That’s a different point johny. The above poster said it was Valve’s fault. Were they naive? Probably. Could they have done more to prevent such a hack? Probably. It is the lot of generally nice people not to think the same way as criminals and so leave themselves vulnerable (Valve are game-makers first, businessmen second - you know, the sort of developers gamers wish for and whom we should be SUPPORTING not stealing from). None of that justifies the crime, excuses it, or removes any culpability from those responsible.

There are lots of people pushing the argument that the theft was somehow justified, or in some way Valve’s fault. That line of nonsense is what I’m speaking against.

Monty, no theft can be justified! No way! How could it be? What I hope is that companies like Valve, who are game makers and businessmen, will use their business capabilities and hire higly qualified security engineers, who will prevent such leakages. Then, all the fans will feel more comfortable.

Agree no theft can be justified but seriously, if you told all your neighbours that you bought a lot of fancy new AV gear and/or left the empty boxes out on the footpath advertising the fact to all. Then left your house with the doors unlocked, no alarm and no bars on the windows, would you seriously be suprised when you got robbed?

And, to question your very interesting point Marty, would you seriously expect the insurance company to pay up? Try sticking that before the courts.

What’s going on with the world thesedays? Where has responsibility gone? It used to lie with the individual, now the individual lets the courts decide who should be responsible. You sound like one of those people that think that just because there’s no sign there that says, "DON’T CLIMB THIS FENCE AND JUMP OFF THIS CLIFF" then it’s the councils fault for you climbing over and jumping off.

It’s Valve’s responsibility to protect their work. Nobody else is going to do it. They don’t secure their house, they get robbed. Their fault.

My it’s hard to take someone called "yodaslovejuice" seriously.

Has it even occurred to you dickheads that every computer is on the "live network".

The internet’s connected to the firewall.

The firewall’s connected to workstation.

The workstations connected to the server.

Sing it with me kids!

… its vaulves fault simple as that … they should have taken the time to invest properly in a nice 128bit encoder for all the shit they were sending back and forth between their building…also the terminals which are on the network and internet full time should not have anyhting to do with the development of their games. they need to share through a strict open close protical. when the machine sends info the path is open when its done that machine is no longer on th network … and yes such things are real!

All the morons (like RevDogma and errm… yodaslovejuice) who think it’s Valve’s fault should ask themselves whether they want money spent on making better games or money spent on fighting shithead hackers.

Already many developers out there are being forced to change their priorities, and this ultimately means less time and money to spend on making great games. In the real world (you may have heard of it) game development is a not a non-zero-sum game.

If you find network security issues more entertaining than playing good games then perhaps you should go toss off over a Cisco router instead of posting absolute bollocks on gaming websites like this one.

http://www.wired.com/news/g…

"They noted that piracy-paranoid game companies tightly protect their networks and servers, often storing code and assets on machines without an Internet connection."

Companies like Valve could have adopted the over paranoid safe approach and had any clients with assets on them on a dedicated LAN without internet connectivity. Sitting next to their LAN boxes, they could have had internet ready clients that are using a LAN connected to the internet that they can switch to if required.

Oh yer, what I also meant to say, Keyboard / Video / Mouse switch to switch between the isolated LAN client and the internet ready client.

Gabe Newell used to work for Microsoft. No fucking wonder he is a dumbarse when it comes to security issues.

Nice work bruce - resort to name calling…

What’s this waffle about ‘changing their priorities’? It’s as simple as ‘don’t keep your code on an internet connected machine’. Is that really that hard for you to understand?

And no, they wouldn’t have to be fighting the shithead hackers if they’d just taken very basic security precuations… like every other intelligent "REAL WORLD" software developer does.

Noone would have to fight sh*thead hackers if there were ‘real world’ consequences for breaching the ‘private property’ of someone else’s network.

Callin Valve silly for not being secure is one thing. Saying they deserved it is nonsense and a point not even worth arguing.

Monty’s ‘provocatively dressed network’ is probably the best way to consider this in real world terms.. and, yoda, I just know you’re not trying to justfy criminal behaviour, right?

dunno where you live but in my world and my industry - the online industry - we’re smart enough to realise you don’t leave your hard work lying around on an open network for other to just go ahead and steal.

guys its’ just common sense - i have no pity for those that don’t have any or should know better. natural selection at work.

and no, as a software developer myself, i would never and have never supported this type of criminal behaviour. to steal is wrong. full stop. but to steal something that’s lying there for the taking is plain stupid. imo, anyone who does this deserves to be tought a lesson because with the security and systems available thesedays, there’s absoloutley no reason for this to happen. Hopefully the whole incident has not only tightened up Valve’s security but that of dozens of other software co’s who might be in the same boat.

As I said before "Callin Valve silly for not being secure is one thing". I think this is a mute point.

I understand you having no pity for Valve… I have no pity for people who are swindled out of their life savings by dodgy schemes involving pyramids, nigeria, or the ‘president of a small african nation needing to transfer 10 million dollars’

But the people who commit those crimes (if caught) are punished - we can all agree that it’s wrong. However stupid those who were swindled my be, they don’t ‘deserve’ to lose their money.

Yoda said:

"…imo…"

Fair enough. You’re entitled to your opinions yoda.

I am of the opinion that network security lessons can be taught in otherways - short of being hacked and having ones property stolen.

I mean moot - not mute. (wishful thinkin maybe) :P

So, young master lovejuice, In your version of the real world, no computer is connected to the internet? Surely if you can’t have any of your work on a PC with an internet connection then you can’t have any PCs with an internet connection. That must make working in the "online world" quite difficult.

Perhaps you have a machine sitting in the corner dedicated to internet access only? Is it one of those purty IMACs?

Wow…. My head hurts now…

There are just so many sides to the story, and so many people getting so worked up over the issue….

Hmmm…. Crazy ¿ ? !

Hmmm….

Maybe Valve should release a playable demo of HL2 to try and drown-out demand for a pirated version??? That way at least they can control what game content is being released to the public early, and can also keep gamers waiting on the edge of their seats?

Hmmmmmmmmmmm…. Crazy ¿ ? !

I have a question. A friend of mine has offered me a copy of Half Life 2. He says it is the whole game (which obviously is hard to believe) and he’s giving it to me for free…Is this without a doubt the stolen property? I liked the first game, i thought it was made well, and I dont want to "help the bad guys out" by using what they stole. Its a fu*ked up situation, kinda of wish it didnt happen to Valve.