Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

eurogamer.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 99 posts

Re: The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

#71

Post by exodust »

grubbs wrote: post #31
maxweylandt wrote: post #11

The article claims/repeats the claim that this cost valve $250 million, but I don't see how. If the leaked version wasn't very playable the damage can't come from lost sales

I vaguely remember playing it. It was total garbage (the leaked copy). You could play maybe a few levels etc. Ultra buggy. I think my buddy burned it to 3 CD-Rs and it spread around my gaming friends in HS pretty quickly.

Yeh I recall the leaked version quickly gained a poor reputation. I had zero interest in downloading or playing it. Not surprised that sales of the final release were unaffected.

Re: The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

#72

Post by kristofferR »

grubbs wrote: post #31
maxweylandt wrote: post #11

The article claims/repeats the claim that this cost valve $250 million, but I don't see how. If the leaked version wasn't very playable the damage can't come from lost sales

I vaguely remember playing it. It was total garbage (the leaked copy). You could play maybe a few levels etc. Ultra buggy. I think my buddy burned it to 3 CD-Rs and it spread around my gaming friends in HS pretty quickly.

That's not accurate at all, the beta was revolutionary - you could play with the physics, the gravity gun.

It wasn't a proper game yet for sure, but as a 2003 tech demo the beta was one of the best, you could recreate the legendary E3 demo [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ddJ1OKV63Q

Re: The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

#73

Post by jamesfinlayson »

xwolfi wrote: post #61
prmoustache wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah that is just "let's throw random numbers to victimize ourselves even more". I don't think a lot of people downloaded the unfinished source code, compiled it, played the game and never bought the conplete game. The worst that happened were people making memes with some 3d and graphics assets which didn't cost anyrhing to Valve. Quite the opposite it was free advertising.

But I did use it as inspiration for an 3D engine project at school, they had geometrical formulas I had trouble to find online, at least efficiently implemented. It helped a bit in reverse engineering their map format too so I could just display any sort of already made map. I imagine that if I branched out in gaming it would have been a nice bonus, it's not everyday you get to see the competition's code. I suppose t…

Hard to say - I don't think Valve was ever big on licensing their technology. Source was used for dozens of games in the end (https://vghe.net/source-engine.html) which isn't too bad, but Source 2 licensing isn't even offered.

Re: The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

#74

Post by mepian »

russelg wrote: post #58
charcircuit wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve has not released the source engine code beyond their partners.

It's literally on Github. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/source-sdk-2013

It's literally SDK, if you care to actually read your link. Not the engine itself: the game-specific logic DLLs (client.dll and server.dll in the game's folder) that hook into the engine, and can be modified to make mods. Valve started publishing those with the release of their first game in 1998.

You can read more about the modding workflow here: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/My_First_Mod

If you are familiar with the latest version of Unreal, then it's like having access to the "Games" project in your solution and only some headers from the "Engine" project.

Re: The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

#77

Post by lifeline82 »

dvzk wrote: post #69
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, well that wasn't in the article, I wasn't aware. I still find Valve's response to a person admitting guilt to be pretty harsh, given that they couldn't have known about unrelated crimes.

Sure, to be clear, I also think Valve's response was over the top. Conspiring to extradite a foreigner, as a private corporation, is straight out of cyberpunk fiction. Axel's a very lucky person, all things considered. If he had been held liable for Agobot's staggering DDOS/theft/remediation costs many in this community might otherwise think it fair.

This is an habit with USA to try to extradite in a trap attempt, suspected « hackers ».

This happened to Gaius, in late 90th, for impersonating US president on the hacked White House pabx.

This happened to Casper/leader2 connecting to a shell of military US server after someone on IRC asked him to kee the connection alive.

Back in the day cyber force of USA were fighting for budget, and having hacker arrested and judged in a very advertised way was helping them get more money for their work.

Even if it means to totally disrespect internationnal procedure/law/agreement on dealing with « criminal ».

Once a foreigner puts a feet on US ground, he is totally in the hand of US officials, in disregard of any official treaties and international laws.

Anyone remembering this Russian guy arrested straight from plane when he landed in USA going to make a talk to defcon ?

Re: The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

#78

Post by FreshStart »

shortrounddev2 wrote: post #28
prmoustache wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah that is just "let's throw random numbers to victimize ourselves even more". I don't think a lot of people downloaded the unfinished source code, compiled it, played the game and never bought the conplete game. The worst that happened were people making memes with some 3d and graphics assets which didn't cost anyrhing to Valve. Quite the opposite it was free advertising.

The justice department has absurd ways of determining how much damages were caused by unauthorized access. Kevin Mitnick talks about it in his book "Ghost in the Wires", but he was accused of causing $1.5mil in damages to DEC or Sun or something because he copied code, printed it out on paper, and kept it for himself (he didn't distribute it to anyone else). Fortunately, he was ultimately only ordered to pay a few th…

(Prize of actual secure software +1$)/NrOfPerpetraitors.

Makes perfect sense just has nothing to do with justice.

Re: The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

#79

Post by jamesfinlayson »

bakugo wrote: post #35

I wish more people would hack and steal code from big video game studios. It's thanks to kids like him that Source Engine games are so well-understood and easily moddable nowadays.

I think it happens more often than you'd think - this was the first of maybe four leaks of the full Source engine code (so far). Generally it doesn't make headlines though because it's just code, not an unreleased game.

Re: The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

#80

Post by tmtvl »

mepian wrote: post #22
sva_ wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure the leak also lead them to release the Source engine's code, which was wildly successful.

They started licensing their code before the leak, e.g. to Troika Games. They never released the code publicly.

Yeah, I remember gaming mags highlighting how VtM:B was using the "Half Life 2 engine".
Post reply on HN