Halflife2 sourcecode leak... ack!

#41 Jarrod isn't Call of Duty a Quake III Engine based game? In PC gamer this month:

"I'm very impressed with what Infinity Ward has managed to achieve with the Quake III technology [in Call of Duty], since that game was released back in 1999."

That was John Carmack talking about Doom 3 tech lasting for 5 more years.

#42 It was reported around E3 time that Call of Duty was HL2 powered, everyone included it in discussions of HL2; seems that is not the case, it is powered by a heavily modified RTCW codebase according the only source I was able to find.

Pat use your imagination . . . after all the HL cheating I am sure Valve put some kind of encryption in the engine for assets at least, that would be severly compromised as would any kind of custom script interpreter. Network protocol is compromised, one of the first effective cheats for HL was a network proxy that altered the data coming in and out to do radar, head shots and other things. That is trival if you have the network code and the encryption code. And even if there are no "new" cheats, it would increase the number and frequency of releases exponentally.

Valve has such a HORRIBLE track record for responding to cheats and game security that hard core games will automatically assume the worst, I know I already do.

#43 Jarrod: So what if they know the encryption. The encryption algorithms for Blowfish etc are all out there. SSH is open source. I'm sure Mark could write a whole bunch on this, but I think that if Valve is relying on "nobody finding out" their encryption, that is a horrible, horrible plan. Challenge-responce...it's all about the challenge-responce.

#44 Pat, anything they might be using would be low grade as a trade off for cpu time vs security, just like most applications have patetically weak registration codes just to keep the casual pirate out, so to would by any encoding of the data in a game engine, so secrecy is 99% of any encryption scheme that is time dependant such as a real time game would be. They would probably only encrypt some of the data to make it look more random that it was and encode the rest. Thus the simple encoding is not even weak security right now, and any strong security would affect game play.

#45 So, this thread is spiralling off-topic. *contributes*

For realtime network gameplay, a "strong" protocol is not an encrypted protocol. It's a matter of assuming the client is already compromised. Torque demonstrates this very well with its scope calculations. Not only do they keep traffic down, but they also prevent clients from learning information they shouldn't know.

Which means that people, even if they have the source, are limited to aimbot-style hacks. Or maybe they can find a trick to let them move a bit faster... but there's no possibility of a game-compromising hack, by design.

Even if I had full knowledge of the WON protocols (or Steam, which is analogous for this argument), I wouldn't be able to play online without a valid cd key.

Unless I compromised both client and server, but HL1 had that vulnerability, and you don't find that many people playing without a valid cd key.

Valve, financially, doesn't care if everybody plays a cracked singleplayer. They make their money off of charging for cd keys. The nature of the system is that people will tend to play on valid servers vs. invalid servers, until there is an entire "invalid" infrastructure set up to support them.

And why run all your own illegal master server and servers, when you could just buy a copy of the game for $50 and use Valve's without risk of legal action or the effort of recracking the game after every update?

#46

Quote:And why run all your own illegal master server and servers, when you could just buy a copy of the game for $50 and use Valve's without risk of legal action or the effort of recracking the game after every update?

For many people who do things like this, I think the reason is to see if they can meet the challenge.

#47 Of course.

But for Joe Average consumer... :)

#48

Quote:When hackers broke into the computing system of Valve Software, they stole more than just the source code to Half-Life 2. They also stole enough game maps and other components to put together a playable build of the game. Today, five days after the first leak, they have released that build.

Holy crap, holy, holy, holy crap.

#49 (Based on reports from friends.)

It's exactly that - [u]playable[/u]. It's missing minor things like the scripted sequences and monster AI. Levels are missing floors and textures. The single player section doesn't work; you have to manually start servers with the level you want to play. The GUI is buggy.

So... playable? Yeah. Competitive with the final product? No.

#50 "The leak could also have a negative impact on graphic chip manufacturer ATI, which Valve recently named the preferred graphics card partner of Half-Life 2. ATI (ATYT: Research, Estimates) planned to give away a free copy of the game with its two latest products. The leaked version could lessen demand for those graphics cards, though."

... Because obviously, the same people who leaked HL2 are going to leak high-end graphics cards to play it on.

I'm sure that ATI's deal would have gained them some good income, but I can't believe that a buggy leaked copy of the game is going to make an appreciable percentage of high-end gamers not only not want to buy HL2, but not buy a new graphics card to play it on.

#51 One wonders if that was actually the current state of halflife 2 not just the leak ;)

Ben I think the kick in the teeth for ATI is that it takes the halflife 2 / 9800XT bundle deal into the next product iteration. Potentially killing the 9800XT stone dead.

#52 Good point. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

#53 Heh... I'm not in a great situation either... The source code ended up on my webserver - one of my users uploaded it. I discovered it in a routine scan of the system, deleted it, removed the user from /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, /etc/group, and so forth, removed all his data, contacted the president of my webhosting company about it (good thing I know him personally!) AND notified valve... Does that leave me clean?

#54 Honestly, I don't think they are in a position to care about anyone except the people who are actively distributing it.

Liken it to finding that one of your friends left a box of illegal porn in your house. Sure, you could potentially get busted, but if you throw it away, toss your friend out on his ear, and don't make a big deal out of it, you'll probably be fine.

#55 My question is why does getting the code stolen prevent you from hitting a before holiday season target mean that you can't get the game out? I agree much will be compromised and I feel for the developers and Valve. But, with a good patching system like Planetside this could easily be updated and even replaced and rebuild the exe from the game. Couldn't they change quickly the really extreme source items, and replace them with a patch in 2-3 months? With the challenge-response and the cd key required by server this would be ok for 2-3 months right, what could really get going in that time and it would change with the patch anyways?

Could it be that Valve just wasn't done and albeit got their code stolen, but are using it to prop them through all the way to next holiday season? I think that this is part of the big name companies schtick, you gotta have your release delayed but you wanna hit the holiday traffic. It is a hype driven marketing channel and this in some way helped them promote their game. They were gonna miss it because they are making an excellent game and that takes time, so they are using this to prop them up. I feel bad for ATI and all the gamers expecting this game to play this christmas (or the day it comes out). If the game was ready truly, I think that they would release it but if they felt it was not complete and this happened then I could see them delaying it. My two cents.

I will be signing this novel at the door for $5

#56 Releasing an initially buggy/cheat ridden game is the DEATH KNELL for a game and severly hurts the game developer. Valve has this horrible reputation for allowing cheating to go on with Half-Life already, they lost lots of players because if it, they lost even more with this Steam fiasco. Everyone I know that played HL games on line have quit rather than fool with the buggy slow pita Steam. They just uninstalled rather than install than deal with it.

Remember that there is no such thing as bad publicity. The got on CNN and FoxNews with this, a timely release would not have gotten them anywhere near that kind of free marketing.