Arrested

Direct from the VERC


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ARRESTS MADE IN RELATION TO HALF-LIFE 2 THEFT
Online Community Tracks Down Hackers

June, 10 2004 ? Arrests have been made in several countries related to the break-in to Valve?s network, theft of the Half-Life 2 source code, and release of the source code on the Internet.

?Within a few days of the announcement of the break-in, the online gaming community had tracked down those involved,? said Gabe Newell, Valve?s CEO. ?It was extraordinary to watch how quickly and how cleverly gamers were able to unravel what are traditionally unsolvable problems for law enforcement related to this kind of cyber-crime.?

Thousands of tips were received related to the criminal activities, with a core group of people who were able to analyze and backtrack from these clues. Subsequent to these individuals being identified, Valve has been working with various national authorities to prepare cases against those involved, leading to these arrests.

?It was very uplifting to see how the community rallied and tracked these people down. Everyone here at Valve is once again reminded of how much we owe to the gaming community,? added Mr. Newell.

For specific details on the arrests, please contact the Northwest Cyber Crime Task Force, Seattle, 206-262-2030.

About Valve
Founded in 1996, Valve creates entertainment software titles, including Half-Life?, Counter-StrikeTM, and Team Fortress?. Valve's portfolio accounts for over 10 million retail units sold worldwide, and over 88% of the online action market. More information about Valve is available through the company?s Web site at <A href="http://www.valvesoftware.com">www.valvesoftware.com

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Good show. Any word of how many were arrested and how they obtained the code?

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/news_story.php?id=58876

Valve Software has so far given no indication of how many have been arrested, nor has the developer named the countries from which the thieves hail

Anybody spoke to Orph on his "one phonecall" then? :razz:

i am glad to know they finaly got the buggers. considering hl2 could of been out alot sooner that realy bugged me :sad: .

I would of done this to them myself :razz:

Killing yourself with a grenade for the cause is really noble Pegs, but maybe a little extreme. :razz:

Gwil said:
Anybody spoke to Orph on his "one phonecall" then? :razz:

I havent gotten a call yet.. I think they might have overlooked that privelege..

Should I be embarrased that it took me a minute to get that? :smile:

heh, i thought it was funny anyway :smile:

Alien_Sniper said:
Should I be embarrased that it took me a minute to get that? :smile:

Yes... Yes you should :razz: Maybe I just didnt say it the right way.

I was referring to Gwils phone call comment. I didn't make the
connection with Jons possession of the game and the 'one phone call'
prison rule. :smile:

I'd suggest we spank those bastards.

Spanking with crowbars I guess? :razz:

Your a little bit late

This is different, note the date.

This is the official press release, but it's exactly the same thing really...

News of the Half-Life 2 arrests comes after months of rumors about
law-enforcement activity on the case. In January, a number of computer
experts in the San Francisco area reported having their hardware seized
by FBI agents on the grounds that they were involved in the theft.
Several weeks ago, unconfirmed reports from Germany said the author of
the Phatbot Trojan worm was also involved in the theft. In both
instances, neither Valve nor the authorities offered any comment.

Their punishment should be being put in a room, with 20 Half-Life 2 fans who have legal immunity for about 4 hours.

Yeah, let the nerds at him. :biggrin: [/innacurate generalization]

KingNic said:
Their punishment should be being put in a room, with 20 Half-Life 2 fans who have legal immunity for about 4 hours.

Why the long wait? Just lock them in a room for 10 minutes with the entire SnarkPit population in their, and they will have suffered enough :biggrin:

Yippie Ki Yay!

Potential bad news which is related to the original story. :sad:

Although the current news must make
most H-L 2 fans happy, the timing casts a question mark over the game's
release date. Following the theft, Half-Life 2's release changed from
Christmas 2003 to sometime in 2004, it was only just before E3
that Valve begun b>not denying a possible summer release date. A
look at Vivendi Universal's, H-L 2's publisher, mid-year release
timetable however, raises some doubt over the summer release since the
game is not included. What is even more troubling is that the timetable
includes other titles, known to have a planned Christmas release for VU
Games, suggesting that H-L 2 may miss the holidays of 2004 as well.

Let
us hope that Valve choose to recognize the help they received from the
gaming community and stick to the summer release we have all been
hoping for.



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There was some confusion over that sometime back I remember... Vivendi released it's Christmas release schedule, not it's summer schedule, and some people got them mixed up on their sites. Maybe this is just the same thing?

MAKEY TEH H4X0RZ PAY!

HL2 has taken far too long already to come out. Whoever those hackers are, they've already ruined the once-superior graphics engine by delaying the game, and the physics engine is heading downhill too. By the time it's released, it'll be just another FPS...

Well if it doesn't come out until christmas, go enjoy Doom/Read World? instead :wink:

Somehow I'm not worrying that HL2 will be "just another FPS". What made HL1 great (its still one of the best singleplayer FPS games ever) was not the graphics, or the AI, or any single thing, but how the level design brought all the little peices together perfectly to create a great game.

Valve knows how to take their technical assets, and turn them into fun gameplay, which is more than can be said about most FPS creators these days.

I like this part:

It was extraordinary to watch how quickly and how cleverly gamers were able to unravel what are traditionally unsolvable problems for law enforcement related to this kind of cyber-crime.

So it looks like not everyone who uses IRC is an evil kiddy porn virus wrtiing whore? I wish more people would look at instances like this and help dispell the idea that anybody who has downloaded a few mp3s is some moral-less criminal with no care for society or whatever...

But yeah, if HL2 was going to be a great game in September, it will be a great game when it does come out. As long as the graphics are at least average, it's the content of the game itself that matters.

Don't be stupid, people doing good to help the world doesn't sell newspapers does it? People want hard-hitting headlines and stories! Does it particularly matter that thousands of people get mullered because of the crap we print? OF COURSE NOT

[/saracasm in case anyone's stupid enough not to notice :razz: ]

hah :smile: We do have [sarcasm] tags, you know :razz:

I was refering to this NYT story really: slashdot story (you have to register to use nyt).

Leperous said:
Well if it doesn't come out until christmas, go enjoy Doom/Read World? instead :wink:

If that happens, I'm waiting for Duke Nukem Forever.

Yes, you will be

b'dum chi

fraggard said:
I'm waiting for Duke Nukem........ Forever.

there i fixed the little text misdirection..

its prolly going to be forever before it truly arrives.

Way to miss Jeffs joke. :razz:

:smile:

Alien_Sniper said:
Way to miss Jeffs joke. :razz:

:smile:

didn't miss it bud.. i kinda stole its thunder though.. sorry jeff.

sadly.. jeffs joke wasn't nearly as good as nick using his other hand for "hardcore"