Source code for Half Life 2’ stolen And

[Ladic]

http://www.msnbc.com/news/975464.asp

Oct. 3 —  A Bellevue, Wash., company that spent five years developing the sequel to its acclaimed computer game “Half Life” was victimized this week by an enemy more fearsome than the alien thugs that populate its make-believe world — a hacker who apparently penetrated its computer network, stole the game’s source code and posted it on the Internet.

“EVER HAVE ONE of those weeks?” Valve Software founder Gabe Newell wrote on a gaming Web site Thursday announcing the theft of the “Half Life 2” source code and asking the gaming community for help in tracking down the villain. “… This sucks.”

      The source code does not allow a person who downloads it to play the game, but it contains enough core programming that it could be used to create games with different graphics, said Michael Pachter, a gaming analyst with Wedbush Morgan.

      “You can take that engine, which essentially just tells the characters how to interact with one another, and turn the scientist battling the aliens into a military guy battling Iraqis in the desert,” he said.

     

INTRUDER GAINED ACCESS TO E-MAIL

      In his posting on HalfLife2.net, Newell, said that the source code was stolen by someone who was able to gain access to his e-mail account in September and install keystroke-logging software on several company computers.

      “Around 9/19 someone made a copy of the HL-2 source tree,” he wrote.

      Newell, who spent 13 years with Microsoft Corp. before leaving to start Valve Software, said the company also had been experiencing denial of service attacks against its web servers and Steam, a broadband software delivery platform the company operates, but stated that it was not clear whether the attacks were related to the theft.

Representatives of Valve did not return calls Friday seeking comment.

      A source familiar with the case said federal agents were investigating. An FBI spokesman in Seattle declined comment.

      The release of “Half Life 2,” currently scheduled for December, has been one of the most eagerly anticipated events of the year among computer gamers, who made the first game one of the most popular titles ever.

      The game, described by fans as a cross between the “X-files” and Stephen King, stars Gordon Freeman, a scientist at Black Mesa Research Facility, who is forced to battle a horde of alien thugs after a freak accident opens up a portal to another dimension.

     

PREVIEWED TO RAVE REVIEWS

      In the sequel, which previewed to rave reviews at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles in May, Freeman is joined by other humans in attempting to prevent the aliens from achieving world domination, as well as another alien race whose allegiances are unclear.

     

Read 'Half Life 2' review

      Though the theft stirred considerable buzz in the gaming community, and raised fears that the release of “Half Life 2” — originally slated for September — could be delayed beyond Christmas, observers said it was not expected to have a significant impact on the company. 

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        Pachter, the gaming analyst, said that while other game developers could try to piggy-back on the “Half Life 2” code to create bootleg versions of the game, they probably would not be able to distribute their product.

      “It’s a close community and it’s going to be difficult for someone to come out with a game and try to pretend they developed it themselves,” he said. “It would be like taking a copy of ‘Moby Dick’ and changing the names and saying you wrote it.”

     

WORRIES ABOUT ‘CHEATS’

      Dave Kosak, executive editor at the gaming news site GameSpy.com, said the financial impact - if there is any - could come if gamers use the code to reverse-engineer “cheats” that allow them to defeat all comers in online, multi-player games.

      “Once cheating becomes rampant, it’s worthless to play,” he said. “It’s just no fun.”

      Kosak said that while the theft is something of a security black eye for Valve, it also is a back-handed compliment.

      “It certainly reflects on their security, but it also reflects on the popularity of their product,” he said. “People went out of their way to penetrate their network and get their hands on it.”

     

      MSNBC.com’s Tom Loftus contributed to this report.

not sure if this has been posted before.

[JsARCLIGHT]

Yup, been aired out in a few threads so far.

You may be late to the party but I'll still let you have a beer.

[Ladic]

oops, my bad then, if you wish mod can lock this one up.

[justvinnie]

cheaters andd hackers are lame asses who have no social lives.

vinnie

PS: I just bought a new tux since I've outgrown my old one! Just thought I share that!

[Ladic]

I found this from another board:

I'm not sure if people realize how serious this is. From a consumer gamer point of view, even the hardcore of us, the Doom 3 alpha leak is cool. You can play it, see it in action, etc. The source code for a game is far less exciting, unless you have some knowledge of how to go about compiling that code it's useless, and once you do there's still no content so there's nothing to look at unless you make it yourself. In that respect the Half-Life 2 source code is boring, and as such will probably be seen by far fewer people than if it was a full build with all the content and the binaries compiled (a warez copy). Sure, a warez copy of the game hurts sales, especially if it's released before the game is out. Illegal copies of software is an issue that effects every product released on the PC. The most this effects the normal consumer is a price increase in the product, but otherwise it's transparent to maybe even 90% of the consumers out there.

Most people don't think about how someone else with the source will effect us as gamers. Counterstrike is well known for it's abundant cheats. These were almost all created by reverse engineering code or using hacks that go by way of things outside of the actual game code. With the Half Life 2 source code out, all of those people making cheats now have a direct look of how the code works, they can create their own clients that pretend there's nothing different about them and can bypass any anti-cheat protection put in place. They have access to exactly what the server sees when they move around, jump, fire a button. They can send a call to the server telling it that it's aimed directly at a person's head they happen to be looking in the general direction of. These kind of cheats exist for Counterstrike now, but it took a long time for people to figure out how to do it. People will be able to come out with these cheats the day of, or in fact before Half-Life 2 is even released. Worse, they have access to cd key generation code, even the code that the game uses to check that cd key so clients that don't even need a cd key will be released. The code that hooks Half-Life 2 in to Steam can be removed or exploited.

That's another thing, the Half-Life 2 source includes more than just the Half-Life 2 game code, it's everything. People now can see how the entire Steam system is setup, how the security code for that is done, etc. Thousands, even millions of dollars of research and production time that went in to the creation of these systems is now all for nothing as they'll need to be essentially redone from the ground up to protect us the consumers from being prey to those who could use this information against everyone who buys their game. If Half-Life 2 uses auto updates, and someone has access to the code that lets the Half-Life 2 client know about it, they could hijack the system to install all sorts of wonderful viruses or trojans as part of a bogus update.

Even worse are the legal implications. Valve's engine uses sub systems written by other people. Video codecs, audio systems, physics systems, which Valve had to pay big bucks to get the source for. The source leaked has the source for these too. That doesn't mean too much to us, but to the companies that Valve paid to get that code is going to be very unhappy. They make their living on that code and making sure that no one who isn't authorized to have it can get it. Now it's out there, and while it's possible source for many of these already exists somewhere on the net, Valve is still liable for letting that code be released. This is bad, bad news for Valve.

For Valve it means that the engine they've worked years on is freely available to everyone, so I'd not be surprised to see "open source" (sorry for the pun) 3d engines coming out based on Valve's hard work.

I'm deeply sad for Valve as this could possibly cause Half-Life 2 to never be released, or if it does take millions more dollars than Valve had intended to spend on it. This also destroys any plans Valve had for Steam. While I personally thought Steam was a bad program, I thought the idea Valve had behind it was admirable and was looking forward for it to become more common place. With the set backs the system has already had, this could set back the Steam network indefinatly.

While I doubt this will have any effect, I urge anyone who gets access to this code to not distribute it further. I know I'm not going to stop anyone from trying to find it, but the more that can be done to slow the speed of the source's distribution the better. Think of this as if someone came in to your home and stole your life's work along with your TV and VCR and left an IOU in it's place, someone did this to Valve and it's employees. Regardless of your opinion of Valve as a company, remember people like you work there and make their livelyhood on that code; blood, sweat, and tears have gone in to it and a lot more is likely to be shed from this incident.

I've seen a lot of confusion about what the Half-life 2 source is and isn't, whether it can be compiled into a working copy of the game or not, and whether this is bad or not for Valve.

I am a small time games developer myself and for the benefit of those in the community not into software programming or knowledgeable in games development, I thought I'd try and give a brief explanation. Apologies to the experts as some simplifications have been made for general consumption.

1) A game like Half-life 2 consists of two main elements, resources and programming code.

The resources consist mostly of all the non-logic/instruction based elements of a game, that is the art, textures, sound, story script, maps etc. Things like the model and textures for the headcrab is typical of this. This is the largest part of a game in size, for a game like Half-life 2 typically over a gigabyte of the game will be resources. These resources cannot do anything by themselves, and if you have the right software, can be viewed/played as when making a mod. These are like the bricks and wood for the "house" Valve was building.

The program code consists of the logic and instructions as to how the game will function. That is to say, the code directs the computer in how to utilize the resources mentioned above, in the correct manner to allow you to play a game. Examples of what would be included in the program code are the Source engine, the Havoc engine for physics, artificial intelligence routines, game launcher code etc. Using the analogy above with the headcrab, the corresponding program code would be the animation rules for the headcrab, its artificial intelligence behavior, its stats etc.

This is like the architectural plan of the "house" Valve was building.

2) To play the game (as you will when it is released) you need the program code and the resources. What has been leaked is the program code, which amounted to around 160 megabytes of text (though this did include some non half life 2 related code), which is a SERIOUS amount of code. The resources for half life 2 are not included, and they would have amounted to at least a gigabyte.

When programmers write code, they write it in so called high level language like C++. A high level language is one that is easy to understand to humans, so that editing it is easy during development. This is known as the source code, and is what Valve will be working on right until half life 2 goes Gold. This is what has been leaked to the public. The source code has many lines of C++ code, which you will have trouble understanding if you do not know C++ (though it is very easy to learn!), and some comments that explain what the code is doing.

A computer is not designed to directly execute C++ code, which has been designed for a human to read. Instead it executes machine code, a far lower level language which is very hard for a human to understand. Coding in machine code would be a nightmare for a programmer and so they prefer to use C++ and other high level languages. Now for the computer to understand Valve's C++ source code, it must be converted to machine code. This is what a COMPILER does. Valve will run a compiler on the source code every so often, creating a bunch of executable files (machine code based) that can then be used to run the game and test the changes made to the source code. This is what you get when you buy a game: Resources and the compiled source code to run them.

As such, the fact that the source code is in the public domain does not mean that anyone can compile a working game out of it, as all the resources are missing as well as a few other code elements. So this source code leak isn't a big deal for Valve right? Why all the worry?

3) A source code leak is a HUGE deal. Source code is only released for obsolete games (like Quake, Quake 2 etc) once the programming secrets they contained are deemed out of date and no longer valuable to rival developers.

Half-life 2 is NOT an obsolete game. Is a cutting edge game incorporating many features that have never been seen before in a game, and more importantly is HAS NOT BEEN RELEASED. What does this mean for Valve?

It means all the work behind the new features, the Source engine, the revolutionary AI etc is now exposed for anyone in the public and rivals to see, learn from, and God forbid, copy. Using the house analogy above, it means the new revolutionary solar powered house you were building has had its building plans stolen before you've built it. Now everyone knows how you solved all those problems which prevented people from building revolutionary solar powered houses.

As an example, the Strider as seen in the released videos, is an amazingly novel creature to see in a computer game. It is seriously big, yet maneuvers around and interacts with the landscape in a convincing and intelligent manner. Getting a Strider to function like this will have taken Valve months of painstaking AI and animation work. Rival developers would have had to guess how on earth Valve pulled it off. Now they can simply look in the equivalent of the Strider AI source code file, and it will all be there, conveniently commented and explained by the Valve programmers for their own internal private understanding.

The source code for half life 2 is the result of 5 years of hard work by some of the best programmers in the games industry. No one would have seen it (bar engines licensees) for 5 or 6 years at least, upon which it might have been released to the public (like Id software with Quake).

The source code is not to be confused with the SDK as some people have. The SDK for half life 2 which will be released, is its Software Development Kit. This allows modders and fans to create games and mods using Half-life 2 technology, but does not tell them how the technology works. Unfortunately this is exactly what the leaked source code tells people.

So in short , this means for Valve:

All its clever routines and algorithms for making a revolutionary game like half life 2 tick, are available to be understood by anyone who knows C++, including game development rivals, hackers making cheats and exploits and the general public.

More worryingly the source code seems to contain a lot of source code from partner software developers that Valve had licensed to use in Half- life 2, such as the Havoc physics engine, and that Valve is contract bound to keep protected and confidential. These leaks enable people to potentially rip off these software partners too, and hence opens Valve to be sued.

Finally the internal workings of Half-life 2 have been so seriously compromised that I will be amazed if we see it released before 1st Quarter 2004. The potential for hacking exploits is enormous; it is like printing the blueprint to your high security safe in the local newspaper before having it installed in your home. SERIOUS work is needed now to rework the source code to protect it from future attacks on release. Let us not even mention that it seems Steam has been seriously compromised as well in the leaked source, as that had enough problems of its own to be getting on with without this.

A leak of the source code of a revolutionary highly anticipated game like Half-life 2, close to release is, as far as I know, unprecedented. My deepest sympathy as a games developer goes to the Valve crew and I wish them every success in catching the perpetrators of this crime.

[JsARCLIGHT]

Makes you just want to beat the hackers to death with your shoe, doesn't it?

I'd like to see what sort of drop in hacking would happen if suddenly stuff like that was a death penalty offense enforced by a far-reaching and all-seeing Orwellian entity that would come for them in the night...

[Hurricane29]

That would be great, hacking would just all together stop. Why does someone all ways have to mess up things for others. Hopefully that hacker gets whats comming to him.

[justvinnie]

Makes you just want to beat the hackers to death with your shoe, doesn't it?

I'd like to see what sort of drop in hacking would happen if suddenly stuff like that was a death penalty offense enforced by a far-reaching and all-seeing Orwellian entity that would come for them in the night...

I'm all for making harsher laws for cyber criminals, cowards who can't even rival their real world counter parts, opting instead to hide behind a computer. I have nothing but contempt for these egocentric leeches.

vinnie

[myk]

I can't tell the difference between a Valkyrie or a Go-bot, but how or why would a "source code" be available to the outside world, either through legitimate or malicious methods? I just don't see why something as valuable as your source code, or archived Kelly Brooke pictures or whatever would be just sitting in a PC that could be accessed by another terminal somewhere....

[1st Border Red Devil]

Makes you just want to beat the hackers to death with your shoe, doesn't it?

Yes it does.

The fragger that did this hosed not only the Half-Life 2 game company...but any company (like, say, White Wolf) that had games coming out based on the Half-Life 2 engine. I hope they find this punk and shoot his sorry ass while he's on the toilet....an ignominious end to a waste of flesh. Either that or he needs to spend 10+ yrs playing 'Prison Bitch' in a "Pound You in the Ass!" penitentiary.

The amount of money that will be lost to this is going to be immense I bet.

[myk]

I don't know what it takes to 'hack, I can't even get my own programs to open most of the time, but I don't think this would've been the work of just one person.....

[bsu legato]

....

[Mr March]

This is old news. But it's sad nonetheless. As a big fan of Valve and the original Half-Life, I am pissed off that this is going to hurt one of my favorite gaming companies. They better still be able to release Half-Life 2. If not, this hacker will have done more damage than he already has.

[ZorClone]

the whole thing gives me an ulcer..

not yet mentioned in this thread is the fact that, indeed, enough game resources along with the source code were stolen to compile a playable build of the game, and is circulating across the world. I'm also a small-time game developer, and this whole situation makes me sick... I feel so hurt for Valve.. those guys have worked on that game for longer than most of us have or will ever spend in high-school! Now, because of gutless thieves, it could be all for nought.. I'm praying nearly every day that this game still gets released.

[leeden]

I can't tell the difference between a Valkyrie or a Go-bot, but how or why would a "source code" be available to the outside world, either through legitimate or malicious methods? I just don't see why something as valuable as your source code, or archived Kelly Brooke pictures or whatever would be just sitting in a PC that could be accessed by another terminal somewhere....

Intellectual property such as Valve's source code is usually secure on their systems. It's not something that's just left laying around. It sounds like the hacker found an unsecured port and installed a "root kit" on their system. This person basically probed their firewall for a security flaw, invaded their system and snooped around. Such a program may go unnoticed until somebody sees unusual network activity.

[justvinnie]

Isn't there some law that holds websites responsible for their content? IE a website that host stolen content suchas the source code ffor the HL2 game engine is liable to be sued to oblivion? Making illegal content public I feel should just be as incriminating as doing the actual crime.

vinnie

[Ladic]

....

[Blaine23]

Makes you just want to beat the hackers to death with your shoe, doesn't it?

I'd like to see what sort of drop in hacking would happen if suddenly stuff like that was a death penalty offense enforced by a far-reaching and all-seeing Orwellian entity that would come for them in the night...

I'm not quite up for the shoe-style execution... but I think whomever is responsible should be completely liable for loss of revenue for the company. I just get sick thinking about all of the folks employed there and their kids, bills, etc. This will have a HUGE detrimental impact on all of them.

And I'd love to see some Hacker buttwad have to find out he's liable to the tune of several million dollars.

BTW - Thanks for the informative post, Ladic... that really breaks it down better than I previously understood the issue.