[HN Gopher] The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)
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The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)
Author : grubbs
Score : 107 points
Date : 2023-08-31 18:33 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.eurogamer.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.eurogamer.net)
| maxweylandt wrote:
| 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
| grubbs wrote:
| 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.
| prmoustache wrote:
| 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.
| nanidin wrote:
| In around 10th grade a friend and I got the leak just as it
| came out and then used it to make the characters lips sync to
| our voices for a chemistry class project. The engine worked,
| the lips matching word tech was awesome, and people couldn't
| believe what we pulled off.
|
| Imagine that intro scene in HL2 where you walk through a trap
| door Pepsi vending machine and behind it there's a lab - and
| instead of talking about HL2 stuff, Alyx and company talk
| about sampling and testing local natural water sources.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| 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 thousand in restitution.
| deaddodo wrote:
| Not that I can speak for this specific story, as I have no
| firsthand testimony, but Mitnick is a notorious
| embellisher, downplayer and (anecdotally) liar.
| sva_ wrote:
| Pretty sure the leak also lead them to release the Source
| engine's code, which was wildly successful.
| mepian wrote:
| They started licensing their code before the leak, e.g. to
| Troika Games. They never released the code publicly.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Valve has not released the source engine code beyond their
| partners.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _The boy who stole Half Life 2 source code (2011)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7830881 - June 2014 (153
| comments)
|
| _The Boy Who Stole Half-Life 2 (Source Code)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3477834 - Jan 2012 (1
| comment)
|
| _The Boy Who Stole Half-Life 2_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2245786 - Feb 2011 (125
| comments)
| neonate wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220412005212/https://www.eurog...
|
| https://archive.ph/z6qbR
| no_wizard wrote:
| Article is from 2011 (figured that out after I read the whole
| thing).
|
| I wonder if in in the interim anything else happened to Gembe.
| Somehow, I kinda want to hear he ended up at Valve in a
| turnaround of events, but I highly doubt it.
| giobox wrote:
| I can't imagine Valve would ever hire him, given the lengths
| they went to assisting the FBI with the fake entrapment style
| job interview. Also sets a horrible precedent that you can hold
| the company ransom over stolen code to get a job if nothing
| else!
| pdntspa wrote:
| That used to be a running joke within the original hacker
| (NOT startup-hacker) community
| JohnFen wrote:
| When I was in high school, in the Before Times[1], a guy
| who ran in my hacker circles broke into the school system's
| mainframe and gave everyone he liked straight A's. He was,
| of course, caught -- but the school system really did hire
| him after he graduated, as their IT security guy.
|
| [1] This was before the internet, before there were laws
| specifically about this sort of thing, and before the
| public started mistakenly equating "hacker" with
| "criminal".
| SoKamil wrote:
| How f-ed would he be if he flew to the US?
| eloisant wrote:
| That's easy to know, just look up "Xbox Underground" and you'll
| know what happens when you get caught by the FBI accessing
| video games developers networks and leaking games:
|
| Short version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_Underground
|
| Long version: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/45/
|
| In short they got sentenced to 18 to 24 months of prison.
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| Yeah, you know you are in Germany when the police even tells
| you that :D Epic..
|
| > There he was greeted by the police chief. He walked up to
| Gembe, looked him in the eye and said, "Have you any idea how
| lucky you are that we got to you before you got on that plane?"
| bakugo wrote:
| 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.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| TL-DR: 1) don't hack. 2) if you hack, don't get caught. 3) if you
| hack and get caught, be in a country that you can bribe yourself
| out of the mess (definitely not Germany!) 4) don't destroy other
| people's hard work, it's not nice.
| [deleted]
| Nullabillity wrote:
| > 4) don't destroy other people's hard work, it's not nice.
|
| Destroy.. how? The game still exists, Valve still owns it.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| Not only they own it but their entire gaming position with
| Steam is thanks to Half-Life 2 forcing everyone to download
| it (and pretty much everyone _hated_ Steam at the time).
| tetris11 wrote:
| I think 3 should be "Don't email your hack victims with proof
| of your crimes for a face-to-face meeting."
| dopeboy wrote:
| He did so to confess. He has admitted he didn't want to hide.
| There's no strategy to critique here; he wanted to come
| clean.
| RandomGuy456 wrote:
| That one is fundamental! lol
| Arrath wrote:
| Rule 0: Commit 1 crime at a time.
| doubled112 wrote:
| "Only break one law at a time" is exactly this said
| another way, yet somehow easier for me to parse.
| Arrath wrote:
| Fair, but it loses out on the rhyme.
| tetris11 wrote:
| That boy is now 40
| serf wrote:
| the 'boy' was also 21 when the thing happened, one could say
| the titling was never really appropriate.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| idk, anybody under the age of 22 is basically a child to me
| setr wrote:
| Really a child is anyone under my current_age / 2 + 7
| bykhun wrote:
| that's dog years
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| This same article later appeared in Ars Technica as _Catching up
| with the guy who stole Half-Life 2's source code, 10 years later_
| (2016)
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/06/what-drove-one-half-l...
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(page generated 2023-08-31 23:01 UTC)