If you haven't heard, Valve Software and Vivendi Universal (thier publisher) have been go back and forth in court for a little while now... since 2002. It all started when the original Half Life started showing up in internet cafe's without the consent of Valve (Sierra is a division of Vivendi). This has not been settled and they even have a court date for this coming on October 8th.

Anyway, now for even more bad news. Vivendi has the option to hold onto the release of Half-Life 2 for at least 6 months after a final release candidate has been accepted. This means that the release of HL2 could be.... whenever. Apparently Valve has been telling everyone about a release date that Vivendi may not honor because they don't have to. The release date was never discussed with Vivendi.

That's where this story sits. No clue as to the fate of Half Life 2. We will one day see the game... but when that is, no one really knows just yet.

More political garbadge in gaming... grrr...

That's a shame. I'm still looking forward to it. Hell, an exra 6 or so months won't be bad on my side... Gived me enough time to save more money for a PC and also to learn modeling..

It will probably mark the end of Vivendi. Who would consider working with a company that pulls that kind of nonsense?

Well, Vivendi is a publisher, and Valve's gonna need them to get their game on the market. I imagine this will trouble Vivendi's reputation, but it can also be said that Valve releasing the game to Internet Cafes without Vivendi's knowledge will have Valve running into trouble trying to find a new publisher.

Well, from what I know the thing is Valve did not release HL to cafes, Sierra, the old HL publisher, released it anyway and Vivendi Universal saw to their end earlier this year, if you remember, firing over 300 employees.

As far as needing Vivendi Universal, Valve ultimately does not need them and I imagine if VU were dumb enough to hold the game for the six months, when it lapses they will find another company to distribute or offer the game themselves via the Steam platform, cutting out the publisher to start with. The fact that the game is already pre-loaded on to many computers would make this a viable solution...the problem is Valve cannot release it on Steam without it being released (as far as the deal with VU goes) on retail shelves.

Another point is that VU has already done this successfully with Counter-Strike: Condition Zero - they waited and caused the game to miss the holiday season, so do not think they do not have the balls to try it again, especially with a title that is so highly-acclaimed. (They may feel it will not matter because the title will sell anyway - which it just may not.)

The fact many people have Vouchers and rights to own the title, Vivendi will be facing trouble from them and/or ATI as well...it seems to me if ATI cannot keep it's deal for HL2 going then VU is going to bite it big-time for this trick.

In the end, I think it is Valve who will walk away from this and Vivendi, worthy of full credit or not, will get trashed. I'm sure former Sierra employees would more than happily wish to see something...better come out of this...VU wants to own the entire Half-Life franchise, which is part of the lawsuit because Valve doesn't want to give the rights over. :/ VU shouldn't be allowed to take that away, especially since Valve only really made around what I think $30,000 off of HL1?