Adam Urbano of PC Gameworld speaks out against the recent surge of conspiracy theories that have been circulating on internet forums everywhere his most recent article. I've copy/pasted it for you non-clicking laziness pleasure:
"A great deal of online media attention has been given over the last week to the theft of the Half-Life 2 source code from Valve’s network. As a software developer, I have been following this story with great interest. The theft of source code, especially source that appears as revolutionary as that of Half-Life 2, is something that concerns everyone in the industry.
What troubled me as I browsed the dozens of forums devoted to this topic are the “conspiracy theories” that seem to be gathering a great deal of Steam (capitalized for maximum pun-power). I became so frustrated with these issues that I’ve decided to present my first non-comedic piece for this site. I’d like to debunk some of the “conspiracy theories” surrounding the source leak.
Conspiracy Theory 1: “The thief looked at the code and now has proof that the game is nowhere near finished.”
I'm astounded everyone is listening to the code-stealer's evaluation of the game's progress. There is absolutely, positively NO way an outside individual or group can provide an evaluation as to the relative "completion" of any game. I'll ignore the absurd complexity involved for a moment and focus on one concept: SOURCE-CONTROL (ie SourceSafe)! The thief has one single archive of the source that in no way represents the current, actual progress of the game.
At any given time each programmer needs to “check out” files and directories to work on. Across the developer's network are hundreds of code files and assets (textures, levels, characters) that are checked out. These changes, and all of the work involved in making those changes, are only available as an isolated file on the local machine or in individual "file archives" in the source-control database.
Only by miraculously encapsulating all of these changes, or stealing the monstrous source-control database, could the thief even begin to get a complete picture of the current progress of Half-Life 2. Of course, the hacker would also need to perform a progress audit on the millions of lines of cutting-edge source. Good luck.
Conspiracy Theory 2: “Valve leaked the source code so they could attribute impending release delays on a need to secure the code from cheats.”
The release of this source code guarantees that a contingent of less-than-ethical developers outside of Valve will now have access to some great routines. It will, of course, be impossible to integrate aspects of the code without a giant intellectual property lawsuit. Developer’s outside of Valve can, however, gain a huge leap on competitors by examining the code and building upon the theories presented. Valve is doing a number of things in Half-Life 2 that nobody has ever tried…these great algorithms are now part of an underground public domain.
The loss to Valve is tremendous. Valve executives also have the unlikely, though still valid concern that they could lose millions of dollars in engine licensing revenues. Does this sound like something a software company would do to justify a relatively short delay of under a year? Video games are rarely, if ever, released on time. How many of you are still holding your Duke Nukem preorder at EB from 1998? Valve, quite simply, does not need to justify a delay, and certainly wouldn’t perform an economically disastrous move in doing so.
Conspiracy Theory 3: “Valve leaked the source code as a publicity stunt to increase interest in the game.”
My initial reaction to seeing this frequent comment on the message boards was absolute shock that anyone could possibly believe this. I’ve already pointed out the horrible consequences of a leak from Valve’s perspective, but the idea that Valve needs a publicity stunt really floored me. This is one of, if not the single most highly anticipated, covered and pre-ordered games in the history of the industry. Public interest is staggering, initial impressions are fantastic and the web is plastered with Valve-Approved media.
I hope everyone in the community will support Valve’s request for help in tracking down the thief. Doing this will not only help the industry as a whole, but will make Valve feel more comfortable in sending early copies of the game to journalists such as myself for evaluation. As such, even if you don’t want to help Valve, do it for me, your loyal writer, so that I can personally play the game long before everyone gets their grubby little hands on it…clearly a cause we can all truly rally around."
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