Half-Life 2 wins an award!!!!!!!

[Gwarsbane]

#1 Vaporware product of 2003... or is it 2004?!?!?

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,128...tory_page_next2

Without a doubt, Valve's Half-Life 2 was last year's most eagerly anticipated game.

The sequel to Valve's wildly popular alien-zapping first-person shooter Half-Life, HL2 promised stunning graphics, astonishing physics and cunning AI.

On the basis of a couple of astonishing video reviews, fans queued up at E3 to catch a glimpse. This summer ATI did a roaring trade in high-end video cards, thanks in part to free HL2 coupons in the box.

Fans looked forward to a September release date, which later slipped to the holidays.

Then something weird happened. In early October, Valve claimed it had been the victim of a virtual break-in and that a cracker had stolen the game's source code.

The code appeared on the Net, and Valve responded by pushing back the release date until April 2004 for an extensive rewrite, according to the company.

But after inspecting the code, some fans claimed HL2 didn't need a rewrite so much as it needed to be simply finished. Valve, fans claimed, was using the break-in as a ruse to gain more time. (Valve didn't return calls requesting comment.)

"How about a working copy of anything from Valve Software?" wrote reader C. Recicar. "Half-Life 2, Steam, Team Fortress 2 (voted for that one in 2001). These goons have been no-shows since coming out with the greatest game ever made, and I am, quite frankly, tired of waiting."

"Games get delayed all the time, but the way this has been mismanaged is truly awe-inspiring," said Jon Hicks.

Ken Le said, "This vote is not to mock the hardworking people, toiling to meet impossible expectations.... Unlike the Duke, perpetual lord of vaporware, this vote is cast in loving anticipation.... We're waiting with a new video card, new CPU, more RAM and a chunk of hard drive just for you."

[Cactus Dude]

Most delayed game you mean... don't be surprised if the current release date is pushed back to the Summer or even to the Fall.

[Guest]

Ever watch that film with Dustin Hoffman, Sean Connery and Mathew Boderick, where they as grandfather, father and son break into a building and steal some stuff. Mathew gets caught and it's then that we find out the company had arranged it all because they couldn't afford to have investment pulled when they were found to have a product that wasn't ready and the buglary gives them time to complete.