Just a follow-up on yesterday's Half-Life 2 delay story: to clear things up, we have confirmed directly with Vivendi Universal that there is a delay. We've even double checked. Valve has yet to send an official confirmation or denial either way on this, and other sites are reporting that there isn't a delay based on alleged email answers Gabe Newell sent to random fans. In some cases, these mails are obviously forged.
Yes, Valve is developing Half-Life 2 and they have control over when the game is declared finished, but Vivendi is responsible for publishing the game and actually getting it in stores. And that entire quality assurance, duplication, packaging, and distribution process takes time. So Vivendi has a little bit of say in the matter too, wouldn't you say?
Now, if there really wasn’t a delay, Valve could have easily sent a two line press release out telling everybody that everything was right on schedule. But they haven’t. And considering the original Half-Life, TF2, TFC, the HL SDK, Steam, CS: CZ, and pretty much every other project Valve has been involved with has suffered delays of various lengths, this latest setback shouldn’t be surprising.
Really, this isn’t a big deal, as we should still get the game this year. Valve doesn’t want to push a crappy version of Half-Life 2 out the door just for the sake of meeting some arbitrary deadline, and I’m sure they won’t ship Half-Life 2 until it is ready.
As always, we’ll attempt to keep you posted.
source :
www.gamespydaily.com
