Half-Life 2 Final Hours
Gamespot has an excellent lengthy article on the development of Half-life 2. Lots of insider details from the re-design, missed release dates, the source code leak, the hacker capture, and the lead up to final gold date, it's a good read.
The source-code leak turned out to be only the opening salvo from a man calling himself "Osama Bin Leaker." (It would later be learned that the hacker was "Axel G," a 21-year-old man in Germany). On October 7, only three days after the source code leaked, the second bomb dropped: A playable version of the game was released, including portions of the E3 2003 demo. Newell didn't know what to think--was the worst over? "It just felt like each day things kept getting worse," he recalls. "First the source code. Then the game. And then people started using the game to compose their own screenshots of Dr. Kleiner performing [oral sex] on Alyx. It's basically your worst nightmare."
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