The boy who stole half-life 2

Craig1981 · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:02

Interesting stuff! I had never heard any of this before.

trigger-happy · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:15

1. How old was Gambe?
2. Is he released yet?
3. This reminds me about the freesteam project that was run by valve seniors to catch the offenders. It was partially successful.

edit: nvm about question 2 - he served a two-year probation.

Tombo · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:17

He was never in prison to be released.

Angst · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:21

Very interesting read if true.

Mahnsikir · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:35

Good read, lucky guy that the German police got him before he went to the US.

WingZero30 · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:43

Amazing story

. Never knew about this. He is a clever kid. I bet gabe newell had sleepless nights and no desire for food during this period lol

.

Aedus · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:43

trigger-happy said:
1. How old was Gambe?

Well it says he's 28 now, and the hack was done in 2002, so 19-ish

muon · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:55

The internet was still young then. A leak of the source code of say HL3 would play out very differently now.

Destination · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:58

Interesting read.

Sin_Chase · 21 Feb 2011 at 23:01

ghost101 said:
The internet was still young then. A leak of the source code of say HL3 would play out very differently now.

Young, how do you work that out?

muon · 21 Feb 2011 at 23:07

Sin_Chase said:
Young, how do you work that out?

2003? Internet connections were lame back then.

With exponential trends in technology, a lot of stuff is young

.

Sin_Chase · 21 Feb 2011 at 23:12

Sweden has been on 10 to 100mbit connections since forever compared to the UK for example. They had faster broadband than we have now while us UK lot were on dial-up.

He was utilising company/educational networks it seems anyway, once he offloaded it at a good speed he could spend all the time he wanted getting it to himself. He also developed a hash based differential downloaded, assumingly purely to use as little bandwidth as possible.

muon · 21 Feb 2011 at 23:12

Sin_Chase said:
Sweden has been on 10 to 100mbit connections since forever compared to the UK for example. They had faster broadband than we have now while us UK lot were on dial-up.

He was utilising company/educational networks it seems anyway, once he offloaded it at a good speed he could spend all the time he wanted getting it to himself.

All well and good, but relevant to my point how?

Sin_Chase · 21 Feb 2011 at 23:14

You seemed to think internet connections were lame in 2003, in educational/corporate areas and in some countries residential areas - they were not.

Directly relevant to your point I think you will find. The internet was not young in 2003.

andshrew · 21 Feb 2011 at 23:23

ghost101 said:
The internet was still young then. A leak of the source code of say HL3 would play out very differently now.

What do you think would have been different?

muon · 21 Feb 2011 at 23:25

Sin_Chase said:
You seemed to think internet connections were lame in 2003, in educational/corporate areas and in some countries residential areas - they were not.

Directly relevant to your point I think you will find. The internet was not young in 2003.

Also 100Mb residential connections in Sweden in 2003? Doubt it was even close to that.

Secondly, if we're going to cherry pick the best educational/corporate networks, I suggest you do the same now.

The idea that internet services have not increased at a very fast rate since 2003 is not in doubt.

The semiconductor wasn't "young" in 2003, and yet in many ways it was. The increase in performance is ridiculous.

Finally my point if you go to my actual post

The internet was still young then. A leak of the source code of say HL3 would play out very differently now.

A leak of a game where everyone has broadband connections is much worse than when nearly everyone had dialup.

Love how people make an argument out of nothing.

andshrew said:
What do you think would have been different?

This was the age of dialup across much of the developed world. HL2 was a game in the many gigabytes. (in fact 4.5GB according to my old case)

Sin_Chase · 21 Feb 2011 at 23:30

I live in Jersey, which in 2003 was hardly that mature in the internet space. Even I had the HL2 leak.

Who did not?

Nothing would really change today should the same circumstance of arisen. Back then newsgroups, FTPs and IRC DCCs were more popular, today it's BitTorrent and a mix of the aforementioned.

Not making an argument, simply that stating the internet was young in 2003 is total bull. IMs, e-mail, IRC was widespread. Not much has changed since then other than bandwidth increases and the prevalence of social networking.

Point in case - Crysis 2 was leaked and it wont amount to much more than the HL2 leak did.

Overslop · 21 Feb 2011 at 23:32

I never downloaded the leak as I wouldn't want to play a pre-release version of a game.

Sem · 21 Feb 2011 at 23:38

i can confirm from clan buddies and direct connect

that back in the day it was pretty standard to have 10Mbit connections up and down in Sweden

not sure on the name of the ISP but it was shortened to BBB

people in finland and iceland and other countries had good speeds as well

this was back in 2000/2001

and even tho we in the UK had crap connections in comparison the internet was hardly young back in 2003....

ChrisJSY · 21 Feb 2011 at 23:57

ghost101 said:
Also 100Mb residential connections in Sweden in 2003? Doubt it was even close to that.

Secondly, if we're going to cherry pick the best educational/corporate networks, I suggest you do the same now.

The idea that internet services have not increased at a very fast rate since 2003 is not in doubt.

I think it's more the fact that the Internet wasn't young, that the UK and other places were behind and still are. Other countries are leaps and bounds ahead, heck even to the point we're still 10/11 years behind what other countries already had better and cheaper.