Wired Article
The source code for the highly anticipated upcoming game Half-Life 2 was stolen from Valve Software and released over the Internet. They don’t think it will have much of an impact on the sale of the game as it is not playable with just the source code. Allegedly, security holes in Microsoft products are one again to blame.
The article goes on to talk about ‘Steam’, a new Digital Rights Management (DRM) system Valve has been working on. It could be used to require players to pay a monthly fee to play all Valve games online as well as prevent piracy and cheating. I wonder if the theft of the source code might be used to release a version of Half-Life 2 that does not include the Steam system, or if that is even a possibility. At this point, that seems like the likeliest motive to me.