[crote]

Valve already gave Half-Life 2 away for free, and released the source code of the HL1 engine.

Is it technically illegal? Yeah, but Valve isn't losing out on any money, and there's no way they're going to risk the negative PR blowback they'd get for a takedown.

Besides, IP law is dead. The rise of AI made it pretty clear that you can steal literally anything without consequences.

[Cthulhu_]

Giving things away for free (at one point) is not the same as making it public domain or relinquishing your (copy)rights. Source available is not the same as open source. Open source code does not mean open source assets/product. I find it weird that this needs to be explained in this community.

[crote]

> Giving things away for free is not the same as making it public domain or relinquishing your (copy)rights.

Obviously. But it does kill the usual "piracy is bad because companies lose money" argument - especially for a 22-year-old game.

> Source available is not the same as open source.

Obviously. But it does show that Valve is more interested in preserving old genre-defying games for the general public, rather than milking every last cent of revenue out of it.

[nba456_]

>Besides, IP law is dead. The rise of AI made it pretty clear that you can steal literally anything without consequences.

God, AI keeps making life better than I could've ever imagined!

[zombot]

It only works like that for the Big Thieves. Us regular folks get screwed over just like before.

[dminik]

GoldSrc (HL1 engine) is very much not open source (or even source available). There's at least one open source remake (which is possibly illegal due to using the SDK) but no official release.

[crote]

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/halflife is the HL1 engine, is it not?

[bpye]

That's just the SDK - which does include the game code but not the engine. Xash3D is the reverse engineered engine alluded to above.

[flordaman]

No no, you can't steal anything without consequences, only big corperations who are making slop machines(tm) can.

[account42]

Turns out "too big to fail" doesn't just apply to reckless financial behavior.

[foldr]

HL2 is not free: https://store.steampowered.com/app/220/HalfLife_2/

[crote]

It was available for free as part of its 20th anniversary update: https://overclock3d.net/news/software/half-life-2-is-availab...

[foldr]

That was a special promotion with a defined end date. The game is not free. The only legitimate way to obtain it currently is to pay for it. Together with the false claim about HL1 being open source, you're really adding a lot of misinformation to this thread.