In Seattle, Newell's first thought was to go to the police.

It grew quickly to one of the most prominent malwares at the time, mostly because I started writing exploits for some unpatched vulnerabilities in Windows.' AXFR 'So I coded my own malware to steal CD keys in order to unlock the titles I wanted to play. 'At the time I couldn't a afford to buy games,' he explains. If it wasn't an inside job, how did it happen? Did someone have access to Valve's internal server? How had this happened? Had the leak come from within Valve? Which member of his team, having given years of their life to building the game, would jeopardise the project in the final hour? Such a leak was not only financially threatening, but also embarrassing.Īfter he had spent a few moments pondering these immediate concerns, an avalanche of questions tumbled through Newell's mind.

Half-Life 2, one of the most anticipated games of the year, was going to be late, and Newell had yet to admit to the public how late it would be. The game had been due for release a couple of weeks earlier, but the development team was almost a year behind schedule. Seven months earlier, on October 2, 2003, Valve Corporation director Gabe Newell awoke in Seattle to find that the source code for the game his company had been working on for almost five years had leaked onto the Internet. 'You are being charged with hacking into Valve Corporation's network, stealing the video game Half-Life 2, leaking it onto the Internet, and causing damages in excess of $250 million,' came the reply. Do not touch the keyboard.' Gembe knew why they were there. At 6am on May 7, 2004, Axel Gembe awoke in the small German town of Schönau im Schwarzwald to find his bed surrounded by police officers bearing automatic weapons.

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