Don't get why...

[ilh]

I know this probably comes under discussing the illegal release but i'll say it anyway.

Why do news sites post "don't download blah blah blah" or "don't discuss the illegal release" and yet still post about new source code or whatever being released. This just alerts people about it existing and make some go off in search for it. Less people would download it if they didn't know about it or if they stumbled across it would maybe think it's BS because nothing has been said about it. Try thinking about what it could do before you post it.

 

[Ridic]

good thread. (Its me, cleric.)

 

[Blynd_Syde]

People would find out about it anyways. Also currently there's not much else to report on.

 

[ilh]

First I heard about Valve being hacked was on a news site, they said that the source code had been out about a month and this was the first news of it. A month, that's quite a long time with nobody/very few people knowing about it. Now if they didn't post about it then great hordes of people wouldn't have found out about it and it may have lasted that way for a lot longer, perhaps HL2 might not have been delayed so much. But it was posted and the whole hype about it began and downloads started.

 

[The Mullinator]

Websites that post news are there to report what is happening. They are there to report on what is newsworthy. New developments in the stolen files is certainly newsworthy and the majority of people that will download and distribute the files will already know about the theft or find out anyway. Trying to keep everything a secret would merely slow down the distribution while making people upset because they want to know what is going on.

 

[Sunbeam]

I think it sucks that we cant talk about it. we know the files are illegal and so is posting links, but merely talking about it is fine. this site is just trying to be 'politically correct' or 'Valve correct'...or some crap. in fact making it all secret just makes people wanna talk about it more, and theres plenty of sites for that.

at the end of the day this is a public form, and the admins can dictate any rules they want. hell they could ban us from talking about half-life2 if they wanted, and nothing we can do about it.

 

[hunteraz]

because for every line you set, someone is going to push it a bit further.

like even now, mods say no talking about it whatsoever, yet people still insist on posting pictures, urls, snippets of source code, etc.

what if the rule was, 'talk about beta but not where to get it'?

people would post links to torrents and more spoilers etc.

 

[Deadlor]

I don't think discussing the beta is such a bad thing anyways. Spoilers, yes, but stuff like benchmarking and the engine's capabilities will tell how the community feels about certain shortcoming in the engine and they can patch it up for an even less buggy release. But the morons should not have stolen it in the first place.

 

[The Mullinator]

It is an easier task to make a rule saying "no beta discussion" than it is to allow for such discussion and then constantly be forced to wade through the multitude of threads all on the same subject and ban and close those threads that have spoilers or illegal links.

On the days leading up to the 30th of September these forums were a complete mess. The only discussion was on the delay, the entire front page of the forums was all about the delay. Everything was either someones opinion that no one cared about or some really stupid rumour. Everyone was fed up with it (the mods especially). The beta discussion would certainly be just as bad if not worse, so a good way to prevent that from happening again is to simply not allow any discussion of the subject.

Virtually all the stolen code discussion would be rumours which belong in the "Half Life 2 Rumours & Speculation" board anyway.

 

[Frost]

Same thing happened with Napster (Media and RIAA) focused on it and all of a sudden everyone was finding out how easy it was to get music, the number of users went up over 300% after the first media coverage and got even larger during the trials with Lars (Metallica) and Sean (Napster)

*But alas there are so many news stations and news websites because its human nature to be curious and to be "in the know" so it was inevitable from the start

 

[xtekian]

it's not quite the same with mp3s as warez. with warez you need connections, and most people who are downloading hl2 already have the connections, i doubt anyone will enter the warez scene just for hl2 beta.

 

[Deadlor]

True, about 99.9999% of the people who purchase HL2 would never even know where to look to find the beta anyways.

 

[GhostValkyrie]

I doubt those numbers...too many nines.

-Ghost.

 

[Deadlor]

Yeah well look at the people playing Counter-Strike. I mean how many people own a copy of Half-Life 1? And how many even give a damn about the warez community?

 

[GhostValkyrie]

I guess I'm the only person who still has Hl then...*stares at floor*

-Ghost.

 

[Deadlor]

Originally posted by GhostValkyrie
I guess I'm the only person who still has Hl then...*stares at floor*

-Ghost.

Nah man I'm just saying there are alot of people out there who don't even care about Warez who own halflife.

 

[D33]

Every day I come here and I see someone complain about is not letting the community talk about the beta. If you think that's a lot of people, you'd be correct. Yet it does not compare to the amount of people who contact us moderators and complain if we let it go.

You see we may enforce the rules but it's usually the community who creates them. The majority is what counts. However we also enforce the no beta discussion due to ethics. Ethics like not allowing people to discuss something that was obtained using methods against the law, eithics like showing Valve we do support them.

We don't force people to stay here and use our forums, even if we did what's to stop people from using these forums for normal discussion and another forum for warez discussion.

Getting back on topic, to ilh's point - A well made point I might add. It is our job to keep up with HL2 current events and post news about them. If we don't, other websites will. The difference between our news posts and some of the deleted beta threads on this board are things like spoilers, screenshots, ingame discussion, download links, people admitting to owning it, etc, etc, etc. It's this sort of thing we look for and this sort of thing we remove.