Well the rumors are swirling that Half-Life 2 is just about done. As you guys know we carried a story a little while ago mentioning that Valve was submitting release candidates to Vivendi doing their final bughunting. Word has it that Valve has submitted RC5 recently addressing just a couple of bugs. Assuming those are fixed and nothing more is found in further testing we could be looking at a gold announcement in the very near future. The guys at CSNation, HL2Fallout, and even the former GoneGold guy are all saying this.
This is of course assuming VU doesnt hold the game up in court. But given the last couple of glimpses we've had of VU's financial situation they probably arent very eager to do that. Update: the Steam website notes that the sixth phase of Half-Life 2 preloading is now underway. This phase will result in the Half-Life 2 maps being loaded on your computer, so Valve doesn't expect them to change much if at all.
Steve Gibson is the cofounder of Shacknews.com. Originally known as sCary's Quakeholio back in 1996, Steve is now President of Gearbox Publishing after selling Shacknews to GameFly in 2009.
