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At your Leisure - 08 November 2004
Half Life 2
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- Produced by Valve, a US games software business
- Published by Vivendi, a French multi-national company
- Valve receive advance payments to develop games
- Royalties depend on sales
- Sales revenues can dwarf costs
- 'Steam' new content delivery system promises to reverse revenue split between Valve and Vivendi
- Sales of a new game can exceed movie takings
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas sales of 4.5m units in week 1
- At $50 per unit = $225m in one week
- Commercial theft
- Hackers stole code from founder's laptop
- Playable versions appeared on Web
- Valve used gamers to track down thieves
- FBI made arrests June 2004
- Released Nov 16 2004
- Develops characters from original HL game
- 1st person shooting game
- Use vehicles and weapons to progress through game
- Human facial movements modelled on scientific research
- Global games software industry worth £11 bn
- Console games market growing at 15% per year
- PC games growing more slowly
- HL 2 expected to boost market growth
- Product lifecycle extension
- 'Mods' take source code and develop new versions
- Counter Strike
- Opposing Force
- Blue Shift
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