[kupoartist]

Valve announced recently that pre-loading of Half-Life 2 would occur via their steam service... after about a week of slippage, the Half-Life 2 preload (containing art assets like textures and models, all guaranteed not to change between preload and the actual release) began on Thursday / Friday, weighing in at about 1GB (when uncompressed) of game content.

Many speculated that the preload would be the first indication of a light at the end of the development tunnel, and the word from Gabe Newell is: Half-Life 2 will go "gold" on August 30th. That's this monday. However, the post from the halflife2.net forums hasn't actually been confirmed - it was posted from Gabe's account, so if it isn't genuine, Valve's security has been breached in some way. Again. The forums are now down (HL2 just has that magnetism I guess), but here is a picture of the news: https://www.halflife2.net/news//1093671787_gold.JPG

Who knows whether it is true? And if it is, an actual release date is still forthcoming...