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Did you know that the 2003 leak had no major affect on Half-Life 2's development beyond moral? A lot of people love to point out that the darker tone of the game was scrapped and the game was delayed due to the leak, but that's not the case. A lot of those cut ideas were already cut by the time of the leak and were merely leftovers from a bygone era of development. The delay from November of 2003 to sometime in 2004 was also going to happen regardless as the game was not ready (as you can clearly see in the leaked build.) The 2003 leak was already shaping up to be the final story and mapset. It just needed some more time in the oven to be finished, which it got.

A. Shift
A. Shift
Sep 19, 2022

The only three "beta" things Valve were still considering by the time of leak were hydras (which aren't even on actual maps, only in notes), gunship bays, and bullsquids. Oh, and handheld gauss I guess.

Notabot
Notabot
Sep 19, 2022

It did have other effects than moral,their servers were compromised and several people installed key loggers on the developers computers,it also somewhat ruined their public image since alot of what was advertised was broken in the leak but yes it didn't have any effects on the story at all