'They did pin the delay largely on the code theft back in October stating that whole parts of the game had to be re-written from scratch.'
Please provide a single link to back that up. Thought not. :p
FYI Valve have continually said the game wasn't ready regardless of the hack, check the HL2.net Valve e-mail thread - Gabe says it repeatedly. This isn't a new admission... Anyway, none of that supports your conspiracy that the hack was an excuse just that Valve's communication was poor leaving people to speculate.
The Facts:
1. The Game and Steam weren't ready
2. A hack occured
3. The "beta" released was not all Valve had
Anything else is purely speculation. IMO the most plausible explanation is that Valve weren't ready (particularly with Steam and most likely content and polishing), then they got hacked and the immediate reponse was damage control. The legal and clean-up consequences were inevitable and compounded an already problematic schedule. Ergo, the target window for audience expectations and pc hardware was lost and a new one would have to be aimed at in order for the game to live up to potential and have a smooth release. HL1 was ONLY a GOTY because it got delayed a year, Valve would have hardly forgotten this.
Regardless, here's one for the x-files nuts, if Valve wasn't anywhere near ready at all then why did they reveal the game at all after all this silence? To deliberately piss fans off ?
This comment was edited on Apr 27, 15:43.