Only a year late, kids...
Quick, someone steal the source code again!
Ever since the theft of the source code I've seen these kinds of sarcastic remarks from gamers who have the maturity and intellectual capacity of a turd. Unbelieveable to me how many of them were screaming bloody murder that the theft of 5 years worth of work could possibly *gasp* delay the release Half-Life 2. The viciousness was unreal. And of course the worst of the comments was that somehow Valve fabricated the entire theft "story" because the game was never going to meet the September 30, 2003 release date anyway (the game was going to miss it's release date, but the theft was obviously very real). What a bunch of rubbish. I felt terrible for Valve, and was fully expecting the release date to be pushed back indefinitely after such an incident. The last thing I was thinking about was not getting "my game" to play when I wanted it, but rather hoping Valve would be able to pull through and not incur a financial disaster having to rewrite major portions of the engine. All most idiot gamers cared about was that somehow Valve lied to them and they went from being the most respected company in the industry to the most hated because of a mistake on their end in not properly securing their network. Meanwhile all Valve has ever done is tried to please the gaming community and they got royally slapped in the face for being a little over optimistic on a release date as a "thank you."
Sometimes I don't know why/how game devs do it. Gamers as a whole are the most selfish, cruel, immature, thankless bunch of people around. Everything revolves around them, and heaven help you if you're a devoloper who accidentally pisses off this fickle bunch.