That's all very well phorce phed, but missing a projected date by a year is hardly unusual for a such a big project let alone one with such security catastrophe.
We know both scheduling problems and the hack affected the length of the delay though not which aspects of the project or to what degree. We also don't know to what extent their plans regarding Steam, the Source Ports (particularly CS:S), the WON closure etc etc affected Valve's inner decisions and when HL2 could be released. A lot changes in a year including the audience expectations and average hardware.
The only sensible thing to do is bury the hatchet and evaluate the game on its own merits when it comes out. Though of course, as is only fair, Valve will now have to wheather the inevitable comparisons to D3.
This comment was edited on Jul 29, 01:45.