Dirty old Bro has been interviewed by Planetfortress about what they are upto in Valve with the Half-life engine.

Of interest are his comments regarding cheat protection, which IMO I think are wrong, since people paid to do something generaly dont have half the passion of someone doing it (exploit the engine) for the fun of the hack, Bro had this to say:

We’re getting smarter about our cheat prevention stuff. We’re learning all the time. Every one we fix just makes us smarter. So far, everything that we've really concentrated on, we've been able nail down. So, we’re pretty optimistic. There have been a few that have been there for a while that are kind of tricky, but we have good ideas on how to stop them. I think one thing that sets us apart from most of the other online games is that we consider these important as an error that's causing everyone out there to crash on startup. Cheats are probably the number one way to destroy the community. We really, really want to remove them and so we do everything we can to stop them.

They are always going to come out, though, and we'll keep fixing them. Eventually they'll get tired. After all, we’re getting paid to solve these problems, but they're not getting paid to make them.

Check out the full article here.

Yup - it's the fact that they're doing it for money that will make it hard for them. You can't afford to spend time fixing the problems/exploits that people out there _will_ find.

It actually amused me to read the comment about people getting tired - that couldn't be further from the truth. If anything, the software developer will get tired of fixing the problems well before people will get tired of trying to exploit the software. A comment like that pretty much only serves to challenge or incite people to try harder.

It's not a laughing matter though, because it generally affects both the honest gamers and the software developer adversely through expended time which almost always translates down to added cost.

Although one upside is that hopefully the software developers will get smarter from the experience.

wtf happened to TF2 ?

the piece of s*** has been "in development" for like 2 years or something. f***en idiots. everyones been worn down by the hype for so long no one even gives a s*** anymore, and by the time it gets released there will be half a dozen other games out which are more advanced.

iiiiidiots.

You sound like you certainly give a s*** :P

heh, exactly. the developer will get sick of it before the h4x0rs.

like when ineff and I kept finding ways around trog's ausbabes voting thing, we coulda kept going on for ages :P

Don't belive anything that comes out of anyone at valves dirty slutty poo face.

Nothing they say is true. TF2 is only a click banner add campaign, there is no truth to it being a actual game.