Agreed Nautis, I don't ever remember something quite like this happening before. It's really disheartening to me, and the whole sorry saga seems to signify a decline in the industry and its relationship with the public even at a point when things should really be looking up in many respects.
About nVidia--even though I can see a certain consistency in the company's behavior all year with respect to any software labeled "DX9", and that the company has made it both directly and indirectly clear that they consider such software a tangible threat and will act when they can to undermine it as we saw with 3dMk03 and most recently with the TR benchmark, not to mention their numerous public statements on the subject, I really see no evidence of the company's involvement with what has transpired with Valve. They might benefit from it, but anything which discredits the 3d industry in the minds of investors and the gaming public is just as likely to hurt them as much as it hurts ATi. It's not clear to me though that companies are very clear headed about the consequences to themselves that can occur when they attack rival corporations in the same business--kind of like how SUN never anticipated how destroying public confidence in Microsoft would impact the industry as a whole and would inevitably spill over to affect SUN's fortunes as well. Companies are often short-sighted and pig headed just when they ought to be considering the long view and thinking reasonably, as their paths reflect no more than the attitudes of the people who run them, but none of that constitutes any sort of evidence that nVidia has had a hand in the Valve situation.
What I find really disturbing and bizarre are all these nut-case claims showing up around the Internet and being given a certain amount of credence by some--hopefully a distinct minority--in the online community. I mean I have to tell you I just simply don't believe people making claims like this. If they have any software at all it most assuredly is not what they think it is. I have to laugh at the people who got some leaked/pilfered, very old version of HL2--assuming that's even what it is--probably leaked at E3, I would imagine, and are swearing up and down that "they know" that the software they have represents Valve's actual state of development in the game to date. I read one post out here in another thread by someone who more or less was blackmailing Valve by threatening to release "the other software I have" which he was stupid enough to believe proved some detrimental point about Valve "lying" all year about the state of the game. I cannot imagine why, if the software this person has is as rough as he maintains it is, that he might ever believe it represents something recent from Valve. Common sense would seem to dictate that what this person actually has is old stuff I would think, if he has anything at all, that is.
Now we see web sites taking up the mantra and also either making up stories completely to get "hits," or else running some really old, incomplete build of the game smuggled from somewhere without having common sense enough to understand that it's as rough as it is because it obviously isn't the current build of the software. But when has the mere truth ever stood in the way of the delusions of such people? Even more troubling is that I can't think of a time when people have been more willing to be deluded than they seem to be currently.
This year we've seen new lows in the public conduct of some companies involved in 3d--had it rubbed in our faces all year long. As well, we've seen new lows in public behavior by idiot hackers with unknown agendas who seem to delight in ruining the Internet as a growing concern even as it struggles to get off the ground. It's like every maladjusted, antisocial nutball in the world is using the Internet as his own personal "get back at life" remedy for whatever injustices they've suffered, both real and imagined. These poor clods think that if only they can mess things up for everybody else they'll get some sort of relief. Well, that's not going to happen. If all they know how to do is tear down and destroy eventually they'll destroy themselves, I'd imagine.
I can't comprehend the mentality of this kind of person. What's troubling is that this kind of mentality seems to be becoming more prevalent as time goes on. Everywhere you look these days--finance, business of all types, religion, education, government, science, whatever--traditional values like integrity, honesty, truthfulness, industriousness, even common sense and so forth are under vicious attack--it's getting so pervasive it can even be seen in the 3d gaming industry, for crying out loud. People who try and live their lives by these kinds of traditional values are finding they have to work harder at it and often justify things that 30 years ago needed no justification whatever but were entirely self evident as to their benefit in a civilized society. Saying that these kind of values are beneficial to civilization is probably an understatement--foundational, is more like it. Most troubling is that even though I'd like to I can't honestly describe my interpretations of current trends as overly alarmist or melodramatic.
