I just finished playing through Portal. It was short, but oh so sweet. I haven't laughed harder at a video game since Sam & Max Hit the Road.

Along with its dark, sick sense of humor, the game manages to establish an atmosphere reminiscent of the movie Cube, only more actively sinister. I loved every minute of it.

Now I want some cake.

Hey Valve, guess what I'm doing right now? That's right: not playing the Team Fortress 2 beta. Can you guess why I'm not playing Team Fortress 2 beta, Valve? Because you haven't released it yet, that's why. Can you guess what I've been doing since Team Fortress 2 was announced back in 1999? Yep: not playing Team Fortress 2.

Something tells me I'm going to continue not playing Team Fortress 2, in spite of the promises that I'd have it today if I shelled out my $44.95 a little early.

Update: 12:04am PDT and everyone who preordered and preloaded TF2 has discovered that, even after Valve finally activated the game with 10 minutes to spare, it does nothing but crash a few seconds after launching. Way to tease your customers until the last minute and then poke them in the eye with a sharp stick, Valve.

Update 2: Finally got to play the game. Is it hilariously fun? Yes. Was it worth $44.95? Hell yes. Was it worth an 8-year wait? Um, no.

Most people who know me would probably tell you I’m generally not terribly concerned about software piracy, music downloading, and other things of that nature. It doesn’t bug me because, while lawyers and the BSA would have you think otherwise, it’s not theft (not in the strictly literal sense, anyway).

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (courtesy of dictionary.com) defines theft as: “The act of stealing; specifically, the felonious taking and removing of personal property, with an intent to deprive the rightful owner of the same; larceny.” It goes on to note that “To constitute theft there must be a taking without the owner’s consent, and it must be unlawful or felonious; every part of the property stolen must be removed, however slightly, from its former position; and it must be, at least momentarily, in the complete possession of the thief.”

Digital piracy, therefore, is hardly theft, since it is not depriving anyone of anything other than imaginary potential revenues. And if you think 15 year-old Jimmy Pirate downloading Adobe Photoshop so he can add some super-leet lens flares to his hacker website is depriving Adobe of revenue, consider that little Jimmy Pirate never had the means to purchase the software anyway, so Adobe isn’t losing anything. If nothing else, little Jimmy is learning to use Photoshop and chances are if he gets a job a few years later and they ask him to retouch some photos or tweak some logos, he’s going to ask for a copy of Photoshop. Ching! Money in Adobe’s pockets. Of course, that’s just little Jimmy Pirate. Big Corporation X pirating 2,000 copies of Photoshop is another matter, since they definitely have the means to pay for those copies and probably would have, too, if they hadn’t been able to find a pirated version.

But something happened recently that really tweaked me. It’s still not technically theft, although it will almost definitely result in embarassment and lost revenue for the company whose digital property was pirated. What happened was this: In mid-September, Gabe Newell, the CEO of Valve Software (although he prefers to call himself the “Managing Director”), fell victim to a nasty IE/Outlook security hole in an attack that was directly aimed at Valve. The attacker(s) managed to install several trojans on his system and others, gained access to his email account, and eventually made a copy of the entire source code tree for Half-Life 2, Valve’s much-anticipated upcoming game. They then posted this source code in its entirety on the Internet. Thousands of people have now downloaded it, looked at it, and some have even gotten it to compile (although none of the game’s artwork or sound effects were included).

This could have a devastating effect on Valve. Half-Life 2 has been one of the most anticipated games of the last few years. By all accounts, the game engine Valve has developed is phenomenal and does things no other engine can do currently. Valve is a company that makes a lot of money from licensing their game engines to other companies for use in other games. With the complete source code now out in the open, chances are high that a shady game developer (and there are many) will simply steal from the Half-Life 2 source rather than paying Valve for a license.

“But Uncle wonko!” you’re no doubt saying, “those shady companies probably wouldn’t have licensed the HL2 engine anyway!”

And you’re probably right. Now I have to decide whether my justification for software piracy extends to software source code piracy, which, technically, it should, but which, for some reason, makes me feel really uneasy. I hate when that happens.

Of course, I’m also pissed off that this might push the Half-Life 2 release date back even further.