Page 21: I'm Getting My Crowbar

On February 15 a strange e-mail arrived in Gabe Newell's inbox at 6:18pm. The subject line was blank, but the text of the e-mail from "Da Guy" was rich in detail. "Hello, Gabe," the author began. He then proceeded to admit that yes, he was the hacker who had broken into Valve's network. In fact, he had been inside Valve's network for about six months, watching the game's development on a daily basis. He claimed he never intended to harm Valve with his hacking. Instead he just wanted to observe Half-Life 2's development because he was such a huge fan of the original game. And then, unbelievably, he even offered his compliments to Newell and the team on their amazing development skills.

At first Newell didn't know if the e-mail was some sick joke or an authentic mea culpa. But then, at the end of the e-mail, the hacker provided proof that he was legit: He included two files from Valve's network that hadn't been released to the public. One was a Microsoft Word document that detailed Valve's plans for the E3 2003 demo. That was all the evidence Newell needed. This was "da guy" who had screwed them. His first reaction: "I'm getting on a plane and I'm bringing my crowbar with me."

The crowbar in Valve’s lobby. Newell almost wanted to use it against the hacker.

But Newell was smarter than that--he decided to play along with the hacker. So two days later he responded at 5:39pm. He did his best to seem calm and collected, stripping all emotion out of his e-mail. He wrote that he "need[ed] to run home to deliver chicken yakisoba to the starving children," but he'd "take a look at [the files you sent] tonight." Then he ended his brief e-mail to "Da Guy" with a question: "So it's cool that you are clearing up the mystery for us, but why are you doing it?" he asked.

Over the next few weeks, Newell and "Da Guy" would continue their e-mail conversation. "He had the typical hacker mentality," Newell says. "He thinks, 'If I can get away with it, you deserve it!'" So Newell tried playing to the hacker's line of reasoning: He told him how cool it was that he was able to break into Valve's network. In fact, it was so cool that Valve wanted to hire him as a special security consultant to protect Valve from any future attacks. "Da Guy" couldn't believe it! Newell was offering him a job at Valve headquarters in Bellevue, Washington.

As the e-mail exchange continued, "Da Guy"--whom Newell came to know as "Axel G," a 21-year-old from the southern German state of Baden-Wüerttemberg--started preparing for his "job interview," which would take place at Valve headquarters in Bellevue. Unbelievably, he even asked Newell if he could also fly over his dad and his brother for the occasion. Newell said that sounded great--he'd even give them all a tour.

There would, of course, be no job interview. Newell had convinced the hacker to fall for the oldest trick in the book. As soon as "Axel G" was to walk off the plane in Seattle, the FBI would be there waiting to place him under arrest. Those plans changed at the last minute, however, when the German government got wind of Newell's plan. The government objected to Valve enticing a German national out of the country solely so he could be arrested on US soil. The German authorities wanted to handle the arrest directly. And they did just that: "Axel G" was arrested this spring in Germany and now faces charges not just for hacking into Valve, but also for developing a number of pernicious viruses, including the Phatbot worm. "He's really a pretty evil guy," Newell says. "He built up these distributive productivity tools for hackers so you can send off 100,000 machines to look for unprotected IP addresses."

The arrest of "Axel G" solved the mystery of who hacked Valve and why. Now all that remained was solving the other mystery on the project: Was Half-Life 2 going to be any fun to play? In early March the team would solve that mystery by playing through a rough version the game from start to finish. Would the game come together like a masterpiece, or would it flounder, much like the team's first crack at Half-Life? No one knew what to expect. The fate of Half-Life 2 hung in the balance.