When news of the theft of the Half Life 2 source code stunned the gaming world, Valve were quick to claim that they would pursue the people responsible using the full extent of the law. It seems that they definitely meant every word since the F.B.I. is, apparently, moving into action in order to apprehend those responsible.
At 6:30am on January 14th, a knock on the door of Chris Toshok's Californian residence, became the first, publicized, action taken jointly by the F.B.I. and the U.S. Secret Service, in the case of the Valve theft. The raid was carried out based on whatever information the authorities had gathered on the case and may have been connected to the fact that Mr. Toshok shared a residence, in the past, with a group called the Hungry Programmers. In total 9 computers were seized as well as a variety of components, peripherals and storage devices.
The precise reasons justifying the raid were described, in the warrant, as accessing a protected computer without authorization, causing loss to 1 or more persons during any 1-year period... aggregating at least USD 5,ooo... The information which connects this raid with Valve and the H-L 2 source theft however, comes further down since the warrant states that the Federal Agents were looking for signs of : criminal activity related to any IP addresses related to any of the Valve internal or external networks... E-mail addresses including any address with the @valvesoftware.com domain... Valve passwords and/or user names.
Mr Toshok claims to have no connection to the theft and it seems likely that a person more worried about getting his hardware back than the possible implications of the search is probably not hiding much. Whether this raid is part of a series of raids or just a single lead the authorities had is not clear since we only know about this one because of Mr. Toshok's web page. You can definitely expect more action however, as the case develops.
Half Life 2 missed its planned, October 2003 release and its expected holiday release this December and is now expected in April, 2004. If you would like to read the full report of the raid by Mr. Toshok and view the various papers he was served follow the download tab above.
