Valves April fools joke

[TheLastSamurai14]

So when is Valve gonna get around to giving us Half-Dead Team Fortress 3?

I think you mean Half-Dead Portal Fortress Strike of Defeat...3.

But I'm dying to know, too. Gaben, we'll come protest in front of your offices if you don't tell us!

 

[ResonanceGames]

Conisdering that Valve have basically made it clear that there isn't going to be a half life 3, the real joke is that people are still waiting...

Yeah, like when Doug Lombardi said "we're not done with Gordon Freeman's adventures" last year. Totally implying that the series is over.

Anyway, fake link, you've all been double pranked, yadda yadda yadda.

 

[Rastien]

Yeah honestly Im thinking this is a tad more sinister than just valve throwing a gag. As in installing malware onto PCs by tricking people into thinking they are actually on a webpage of valves that it simply looks like valves webpage and tries to run an activeX script as the page loads.

Yeah, look before you link.

I doubt this because all the otehr games on the page link to the steam store, so you can't download anything off the site.

You download something off the website the second your on it. It does try to identify and install a plug in of some sort.

Thank god for sandboxing,

Edit: Yes im sure some of the links are indeed valid, Hell thats one of the oldest tricks in the book of virus writers. Go to a trustable webpage, copy that pages source code and then modify the source code to draw people into the point you want them to click. Seeings how the point is to simply get them on the page, mission accomplished.

Not saying this IS virulent. Source code as best as I had patience to check looks fine, Just saying, people have not the slightest clue how the internet works or the damage they do to computers.

NoScript, ho!

(NoScript does protect me from this shit, right? It should. Its called NoScript, after all.)

Sall good just grab a tin foil hat and join this dude

But yeah noscipt or adblock plus /shrug all good chief

 

[CarlMin]

Conisdering that Valve have basically made it clear that there isn't going to be a half life 3, the real joke is that people are still waiting...

How did you reach that conclusion?

 

[daveman247]

They shouldn't have done it simply because it was way too obvious. I doubt anyone with valve experience believed this was real.

Something a little more credibility would be to make a video titled "pyros face" or something similar and reveal him/her to simply be a smaller version of heavy. And possible a transvestite to boot.

A better troll would be to have another mask under the pyro's mask

 

[viranimus]

Sall good just grab a tin foil hat and join this dude

But yeah noscipt or adblock plus /shrug all good chief

EDIT: I know your just saying that in all good fun. Please dont take my overly serious response to mean the humor is lost on me, it was humorous and I chuckled at it.

Spoiler: You need to pay more attention to what your doing

Tin foil hat huh? Well I grant you, I have my browser locked behind a virtual session of Linux mint, then behind peerblock(to block known spyware addresses), Adblock ( I have pub club. I dont use adblock to stop advertisements. I use it to stop more nefarious scripts from freely running and implanting themselves on my system. The escapist is good about non malicious advertisements thats why It is whitelisted, but not all websites are so responsible with their actions), active malwarebytes RTS, Avast RTS, Resurrected sygate firewall, TORproxy, Process watch and several other minor protections.

Buuuut

I don't have to reformat my hard drive every 3 months because my computer is essentially unusable due to all the nefarious garbage on it that you can inadvertently pick up on the internet.

Just like after giving my grandmother a PC, not even 2 months after I set it up, other family members start using it and when I go to do routine maint on the thing It has 10 virulent entities and over 100 instances of spy/malware to the point the malware disabled the antivirus, locked out task manager and even de provisioned the router setup getting rid of SSID protocols

So I would much rather be paranoid and protect my stuff, than to allow malicious software to eat up my system resources so as it can report back my various activities from trying to access email addresses, credit card info, or usage metrics like how many times a day I look up any given subject so they can figure out how to sell it to me.

Just because your paranoid, dont mean they're not after you. And I say that from the experience that even with my overly paranoid security measures, I too still pick up problem files on occasion. Now consider someone who ISNT as paranoid as me how much they pick up.

Honestly, you never can be too careful.

 

[Treblaine]

That's not funny at all, especially if they know that we've been waiting so long for it!

But... that IS the joke. That we have been waiting for this long.

It wouldn't work if say Activision did the same with announcing the next CoD game, as the last one came out just over 4 months ago and we know one will be released every November.

 

[Atmos Duality]

You all realize this isn't linked to the actual steam store, right?

http://store.steampowered.com/ is the real store
http://store.steamppowered.com/ (note the two P's) is the one OP linked.

Escapist, you're usually more on the ball than this.

Yeah. I thought that looked rather fishy. DNS-lookup suggests it might be wiser to not bother clicking that link. :\

Good instincts.

 

[BoredDragon]

Hehe nothing like winding up fan boys for a laugh, now excuse me while i finish explaining why portal and portal 2 were over hyped and not that great to my bro

I see what you did there

 

[lacktheknack]

Best April fools joke ever.

Can you actully pay for that? DO you get anything for buying it?

If you click it, it takes you to a picture of Gabe with a trollface.

So no. No you can't.

OT: I laughed for 9001 hours at this. Well done, whoever made this.

 

[lacktheknack]

You all realize this isn't linked to the actual steam store, right?

http://store.steampowered.com/ is the real store
http://store.steamppowered.com/ (note the two P's) is the one OP linked.

Escapist, you're usually more on the ball than this.

Yeah. I thought that looked rather fishy. DNS-lookup suggests it might be wiser to not bother clicking that link. :\

Good instincts.

Go ahead and check. I did. If you click any of the other games, it takes you to the real page (with one p). If you click on the Half Life 3 page, it just trolls you.

It's an innocent, if not fairly cruel, joke.

 

[Tony2077]

i thought they were suppose to be jokes not someone hitting you in the face with a metal bat then a wooden one

 

[Atmos Duality]

Go ahead and check. I did. If you click any of the other games, it takes you to the real page (with one p). If you click on the Half Life 3 page, it just trolls you.

It's an innocent, if not fairly cruel, joke.

It's never bad to be mindful of such things regardless. Phishing sites and knock-offs thrive on that kind of practice.

As for the joke itself; I got a chuckle.
The only cruelty involved is what the fans do to themselves.

 

[Just_A_Glitch]

I do hope that if this game ever does get released, it is on April Fools day, in a similar manner to this.

As for the joke, I love it, because I don't care one bit about the series.

 

[jpoon]

Hah, nice...crafty crafty gabe!

 

[Aeonknight]

Let's see.

Valve trolls it's fanbase using a subject that's already pretty touchy, and people applaud it.

EA tries to make money because they're a business and that's what they do, and they're the devil's spawn of the gaming industry.

Logic!

 

[Atmos Duality]

As long as you dont enter any passwords you should be fine.

I disabled my noscript and Avast+Malbytes didnt find anything, so it appears the website is clean at least. Could be phishing though.

EDIT: You know whats really annoying about this new captchas though? Noscript blocks them. >.>

"Never leap before you look." Checks are simple and quick. Repairs can take hours.

ASIDE: And yeah, I had to work around No-Script to use the new captchas.
Plus, doesn't it strike you as self-defeating to include static ads for a security check?
(ignoring for a moment the obvious incentives for ad-revenue)
You'd think those ads would get indexed and added to bot-scripts in a day, tops.

 

[lacktheknack]

Let's see.

Valve trolls it's fanbase using a subject that's already pretty touchy, and people applaud it.

EA tries to make money because they're a business and that's what they do, and they're the devil's spawn of the gaming industry.

Logic!

Valve didn't do it, so there's that.

There's also a difference between a picture of Gaben Newell with a trollface and having your purchases gimped.

 

[Erttheking]

Oh that is cruel, that is just fucking cruel.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I dunno man, it seems like I leap everyday without looking and nothing has happened... Yet. Kinda surprised I have gone this far without at least having my anti-virus pick up something and block it.

Maybe its because the kind of common sense you get by working with the internet for years is second nature to me. I dont even realize how careful I am anymore.

Well, part of it involves what parts of the net you go to or why.
It's part of why I told Lacktheknack "Good instincts". You just stop consciously noticing some of those things after a time or just know when to back away.

Then again, I'm a network security engineer by trade. Perhaps its a matter of perspective, since computer forensics is sometimes part of the job.

ASIDE: Oh look, it's "The all-new Chevy Sonic". Again. For the 6th time in two days.
If I can keep a Captcha response in a notepad on my desktop for some Copypasta action, IT'S FAILING TO DO ITS JOB.