Well now isnt this just an interesting turn of events. As I'm sure many of you recall a couple other places were reporting that Half-Life 2 had been delayed and we had this silly idea that it wasnt even though the reports were coming from Vivendi themselves. But guess what, after what can only be called just a tad of confusion it seems Vivendi has a new stance, here's the quote from lead PR at Vivendi working on Half-Life 2 thanks to Evil Avatar:

Valve is still working toward the Sept.30 ship date.

Given Valve's uncharacteristic quietness on this, I can think of only one thing. Valve is working hard on hitting that shipping date and they still feel they can hit it, but perhaps they shared with Vivendi that there is a possibility of them missing that date, and things got misintepreted from there. There is always the possibility of missing a ship date though, but if Vivendi is going back on earlier statements then there must be at least some confidence that Valve can still hit that target date. If we ever get any kind of on the record statement from Valve we'll be sure to let you guys know.