GameSpot has a new story up about the legal battle between Valve and Vivendi Universal (see previous story), as they've found out that Vivendi Universal Games can hold on to Half-Life 2 for six months after receiving a gold candidate from Valve. In the court filing, VUGames' senior vice president and deputy general counsel Eric Roeder says that Valve "made a number of public statements without our consent or concurrence that the product will be published and released to the general public in September of this year". The story also mentions that until Vivendi ships the game to retail, Valve is unable to release the game through Steam as it has to be made available at the same time as the retail release.

When asked if VUG could be targeting a "late-cycle" release date for Half-Life 2, Lombardi said, "We've been asking, but Vivendi has refused to communicate an expected retail release date for Half-Life 2." Additionally, Lombardi clarified Valve's perspective when it came to the company's desire to get the game into the hands of gamers. "We delivered the first release candidate last week, and hope to deliver the final version very soon," Lombardi said. For its part, VU Games declined GameSpot's requests for comment.