It's a shocker! Half-Life 2 out of seemingly nowhere has GONE GOLD! Here is the official PR we got from Vivendi announcing as much and more importantly a promise to ship the game with a shelf date of November 16th.

LOS ANGELES (October 18, 2004) Vivendi Universal Games (VU Games) today announced that Half-Life 2, the sequel to one of the most critically acclaimed PC titles in gaming history, will ship to retail outlets around the world in November. The Company confirmed that Half-Life 2, developed by Valve Software, has gone gold with a planned retail street date of November 16, 2004. The countdown to the highly anticipated retail street date has begun around the world, as VU Games completes plans to ship localized versions of Half-Life 2 simultaneously in English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Korean, Thai and Japanese.

Half-Life 2 has surpassed our expectations in every sense its high-quality graphics, ground-breaking physics and immersive first-person shooter gameplay set a new standard for PC action games, said Bruce Hack, CEO of VU Games. Half-Life 2 will go down as one of the best-selling PC titles, and we are thrilled to deliver this ground-breaking title to the worldwide gaming community this fall.[snip]

Steam users: Half-Life 2 will be unlocked on Steam on November 16th as well. Unless of course any retailer breaks the street date and puts it out on shelves sooner, then Steam will unlock Half-Life 2 sooner.