Half-Life 2 street date broken

There was some considerably debate over the post a few days ago about the Half-Life 2 street date. Despite being an old press release, the fact is a good chunk of the gaming world seemed oblivious to the information.

Well, it's irrelevant now, as some stores have broken the release date and started selling the game early. Some have even called people to go and pick up their pre-orders of the game. I'm sure Valve are rather annoyed by this, but with the game requiring online activation to even run, while people may have gotten their copies early, if the activation works as expected, all that people have to play with now is a nice, shiny box. They won't get to play the game until the 16th.