When we reported on August 27th that Valve started to pre-load Half-Life 2 over their distribution network steam, I thought the release is maybe days away.
Now it is 3 weeks later and Half-Life 2 is still not released. What is actually happening is that Half-Life 2 is pre-loaded in phases. The phase 3 was made available on September 10th on the Steam Network. Well, this is really only for very patient people.

On top of that there is a legal battle between Sierra/Valve and Vivendi Universal going on that could delay the release of Half-Life 2. Gamespot has an indepth coverage of this situation. On the positive side Valve has shipped the release canidate of Half-Life 2 last week to Vivendi Universal, who is publishing the game (see GamesIndustry). Still no release date though. The wait continous.