Best Buy made the decision of selling Half Life 2 on Friday night (Nov. 12th) and they are available for sale at Best Buy retail stores now. A news item on the Best Buy Employee Toolkit says "Please begin selling Half-Life 2 as the street date has been removed. Again, please begin stocking and selling Half-Life 2 immediately."
*However*, once installed, it requires to be authorized through Steam to activate the game. This does not happen until Tuesday, November 16th, which is the official release date.
Here is a statement released today by Valve:
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Half-Life 2 For Sale?
November 13, 2004, 4:57 pm · valve
If you have purchased a copy of Half-Life 2, we are sorry you are still waiting to play. This is not Valve's choice. Vivendi is insisting that the game has not yet been released, and has threatened that Valve would be in violation of its contract if we activate the Half-Life 2 Steam authentication servers at this time.
Thanks for your patience and we will update you when we have more news to share.
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Update 2 - November 14th 2004:
Best Buy corporate has notified all stores to now *remove* all copies of Half Life 2 off the shelves and hold off until Tuesday the 16th. Those who were able to already grab a copy lucked out, so everyone else will have to wait until Tuesday.
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Click on the Screens tab to check out the pictures of the copy we just purchased at Best Buy.