Vivendi Universal Entertainment has canned the Christmas launch of Half Life 2 in response to last week's leak of source code onto the Internet.

In a statement today, the games publisher said that Half Life 2, an expected blockbuster, will now contribute to 2004 results.

VUE says that crackers scooped up a third of the code of Half Life 2, making it "almost impossible" for bootleggers to exploit the leak.

Crackers obtained the code probably by exploiting a vulnerability in Outlook and installing keyloggers, according to Valve, the company which develops Half Life. Valve's account of the leak is here (http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?s=e6e7d0ce0abe19997425ef50fa7fe1df&threadid=10692). ®