Half-Life 2 confusion continues apace – Specific date claims debunked

Let's face it, if it's at release candidate stage, Valve believe it to be finished and expect no significant changes to be requested from VU.

The vast amount of HL2 preloads that are being pumping out over Steam would back this up - why ship terabytes of data if there's a risk that it'll have to be done again at the expense of bandwidth and core customer satisfaction?

Yeah, but what the developer thinks is finished, and what the customer thinks is finished are sometimes massively different. I believe you have some familiarity of this.

Indeed I do, but in this case I get the feeling that there's already been a good bit of too-ing and fro-ing between VU and Valve as it is a release candidate rather than a beta and, as mentioned, Valve are seeding the preload files over Steam.