Quoted from Bluesnews:

Today we received word from the game's publisher, Vivendi Universal, that Half-Life 2's release has been delayed until later this year. Without commenting on the delay, a Vivendi Universal representative reaffirmed that the game would ship this year, sometime during the holiday season.


Bummer..

This is incorrect.
And people from Valve have confirmed that it's still planned for Sep 30th.

More along, nothing to see.

yeah strange that one..
developers saying its on schedule and publisers r saying its delayed.
hrm
=?

Isnt Valves publisher Sierra? Is Vivendi the same people who tried to offload blizzard?

i think valve is a department of sierra (ala Blizzard North is a department of Blizzard) but sierra itself isnt a publisher.. i dont know all the details but (i think) the publisher basically just takes care of shipping PR and stuff.
and yeah Vivendi also publish Blizzard titles

Valve is no part of Sierra, who is a publishing company. It is Sierra that part of another company, Vivendi. Sierra has been the distributer for most of Valves work, except DoD retail, that was done with Activision.