Weird Half-Life 2 beta videos from October 2003

[fps]

Hey all, new to the forums so I don't know if this has been discussed before, but a few months ago me and a friend were browsing around the mirrors of the Telefragged FTP server that were hosted on DukeWorld and found a couple of videos from around the time the game leaks happened that show someone inserting an (obviously fake) DVD-R with the label "HALF-LIFE 2 BETA" into their computer, installing it and then running it on another computer in a second video which I find to be rather interesting.

The videos are hosted over here http://dukeworld.com/telefragged/hl2r/ , with them being .WMV files inside of hl2betavid.zip and Hl2Install.zip. For proof that they are from October 2003 and not modified file modification dates (which is possible with some tools), here is a listing from that exact same mirror that is on archive.org - http://web.archive.org/web/20031009014743/http://www.3ddownloads.com:80/telefragged/hl2r

I've been wondering if anyone here knows anything about them, as they are rather interesting to me and they haven't been discussed anywhere to my knowledge, I've looked around on stuff like Google Groups/Usenet conversations from the time, various forums and have found no reference to these anywhere.

Anyway, that's pretty much it. Oh yeah, and here's the thumbnail data from the video in case someone doesn't feel like downloading it:

[Витой]

These videos were recorded by some troll who made up some fake installer on a disk and made the fake "hl2 launcher" play one of E3 2003 videos (specifically Traptown).
I guess he just used the rumors about HL2 code leak that were spreading in the Internet back in those days and trolled the community members who were looking the place to download this leak.

[Shift]

Sorry for a bit of necro, but the fanmade wallpaper they used for the menu can still be found on hl-inside. Most of these things were posted on hl2world forum, that is largely unarchived and lost to time.
https://hl-inside.me/gallery/wallpapers/?page=1



And a bonus forum thread from around the time.
https://www.valvetime.co.uk/threads/what-has-happened-during-the-absense-of-hl2-net-forums-big-news.11034/