One wonders how things like this can happen, but usually if it could, at some point it will. There is a lot of talk about this at the moment, especially about how it will cause problems for Valve Software. If the code was stolen by someone from one of the development machines at Valve, it makes you wonder why they would have this code sitting on a box which in one way or another is net connected. The best thing to do would be to keep these machines away from the network, just having a firewall installed usually isn't going to be good enough as a network or system is only as secure as its weakest point.
The fact that the code is now out there in the wild, no matter how it was obtained, is a different concept entirely. Some people are talking about how others might use it to develop new games. Indeed, ideas could be used, but not actual code. For example, if the engine was used, there would be people that could notice which engine is being used straight away without an official license from Valve, so commercially I don't think the code leak will cause probems in that respect.
One of the main issues with this leak, will be relating to cheating in multi-player games. The code is all over the place now, there are even Bittorrents of it. We shall see how this unfolds... will the culprit(s) be caught?
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