As the question asks, what does it mean when a game gets leaked, well we all know when a game gets leaked it goes on the net via bit torrent or kazza etc but how does it get leaked from the game company... question sounds dumb but ive allways wanted to know!

People inside the company might release it before the actual realease date... Beta testers might release it to people... A lot of people can "leak" the software...

same thing as programs, its an inside job

There was also the 'incident' with Half-Life 2, a naughty little person found their way into the companies servers and 'borrowed' the code

Now that's very nice question. Look here, car/CPU/GPU designs are stolen.

It is most probably that:

1. The rival of the game developer/publisher wants to have a peek at what graphics detail level/story-line/audio effects/engine enhancements the other is employing, so that they themselves can come up with an answer in a very short time.

BMW/Mercedes, Toyota/Honda, other rival pairs etc. keep bribing the clerks, peons, sweepers etc. (even the MDs & CEOs) to get a hint of what new technologies the other is incoporating. The same way ATi/nVidia pair does, the same way Intel/AMD do it.

2. Some geek (who may be an employee of the company) gets a copy of the king by acquiring access to the code (just look very smart/important in other's eyes).

3. Its a very major possibilty that the company leaks the code on its own intent. Because the pre-release version is not even beta. Its very unstable, crashes too much, and overall needs more than one major code overhauls. So why spend on engineers (who's job is to play games :-) ) when there are thousands out there to try it, play it and then post info about bugs, or features that are not correctly working. Then read all the threads on different BBSs/forums and voila! The whole world says, "Despite code theft/program leakage they've managed a very good peice of software."

and to add to #3, game releasers also "inocently" get their games "leaked" and then have to push back the release date *COUGH* HL2 *COUGH*.

offtopic hl2 will be released in mid november!!!

It could also be someone at the CD/DVD pressing plant and they just swipe a disc and put it in their pocket...