Too bad there never was a "middle of release", or any kind of release to speak of. With how much they're delaying it, I wouldn't be surprised if they made up the hacker story to cover their asses.
With how things are going now, and how things have been going throughout the duration of the project, I think it would be best to assume that HLRally won't be released. That way, everyone who's been anticipating the release of this can mope about one big let-down instead of hundreds of little ones every twenty minutes.
