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Gates of Troy Gold Master Stolen, Delayed
Ant writes "According to the story on Blue's News and Slitherine Software's related official statement, the gold master for Gates of Troy, their upcoming stand-alone PC strategy title, has been purloined, via a physical robbery of a UK Post Office carrier, rather than a computer break-in." It may well have just been "a piece of extreme bad luck", but kudos to Slitherine for trying to make the most of this incident, as they slather: "This attack comes hot on the heels of the theft of the Half Life 2 source code and shows how vulnerable games companies can be", and also fret: "It has been a wake up call to us and Slitherine will be reviewing its procedures in future to ensure the same type of thing cannot happen again." - perhaps a heavily armed guard is needed?
First time I ever heard of a warez group not only releasing a game before it's in stores, but releasing a game that WON'T be released in stores :)
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
When you're dropping your company's ENTIRE business model into the "mailbox", you deserve whatever happens.
Things of value should be protected and transmitted as such.
I have no sympathy for them. Hell, even Grandma knows better than to send cash in the mail; never-the-less a potentially million dollar peice of software.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
...but boo-hoo.
On it's way back from the duplication... How does this delay the game again? Was it the _only_ copy? How long does it take VS to crank out another build? Worried that people will download the warez copy before they can buy one? Simple, make it available for download by purchase.
Maybe they will delay the game for a year and claim it was because it got stolen. *cough* Half Life 2, but they actually had to do an internal investigation and security audit. That certainly didn't take a year.
Soon they will be blaming the loss of digital bits for cancer and terrorism (oh wait a sec....)
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
How will it help them to delay the release? In fact, they should try to release the game sooner to beat the potential pirates.
And it's not like they can't ship out another CD right away. (Unless burning a "gold master" somehow involves wiping out all of the company's hard drives and backup tapes.)The HL2 source code being stole happened last October, over 8 months ago. here's a dated money.cnn.com article
if i got laid last October and then laid today, i wouldn't necessarily say this time was 'hot on the heels' of the last time.
oh wait, since i read slashdot, maybe i would...
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
This attack comes hot on the heels of the fall of the Roman Empire... Visigoths blamed, barbarian horde community comes together to defend against defamation of Vandal name.
http://www.busybox.net/shame.html
Hall of Shame!!!
The following products and/or projects appear to use BusyBox, but do not appear to release source code as required by the BusyBox license. This is a violation of the law! The distributors of these products are invited to contact Erik Andersen if they have any confusion as to what is needed to bring their products into compliance, or if they have already brought their product into compliance and wish to be removed from the Hall of Shame.
They could have at least taken the ISO and incrypted it. Even if they mailed the pass phraze after the disk arrived safely or emailed it or called up and told the people at the other end. It would have made stealing it a moot point. Inless it was an inside job, but once the bad guys are inside all bets are off.
Charles Puffer
Gates of Troy is only available through the Slitherine Online shop - you will not see it at your local store.
But you WILL see it on Kazaa, eMule, and at Suprnova.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
I haven't played Spartan, but I have played its predecessors, Legion and Chariots of War. Neither of them are very special, and the only real difference between them and Spartan (and, by extension, Gates of Troy) that I can see is that Spartan has bland-looking pseudo-3D battle graphics while the others have 2D battle graphics. So this news really only matters to the few Slitherine fans out there and the hardcore pirates that download and play every PC game that comes out.
Rob
If it wasn't the source code how is this different than somebody's copy stolen in the mail? Hell, if the game needs a serial # to install that probably wasn't even with the disk! So it could be worth less than a copy. Just reburn the damn thing and overnight it!
Is this that big of a deal?
Would someone steal a whole bag just to get a game?
The thief was probably looking to get some money out of other mail that was in there, and he'll probably just throw the disc aside (if he even knows what it is).
who made (tried to) tyrannasaurus tex for gbc?
What's the delay? This is practically the same as if someone stole a copy from the store! It's "exactly" the same thing. This couldn't possibly warrent any delay greater than 1 day!
I was suspicious with the HL2 source code theft, but this just looks plin obvious. First of all, it seems that somebody stealing the master != delay. They can just burn another one. Also, the fact that the only person to report on it in that article was the post man himself; no police, etc. leads me to believe that it was just the company pulling a prank to:
A. Get free publicity
B. Have an excuse (however bad) to delay the game.
Some things just look too suspicious.
In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered as a bad move.
perhaps a heavily armed guard is needed?
:-)
I can see it now... the little postman walking from door to door flanked by two massive guys with BFGs.
--------
This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
I'm sure all those alarmist scapegoaters are going to blame this act of violence on video games.
I doubt the thieves were going for THAT disk, but I am curious to know if there is enough gold on a disk to make it worth it? Is a gold master just covered with gold, or is it solid gold? I wonder if they insured it. Be quite a boost of they insured it for 10k, but then I don't know if you can insure it in the UK.
1) First of all, the image of the "gold master" is obviously sitting on at least one machine back in their offices, and is almost certainly backed up securely in several different places
2) As others have pointed out, if whoever they're sending it to doesn't have FTP capabilities, they're not a legitimate destination, so it's no big deal on the timing
3) If this is really the "gold master", it's literally bit-for-bit what's going to be in boxes in the store (or available online). There's no advantage to any "thief" of posting/duping the GM as opposed to what they could buy retail
The only possible advantage a thief could get is saving the price of buying a copy, and maybe a couple of weeks lead time before the game might appear on the shelf. Doesn't make much sense to me.
Yeah, that's just what a bunch of guys creating some of the most violent imagery on earth need: access to really big guns. There's no telling what some of these guys have been through to make them want to create so much artificial death and destruction, but I definitely think it's a good idea for those same people to have access to the weapons that can make their fiction come to life!
(This was written entirely in jest. I enjoy first-person shooters and, um, Grand Theft Auto.)