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Bungie Speaks On Halo 2 Leak
BlueMoon writes "A moderator on the official Halo 2 forums posted some speculations and warnings about the Halo 2 leak. To the question where the leak originated he answered "is almost positively the work of some jerk in the manufacturing plant who pocketed the game". They also send out a warning that posting any kind of information about leak will result in "having your XBox Live account's ability to play Halo 2 crippled as we can and we will ban your gamertags from access to vital parts of Halo 2's online experience"." TalkXbox has a repost of an official statement asking community members to assist in the capture of the folks who leaked the game.
Bungie, I'm ashamed! Look, I LOVE the Halo series. I bought the first Halo game when XBox came out. In fact, I BOUGHT the Xbox just to play it!
BUT, and it's a big but, I have TWO friends who work at Bungie... and no, I'm not naming names here, but they have HUNDREDS of gigabytes of illegal movies, mp3 audio files, and PC software on their home computers. Trust me, we were watching Spiderman 2 with beers and popcorn three days before it was in theatres!
Where is the JUSTICE here? I know others of you are the same way. You write software, so you value software but not movies or music. I bet music industry employees steal movies and software but don't download illegal mp3s. It's just the NATURE of how things work.
Bungie is over-stepping their bounds here. Piracy is as natural as BREATHING. If you have a computer, disk space, and a connection to the Internets, it's not hard work to hunt and find exactly what you want for free!
Look, I plan on buying Halo 2. I love the first one and still play it with my boyfriend and my family when they come to visit me because it's easy to learn but FUN as heck. I just want Bungie to be honest here -- they'll do fine financially... no one wants French subtitles anyway!
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
...How are they going to find out my gamertag?
Nothing for you to see here, Please move along.
When will companies realize that piracy is just an unfortunate part of doing business. Did they honestly think it wasn't going to be posted up on the internet? I've talked to a variety of friends and strangers. Those that are familar with Halo and Halo 2 all said that they knew of the leak, but they were still going to buy it when it comes out in a few weeks. Those that steal it now...probably wouldn't have bought it anyways.
and about that.. if I'd write anonymously somewhere about the leak, or the game, how would they know it's me?(to be able to fuck my xbox live ability, which I don't have, hell, I don't even have a xbox).
so.. they're resorting to fud to keep the lid down on this... which is kinda stupid because the leak is already mentioned on PRINTED papers as well..
here's an idea though, next time you're making a game: don't fucking sit on it for a month once it's ready, especially when you know that THESE THINGS HAPPEN in the industry.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Now I loved Halo and can't wait for the sequel, but have we really reached the point where we'll turn in our neighbors not just to the gubmint but to the corporations we love as well? Can I get some Monopoly game pieces from McDonalds for killing the guy who made Super Size Me?
This is exactly the kind of thing peer to peer networks didn't need right now with all the litigation going around. Microsoft is sure to blame evil Kazaa, EDonkey, et al for what is obviously an internal matter.
Microsoft and other corporations need to look on the inside at their own employees before they blame P2P...P2P can't make it magically appear.
Nabbing a CD off an assembly line is no better than downloading the game off the internet, it's stealing plain and simple.
and your sig says...
Software piracy is victimless theft
If you feel there is no difference between stealing a cd off an assembly line and downloading the game it contains from the internet... are you saying that stealing a cd off the assembly line is victimless theft?
At least with downloading a copy there is no actual physical loss, but between the combination of your statement and sig, you seem to be condoning stealing cd's... possibly from anywhere as it is 'victimless theft'.
You sir make me sick. Please get your ethics and logic in order.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
The more people that know its actually been leaked, the more that will go out on the net seeking it. However, I don't feel that this leak will have a big impact on the games sales. It would be interesting to find out how many people actually have modded xboxes, and then on top of that... how many people would be happy with a 'french' version of the game. And of those people, how many will not care about gaming online.... i dunno, i think Halo 2's big selling feature was the Xbox live support. Lets wait and see.
as long as it's from microsoft.
or is it ok as long as it's from any corporation?
how about your local computer dealer, you know, the one who hasn't been driven out of business by walmart yet? (because we all know stealing from walmart would be okay.)
Why aren't they implementing high security levels in these plants, not unlike diamond/gold mines? I mean, if it's that easy to steal something worth many millions dollars, someone WILL do it (even if won't make a cent out of it, obviously). Prestige of being the first to release highly awaited titles is crucial on the warez scene I heard.
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
Yeah, that'll work, because we all know security through obscurity is the best solution.
The fact is, anyone who was going to pirate knows where to find it.
The people that pirate the game apparently already have a modded Xbox. Since they modded their Xbox I would guess that they would not be purchasing the game anyway. So really what kind of loss would Bungie be looking at in the first place?
Who the fuck are you to tell me what I can talk about and what I cannot talk about?
It's thier forum. If you don't like the rules, go talk elsewhere.. they are only banning people who talk about it on BUNGIE forums.
Torrents have no encryption, obfuscation or plausible deniability. Microsoft and Bungie can go straight to the tracker and demand a list of all IP addresses downloading Halo 2.
Then they'll sue you.
Think they won't? Just try your luck, punks.
you wouldn't need to be good at programming, just change some random bytes. or fill it up with goatse.
Actually, I believe bittorrent prevents people from doing this very thing. It uses checksums for each segment transferred, so you can't just insert any old data in. You would have to insert data that matched the checksum. Needless to say, this is not generally an easy thing to do.
Don't count your messages before they ACK.
What did you expect them to say? "You can check out the leak and post about it here, but be sure to put *SPOILER* in your subject line!"
This is a post on their OFFICIAL forums. Of course they're going to seem arrogant! This is a game they've been working hard on for a few years now. They're trying to prevent folks from ruining the experiences of others by posting spoilers, screenshots, etc. of the game on THEIR official boards. Undoubtedly there are lots of Bungie/MS haters who would love nothing more to piss off Halo fans by doing those type of things.
-- jchenx
They aren't banning accounts for talking about it - they are banning for people who link to info on how to get it, whats in it, spoilers obtained from the leak, etcetera. Basically they're trying to keep the bungie forums a safe place to enjoy discussing the game
Sure, they have a right to control their forums, but the statement Bungie made isn't limited to just their forum. Here's a clip of the rather draconian announcement:
It really sounds like Bungie is trying to control the spread of free speech. It's a rather poor statement if all they want to do is provide a leak-talk free forum on the bungie forums. A good way to actually GET people to talk about something is to tell them very loudly to NOT talk about it. Get real Bungie, this is a game not a military secret. Sadly I think this is just a poorly thought out statement from one guy at Bungie, but since it's the only thing that's been said it's taken on large-scale meaning.
Bungie needs to realize that the cat is out of the bag and they can't do anything to put it back in. Anyone that wants to know will know. They should have just been as quite as possible, announce they're looking for the source of the leak, and remove any posts on their forums posting links to the game or spoilers.
AccountKiller
Before MS bought them out. How can a game company produce only 1 game and not sell the game engine to anyone and still stay in business? Id and Valve are different in that they sell the engine to other folks.
Erm...
There are quite a few game companies who have written their own software without licensing it out as a basis for the games of others.
Ignoring the fact that Bungie already has one licensee for the Halo engine, there's probably one little secret, one little flaw in your theory...
The Halo (1) engine actually isn't that great, and has many peculiar limitations. It's difficult to extend it (Halo PC is somewhat limited in modding potential - there's no chance of adding extra code without hacking the main Halo executable). Its design isn't really suited for online play, and isn't client-server like Quake, Half-Life, Unreal etc. (Gearbox did a pretty good job of retrofitting some modern netcode, but it's still not perfect).
There are a bunch of weird physics bugs involving moving objects (lifts, etc) and non-player entities - persuade a vehicle or monster on to a lift, and it'll fall straight through.
It's perfectly tuned for the game it was written for and works extremely well for that, but it's not some cross-platform, ultra-versatile thing like a Quake or Unreal engine. Anyone wanting to add to it will have to dig deep down into its innards.
As for the Halo 2 leak, probably the biggest problem isn't so much the hand-wringing about copyright theft, more the fact that Bungie has kept the full story of the single-player game a complete secret. There are most likely whole races of creatures you're not supposed to know about yet, like in the original Halo. And the pricks pirating the game are likely to be just the sort who will jump into some online forum to describe all the plot twists and characters.
Halo.Bungie.org has already closed its forums to new posting. Bungie.net are threatening people with permanent bans. Vicious, yes, but for a Bungie game, where the sotory is incredibly important, revealing the plot is wrong...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
1- There is no point in acting as if the world has ended. Games get pirated all the time. In fact, ALL of them get pirated. What made you think yours would be exempt?
2- Repeatedly pointing out that this is "highly" illegal (is there a lowly illegal?) bores me. EVERYBODY knows it's illegal. Next, please point out that the sky is HIGHLY blue...
3- Pirate copies are available before your game was officially released, so what? Again, it happens all the time, especially with high profile games like yours.
4-Is this going to harm you more than if the game had been pirated one or two days before official release? No, to play a copy, one needs to have a modchip installed. People who have a modchip installed and are playing the leaked game were going to pirate it anyways once it was released.
5- Microsoft is investigating this and will prosecute to the full extent of bla bla bla.
Again, you're boring me. Most of these investigations get nowhere. If you do happen to catch the leaker, I hope that makes you happy because no one else will give a shit. The guy who leaked the HL2 source code was arrested. This didn't dissuade the guy who just leaked Halo 2. What makes you think this time will be any different?
To sum it up: It's no surprise that your game was leaked, it's no surprise that it will be pirated, and we all know it will still sell like hot cakes and that you will all make lots of money. Hell, you're already making lots of money, you work for Microsoft right?
So stop your whining. Thank you.
Disclaimer: My xbox isn't modded, I have not downloaded this leaked version and do not plan to.
No, I just have a sense of ethics. Not everybody in this world is motivated by love of money.