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Hellgate London Code Stolen?
The Gamers With Jobs Press Pass is reporting on a rumour that the code for Hellgate:London has been stolen. 'Reliable sources' indicate that Flagship Studios' servers have been taken down (and hopefully secured) in the wake of the incident. From the article: "My source indicates that the virtual break-in was conducted by a Chinese individual who is currently attempting to sell the code from a personal website. For those of you who don't know, Hellgate: London is the first project by ex-Blizzard developer Bill Roper and his new studio, the game has been at the last two E3's and looks to be shaping up very nicely."
I hope they get it back, I was looking forward to that game.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
If ((CodeLate==TRUE) && hacker.holding( yourcode ))
{
Panic();
}
liqbase
The code is probably no where near finished so whats the point of stealing it other than to piss people off? Sure it might help if someone wants to make their own games, but wouldn't it be obvious to the original author if someone did this and if a major Game mob did this they would have their pants sued off
Admiral Trigger Happy
So... The source code for an FPS that isn't even close enough to release to set a release date was stolen.
Why not just download Quake's source and be done?? An engine with no data is nearly useless in today's FPS scene. The only possible use it could have would be to crack the game before it even comes out, but as it is so unfinished, even that is pointless.
"Ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking."
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
We wouldn't have this problem! People wouldn't steal, they could just download the code.
.. fudge would you take the risk of putting the source online. If one had surely you'd break it down into modules. i.e never have the complete code on one server??
Most people have no idea what they are doing, and are silently panicking on the inside.
... it's not stealing, it's copyright infringement!
Sorry, couldn't resist.
I thought Don't Connect Your Development Enviroment To The Internet was in game design 101 since Half-life 2?
Come as you are, do what you must, be who you will.
Now, how many people here have screamed bloody murder about how downloading digital content (ie: Movies and music) is not Theft because nothing of value has been removed from the original owner.
In this case, it's even less then those because the code owner likely hasn't copyrighted the code at this point. So at best you are looking at an trade secrecy issue and some vague 'unlawful use of a computer' crime. Attempting to sell the code could get you into more legal trouble, but it still isn't theft as nothing has been stolen.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I fear a theft will cause a huge release delay. The game is slated to have a major multiplayer aspect with massively multiplayer staging areas and instanced group mission areas. If the code was stolen there is a significant risk of cheaters ruining the game for everyone. To be fair, this has happened in pretty much every Bill Roper game since he makes earning stats so tantilizing, but in the past it was (presumably) done without access to the source.
The big variables here are whether games will be served by the company or by players, what the pricing scheme will be (thus the urgency to fix the game), and, of course, how complete the stolen code was. For reference, the code to every single id Software game was leaked before release, and those games did just fine technically and commercially. No one could reuse stolen code commercially without getting caught, and the publisher could instate whatever crazy engine licensing agreement they want in that case.
Regardless, I adore Roper's games and I can't wait for the release of Hellgate: London. I hope I don't have to wait much longer to play it!
Didn't this happen with HL2 as well? If they aren't very far into the development, like others have said, I think it would be safe to assume this won't actually have any kind of impact on the end product.
Blerg.
Who even assumes this is true. This is a big news story for a game most people would ignore.
PR 101.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Gabe Newell used this excuse when Half-Life 2 slipped behind schedule
Put down the tinfoil-covered keyboard/mouse, and step away.
Gabe got his desktop hacked. Simple (and dumb) as that. But when you're not planning on giving away your expensively paid-for code to your competition, you don't really think of it as an OSS project - so comparing the two is completely pointless, and you pretending there were no vulnerabilities to sweat under the circumstances just shows how ignorant you are.
Speaking of which, why do you care? You obviously have great contempt for Valve, and wouldn't pay for their products, so why do you care whether they're later than they'd like (or why they are) in delivering their own product? Delivering it is how they repay their investors and write paychecks to their staff - and if you dislike the company so much, you should be pleased that they had a harder time generating the game's revenue than they would have preferred.
Or maybe you just don't know what the hell you're talking about.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
maybe he's a troll but it's so true. Turn on a ssh server and monitor your /var/log/secure over a weeks time and perform a whois on the attackers. Also install snort and check the logs for that. It's amazing what a large percentage of the attacks come from china, japan, and poland.
Bill Roper and the crew now working at Flagship Studios are the same people who brought us Diablo, Diablo II, D2:LoD, Starcraft, and Battle.net.
Diablo, which was released January of 1997, debuted at number one in the United States. The game has sold in excess of 2.5 million copies worldwide and was honored as the number-one selling computer role-playing game in 1997 as well as being named Game of the Year by Computer Gaming World.
In July of 2000, Diablo II was announced as being the fastest selling computer game in history. It dominated PC game charts with sales of over 4 million copies worldwide. The game has also been awarded several accolades including Computer Game of the Year, Computer Role Playing Game of the Year and Game of the Year for 2001 by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences.
Blizzard announced in August of 2001 that Diablo II: Lord of Destruction had surpassed 1 million units sold worldwide, with Over two million units of the game having been shipped to retail. It was the fastest selling expansion set in PC game history. In its first week alone, the game captured a record 17.7% percent of total U.S. PC game market share
StarCraft was released in March of 1998. It was the company's third number-one selling game and was named the best-selling game of 1998 by PC Data.
Yeah, I'm sure their next project will tank.
TPJ - Founder, The Amazon Basin
MMO's often get around this by doing all the computing on the servers and making the graphical view irrelevant. It don't matter if you can view the enemy, it matters if the server allows you to target the enemy. Since few MMO's are about tactics like hiding (you can usually target anything in a certain radius around you no matter how hidden they are by terrain).
In a FPS this does not work. Unless you move all the computing to the server and on this central server determine what the player can't or can't see in an absolute fashion then you can cheat.
Cheat by making the world simpler to intertrept. Image a FPS were a player has 360 vision, high contrast world, a popup over enemies telling you there stats (health, weapon) vs a normal player. Would that be cheating?
It ain't a bug and there is nothing that many eyes can solve.
The problem is that a FPS game will send more data to a client then the client should b able to see. Opensource by definition can't deal with this and it is the reason you can not ever have truly opensource DRM. (at least not in the ways it exist now)
Your mistake it is simple. You think cheaters rely on bugs. Yes they often do but the most constant threat is people playing with a different client seeing more then they should be able too. Good luck suprising someone with 360 degree x-ray vision.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Speaking as a game developer, I must say that there is almost no fear of giving away your expensively paid-for code to your competition . Why? Because it's useless to others. Most games I have worked on were without documentation, without a sane amount of comments - and having looked at the hl-2 leaked code, no difference there - a huge mess.
What can you steal?
-> You can't steal the technology ( because it's unreleased and probably buggy, written in haste and therefore uncomprehensible ) - it would be faster to implement the technology yourself.
-> You can't just use it and make your own game around it. Even a script-kiddie could find out that you used a "popular" engine by comparing strings in the executable/dlls.
-> You can't steal the assets ( batteries not included )
So you stole yourself some worthless pile of source-code. Wow. Beats me. I'ld place a bet that this "source-leaking" is a PR gig of some sort.
As noted here. Newell and others admitted after the game's launch that the source theft had no effect on the development schedule. However, you may recall at the time of the leak Valve said otherwise - a four month delay.
/., how couldn't you?
Hiding a project's source code rarely makes the project more secure. You knew this. I mean... this is
Tinfoil? I think your blind fanboyism, no personal offense, is clouding your judgement. As a physically big man and a liar, I think my judgement of 'fat jerk' on Newell stands. Valve makes good products, and I like them. My opinion of Newell doesn't change that fact.
My problem with spontaneous human combustion is that never seems to happen to the "right" people.
"Give away the engine, sell content. I suggest protecting it with a HASP key :D (just kidding, HASP has been defeated left and right.)"
I think you mean, "give away the engine, download the content from piratebay"?
That distinction is important. The article is misleading in using the term 'stolen' if the code was not in fact deleted from the developers' systems.
Why was this modded troll? Ask any sysop, or anyone who runs a server. My SSH logs were packed with root attempts from Asian subnets, until I blocked the entire region. Hack attempts dropped to almost nothing.
First Half Life, now this... and Coke's secret sold in the middle. What's this world coming to? Sure, information is meant to be free, but don't tell that to people with trade secrets to protect... Their lawyers will come and bite ya on the butt.