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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
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
... 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.
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!
When it happened to Valve with Half Life 2 the attack was pretty well executed. The code was never put on a live server but it got stolen just the same.
Gabe Newell noticed one day that his computer was acting slowly. He scanned for viruses but found nothing so he formatted and reinstalled. A few days later an admin noticed that someone had accessed Gabe's email, and further investigation revealed that the code tree had been accessed and large portions had been copied. The attacker somehow got a keylogger and backdoor tunnel installed on Valve's internal machines which provided a relay to the internal-only servers.
You don't have to do anything activily to have copyrights. It's something you attain when you produce it, not by filling in an application. applications (not computer) are for trademarks and patents.
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
"We wouldn't have this problem! People wouldn't steal, they could just download the code."
Well, I guess you've got a point. I mean, if murder was made legal, crime would go down.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
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
Give away the engine, sell content.
Sometimes the engine is the most important part of the content. It can be the result of untold thousands of hours of work, and recouping that investment is essential - because if you can't, then you can't risk employing all of those people to build it in the first place.
If made-by-volunteers/hobbyists engines were even close to as viable as those that get millions of dollars of focused investment, we'd see them out there being better than the professionally built ones. But we don't, because they're not. There is no free lunch, and there especially is no free high-end rendering engine, physics engine, driver integration, etc. Once a company is comfortable that their risk and investment has paid off, they might very well consider getting more people into their camp by making their now-established system more open or freely licensable... but they've got to pay the bills, and enabling other (competing) content developers to use a newly built (and paid for) engine for free just doesn't path the math test.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
you missed the important part of all that,
Their not FPS.
Sure the RPG, Magic & Demon elements of the game are going to rock hard but what have they done that is FPS?
I'm not knocking the game or the developers in anyway (I am looking forward to the game) but I've seen this happen one to many times. A Major person that is responcable for a killer franchise leaves the company that owns it, starts his own and takes a couple of the people with him (for whatever reason)
They promise the greatest game ever in a genre they never made a game for, naturally it isn't the greatest thing ever but it's not a horrible peice of garbage either, it's just not what people were expecting.
Each game you listed was a point and click dungeon crawler & an RTS, those are harder to do then an FPS but that doesn't mean they can make the worlds best FPS on their first try.