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Lineage III Source Code Stolen?

Posted by Zonk on from the a-whole-world-down-the-tubes dept.

Shack News and the Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo are reporting that sourcecode for the MMOG Lineage III may have been stolen. As the third Massively Multiplayer game in a huge-selling South Korean series released by publisher NCSoft, over a billion dollars may be lost as a result of this theft. "The Seoul Metropolitan Police said Wednesday that seven former NCsoft employees are suspected of having sold the technology to a major Japanese game company. The seven left the Korean firm in February and allowed the Japanese company to review the software during a job interview. Police believe that the technology might have been copied during the demonstration."

6 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Wow. by Z0mb1eman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They lost over $1 billion because of the theft?

    It's gotta suck only having one copy of the code. Now they gotta write it again from scratch, or hope the other company gives it back. They should've made backups.

    Wait, what?

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  2. Uh by Knara · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The code was copied, not stolen. Talk about alarmist press. Even if one of their direct competitors got the code, what good is it going to do them? Players of lineage will continue to play lineage (cuz lineage people are obsessed, I think). It's not like someone's gonna be able to plop the code on some server farm in a couple weeks and make a competing mmo.

    1. Re:Uh by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The code was copied, not stolen. Indeed, when talking about movies and music we have contingents so ready to say "copyright infringement isn't theft" but when it's unpublished source code the terms "stolen" and "theft" are used without any hesitation.

      Can't we just agree to say "illegally copied" across the board?
      --
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    2. Re:Uh by Fnkmaster · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Furthermore, the competitors would be foolish to ever use the code. They'll get sued into the ground for copyright infringement.

      This sounds ridiculous. It's unlikely to cost anybody anything except legal fees.

    3. Re:Uh by Miniluv · · Score: 4, Insightful

      MMOGs don't compete on technology for the most part, they compete on content and aesthetic. There is one possible exception to this, that being EVE Online in that they are basically the only un-sharded MMO I can find record of. And they talk pretty openly about most of the technology "secret sauce" that goes into sustaining their simultaneity numbers.

  3. Something stinks about these accusations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This sounds like sour grapes because they got their team poached.

    Now they're on a fishing expedition. Sorry but anyone who thinks you need to steal code to write an MMORG when you just poached a team that wrote one, or that the owner of code loase money because someone else sees it, OR that interviews are conducted by reviewing your previous employer's code, is a complete idiot.

    The biggest component of an MMORPG is content and design, not actually the code. Sure there's server load ballancing and client pagine etc, but that is all tractible. Art (masses of it) and game design are king for MMORG, you don't need to steal code (and I am a programmer and have been a game programmer).

    If someone showed up for an interview with code the last thing you'd do is hire them.