Slashdot Mirror
Crysis 2 Leaked Over a Month Before Launch
iviv66 writes with this excerpt from Rock, Paper, Shotgun:
"According to a thread on the Facepunch forums, a developer build of Crysis 2 containing the full game, multiplayer and the master key for the online authentication has been leaked, and is currently freely available from all sorts of astonishingly illegal websites. This sounds like it might be a serious tragedy for Crytek. Crysis 2 was scheduled for release on the 22nd of March, so the leaked build could be dangerously close to finished."
EA and Crytek have responded to the leak, saying that the illicit copy is incomplete and unfinished, and that "Piracy continues to damage the PC packaged goods market and the PC development community."
Now thats a crysis
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
"...is currently freely available from all sorts of astonishingly illegal websites." So these websites aren't just illegal, they're *astonishingly* illegal! This changes damn near everything about my view of the story!
Justin D. May, infamous iPad hacker.
nonconformity at work
Valve went and changed the game substantially and for the better. I hope they take the chance to do the same to crysis 2, if they do (add more value) then no one will pirate the inferior version.
Oh well that's just fantastic, isn't it?
Look, I know that there are all kinds of flaws in the copyright legal system. And yes, I know that there's plenty wrong with the approach that most of the industry takes towards DRM. But seriously, who the hell thought that leaking this was a good idea? All this is going to achieve - beyond letting a bunch of scabby teenagers play the game a bit earlier than they would have otherwise - is to seriously piss off one of the few remaining developers who really cares about the PC as a platform. Yes, Crysis 2 may be getting console ports, but everything I've seen so far suggests that it is still a PC game first and foremost and, most critically, one of the few around to really be pushing the limits of the platform.
PC gaming isn't dying. In fact, it should be positioned for a real comeback over the next few years. The current generation of console hardware is aging, there are no successors on the horizon and there are a lot of people out there who got into the development business because they want to make games for the latest and greatest technology. Whatever the corporate priorities, it's almost inevitable that we'll see games over the next five or so years on the PC that far outperform their console cousins - in terms of both graphics and gameplay (because like it or not, better technology does sometimes unlock new gameplay options). However, I say "almost" inevitable. Because, justified or not, if there's one thing that could prevent a PC renaissance, it's arseholery like this, which goes beyond even the usual day-one piracy. It's not just about the impact on sales - which slashdot can and does argue over all day on occasion - I can just imagine how galling it must be for developers to have people playing their work for free, before honest customers even have the chance to buy it. Particularly if the build is unfinished and the game is now going to get criticised for flaws not in the final version.
I'd like to think that people would just ignore the leak en masse. Sadly, we all know that isn't going to happen.
Where's the link in the story to the leaked files?
Divide a cake by zero. Is it still a cake?
Arrrg, they screwed up the game and purposely leaked to cover up their screw up so it's not so over hyped like Black Ops lmao... I'm just blabbin, no fires needed lol...
I am neutral when it comes to privacy but leaking a game/movie before release is bad for the industry and especially for the one producing it.
EA and Crytek have responded to the leak, saying that the illicit copy is incomplete and unfinished, and that "Piracy continues to damage the PC packaged goods market and the PC development community."
Then just hurry up and die already. Or pull out of the PC market.
What's that? You still make money hand over fist so you can't justify pulling out to your shareholders? Well fuck me, how unexpected.
Your Crysis Crysis jokes were already made. And though I'm against intellectual property, this isn't okay. But what do they mean the copy is unfinished? Are they saying the game hadn't gone gold yet?? Dumb comments will lose them the moral high ground...
There is no -1 Disagree.
Their games are mostly eye candy used to show off the engine... They make most of their money from selling the engine to other studios that use it to make good games...
If the game is incomplete and what not. Just ban that "master key" and simply relabel it as the PC Demo which they weren't going to release.
Sure, this release might result in some lost sales (because people tried the game and didn't like it).
For bad sales.
For all we know, this leak was intentional so they have something to blame poor sales and a poor console port for PC on.
An alpha build of Half Life 2 was also leaked nearly a year before release and look how that impacted it... It delayed it somewhat, but didn't really end up hurting the game. Hell, the Half Life 2 leak was of the source code even. This Crysis 2 leak is only an earlier build with lots of problems.
Awwww, poor corporations. You got your copyright lobbyists, your DRMs, your EULAs, your DMCAs, etc., etc. I've got an inquisitive mind and a bit of time. Guess who's gonna win this one. Am I a pirate? Arrrrrr!
Tell ya what. I'll give you the same amount of respect and lovin' that you give me. That's fair, right?
Why WOULDNT the fans want to get their Much Awaited Release before time?
I'll give an example of one of my most anticipated releases, the Michael album released after Michael Jacksons death. I've been a fan of MJ's since I was about 5 years old, my whole life he's been my favourite musician. I host a small podcast talking about Michael Jackson, I live in New Zealand, we hit day X before anywhere else in the world. I thought I'd have the album before the rest of the world. Not so. I go on Skype, my friend in the UK calls me, and just casually mentions the MJ album is out, what did I think?
WHAT! ITS OUT?!?!? Turns out it dropped in the US and possibly other countries before the rest of the world... WHY!?!? There is no physical media needed for iTunes, the largest music store in the world... why can we not ALL get it as soon as possible? As soon as NZ, the first country in the world wakes up to Day X, the rest of the world ALSO get it?
My friend had downloaded the US version. I fired up a Bit Torrent program, and had the 100 MB download in less than ten minutes. Ten minutes, compared to something like a week for the "NZ Release", from memory. It felt terribly unfair. Especially when you were covering the news before the release on a show by fans, for fans. And others would have the album before you.
I downloaded a torrent version, and, we reviewed it for our show together. We played 10 second or so clips from each song, and shared our thoughts. Those who didnt have the album yet waited until they heard it for themselves, those who couldnt wait loved the episode. And as soon as it was "officially" released, and I my preorder could go through on iTunes? Then I deleted the torrent gotten version, and had the "official".
Everybody won.
This has happened many times with releases I wanted desperately, like Drake's first album. The fans continue to buy the official version, perhaps those who pirate wouldnt have bought it anyway. I know there are audiobooks I simply CAN. NOT. GET. in New Zealand, they are unavailable due to "publishing rights in your region"...
I go on Torrent trackers, boom, find them easily. Not as nicely as if I could buy them for 20 dollars through iTunes, but is all or nothing here.
Go easy on those enjoying the product before release. The fans will still buy the game.
---
Has anyone wondered if this was done so Crytek can point a finger at piracy? This is a ridiculously huge blunder for such a huge company and they've pointed fingers at piracy before. That's allegedly why Crysis 2 is for both the PC and the consoles.
This could be a stunt for publicity as well. Something like beta builds of games aren't regularly leaked.
Is why you pay your developers good money. So they don't fuck you over out of spite.
If the pirated copy comes much later than the original copy the pirates will still not buy the original. But if the legit copy comes much later than the pirated as is the case here (even unfinished) the true fans and fence sitters will be extremely tempted to download it and, of course, the pirates will help themselves as usual.
This is why this is going to hurt them so much, and it is extremely unfortunate.
Reason is unless Crysis 2 is some major departure from their earlier games, it is just more crap. Crytek could go out of business and it would do no real harm to the gaming industry.
Reason I say this is their games fail to impress these days in pretty much every way. Graphics wise Farcry and Crysis were very advanced... but were advanced because they required hardware not yet available. That really isn't impressive when you think about it. Doing more with more is always possible. I mean I could make a game engine that used NURBS instead of polygons and did full Radiosity rendering which would look stellar, but would run at alike 1 frame per couple minutes on current hardware. That wouldn't really be an achievement, 3D modelers already do that. It would be an achievement if I could do it in real time, but just doing it and saying "Well hardware will catch up some day" wouldn't mean much.
The flashy graphics impressed more in the past but these days, graphics are pretty good all around. We are starting to get beyond the point where better graphics matter so much. That isn't to say there's no room for development, until we have photorealistic rendering there is room for development, but it isn't a big deal, most games look quite good and the quality of the artists doing the textures/models is more important than the engine.
Then of course there's the gameplay. Crytek games start you in what seems to be an open island world, that actually has very linear game play, and presents you with some fairly satisfying sneaky gameplay. Then they turn in to a monster game and become about twitch shooting, carrying the biggest gun possible, and reloading every time a monster touches you since they do a lot of damage. Ok, ok, they were technically "aliens" in Crysis, same shit.
I just find it hard to give a shit about Crytek. I agree that piracy is not at all helpful to PC gaming but if Crytek goes under it will be no real loss to gaming. Their games are not worth playing and almost nobody licenses their engine since you can license engines that run far better on actual, existing, hardware.
I'll ignore the leak just as I'm going to ignore the game, unless on the off-off chance it is actually a real departure from the crap they've made earlier and worth buying.
I'm not one to jump on conspiracy theories for the most part. An equally valid explanation would be an employee within the company was pissed off about something and leaked it to get back at them in some way.
I will give it credit as having some plausibility though. The Crytek CEO whined and bitched up a storm about Crysis 1 'only' selling about 1.5 million copies in the first couple months, blaming pirates for taking away all their money. This of course conveniently ignored that there were only a few million systems that could even run the game well out there, at the time it was released you needed high end hardware to even play it with medium detail, nothing could tackle the higher settings and mid-low end computers were just SOL for playing it without poor FPS.
Of course it was also a pretty shitty game. Like Far Cry it started ok, the sneaking around and killing folks was amusing, if a little repetitive and it was a little annoying being so constricted in your path for what seemed like such a sprawling world. However then it turned in to a monster game and sucked hard. I played it after my roommate got bored with it (I believe his exact quote was "Want this? I'll never play this crap again,") and I'm glad I didn't waste money on it.
So who knows? Perhaps they have done the same thing again, another game that looks flashy in screen shots but can't run maxed out on any hardware, and only runs well on the highest end systems, and has shitty game play. Perhaps they are hedging their bets to have a scapegoat for failure when the game itself isn't very good.
But perhaps not. Perhaps it was just an angry employee who figured he'd get back at the company by posting it online to try and hurt sales. Or perhaps it was an employee who was disgusted with it, thought it sucked, and wanted people to see that so they wouldn't waste money.
Your theory is possible, more possible than most conspiracy theories, but I still lean towards the "one guy in the company" theory.
Win-Win. Cry-babies don't ACTUALLY lose any revenue, and I get the game without spending my money. If that's not Win-win, it's at least tie-Win.
This is not hurting them in any way, since the game would have been available on pirate sites the day of its release anyway, quite the contrary it's providing for large advertisement just before the release.
I don't care at all that an EA product was leaked early.
"INTERNET CONNECTION AND ACCEPTANCE OF END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT REQUIRED TO PLAY"
Wouldn't have bought it anyway, and I won't be torrenting it iether.
Maximum leak.
I dont buy overhyped games, they are often copy/pasta.
I just pirate them, play them for 10 minutes, get bored, delete.
Recently played Crysis as free giveaway with my games mag. I can say I was seriously underwhelmed. Technology was reasonable, but game-play is nothing to write home about, just a generic shooter with pretty bas storytelling. That said, I am not even interested in looking at Crysis 2 and their problem is not piracy.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Isn't this also being developed for consoles with little to no change to the game other than a few higher res doo-dads?
apparently they've never searched torrent sites for any of the console names either..
all I see is a company trying to generate an excuse for what they know will be a sub-par product ahead of time. I wonder what they'd do if they had to actually be honest for even 5 minutes?
If you have ever run or been part of a large project of any kind you know one thing you can count on:
Things NEVER go as planned. It's how you overcome those problems that makes or breaks your product.
Regrettable as this unplanned leak of of their game is you can't just stop and whine about like a little girl you come up with a solution!
For example and this is just one of the top of my head..
Issue a modding and/or mapping contest for the game! Release the editor by it self legally and people will use the leaked beta for testing come up with some cool prices and then on the release day you announce the winners.
This will show you can overcome something like this which will raise peoples opinion about your product and company. Give you a bunch of more PR and hell you even have some extra free content for the people that buy the game!
....someone would hurry up and leak Duke Nukem Forever.
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
Secondly, this "Crysis 2 Crysis" will only do what all similar leaks do: It will amplify the effect the quality of the game, has on its sales.
Meaning, that if the game sucks. it will absolutely sink when it becomes available commercially.
And similarly, if the game is good, it's sales will skyrocket.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Dear Managers, repeat after me:
'I'll treat my developers well'
'I'll treat my developers well'
...?
Profit!!1
There will be a cost. Companies like NVIDIA and ATI may slow their development pace since they can't monetize as well any future advancements. Who is willing to shell out $300 to run MW2 at 90fps vs. 50fps...? Are we done generating real time photo-realistic images? Does this look like a screenshot from an action movie yet? I for one don't think so.
We need the next Crisis. That game that will bring to a halt all but the top 1% of existing PCs on maximum settings. The industry needs it. I need it. You need it too - you just don't know it.
I don't see a problem with this leak. Those who will download the leaked, unfinished game will get to try it. If they like it, they'll be much more likely to buy the full game once it is finished and released since the version they have is not complete. If they don't like the unfinished game, most of them will blame it on the fact that it isn't the complete game and therefore will buy the full game when released.
In fact, players who try the leaked version might be able to give feedback to the devs. How many time has a sequel been released and there was something awful about it, something that went way against fans' expectations? That leak will prevent an outrage similar to that against GTA IV: players expected an improved San Andreas but instead the game was just GTA III with better graphics.
Both EA and Crytek have been whining for some time about how the PC is no longer viable as a gaming platform, and about how they need to drop it and focus on consoles. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but this could be an inside job. EA reviewed the gold master, realized it was another plotless tech demo like the first one and therefore unlikely to sell in great numbers, and decided to sacrifice Crysis 2 on the altar of public opinion, to help all their poor sheep consumers realize that "PC = EVIL". I hope I'm totally talking out my ass, but it sounds like 'logic' we've seen from EA before.
The preceding comment is my own, and in no way construes an opinon of the Emperor of Mankind.
That's not piracy. Someone copied the unfinished game. That's more like an inside job.
OR, the game is complete garbage and Crytek released it early intentionally so they could blame their failure on pirates and hackers. It's hard enough to have a development build leaked, but the master keys as well? Smells fishy to me. Even if they didn't release it intentionally, their security protocols must be completely lax for this sort of thing to have happened. Either way, it's completely Cryteks fault.
...but "facepunch forum" is awesome.
The scripty kid who did this bullshit ought to be flogged publicly. Look, I've got no problem with retail games being released in the scene. They serve their purpose. But stealing development builds and releasing them is just plain wrong. This hurts the industry far more than a scene release. Now they'll have to re-jigger the multiplayer authentication and it will delay the game.
They're using their grammar skills there.
couldn't they just change the authentication key?
Missing textures everywhere, a constant screed flicker, not lined up audio, impossible to play on anything but lowest settings, etc.
I wouldn't worry about this hurting sales, nobody is going to play this instead of the full game.
How do I know this? Uhh, my friend totally heard from his cousin who downloaded it...
If EA really thinks PC gaming is such a waste of time and money maybe they should GTFO.
I for one wouldn't miss them. As it is now I have to check every game I look at on Steam to make sure it's not published by them. It'd be nice not to have to worry about making that mistake anymore.
Good, I really don't like EA and love to see anyone do anything to hurt them. Maybe they should take care of their workers better. I ALSO FULLY ADVOCATE PIRACY!
Crysis was awesome. For starters, it ran just fine on a computer I built in 2008, and I didn't have to turn the graphic features to minimum either (I was using a quad-core 2.4ghz CPU, 4gb of RAM at 800mhz, and a Radeon HD3870x2 with 1gb RAM).
Crysis brought some amazing stuff to the table. The AI was "intelligently stupid"; I can't count how many shooters these days have completely terrible AI. The enemies couldn't see you if you hid behind the very well-rendered foliage, but they would react to the sound of your movements. If they saw you and then you went into stealth mode and stalked away, they would slowly converge on your last known position. As in, they would believably approach it very slowly while scanning the area, not run at it like lemmings. A classic moment was if you went into stealth mode in front of an enemy; their reaction would be to start backing up and shooting in random directions. It was also incredibly awesome how the enemies would speak only in Korean on the hard difficulty.
The suit abilities were awesome and the trade-offs between each mode made it relatively balanced; it was also possible to use skill to get around some of the limitations of the suit. For example, I got really good at going into strength mode, making a super-jump, and then going into stealth mode as soon as I started my jump, so that I could leap over a wall and fall into the middle of an enemy encampment without being noticed. Finding little tricks like that was rewarding.
Crysis: Warhead resolved some of the issues you speak of. Most importantly, it removed the Alien's ability to see through your stealth cloak, which helped to bring back the stealth gameplay in a huge way. That change alone shows that the developers are listening to the players and they are making changes to the formula based on common complaints.
Did you ever try the multiplayer? Some of the multiplayer modes would make perfectly good stand-alone games just on their own.
In summary, Crysis was not just eye-candy, it's one of the most engaging shooters on the market and considering how much fun I've had with it, I just find it hard to give a shit about your opinion. Crytek doesn't make "crap."
... than an illegal sandwich.
And not the entire PC gaming community... This one is their problem. It's an internal build. Everything is there. There are licensed tools in there that they don't even have the rights to distribute. DRM master keys (not for online play, for the actual secure shield DRM) with usernames and passwords in plain text files
This looks a lot like the development version of half life 2 that got leaked, except I don't think the full source code to the engine is with this one. Bottom line is that this could have only happened two ways. Someone working at Crytech leaked it on purpose. Or their security is garbage and someone simply copied it off a network drive that some idiot left open to internet connections.
Although it shows lots of content, and an interesting view on how games are developed professionally, the game is virtually unplayable for a n00b like myself. I was one of the first people who completed the download (when it was only 400 peers) and i've been messing around with it all night.
Basically it's an unofficial demo. Will I still be buying Crysis 2? Probably. Crytek supports and encourages a mod community, which is a whole lot more then black ops and bad company 2 can say.
I hadn't even given this game much thought, but after trying out the leak, I've decided to buy it. It plays really well for how nice the graphics look, and the gameplay seems good. The leak is buggy as hell, but there is a cool game here. Just went from being not interested, to now planning on buying it. Damn you piracy! :D
How about all that free publicity?
I have this strange nagging feeling that the leaked multiplayer will not work once the game actually comes out, and that the leaked singleplayer will be buggy.
Yet...thousands of copies of the game WILL be downloaded and the equivalent of an extended demo will be distributed at $0 cost to the developer (probably) and $0 cost to the distributor (definitely).
Bonus points if they manage to somehow write off all those "lost sales" as loss when the tax man comes along.
Extra bonus points for when they use this "situation" to delay (and fix) the game which had issues that needed fixing before it is playable.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
You only have to look at the use of Xinput in the original Crysis, which immediately excludes hundreds of existing directinput gamepads. The keyboard and mouse bindings are on a separate screen from the controller bindings, the Xbox controller seems to be the only device supported - and you can't even choose your own control configuration for the damn thing. They think that if you want to use a controller in the game at all, that you want to use the controller for 100% of it, and the same goes for the keyboard and mouse. They're apparently totally clueless to the concept of using a mouse/keyboard for some of the game and a gamepad for other parts of it. That's not what's I'd call PC-friendly. It's what I'd call completely failing to understand the PC as a platform.
Yes pirated version of game can do some damage to the game industrie, but don't forget that version was leaked by people inside de company!
Don't forget to point at yourself if you have trouble with the game piracy...
If you can't keep a game inside your own wall... and remember.. that problem you facing can happen to the PC/Xbox360/WII and PS3.
I hope all the pirates enjoy playing Crysis 2 a great deal, since they will never ever be playing any new Crysis game, and probably won't ever be playing any new PC games either.
Hope the corpse of the PC gaming industry is delicious!
CryEngine 3 Sandbox ,Gameplay, Preview 2011 Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QekRvvIsXg
Ain't that cute...
Too bad I got karma to burn.
Come on! Troll me, mod me, make me feel so cheap!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
This is gameplay beta for PC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czFj0xbA-Mg
There is download. :-)