Hellgate London Code Stolen? 89
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."
Well that's just awful... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well that's just awful... (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Well that's just awful... (Score:2)
Synical... (Score:3, Funny)
{
Panic();
}
Re:Synical... (Score:1)
I read more since as well and from what I can gather its not actually late, but it reminds me of the half life 2 code theft.
Re:Synical... (Score:1)
Re:Synical... (Score:3, Funny)
I think it goes something like this:
if(typo)
{
programmer.shoot(foot);
}
Re:Synical... (Score:2)
If you're using VB.NET, you can use the self-referant!
If typo Then Me.shoot(foot)
Re:Synical... (Score:2)
Re:Synical... (Score:2)
movlw 0x38
call shootfoot
Re:Synical... (Score:2)
Re:Synical... (Score:2)
Re:Synical... (Score:1)
Panic();
} ElseIf (CodeLate==TRUE) {
InventStoryAboutHackerHoldingYourCode();
FeignPanic();
} Else {
Celebrate();
ExperiencePoorSales();
Probably bad qualtity anyway (Score:1)
Re:Probably bad qualtity anyway (Score:1)
Re:Probably bad qualtity anyway (Score:2)
Useless? (Score:5, Insightful)
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."
Re:Useless? (Score:2)
It's much easier to devise cheats for the game if you've had a good look at the source too. That can be very detrimental to a game if cheating becomes rampant. So a code leak could seriously impact this game's sales and popularity.
Re:Useless? (Score:2)
I haven't looked this long enough to know if they are planning online support or not. I assumed off-hand that they weren't, but FPS's aren't really my bag.
Re:Useless? (Score:2)
The following is from a Gamespy preview (emphasis mine):
Re:Useless? (Score:2)
The graphics are akin to a FPS, but the major part of the game is the highly anticipated random map generator and actual game content.
Re:Useless? (Score:2)
This preview [hookedgamers.com] Says:
Unfortunately, it also notes that to hack n slash, you will probably be required to use third person mode, and of course, shoot
Re:Useless? (Score:2)
The only resemblance between Hellgate and standard FPSes is that it can be played in first person. Can you say Oblivion is an FPS? Can you say System Shock is an FPS? Didn't think so.
Re:Useless? (Score:2)
And yes, System Shock is an FPS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Shock [wikipedia.org]
And yes, Oblivion borders on FPS-hood. Only its intricate plot, numerous side-quests, and flexible weapons, armor and magic systems push it over into RPG-land. (I'm an Oblivion fan, but this is still true.)
Re:Useless? (Score:2)
System Shock was a bit different in the sense you could set that the combat to inactive, pretty much removing the whole "shooter" part, leaving more room to plot/puzzles/exploration.
If you say Oblivion is in the RPG-land, how can Hellgate not be? With its plot (tho probably simplistic), numerous side-quests, and flexible weapons, armor and magic systems that were promised by the developer?
Anyways, this is an argument about nothing. In my opinion HG will be
Re:If all games were open source... (Score:1)
Re:If all games were open source... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:If all games were open source... (Score:2)
Kudos to ID for open-sourcing the Quake and Quake 2 engines, but of course those were of commercial origin. Where's the home-grown open source engine that tops the Quake 2
Re:If all games were open source... (Score:1)
Re:If all games were open source... (Score:1)
You're kidding, right? If there's one thing that OSS is famous for it's reinventing the wheel, sometimes many times over.
In any case, it hasn't happened because writing engin
Re:If all games were open source... (Score:2)
Re:If all games were open source... (Score:1)
Re:If all games were open source... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I guess you've got a point. I mean, if murder was made legal, crime would go down.
Re:If all games were open source... (Score:2)
Re:Why the (Score:2)
Re:Why the (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Why the (Score:2)
Re:No excuses, and no concerns (Score:2, Insightful)
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 wh
Re:No excuses, and no concerns (Score:1, Informative)
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 fa
Remember... (Score:2, Funny)
... it's not stealing, it's copyright infringement!
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Re:Remember... (Score:2, Insightful)
HL2 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:HL2 (Score:2)
Re:HL2 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:HL2 (Score:2)
Re:HL2 (Score:2)
Other than that, memory keyboards exists which can save text as a clipboard.
Re:Poor use of the word "stolen" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Poor use of the word "stolen" (Score:2)
-Rick
Re:Poor use of the word "stolen" (Score:2)
Even your comments are copyrighted. There *are* ways to register your copyright of a given piece of content, but they exist solely to help you *prove* that you produced it originally, and carry no weight other than that.
Re:Poor use of the word "stolen" (Score:2)
-Rick
Re:Poor use of the word "stolen" (Score:2)
Re:Poor use of the word "stolen" (Score:2)
-Rick
Re:Poor use of the word "stolen" (Score:2)
Re:ban all asian countries (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:ban all asian countries (Score:1)
It may or may not be a big deal (Score:3, Informative)
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!
Re:It may or may not be a big deal (Score:2)
Re:It may or may not be a big deal (Score:3, Insightful)
Hacking into servers is bad, but it always irritates me that people think multiplayer games cannot be secure if the source code is open.
If more eyes are looking at the code, then more people can help fix them or point them out to developers. The problem with most small programming houses and MMOG live teams is that those guys are usually swamped with bug fixes and can't look at the code.
Sure, there will always peopl
Re:It may or may not be a big deal (Score:2)
What OSS really needs is a killer app to show that the model can be profitable. How do you go about honouring troubleshootes in a for-profit OSS game? Do you pay them? Do you make them sign a waiver saying forfeiting payment before
I wonder if this is true for games (Score:2)
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 i
PR spin (Score:3, Insightful)
PR 101.
Huh? (Score:1)
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
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
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 gam
Re:Huh? (Score:1)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
This was just before E3 so I don't know how much has changed with it.
Re:Huh? (Score:1)
Re:PR spin (Score:1)