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Crime Games

Urban Terror Code Stolen 264

Posted by timothy from the et-tu-b1nary-th1ef? dept.
New submitter herbalt writes "The code of the free FPS game Urban Terror (a standalone game based on a Quake 3 mod), has been stolen. The development team, Frozen Sand, at first stated their Git Repository had been hacked, but later issued an announcement stating the perpetrator of the leak was a member of the development team. Frozen Sand also states they have found chat logs indicating there had been 'a plot to get B1naryTh1ef to steal the code so they could sell Urban Terror under a different name on Steam.'"
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Urban Terror Code Stolen More

Urban Terror Code Stolen

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  • Well what do you know.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by metrix007 ( 200091 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2013 @08:24AM (#44617289)

    I had thought it was open source all this time. Huh.

    • Re:Well what do you know.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RobertLTux ( 260313 ) <robert@laurenceE ... g minus math_god> on Tuesday August 20, 2013 @08:28AM (#44617341)

      the CODE for the game could be open source but the ASSETS could not be. Plus its very skanky to jack somebodies code and then sell (for profit) the same game and not credit the original authors.

      • Sounds like a good reason to change the assets to something they can ship under a free software license.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • How exactly would it be possible to *steal* code to an open source project? It's presumably available free for the asking to anyone who wants it, right? Of course you could illegally release a derivative work honoring your license obligations, but that has nothing to do with theft, and certainly nothing to do with hacking a Git repository.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gl4ss ( 559668 )

        I guess the mod code belongs in the assets category if someone is confused.

        why they would do that I don't fucking get. unreal engine is pretty cheap, they could make it more modern and the urban terror code that is urban terror itself? not much to it, really. not much at all.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by TWiTfan ( 2887093 )

      This all sounds a lot like a publicity stunt, to garner attention for the game, to me.

      • Re:Well what do you know.... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by GoatCheez ( 1226876 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2013 @09:08AM (#44617861)
        I have to agree. Stealing the source to sell the game on Steam? In what world does anyone think that they could get away with that? Even major corporations aren't that stupid. It's literally the dumbest idea I've ever heard. When a thief steals something that isn't money, they have to sell it "underground" or just keep it for their own personal treasure. They don't sell it in an auction or through an ad in the paper because it would be obvious they stole it and the stolen goods would be returned, and the thief would gain nothing. How would the thief in this case think that they would never get caught? Change the color of some textures? Fucking asinine.

        • Re:Well what do you know.... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Khyber ( 864651 ) <techkitsune@gmail.com> on Tuesday August 20, 2013 @11:47AM (#44620113) Homepage Journal

          "Stealing the source to sell the game on Steam? In what world does anyone think that they could get away with that? Even major corporations aren't that stupid. It's literally the dumbest idea I've ever heard."

          Never heard of Zynga, I see.

  • Poor choice of name (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20, 2013 @08:30AM (#44617369)

    If you call yourself "B1naryTh1ef", and then steal the source, that just indicates a general sloppiness of character. Sheesh.

  • I know this is off-topic, but I hadn't played this game in like a decade, and never think about it, but just last night I was sitting thinking about the times I used to play it. Didn't even know it was still around, might have to check out what their doing with it..
    • If you haven't played it since the Q3 mod days, there's a bunch of new features and a rather lively competition community. The game is currently in version 4.2 with new game modes (e.g. a trickjump mode), animations and weapons, and most notably a cheat detection system which players have been awaiting for ever since Punkbuster was no longer supported. From what I read in the forums, the anti-cheat system is a good reason to be worried about the code leak because it will again give leeway to developers of

    • I was just thinking when I read the headline "Wait, that game still exists and servers weren't left to rot years ago?"

      I remember playing it like a decade ago, and thinking that it was a slightly "edgier" version of Counterstrike, except that anyone with Half Life could already play Counterstrike.

      Maybe it's gained something in the last decade, but if it's still based on Q3, I doubt it has gained much.

  • U sure it wasn't NSA? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by c0lo ( 1497653 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2013 @08:37AM (#44617483)
    I mean, a game with such a name...
  • They gotta get a stolen sequel for their stolen first game. Don't worry Frozen Sand, they'll screw up any changes they make so bad that it won't effect your bottom line.

  • what am i missing? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2013 @08:49AM (#44617623)

    quick google of the name and i found a github repo that's been up for years. [github.com]

    The officially supported ioquake3 engine by the Frozen Sand Development Team for the game Urban Terror 4.x

    so what's the deal?

    • That's the source for the ioquake3 engine, which Urban Terror uses and which was released under a GPL licence by ID Software. The actual game is released in a separate package (and they've been getting some hate for that, eg on the ioquake message boards [ioquake3.org])

    • Re:what am i missing? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20, 2013 @09:17AM (#44617981)

      That's just the open source Q3 engine though.

      UT is a closed source mod to the engine developed seperately (under the Q3 SDK licence)

      From http://www.urbanterror.info/support/196-misc/#1.1 [urbanterror.info]

      "Urban Terror uses the Quake 3 SDK license. This means the game code (the .qvm's in zpak000.pk3) are closed source."

      "Urban Terror's close sourced .qvm's (quake virtual machine) are interprated by the open source engine"

      So basically there are three bits: engine, mod and assets. The engine can be the open source Q3 (but could be the closed source version, and doesn't really care). The magic bits of the mod are closed source, and presumably the bits that have been "stolen".

      (no expert, just reading the FAQ's)

  • Now where am I going to find an identikit arena shooter based upon the Quake 3 engine?

    Oh wait, here's a short list of a few of them

    http://freegamer.blogspot.co.uk/2007/04/quake3-total-conversions.html [blogspot.co.uk]

    Come on, the id Tech 3 source code was realised 8 years ago yesterday. Are there really no better engines out there?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Hadlock ( 143607 )

      Seems to work just fine for Activision. They've been using it as the base source for the Call of Duty games up to and including Modern Warfare 3/4 and all the various spin-offs. It's highly modified, but at the end of the day Q3A continues to be the gold standard in FPS.

  • My RSS reader doesn't italicize, so I see "Urban Terror Code Stolen"... I was like, "NOOOOO.... uh... what's an Urban Terror Code?"

  • The real story (Score:5, Insightful)

    by b1naryth1ef ( 3025465 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2013 @01:32PM (#44621783)
    Mildly hilarious to see this here. In fact, I did not steal the source code, nor leak it. I've already made an official statement (which you can read at the bottom of http://playurt.com/index.php?mod=news&action=view&id=7 [playurt.com] that post). If you're really stupid enough to listen to anything Frozen Sand posts on their home page (with the only evidence being "screenshots", and the post being locked to responses) you don't have much going for you. I'm not going to go into the legal implications of what Frozen Sand has done (because I'm still processing documentation with my lawyer) but to say the least, they're in a wee bit of trouble. This basically boils down to FS trying to harassing and defame me after I quit.

  • The entire source tree for a git repository is in git clone, with the magic sauce of "--mirror" to get the full repository. This is an advantage for open source distributed teams, but not a great methodology for closed source development like this was.

    Deeply amusing.

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