Lineage III Source Code Stolen? 61
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."
The Departed (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think any company would publicize its interviews, and I doubt these former employees would sing about their code demonstration.
That means there might be a NCSoft mole inside the competitor.
Re:The Departed (Score:4, Insightful)
A company I used to work for lost their customer data in a similar way. An employee quit and took the entire database with him. We noticed there was a problem when a large amount of the customers started telling us about a competitor trying to sell them their product. Well, my company looked into it, and a few subpoenas and a lawsuit later everything was fixed.
Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
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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thanks for the laugh
Why is Parent Insightful? (Score:2, Insightful)
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However, if they need to rewrite the source code when someone malicious has seen it... well then it already needed to be rewritten, because all it had was "security through obscurity".
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Also, I would say without doubt that, if obscurity was essential enough to their security that the code would need to be rewritten to maintain that obscurity, then the non-obscured design is not secure enough itself. For examples of this, look at the plethora of closed-source games (with no source leak eithe
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That is the only protection there is against bots (cheats that simply provide input to the game in place of the player), be it aimbots in first person shooters or farming bots in MMORPGs. If your game rewards things that can be automated then there is absolutely no secure way of protecting your client from these types of cheats - the best you can do is make it as difficult as possible.
One solution for MMORPG d
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If the competitors are smart, they obviously won't use any of the code... but they now have a handy reference guide to see how they can solve problems they're likely to run up against (while presumably writing an MMORPG). Definitely a bummer, but I still can't see the $1 billion figure - especially since, as someone already pointed out, so much of the effort in an MMORPG is spent on creating the content. I rememb
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>
> 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.
Exactly my thoughts. What do you know? Real life really is like movies!
Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't we just agree to say "illegally copied" across the board?
MOD PARENT UP (Score:1)
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So if I were to put a brick through your window, depriving you of that window, this is theft? Pretty bizarre definition...
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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?
Copyright infringement is not theft.
Anyway, this is not the same situation.
This is about unpublished works.
In general, movies are copied _if_, and _after_ they are published.
When you share a secret, the secret does cease to exist.
When you get a free copy of a published work, it doesn't change state.
It's not the same thing. It's another issue, and should be judged differently.
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Now, I'm fairly anti-copyright myself anyways, but I say lets hold the same attitude in all cases. Information wants to be free right? Well then these guys were information rights activists. Those guys at NCSoft were probably p
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"Illegal" is a decision for a judge to make, after examining all the facts - we are neither qualified nor in possession of those facts, so we cannot say it was definitely illegal. Making a factual statement, rather than a prejudiced one, requires you say it was merely "copied" - or, if you insist on stating all the details, "copied without the explicit permission of the company".
It is important to realise that not everything is illegal just beca
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"Illegal" is a decision for a judge to make, after examining all the facts - we are neither qualified nor in possession of those facts, so we cannot say it was definitely illegal.
If the software was copied, the only 'qualification' needed for the observation that it was almost certainly illegally done is common sense - or at least any knowlege of the sort of contracts companies like NC Soft require employees to sign.
Do you imagine companies like NC Software allow software developers to own the IP and retain distribution rights for any software they write as employees of the company?
The previous poster wasn't making a 'prejudiced' statement, no matter what agenda you are pushing.
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Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds ridiculous. It's unlikely to cost anybody anything except legal fees.
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Why not? If it was sold to a "large" company as the article suggests, that's entirely possible. I have no idea what "Lineage" is, but at the very least, the competition now knows exactly how "Lineage" is written, and this company has lost any competitive edge that it may have had based on technology.
Re:Uh (Score:5, Insightful)
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Lineage II uses a heavily modified version of the Unreal engine, and was the first ever to include 'loading on the run' feature. That is, to load seamlessly landcape while running the game.
Tim Sweeney went to NCSoft in Korea to give his ideas on how to implement this feature, as it was not present in the actual Unreal engine at the time.
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Pet casters can cast multiple pets? Servers torn down immediately. Pet casters have high end pets disabled by several levels? Meh, that can wa
Yes and no (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Rampant cheating. Think WoW Glider on steroids. If you have the source code, you can write a client which looks to the server 100% like a player at the keyboard on the official client. Write a client which drives a whole group of player characters on a farming or ganking spree from a single machine. Which _will_ screw up the game, and drive people away. (Especially in a game where _all_ there is to do is farm and PvP.) That's money lost.
Or you could delay the game and invest in changing the whole protocol, so the old code doesn't even work with the server any more. Which again is money lost. Both extra development time, and time in which you're not collecting the monthly fees. A single month delay, if you had, say, 1 million players, is 10 to 15 million dollars lost in fees alone.
But even if you do, someone saw all your weak points. Yes, most games do rely on security through obscurity, because noone has the funds, computing power and bandwidth, to do everything on the server securely. There's invariably a lot of functionality in the client, and you basically keep your fingers crossed. Maybe you code some "tripwires" on the server to detect if someone did something awfully wrong, but (A) it's still keeping your fingers crossed that noone will do something that you haven't checked, and (B) more importantly, whoever saw the code now also knows exactly what to avoid.
Basically, it's pretty much _the_ cheating nightmare scenario.
2. Whoever has that code will have a trivial job of making some "emulated" servers and stealing your subscribers that way. It's one thing to have a shabby half-way there alternative server available after a year, it's entirely another thing to maybe have a 100% perfect alternative right at the start.
And yes, that _is_ money lost, and not just profits lost. Most MMOs have far more content than a single-player RPG. (Even Oblivion is a spit in the bucket compared to the sheer size of WoW.) For most, basically the boxed copy is subsidized, and they're betting you'll stay there for more than 2-3 months to break even and start making a profit. That already doesn't leave you with that much pure profit, since the average player stays about 6 months on a MMO. If half your player base buys the boxed copy and buggers off to play on someone else's servers, you'll feel it. If you also over-estimated a little what population you'll get (and hence, how much can you spend on development), it can turn a moderately survivable game into a flop right there and then.
Yes, we all can look at WoW and see one big money printing license. They actually underestimated how many players they'll get. Most MMOs aren't WoW, though. Flops are more common than successes. Even big names like EQ2 or TSO have managed to get only a fraction of the player base they counted on. They may not have seen the plug pulled outright, but then again, others did. It doesn't take much of a shove to topple a game which already missed the mark.
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Yes and no. Mostly I think you haven't thought about it much. There are a couple of problems I can see there right away:
1. Rampant cheating. Think WoW Glider on steroids. If you have the source code, you can write a client which looks to the server 100% like a player at the keyboard on the official client. Write a client which drives a whole group of player characters on a farming or ganking spree from a single machine. Which _will_ screw up the game, and drive people away. (Especially in a game where _all_ there is to do is farm and PvP.) That's money lost.
I'd argue that if this was possible, the game code is already broken. In any event, there's any number of minor changes that could be made before release that can alleviate if not eliminate the problem. I don't see how any of it would require a huge investment in time.
Or you could delay the game and invest in changing the whole protocol, so the old code doesn't even work with the server any more.
Or change the protocol just enough that it doesn't work.
Which again is money lost. Both extra development time, and time in which you're not collecting the monthly fees. A single month delay, if you had, say, 1 million players, is 10 to 15 million dollars lost in fees alone.
Paper shuffling. No different than if a bug was found and the release was delayed.
But even if you do, someone saw all your weak points. Yes, most games do rely on security through obscurity, because noone has the funds, computing power and bandwidth, to do everything on the server securely. There's invariably a lot of functionality in the client, and you basically keep your fingers crossed. Maybe you code some "tripwires" on the server to detect if someone did something awfully wrong, but (A) it's still keeping your fingers crossed that noone will do something that you haven't checked, and (B) more importantly, whoever saw the code now also knows exactly what to avoid.
Basically, it's pretty much _the_ cheating nightmare scenario.
I don't agree, frankly. The very fact that one knows the source has been copied makes you able to
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Now if you were to subtract all bot/raid farming accounts, and accounts in known botfarming regions(e.g. China), I'd bet that number would drop far from 1.25M.
I'd argue that if this was possible, the game code is already broken. In any event
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You seem to be under the mistake impression that I think all the exploits in an MMO can ever be closed. They can't, that's reality.
And do you really think there's tens of thousands of bots/farmers in Lineage? I find that a dubious assertion at best. In any even, even if there were 250,000 of them, that still puts them at 1,000,000 active subscribers, well above any of the competition.
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You seem to be under the mistake impression that I think all the exploits in an MMO can ever be closed. They can't, that's reality.
No. However, when almost nothing is done at all for well-known exploits (or even just the fact that the protocol itself has to transmit certain bits of information) that go on unchecked for years, there's something quite wrong. Think of it as the game where bad policy meets badly maintained code.
And do you really think there's tens of thousands of bots/farmers in Lineage? I find
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A) Just having a number of players in Lineage 2 doesn't mean you'll have the same audience in Lineage 3. Ask Turbine about Asheron's Call 2, which flopped abysmally. Just being the sequel to AC1 didn't say much. Or ask Sony about Everquest 2. They went from EQ1 being the #1 MMO to EQ2 being a niche game. So what makes you think that Lineage III has already hit the mark, when it's not even released yet?
B) You don't seem to
hmm (Score:2, Funny)
Something stinks about these accusations (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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In the West, maybe. This is in Asia, where the culture is quite different. Stealing your old company's resources when you defect to a new company is quite common - even expected.
A billion dollars! (Score:2, Interesting)
Somehow, now that this code has been "stolen", they are unable to make another penny from it. Anything they would have made will go to the new possessor of the code.
From the other comments, I'm clearly not the only one who thinks this makes no sense. For this to be worth that much, the code, and the code alone
Oh, the irony... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have no real sympathy for NCSoft in this case. Maybe if they dropped all the bots for good, stripped out the ineffective Gameguard / Themida, and supplanted the non-automated parts of L2Walker, they'd have a leg to stand on.
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1 billion? (Score:1, Flamebait)
Seriously though, what's the big deal? Even when people tried to emulate Blizzard's stuff legitimately they still got shut down.
It's an MMOG, the number of useful "gems" in the code are probably really low. You'd probably be able to come up with those "gems" independently anyway.
Also you could just get them to boast about their great new features to the media way before their release and a smart person in your company could figure out how to do it in 5 minutes. You do
I am skeptical (Score:2)
Oh No! (Score:3, Funny)
Was it the client or server code that was stolen? (Score:1)
Bad karma for nc soft, but they deserve it (Score:1)