Long lost Starcraft gold source code found, finder handsomely rewarded

[Andreas Lilja]

Quote

About a month ago, a Reddit user who goes by Khemist49 found himself in possession of a fabled golden disc labeled StarCraft Gold Master Source Code. Blizzard Entertainment caught wind of the news and Khemist ended up handing the disc over to its rightful owners, which, unbeknownst to him, meant he'd be getting a whole bunch of goodies from Blizzard.

 

As seen by Kotaku, Khemist purchased a box of old Blizzard-related stuff on eBay in April, only to find an intriguing disc in the mix. The disc in question allegedly contains the source code to the original StarCraft game that Gamespot reported as being lost back in 2000 — it forced Blizzard to start from scratch on its massively popular real-time strategy game.

[...]

 

After weeks of silence, Khemist updated the world on his saga. Blizzard was so grateful to get the disc back that they sent Khemist a copy of Overwatch, $250 in Blizzard store credit, and a ton of Overwatch and Diablo swag. Blizzard even offered to pay for Khemist to come to BlizzCon this year.

 

http://mashable.com/2017/05/04/starcraft-source-disc/#h6NzQBM69iqs 

 

Wonder what's the trend with losing such important data. Gearbox couldn't remaster Homeworld completely due to this.

[themctipers]

need article quotes

[Dabombinable]

Its kind of odd how this kind of thing just keeps on happening (company loses something important, and has it found a long time after they no longer need it).

[Bouzoo]

I will give credit to Blizzard here, contacting him for Blizzcon and everything.

[Sauron]

Part of me wishes the code had been made public - let's be honest, who's going to steal "trade secrets" from the source of a 20 year old game?

[Sauron]

4 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

I will give credit to Blizzard here, contacting him for Blizzcon and everything.

They do this because they hope if anyone else finds something like this they'll return it hoping to get a reward instead of dumping it on the internet.

[8uhbbhu8]

Damn.... I kinda hope they use this code to make a what could have been Starcraft game! I'm very interested in what it originally was like

[Bouzoo]

4 minutes ago, Sauron said:

They do this because they hope if anyone else finds something like this they'll return it hoping to get a reward instead of dumping it on the internet.

Let's be honest, what evil can come out of Starcraft source code being published online, the game that they recently upgraded and released for free?

[ZestyJalapeno]

"Fucking cloud storage taking our jobs!" - CDs

[aisle9]

Hi finds the master code for Starcraft and all they give him is a game, a bunch of trinkets, tickets to BlizzCon and store credit?!

 

Dude, next time tell them what the disc would fetch on eBay (five figures, easily) and suggest they pay you 75% of that to ensure that it ends up in their hands.

[Derangel]

20 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

Its kind of odd how this kind of thing just keeps on happening (company loses something important, and has it found a long time after they no longer need it).

Not really all that odd. Things get lost during moves, office reorganization, or so on. Some former employee could have had it on their desk when they left and packed it with their stuff. Heck, its possible that it wasn't even intentionally stolen. It probably wasn't the only copy of the source code around so Blizzard might not even have realized it went missing until the guy contacted them.

 

10 minutes ago, Bouzoo said:

Let's be honest, what evil can come out of Starcraft source code being published online, the game that they recently upgraded and released for free?

SC is still very popular in the e-sports scene and Starcraft Remastered is based off of the source code. So people could use it to find and create cheats and exploits. Beyond that, its Blizzard's property they have a legal right to ask for it back.

[Andreas Lilja]

16 minutes ago, 8uhbbhu8 said:

Damn.... I kinda hope they use this code to make a what could have been Starcraft game! I'm very interested in what it originally was like

It's the gold source code so it's release day stuff.

 

"Gone Gold" used to be common for saying that a game was about to test the market; don't know whether this changed, last opened a PC games magazine in the early or mid-2000s. One love Computer Gaming World. 

 

Starcraft used to look like Warcraft 2: http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/starcraft/images/e/e0/Zergalpha.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20080113172212

 

 

[Derangel]

4 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

Hi finds the master code for Starcraft and all they give him is a game, a bunch of trinkets, tickets to BlizzCon and store credit?!

 

Dude, next time tell them what the disc would fetch on eBay (five figures, easily) and suggest they pay you 75% of that to ensure that it ends up in their hands.

That Blizzcon trip could easily be a couple grand seeing as its all expenses paid. So travel, food, hotel, etc are being paid for by Blizzard. He's also getting free dinner and drinks with Blizzard employees.

[aisle9]

5 minutes ago, Derangel said:

That Blizzcon trip could easily be a couple grand seeing as its all expenses paid. So travel, food, hotel, etc are being paid for by Blizzard. He's also getting free dinner and drinks with Blizzard employees.

Guess it depends on what's important to the guy. If he values the experience, then it's 100% worth it. Personally, I'd be looking at all the zeroes in Metzen's retirement package and ask for a few of those in exchange for the disc.

[SansVarnic]

Pretty cool.

[N3v3r3nding_N3wb]

1 hour ago, aisle9 said:

Guess it depends on what's important to the guy. If he values the experience, then it's 100% worth it. Personally, I'd be looking at all the zeroes in Metzen's retirement package and ask for a few of those in exchange for the disc.

He has no legal right to do that. It's still the property of Blizzard. That'd be like ransom, and Blizzard could sue him for crap tons of money (or just have it forcefully recovered and returned by police).

[HelplmChoking]

I'd have hoped for a better reward than that. Aside from attending Blizzcon, and maybe a couple bucks worth of shirts, that was basically free for Blizzard. Should have given him some cash or something.

[aisle9]

24 minutes ago, N3v3r3nding_N3wb said:

He has no legal right to do that. It's still the property of Blizzard. That'd be like ransom, and Blizzard could sue him for crap tons of money (or just have it forcefully recovered and returned by police).

If Blizzard reported it stolen at the time and there's police documentation to back that up, yes. If they didn't or took an inordinate amount of time to report it, then no, they have no rights to the disc. The guy who found it couldn't have legally sold the disc to anyone else because it contains Blizzard's IP, but there's nothing preventing him from hanging onto it himself until he "lost" it in exchange for a handful of Bitcoin.

 

If Blizzard reported it stolen, he had stolen property and boned himself the second he posted on Reddit. If Blizzard didn't report it stolen or waited to do so, it's lost property, not stolen, and lost property is fair game.

[Derangel]

3 hours ago, aisle9 said:

Guess it depends on what's important to the guy. If he values the experience, then it's 100% worth it. Personally, I'd be looking at all the zeroes in Metzen's retirement package and ask for a few of those in exchange for the disc.

So you'd rather hold it for ransom and extort people? Says a lot about you as a person.

[Not_Sean]

8 minutes ago, Derangel said:

So you'd rather hold it for ransom and extort people? Says a lot about you as a person.

uumm sir, your still on your high horse. 

 

He's not extorting people, hes selling a highly collectible rare item to a multi billion dollar company.The legal stuff behind this would be very interesting as its a super old item that went missing, and he has proof of buying it so he didn't steal it himself. there is laws for both parties, and yes they could chuck all the law they want at him would still take years to resolve and the PR backlash would be huge.

 

Hell if they gave him $10 000 it wouldn't even register as a blip on their account statement. you make it sound like he's holding a third world village hostage with AK47's. 

 

That out the way, Yeah I'm also a bit shocked at how little they gave him, be funny if i got it as really not interested in overwatch or overwatch shirts.. but a Starcraft GOLD source code.. damn son I'd much rather have that as a epic fan of the game. The least they could of done was given him Free Blizzard games for life for him. Would cost them nothing and be a bolder statement. 

[Derangel]

1 hour ago, Not_Sean said:

uumm sir, your still on your high horse. 

 

He's not extorting people, hes selling a highly collectible rare item to a multi billion dollar company.The legal stuff behind this would be very interesting as its a super old item that went missing, and he has proof of buying it so he didn't steal it himself. there is laws for both parties, and yes they could chuck all the law they want at him would still take years to resolve and the PR backlash would be huge.

 

Hell if they gave him $10 000 it wouldn't even register as a blip on their account statement. you make it sound like he's holding a third world village hostage with AK47's. 

 

That out the way, Yeah I'm also a bit shocked at how little they gave him, be funny if i got it as really not interested in overwatch or overwatch shirts.. but a Starcraft GOLD source code.. damn son I'd much rather have that as a epic fan of the game. The least they could of done was given him Free Blizzard games for life for him. Would cost them nothing and be a bolder statement. 

Doesn't matter if they're a big company or not. It would still make you an asshole. It is their property and their code, it doesn't belong to anyone else.

 

As far as the law goes: As far as I know If it had been reported stolen then he'd still be in the clear. It sounds like he didn't even know the disc was in the collection of stuff he wasn't intentionally purchases stolen goods. He'd still be required to return it, but there would be no real criminal issues. Unless he refused to return it, that is. The civil side is a completely different matter however. If he tried to extort them for money his ass would be sued. If he released the code without permission he would be in even worse trouble. It wouldn't even be a bad PR move at that point.

 

They gave him a decent amount. They're not required to spend several thousand dollars thanking people for doing the right thing.

[vorticalbox]

7 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

Its kind of odd how this kind of thing just keeps on happening (company loses something important, and has it found a long time after they no longer need it).

it happens all the time, when I was a kid I had a RC car and lost the charger then found it almost a decade later. 

 

 

[Beskamir]

9 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

Its kind of odd how this kind of thing just keeps on happening (company loses something important, and has it found a long time after they no longer need it).

Cause it's not important when it's lost. I mean if someone asked you to pull out some old old project you made several years ago for a class you didn't really care about would you be able to find it? Even if it was digital I doubt the answer would be yes unless you're a data hoarder like I am and you made it after you've got yourself a proper storage solution. Now with respect to a large developer or publisher you have to understand that they're large now.... they weren't as large several decades ago and even if they were they've got better things to do then to hoard everything used for a project. Chances are they just reuse their storage once a project is completed and thus lose the data from the previous project.

[tlink]

lmao they basically handed him some of their leftovers from their pr department, what a joke.

[Dabombinable]

32 minutes ago, ElfFriend said:

Cause it's not important when it's lost. I mean if someone asked you to pull out some old old project you made several years ago for a class you didn't really care about would you be able to find it? Even if it was digital I doubt the answer would be yes unless you're a data hoarder like I am and you made it after you've got yourself a proper storage solution. Now with respect to a large developer or publisher you have to understand that they're large now.... they weren't as large several decades ago and even if they were they've got better things to do then to hoard everything used for a project. Chances are they just reuse their storage once a project is completed and thus lose the data from the previous project.

Um, that'd actually be a yes. I've still got the RW DVD which I was using as a rather expensive (but large) USB.