Watch Dogs: Legion Source code leaked

[wanderingfool2]

14 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

All source code should be public after 10 years. This is just advancing the movement. 

This kind of thinking always baffles me.  Out of curiosity, what field do you work in?  It's like sayings all molds/castings/techniques used to create a product should become public to use after 10 years.

 

[ARikozuM]

5 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

This kind of thinking always baffles me.  Out of curiosity, what field do you work in?  It's like sayings all molds/castings/techniques used to create a product should become public to use after 10 years.

Molds, castings become unusable after several uses. Source code does not. Source code can be made better and community support should be allowed 10 years after dev support ends. 

 

If a game is multiplayer-enabled and the developer/publisher no longer has servers they should be forced to give up the code to the server or release a package to create p2p connections. 

[Reytime]

I got the game via Ubisoft Plus for 15 bucks and even then whenever I play it ask myself why. Besides the horrible performance and subpar graphics it’s just not that fun to play either.

 

Here’s to hoping Valhalla will be better.

[wanderingfool2]

1 hour ago, ARikozuM said:

Molds, castings become unusable after several uses. Source code does not. Source code can be made better and community support should be allowed 10 years after dev support ends. 

 

If a game is multiplayer-enabled and the developer/publisher no longer has servers they should be forced to give up the code to the server or release a package to create p2p connections. 

And community molds can be made better, etc.  (Think of 3d printing, why not force all 3d printed part manufactures to release their builds, or perhaps other companies to release their trade-secrets on how they do certain processes, perhaps Intel's lithography and process to build a processor needs to be release...etc).  Just because you view that it could help,  doesn't make it right to force companies into releasing their property to others.

[Delicieuxz]

On 11/4/2020 at 7:36 AM, wanderingfool2 said:

This kind of thinking always baffles me.  Out of curiosity, what field do you work in?  It's like sayings all molds/castings/techniques used to create a product should become public to use after 10 years.

If ARikozuM worked in the pharmaceutical industry, they could have had a good retort.

 

https://www.upcounsel.com/how-long-does-a-drug-patent-last

"Drug patents are good for 20 years after the drug's invention. In most cases, this time frame is halved to 10 years after testing finally brings the drug to the marketplace."

 

 

id, 3D Realms, and maybe some other PC games pioneers used to release their games' source-code to the public after a certain amount of time. John Carmack made a point of it. It would be great if there was a standard period of time after a game's release that its source-code would be made public.

 

Source-code is not entirely analogous to a moulding because a mould for a product often retains its appropriateness with the passage of time, whereas software becomes dated. If a company wants to re-release an old game of theirs to make more money off of it, outside of GoG repackaging (which is a niche market), they typically don't just release the same game as it was, they update aspects of it which includes updating the code to support new formats, OS versions, drivers, graphics features, etc. Having the source-code for a very old game wouldn't easily make it a competitor to an updated re-release or remake of that game or a new installment in that game's series.

 

That said, 3rd-parties can essentially replicate 1st-party moulds to create their own products - such as with perfect-fit aftermarket car parts. That's another way software isn't analogous to moulding - if you perfectly clone a software product (using its logos, characters, lore, music, etc), you'll face copyright infringement accusations.

[Kisai]

On 11/3/2020 at 9:56 AM, zuofx said:

Summary

 

 Ransomware gang "Egregor" have claimed to have breached Ubisoft and Crytek and acquired the source code for Ubisoft's upcoming AAA, Watch Dogs Legion. The leak totals to approx. 560GBs worth of Data according to IGN.

 

 

Quotes

 

My thoughts

This is probably a disaster for Ubisoft, a week after full release of the game, opening the game up to all types of mods and probably makes it vulnerable to piracy. I'm not sure how this will play and I'm not sure what I feel about it.

 

Sources

https://www.ign.com/articles/the-source-code-for-hacking-game-watch-dogs-legion-has-seemingly-been-hacked 

 

Assuming that the data was stolen and in an unfinished state, at WORST, it means pirate copies of the game will exist perpetually regardless of any DRM, Live Services or other always-online nonsense gets added to it. If it was in a finished state, then pirate copies were proliferate pretty darn quickly with those toxic parts stripped from it.

 

Honestly Ubisoft, EA and Konami really do have a knife against their neck when it comes to companies that are too stupid with their IP. SquareEnix, Capcom and Sega at least know what their IP is worth even if SEGA hates money and wastes years not completing localizations or even entire games.

 

[wanderingfool2]

On 11/4/2020 at 3:10 PM, Delicieuxz said:

If ARikozuM worked in the pharmaceutical industry, they could have had a good retort.

Not really.  The patents would expire, but some of the ways and methodologies they use to create the chemical compositions are locked up in trade secrets.  It would be like if they discovered a new chemical process and create a new medicine molecule...the molecule would be patented but if they kept it a trade secret other companies would have to dump into R&D to figure out a process to create it.  Just like people are welcome to dump money into reverse engineering code.

 

In general I am against any motion to force source code release.  The only times I have been even slightly for it are cases such as radar guns (as in ensuring that there wasn't a piece of code that invalidates it's results)

[Orangeator]

3 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

In general I am against any motion to force source code release.  The only times I have been even slightly for it are cases such as radar guns (as in ensuring that there wasn't a piece of code that invalidates it's results)

Somebody has a need for speed... Lol.

[PlayStation 2]

In the dust of all of this... you know what's left? A TCRF page and not much else. You can't do much of anything with it outside of mod the piss out of the game (and even with that said, there's still work that'd need to be done in terms of making sure everything works as intended) or to just dig and see what they may have left out of the game. 

But with all of these source code leaks coming out, I have to wonder: what breakthrough in terms of cracking a large developer (and publisher)'s security was done to even get these ridiculous dumps out?

[Kisai]

10 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Not really.  The patents would expire, but some of the ways and methodologies they use to create the chemical compositions are locked up in trade secrets. 

Most "new" medical patents are actually the old ones with the chemical formula hardly charged (with the advent of deep learning, has also sped this up to a point where you will see companies discontinue their old formulations of things like allergy medicines with new formulations that are exactly the same as the old ones, but the molecules are upside down or something.)

 

Basically the problem with medical patents is that there's no incentive to create new medicines, it's always about making more profitable versions of the old ones. Allergy and Pain killer medicines are this. There has never been a "need" for new ones, but as the patents expire, rarely does the newer medicine improve over the old one (pretty much all oral medicine is bad for your liver.)

 

With source code to applications and games. Games are novel, and should be exist like creative works, like music and books. However music and books "source code" exist in some shape upon publication.

 

Games do not have this. Games kinda have the problem that music/lyrics has. Source code for the game engine (the music) and the assets (the lyrics) where what you really need are separate copyrights for the assets that are retained by the original creator, but the game engine "binary" should be treated like patents, where nobody else is permitted to release a game that can use those assets until the "rights" on the engine code expire. Though even 20 years is too long for a game. I'd say it should be two stages. 10 and 20. 10 years as long as the game developer produces cross-play/cross-platform compatible binaries with current console/computers/devices. Additional time up to 10 years (20 total) as long as it has not been withdrawn from support/sale.

 

To the same extent, the same should happen to applications, operating systems and drivers, with the stipulation that the source code should be made available once the application is no longer supported (thus incentivizing long term support.) Hardware could definitely benefit from driver source code/firmware blobs, being released into public domain.

 

Like the sheer number of shovelware/gacha/mmo games that start and then shut down after 1 or 2 years tells us that the game engines source code should be released within a year of withdrawn from sale. If they aren't making any money from it, then let the fans recompile the source code and play a version without the live services trash.

 

If a game developer has gone bankrupt, or the publisher is sitting on the IP (like EA, Ubisoft, Konami, etc) and not licensing it for a remake, then nobody who reverse engineers the game engine to make a compatible engine (eg SCUMMVM) should be held liable for making a game engine that can use the unaltered assets of the original game license, even if the license terms forbid it.

[Orange1]

One thing, you think some countries care about rights and patents

@Kisai

 

In other respects, there needs to be someone who cares to go after an offender but not only that they need the money to pay for defending whatever it is they want defending.