11 ms·

Did Maxis just lose the game? Why didn't the company have a copy of their own game.

ludamad 6y ago
It was commissioned, it might have been owned by Chevron, with no protocol for keeping a game stored indefinitely
teruakohatu 6y ago
It's was a niche project for a client that didn't want it developed further. Not nearly as outrageous as the BBC taping over their archives to save buying new tapes. They have a page listing all the justifications, some of which are quite weak: https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/bbc-archives--wiped-missing-and-lost/z4nkvk7 https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/bbc-archives--wiped-missing-an...
- jugg1es 6y ago
  well that escalated quickly lol
- skissane 6y ago
  I remember reading a certain company (not my current employer)'s data retention policy issued by their legal department. It had a schedule for destroying all business records. Product source code was in there as a business record – to be destroyed N years after end of support. Made me want to cry. I hope they don't actually do what their legal department tells them to.
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    If hypothetically, someone were to take a copy of that code just before the business destroyed it, they could do almost whatever they liked with it, because the original business wouldn't be able to prove it was stolen from them.
    - skissane 6y ago
      Let me use Microsoft as an example. (And, I'd rather not identify the company in question, but I can say that it wasn't Microsoft – I have absolutely zero information on what Microsoft's data retention policies might be.) Suppose Microsoft's policy was to destroy all copies of the Windows 3.0 source code. Having followed that policy, they have no copies left. Now suppose an ex-Microsoft employee has a copy of the Windows 3.0 source code in their possession, and decides to distribute it. You really think that Microsoft couldn't prove in court that said source code is in fact the Windows 3.0 source code, even if they no longer possessed any copies of it themselves?
      - thaumasiotes 6y ago
        > I'd rather not identify the company in question, but I can say that it wasn't Microsoft – I have absolutely zero information on what Microsoft's data retention policies might be. While earlier things may have been lost, Microsoft operates a Microsoft museum. Anything they have today is pretty likely to be intentionally preserved.
        mikestew 6y ago
        It's been fifteen years since I've last darkened MSFT's doorsteps, but they had an internal server that had everything back to DOS 2.0, IIRC. Now, source code I cannot say with any real knowledge, but the bits were (and I'm guessing, still are) there.
      - jojobas 6y ago
        How do you suppose they would they do it, especially if all references that the code being Windows 3.0 were removed or replaced with something else?
        jerf 6y ago
        All sorts of ways. The easiest one would just be to prove that the person in question didn't have the many thousands of programmer-years at their disposal necessary to make something so large and therefore the only possible source is the one entity that ever did, and used it to make Windows. Since "some guy who leaked Windows" is obviously not in possession of that sort of programmer-power, it's a pretty open-and-shut case. That one is so obviously going to win that speculating further isn't worth much, but there's a lot of other ways we could prove it too based on architectural similarities to the existing binary code (which I presume is not wiped off the face of the Earth), but this one, while quite sufficient to prove the case as well, is more abstract and prone to internet snipers trying to prove their smarts by quibbling about endless leaves while missing the obvious location and sheer mind-blowing size of the forest. But we don't have to go here, because the previous paragraph would do just fine.
  - technicalbard 6y ago
    I know companies that live in legal fear of discovery and destroy lots of things that have potential data-mining value. Imagine a firm that deletes all email more than 365 days old...
    - kjs3 6y ago
      365 days? Luxury. Try 90 days. Not kidding.
- imhoguy 6y ago
  There are bigger fails too - Apollo 11 tapes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_missing_tapes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_missing_tapes
  - est31 6y ago
    Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lost_films https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lost_films
- clappski 6y ago
  At least they're pretty honest about it though; > The idea that some recordings were important to keep for longer term re-use or historical reasons developed gradually and inconsistently across the BBC. > A key recommendation was that a requirement to keep archives was included in the BBC Charter and this was done for the first time in 1981. Although collections of recordings had built up by this time, before this there was no regulatory or legal requirement to keep archives in the BBC. > In a large and complex organisation like the BBC, the processes for making and managing recordings after broadcast were not always well defined, resourced or secure. This sometimes led to programmes not being received, or technical faults not spotted at an early stage. In some cases – Local Radio is one example - central departments had no remit to manage the archive, and with scant resources to spare in production teams, selecting output for archiving could be limited and rely on the personal interest of staff leading to some great collections, but patchy coverage in the archive.
- hedora 6y ago
  Nigeria found some Doctor Who episodes recently: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/oct/11/doctor-who-lost-episodes-found-download-bbc https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/oct/11/doctor-...
DonHopkins 6y ago
SimRefinery was developed by a "satellite" company, "Maxis Business Simulations", so it probably wasn't stored and archived with the rest of Maxis's source code, and may not have even been delivered back to Maxis and archived. And lot of institutional knowledge was lost when EA bought Maxis. There were some old Maxis filing cabinets kicking around the EA offices, and only a few people like Maxis old-timer Mike Perry had any idea where they were or what they contained. https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-serious/ https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-serious/ >What happened to SimRefinery? >One of the biggest questions surrounding Maxis Business Simulations that’s followed me ever since starting this research is whether SimRefinery is still around somewhere. To my knowledge, there are no surviving copies, and that’s okay. Given how frequently this question comes up, I want to document my research for the sake of completion. >Mike Perry said that Maxis would have kept a backup copy of SimRefinery in a binder of floppy disks that held many of the master copies of their software. Perry said the binder was likely thrown out or lost when the studio moved to Emeryville in 2004. A second copy would have been kept in off-site storage; for all intents and purposes, this copy is missing or destroyed. 64 None of the Maxis, Thinking Tools, or Chevron alumni I spoke with had saved a personal copy. I'm also endebted to Mike Perry for helping me dig up and photocopy the original Maxis/DUX SimCity contract from one of those all-but-forgotten filing cabinets, before they were lost. Years later when I was trying to talk EA into making SimCity open source (based on the work I'd done porting it to Unix -- they didn't have a copy of that code, but I'd kept an archive and copies of the contracts, of course), EA Legal needed to know for sure that they actually had the rights to that code in the clear. Fortunately I'd kept that photocopy of the Maxis/DUX contrant, and my contract with DUX, which clearly stated that ownership of the code went back to Maxis after 10 years, therefore I could legally give EA a copy of the Unix SimCity source code, and EA legally owned it and could then relicense it under GPLv3. https://medium.com/@donhopkins/open-sourcing-simcity-58470a275446 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/open-sourcing-simcity-58470a2... >Open Sourcing SimCity, by Chaim Gingold >Hopkins began work on the SimCity to Unix conversion while working at Sun, but the project was eventually completed under the aegis of DUX Software. On July 19th 1991, DUX signed a ten year contract to convert and market SimCity on Unix, with Hopkins brought on as a contractor about six months later. [68] Using the Macintosh version of SimCity, Hopkins performed the conversion, rewrote the remaining sections of assembly language to platform neutral C, and changed the platform from Macintosh to X11. Throughout the 1990’s, Hopkins did the programming necessary to convert SimCity to a wide variety of Unix platforms, adding pie menus and multiplayer support (Perkins 1993; Hopkins 2013; Joffe 2015). >[...] Surprisingly, Electronic Arts agreed to the arrangement. Their legal counsel, in consultation with Eben Moglen (Columbia Law Professor, general counsel to the FSF, and OLPC advisor), worked through the legal logistics. This effort was aided by Hopkins’s discovery and copying of the original Maxis/DUX licensing agreement, on a lark, while working on The Sims. Hopkins did the coding work of the conversion. [71] EA executives approved of the endeavor, no doubt aided by Will Wright’s legendary persuasiveness and considerable prestige, not to mention the prestige of the OLPC project itself. I posted this before to another discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13693675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13693675 It's a good idea not to just keep a copy of the source code stashed away somewhere, but also any contracts relating to the rights to the code. In the early 90's, DUX Software licensed the rights to port SimCity to Unix from Maxis. Then DUX made a contract with me to do the work. I kept a copy of my contract with DUX, the original floppies they gave me with the original PC and Mac source code, as well as versions of the source code I ported to Unix. Years later I got a job working for Maxis on The Sims. Before we shipped it, EA bought Maxis, so a lot of people were let go, projects were canceled, physical and digital files were shuffled around, and institutional knowledge was lost. After we shipped The Sims but just before I left EA, on a fluke, I asked a Maxis old-timer if he had any idea if the contract between Maxis and DUX for SimCity still existed, and where it might be. As you would expect, it was in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard." ;( https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/40705-but-the-plans-were-on-display-on-display-i-eventually https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/40705-but-the-plans-were-on... So I waited late into the night for the leopard to fall asleep, made a photocopy of it, then returned the original to its hiding place. ;) Several years later, John Gilmore suggested we persuade EA to relicense the SimCity source code under GPLv3, so it could be shipped with the OLPC. Of course nobody in EA Management knew where the source code was or if it even still existed, but fortunately I still had my copy. And of course nobody at EA Legal even knew if EA owned the rights to the changes I'd made (Maxis had gotten into some pretty terrible SimCity licensing contracts in the past). But fortunately I'd kept a copy of the contract between myself and DUX, and the contract between DUX and Maxis, proving its provenance, which clearly stated that DUX's rights expired after 10 years, after which the rights to all the modifications I made went back to Maxis (and thus were inherited by EA). Once all that was cleared up, the most important factor was that EA deputized someone on the inside to shepherd the project through the various stages of approval, relicensing, development and QA. Otherwise it would have died on the vine, since everybody in a big company, no matter how well intentioned, is always 500% busy doing their own stuff and can't be distracted by something that doesn't affect the bottom line. It finally made it through both EA Legal and QA, and we released the SimCity source code and binary for the OLPC under GPLv3! https://github.com/SimHacker/micropolis/tree/master/micropolis-activity https://github.com/SimHacker/micropolis/tree/master/micropol...
h0l0cube 6y ago
From my vague recollections of the original article, it was actually a sub-division of Maxis that wrote the B2B simulations like SimRefinery. They separated from Maxis and became Thinking Tools, and eventually went public, bringing on a new CEO that took the company into insolvency but not without making all the employees hate the company: 'At the end of 1998, Phillip Whalen gathered the staff together for a final meeting. 'Well, I wanted to bring you all together,” Wibbens remembered him announcing. “The good news is that you’ll be able to spend more time with your families this holiday.”44 '“They couldn’t even pay severance,” Skidmore said, frustrated. Whalen told the staff to take home their office equipment instead. “That’s your severance.”9 It was the last insult, the ignoble end to the company at the hands of growth capitalism. 'The employees of Thinking Tools did take some their work home, and they burned it. After they were let go, they got together for a bonfire, taking some of their project files, their pink slips, whatever papers they had around, and letting the past burn away.' https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-serious/ https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-serious/ Edit: Why the downvote? I'm basically quoting the original article.

It was commissioned, it might have been owned by Chevron, with no protocol for keeping a game stored indefinitely

It's was a niche project for a client that didn't want it developed further. Not nearly as outrageous as the BBC taping over their archives to save buying new tapes. They have a page listing all the justifications, some of which are quite weak: https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/bbc-archives--wiped-missing-and-lost/z4nkvk7 https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/bbc-archives--wiped-missing-an...

jugg1es 6y ago
well that escalated quickly lol
skissane 6y ago
I remember reading a certain company (not my current employer)'s data retention policy issued by their legal department. It had a schedule for destroying all business records. Product source code was in there as a business record – to be destroyed N years after end of support. Made me want to cry. I hope they don't actually do what their legal department tells them to.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  If hypothetically, someone were to take a copy of that code just before the business destroyed it, they could do almost whatever they liked with it, because the original business wouldn't be able to prove it was stolen from them.
  - skissane 6y ago
    Let me use Microsoft as an example. (And, I'd rather not identify the company in question, but I can say that it wasn't Microsoft – I have absolutely zero information on what Microsoft's data retention policies might be.) Suppose Microsoft's policy was to destroy all copies of the Windows 3.0 source code. Having followed that policy, they have no copies left. Now suppose an ex-Microsoft employee has a copy of the Windows 3.0 source code in their possession, and decides to distribute it. You really think that Microsoft couldn't prove in court that said source code is in fact the Windows 3.0 source code, even if they no longer possessed any copies of it themselves?
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      > I'd rather not identify the company in question, but I can say that it wasn't Microsoft – I have absolutely zero information on what Microsoft's data retention policies might be. While earlier things may have been lost, Microsoft operates a Microsoft museum. Anything they have today is pretty likely to be intentionally preserved.
      - mikestew 6y ago
        It's been fifteen years since I've last darkened MSFT's doorsteps, but they had an internal server that had everything back to DOS 2.0, IIRC. Now, source code I cannot say with any real knowledge, but the bits were (and I'm guessing, still are) there.
    - jojobas 6y ago
      How do you suppose they would they do it, especially if all references that the code being Windows 3.0 were removed or replaced with something else?
      - jerf 6y ago
        All sorts of ways. The easiest one would just be to prove that the person in question didn't have the many thousands of programmer-years at their disposal necessary to make something so large and therefore the only possible source is the one entity that ever did, and used it to make Windows. Since "some guy who leaked Windows" is obviously not in possession of that sort of programmer-power, it's a pretty open-and-shut case. That one is so obviously going to win that speculating further isn't worth much, but there's a lot of other ways we could prove it too based on architectural similarities to the existing binary code (which I presume is not wiped off the face of the Earth), but this one, while quite sufficient to prove the case as well, is more abstract and prone to internet snipers trying to prove their smarts by quibbling about endless leaves while missing the obvious location and sheer mind-blowing size of the forest. But we don't have to go here, because the previous paragraph would do just fine.
- technicalbard 6y ago
  I know companies that live in legal fear of discovery and destroy lots of things that have potential data-mining value. Imagine a firm that deletes all email more than 365 days old...
  - kjs3 6y ago
    365 days? Luxury. Try 90 days. Not kidding.
imhoguy 6y ago
There are bigger fails too - Apollo 11 tapes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_missing_tapes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_missing_tapes
- est31 6y ago
  Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lost_films https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lost_films
clappski 6y ago
At least they're pretty honest about it though; > The idea that some recordings were important to keep for longer term re-use or historical reasons developed gradually and inconsistently across the BBC. > A key recommendation was that a requirement to keep archives was included in the BBC Charter and this was done for the first time in 1981. Although collections of recordings had built up by this time, before this there was no regulatory or legal requirement to keep archives in the BBC. > In a large and complex organisation like the BBC, the processes for making and managing recordings after broadcast were not always well defined, resourced or secure. This sometimes led to programmes not being received, or technical faults not spotted at an early stage. In some cases – Local Radio is one example - central departments had no remit to manage the archive, and with scant resources to spare in production teams, selecting output for archiving could be limited and rely on the personal interest of staff leading to some great collections, but patchy coverage in the archive.
hedora 6y ago
Nigeria found some Doctor Who episodes recently: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/oct/11/doctor-who-lost-episodes-found-download-bbc https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/oct/11/doctor-...

DonHopkins 6y ago

SimRefinery was developed by a "satellite" company, "Maxis Business Simulations", so it probably wasn't stored and archived with the rest of Maxis's source code, and may not have even been delivered back to Maxis and archived. And lot of institutional knowledge was lost when EA bought Maxis. There were some old Maxis filing cabinets kicking around the EA offices, and only a few people like Maxis old-timer Mike Perry had any idea where they were or what they contained. https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-serious/ https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-serious/ >What happened to SimRefinery? >One of the biggest questions surrounding Maxis Business Simulations that’s followed me ever since starting this research is whether SimRefinery is still around somewhere. To my knowledge, there are no surviving copies, and that’s okay. Given how frequently this question comes up, I want to document my research for the sake of completion. >Mike Perry said that Maxis would have kept a backup copy of SimRefinery in a binder of floppy disks that held many of the master copies of their software. Perry said the binder was likely thrown out or lost when the studio moved to Emeryville in 2004. A second copy would have been kept in off-site storage; for all intents and purposes, this copy is missing or destroyed. 64 None of the Maxis, Thinking Tools, or Chevron alumni I spoke with had saved a personal copy. I'm also endebted to Mike Perry for helping me dig up and photocopy the original Maxis/DUX SimCity contract from one of those all-but-forgotten filing cabinets, before they were lost. Years later when I was trying to talk EA into making SimCity open source (based on the work I'd done porting it to Unix -- they didn't have a copy of that code, but I'd kept an archive and copies of the contracts, of course), EA Legal needed to know for sure that they actually had the rights to that code in the clear. Fortunately I'd kept that photocopy of the Maxis/DUX contrant, and my contract with DUX, which clearly stated that ownership of the code went back to Maxis after 10 years, therefore I could legally give EA a copy of the Unix SimCity source code, and EA legally owned it and could then relicense it under GPLv3. https://medium.com/@donhopkins/open-sourcing-simcity-58470a275446 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/open-sourcing-simcity-58470a2... >Open Sourcing SimCity, by Chaim Gingold >Hopkins began work on the SimCity to Unix conversion while working at Sun, but the project was eventually completed under the aegis of DUX Software. On July 19th 1991, DUX signed a ten year contract to convert and market SimCity on Unix, with Hopkins brought on as a contractor about six months later. [68] Using the Macintosh version of SimCity, Hopkins performed the conversion, rewrote the remaining sections of assembly language to platform neutral C, and changed the platform from Macintosh to X11. Throughout the 1990’s, Hopkins did the programming necessary to convert SimCity to a wide variety of Unix platforms, adding pie menus and multiplayer support (Perkins 1993; Hopkins 2013; Joffe 2015). >[...] Surprisingly, Electronic Arts agreed to the arrangement. Their legal counsel, in consultation with Eben Moglen (Columbia Law Professor, general counsel to the FSF, and OLPC advisor), worked through the legal logistics. This effort was aided by Hopkins’s discovery and copying of the original Maxis/DUX licensing agreement, on a lark, while working on The Sims. Hopkins did the coding work of the conversion. [71] EA executives approved of the endeavor, no doubt aided by Will Wright’s legendary persuasiveness and considerable prestige, not to mention the prestige of the OLPC project itself. I posted this before to another discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13693675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13693675 It's a good idea not to just keep a copy of the source code stashed away somewhere, but also any contracts relating to the rights to the code. In the early 90's, DUX Software licensed the rights to port SimCity to Unix from Maxis. Then DUX made a contract with me to do the work. I kept a copy of my contract with DUX, the original floppies they gave me with the original PC and Mac source code, as well as versions of the source code I ported to Unix. Years later I got a job working for Maxis on The Sims. Before we shipped it, EA bought Maxis, so a lot of people were let go, projects were canceled, physical and digital files were shuffled around, and institutional knowledge was lost. After we shipped The Sims but just before I left EA, on a fluke, I asked a Maxis old-timer if he had any idea if the contract between Maxis and DUX for SimCity still existed, and where it might be. As you would expect, it was in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard." ;( https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/40705-but-the-plans-were-on-display-on-display-i-eventually https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/40705-but-the-plans-were-on... So I waited late into the night for the leopard to fall asleep, made a photocopy of it, then returned the original to its hiding place. ;) Several years later, John Gilmore suggested we persuade EA to relicense the SimCity source code under GPLv3, so it could be shipped with the OLPC. Of course nobody in EA Management knew where the source code was or if it even still existed, but fortunately I still had my copy. And of course nobody at EA Legal even knew if EA owned the rights to the changes I'd made (Maxis had gotten into some pretty terrible SimCity licensing contracts in the past). But fortunately I'd kept a copy of the contract between myself and DUX, and the contract between DUX and Maxis, proving its provenance, which clearly stated that DUX's rights expired after 10 years, after which the rights to all the modifications I made went back to Maxis (and thus were inherited by EA). Once all that was cleared up, the most important factor was that EA deputized someone on the inside to shepherd the project through the various stages of approval, relicensing, development and QA. Otherwise it would have died on the vine, since everybody in a big company, no matter how well intentioned, is always 500% busy doing their own stuff and can't be distracted by something that doesn't affect the bottom line. It finally made it through both EA Legal and QA, and we released the SimCity source code and binary for the OLPC under GPLv3! https://github.com/SimHacker/micropolis/tree/master/micropolis-activity https://github.com/SimHacker/micropolis/tree/master/micropol...

h0l0cube 6y ago

From my vague recollections of the original article, it was actually a sub-division of Maxis that wrote the B2B simulations like SimRefinery. They separated from Maxis and became Thinking Tools, and eventually went public, bringing on a new CEO that took the company into insolvency but not without making all the employees hate the company: 'At the end of 1998, Phillip Whalen gathered the staff together for a final meeting. 'Well, I wanted to bring you all together,” Wibbens remembered him announcing. “The good news is that you’ll be able to spend more time with your families this holiday.”44 '“They couldn’t even pay severance,” Skidmore said, frustrated. Whalen told the staff to take home their office equipment instead. “That’s your severance.”9 It was the last insult, the ignoble end to the company at the hands of growth capitalism. 'The employees of Thinking Tools did take some their work home, and they burned it. After they were let go, they got together for a bonfire, taking some of their project files, their pink slips, whatever papers they had around, and letting the past burn away.' https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-serious/ https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-serious/ Edit: Why the downvote? I'm basically quoting the original article.