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CD Projekt Red's ransomed data has been leaked
- steerablesafe 6y agoWho has the incentive to buy it at that price point?
- mnd999 6y agoMaybe they're just trying to crank up the pressure on CDPR to pay.
- mcraiha 6y agoCDPR already said that they won't pay. Stock price would take a major hit if they reversed the decision.
- mnd999 6y agoAgree, I don't think it will work.
- usrusr 6y agoJust what I was thinking. In light of the entire cryptoransom thing the idea of stealing some data and then finding a buyer seems so anachronistically 1990ies retrofuturism that it almost feels like a roleplayed cyberpunk submarine ad.
- willis936 6y agoMaybe the randomers are begrudged cyberpunk fans who want to show CDPR a proper cyberpunk dystopian story.
- imtringued 6y agoGames are developed with a ship it and forget it model. The value of that source code being non public is zero to CDPR. You can pirate the game without the source code.
- 4cao 6y agoThe leak supposedly also includes an upgraded version of The Witcher 3 they've been working on, scheduled to be released later this year. [1] Although it's supposed to be a free update for anyone who bought it before, it's not only past releases that might be affected if that's the case. 1. https://twitter.com/witchergame/status/1301826520311369728 https://twitter.com/witchergame/status/1301826520311369728
- toyg 6y agoSeems overvalued. I mean, it's a game developer. There is no secret sauce in what they do, no secret list of customers, no hack with serious monetary value... There is an academic value to competitors, I guess, and maybe a value to scammers (employees' personal details) but that's basically it. Edit: twitter thread says they are "selling immediately for $7m". I'd be very surprised if they found a buyer at that price.
- that_guy_iain 6y ago> There is an academic value to competitors, I guess, and maybe a value to scammers (employees' personal details) but that's basically it. Just hire their devs, it's a legal and cheaper way to get that knowledge.
- PartiallyTyped 6y agoAnd faster; there was a post recently named "architecture.md", that explained that for most new code contributions most of the time is spent finding where to go to fix a bug. Following that idea, it makes sense that it will take a very long time for a new dev team to pick up the code base, or at least more time than it is worth it.
- mackman 6y agoI don’t understand who would buy this. If you’re a game developer buying stolen code isn’t going to help you. Most of their titles are offline focused so I don’t see value in using the code to write cheats. I could see someone who hates them paying for email to release and damage the company but even that seems thin. Also having worked in games i had a chuckle when I saw the “test framework” folder in Gwent and my first thought was “hmm probably fake then.”
- wccrawford 6y agoSomeone who doesn't have to respect copyright law could use it to make their own game like it, saving years of effort. It'd be hard getting up to speed on it, but it could be worth it.
- gambiting 6y agoIf you're in the market that doesn't respect copyright law there's a surprise for you - no one will buy legal copies of your game either, and it will be banned everywhere else. Also code for the game itself means almost nothing without the tooling to produce assets for it. It could be written for scratch but then....just.....use unreal or unity? Pirate copies if you really don't care. Like, I work in games development and in house engines are incredibly inflexible, they are made for one game only usually and it's a titanic amount of effort to use them for anything else. You could probably use the Witcher engine to make a crappy clone of Witcher, but you're not going to use the engine for anything else.
- that_guy_iain 6y ago> If you're in the market that doesn't respect copyright law there's a surprise for you - no one will buy legal copies of your game either, and it will be banned everywhere else. Considering it's closed source I suspect it could get quite far before anyone notices. Also, people will buy legal copies, you over estimate how moral people are. Remember most of us shop on Amazon even tho we know it's terrible. And the money from those copies will go to CD Projekt Red.
- 6y ago
- throwhackerred 6y agoHow does the Bitcoin auction work? Can't they also participate as a separate bidder and push the price to whatever they want?
- jackric 6y agoTrue of nearly any auction. Actual buyers stop bidding when they think the price has exceeded the value to them. If the music stops with a fake bidder holding the bag, the auction will have to be re-held, now with increased scepticism by real bidders, likely securing a lower final price.
- rambojazz 6y ago"Auctioning again because the previous buyer didn't pay after winning" - ebay, somebody justifying why they've reopened the auction.
- roncohen 6y agotaking this a bit further, the original authors could probably employ this as a strategy: Since it's an anonymous auction, the original author could win the auction and then refuse to pay repeatedly until all the real potential buyers have given up.
- 4cao 6y agoApparently, you have to deposit BTC 0.1 (~= $4,700) to be allowed to bid. Presumably, you'd be losing this deposit upon each iteration if you refused to pay.
- joschmo 6y agoTencent is the most likely buyer given their history of building fast follower games. Likely to be some useful components here. Other fast follower studios like Mihoyo could scrape some value, but $6M RMB is no joke to add to a budget of their size.
- londons_explore 6y agoThey have 1000 employees. If we assume that 100 of those worked full time for 2 years on a game, at a salary of $33k USD per year (Game designers in Poland are CHEAP!!)... That works out to $6.6M. So a price of $1M seems pretty reasonable for a copyright-ignoring competing game house to buy all that code to have something to work from. It's a bit on the high side considering any resulting game would never be able to be sold anywhere in Europe/the US.
- SilkRoadie 6y agoThe cost to produce is not equal to the value of the work. The only thing of value would be source code / data dumps of the store. That potentially can be exploited. Anything else is pretty worthless. The systems in the game and artefacts likely don't meet the requirements for a game your building. Anything you use opens you up to do a law suit. Might as well spend $1M legitimately producing the game.
- imtringued 6y agoIf I were the CEO of such a dishonest company I wouldn't even bother bidding $1M. I'd try to get the source code for a far lower price.
- skocznymroczny 6y agoThe cheap game designers part is probably not entirely true. The company may be located in Poland but they use a lot of foreign talent, and foreign talent would not be willing to work for average Polish salaries.
- mrtksn 6y agoWhat are these "exploit forums" where the trade happens? Are they behind the Tor network like the Silkroad or are these in the open but with exclusive access that only few have actually an access? Any insights on the workings of this business?
- rambojazz 6y agokk? Seriously? Have they never heard of M?
- etiam 6y agoSorry to see they've been hit. There is some historical value to their data, and I hope they manage to recover it somehow. I wonder if there's any risk GOG was compromised as well. That could be an impressive watering hole attack...
- darkblackcorner 6y agoPerhaps a good strategy for CDPR would be to release the code themselves, invalidating the auction?
- 4cao 6y agoAn update: the auction has ended, the seller claims they accepted a private offer 1. https://www.ign.com/articles/stolen-cd-projekt-red-files-reportedly-sold-on-dark-web-auction https://www.ign.com/articles/stolen-cd-projekt-red-files-rep... 2. https://twitter.com/vxunderground/status/1359890201686990863 https://twitter.com/vxunderground/status/1359890201686990863