5 ms·

It sucks because their games are really good

orbital-decay 3y ago
How much harm can a source leak really do for a game released long ago? Especially for CDPR, owners of GOG.com and big proponents of DRM-free games.
- Mountain_Skies 3y ago
  Probably not much danger that players will end up with pirated copies of the games, especially those with an online component, but having the source code will make finding cheats and security vulnerabilities easier.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    Don't get why you've been downvoted to grey, you make a very valid point particularly regarding security issues given the recent Apex Legends hack [1]. [1] https://www.tweaktown.com/news/96928/apex-legends-pro-players-get-hacked-during-na-finals-ea-confirmed-compromised/index.html https://www.tweaktown.com/news/96928/apex-legends-pro-player...
  - arandomusername 3y ago
    They're all single player games (except maybe Gwent?).
  - devwastaken 3y ago
    Shouldn't be serious vulns if they made it correctly. If they didn't, they were there waiting to be exposed eventually and are still the corps fault.
- DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
  Indirectly: the source-code will include third-party licensed libraries, stuff like audio and video decoding/rendering and other middleware - so they could be sued by the original devs/licensors for not keeping that protected.
  - Aloisius 3y ago
    When has this ever happened?
    - aaomidi 3y ago
      Thanks for asking this.
    - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
      I'm not aware of it ever happening after a hack/leak - but years-gone-by I did ask people I knew who worked in the games industry specifically why they didn't release their games as open-source and I noticed that I kept on getting the same answer from people who worked at different companies: Activision, MS Game Studios, Westwood, Electronic Arts, etc etc. And we see the results of those concerns even when games do get open-sourced - for example, last week Descent 3's engine was released as open-source, and it was released without those parts (c.f.: https://github.com/DescentDevelopers/Descent3/blob/61bb9a337d958be9b4716d67d548a06194ff2b5e/README.md#:~:text=Some%20proprietary%20sound%20and%20video%20libraries%20from%20Interplay%20have%20been%20stripped%20out https://github.com/DescentDevelopers/Descent3/blob/61bb9a337... ) ------- When a software company licenses a third-party library in source-form, invariably the license agreement includes a stipulation that the licensee take all reasonable precautions to prevent the release of the source-code - so if it can be shown that CD Projekt Red was negligent in keeping their source secure such that it was leaked by HelloKitty, then they're open to civil liability here. Obviously the onus is on the plaintiffs to prove that CD Projekt Red was negligent here. I'm not accusing CD Projekt Red of being organizationally negligent myself; but I assume that most of their devs had a copy of their entire source-tree on their machines (just like I have all of my org's source on my machines) - and it only takes 1 person to disable their antivirus for something like this to happen. What I am saying is that it's possible that CD Projekt Red was negligent in keeping any licensed source-code reasonably secure, and that HelloKitty was aware of this fact, and used that as leverage in their extortion attempt: i.e. "we know you didn't secure your source-tree - and MIDDLEWARE_PROVIDER won't be happy about that and we estimate you'll owe MIDDLEWARE_PROVIDER about $500k if they find out, so if you pay us $250k we'll keep quiet about this, if not, we'll leak everything". Again, I'm just positing by connecting-the-dots here - I'm not making any assertions.
- GaggiX 3y ago
  Nothing really, the source code is also quite old, Cyberpunk 2077 is very different now.
  - nxobject 3y ago
    I remember the original leak was announced at the beginning (?) of December 2021 – and that Cyberpunk 2077 at that point was far from fully functional, even after release.
    - GaggiX 3y ago
      Yeah that's why today Cyberpunk is a very different game.
wasteduniverse 3y ago
[dead]

How much harm can a source leak really do for a game released long ago? Especially for CDPR, owners of GOG.com and big proponents of DRM-free games.

Mountain_Skies 3y ago
Probably not much danger that players will end up with pirated copies of the games, especially those with an online component, but having the source code will make finding cheats and security vulnerabilities easier.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  Don't get why you've been downvoted to grey, you make a very valid point particularly regarding security issues given the recent Apex Legends hack [1]. [1] https://www.tweaktown.com/news/96928/apex-legends-pro-players-get-hacked-during-na-finals-ea-confirmed-compromised/index.html https://www.tweaktown.com/news/96928/apex-legends-pro-player...
- arandomusername 3y ago
  They're all single player games (except maybe Gwent?).
- devwastaken 3y ago
  Shouldn't be serious vulns if they made it correctly. If they didn't, they were there waiting to be exposed eventually and are still the corps fault.
DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
Indirectly: the source-code will include third-party licensed libraries, stuff like audio and video decoding/rendering and other middleware - so they could be sued by the original devs/licensors for not keeping that protected.
- Aloisius 3y ago
  When has this ever happened?
  - aaomidi 3y ago
    Thanks for asking this.
  - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
    I'm not aware of it ever happening after a hack/leak - but years-gone-by I did ask people I knew who worked in the games industry specifically why they didn't release their games as open-source and I noticed that I kept on getting the same answer from people who worked at different companies: Activision, MS Game Studios, Westwood, Electronic Arts, etc etc. And we see the results of those concerns even when games do get open-sourced - for example, last week Descent 3's engine was released as open-source, and it was released without those parts (c.f.: https://github.com/DescentDevelopers/Descent3/blob/61bb9a337d958be9b4716d67d548a06194ff2b5e/README.md#:~:text=Some%20proprietary%20sound%20and%20video%20libraries%20from%20Interplay%20have%20been%20stripped%20out https://github.com/DescentDevelopers/Descent3/blob/61bb9a337... ) ------- When a software company licenses a third-party library in source-form, invariably the license agreement includes a stipulation that the licensee take all reasonable precautions to prevent the release of the source-code - so if it can be shown that CD Projekt Red was negligent in keeping their source secure such that it was leaked by HelloKitty, then they're open to civil liability here. Obviously the onus is on the plaintiffs to prove that CD Projekt Red was negligent here. I'm not accusing CD Projekt Red of being organizationally negligent myself; but I assume that most of their devs had a copy of their entire source-tree on their machines (just like I have all of my org's source on my machines) - and it only takes 1 person to disable their antivirus for something like this to happen. What I am saying is that it's possible that CD Projekt Red was negligent in keeping any licensed source-code reasonably secure, and that HelloKitty was aware of this fact, and used that as leverage in their extortion attempt: i.e. "we know you didn't secure your source-tree - and MIDDLEWARE_PROVIDER won't be happy about that and we estimate you'll owe MIDDLEWARE_PROVIDER about $500k if they find out, so if you pay us $250k we'll keep quiet about this, if not, we'll leak everything". Again, I'm just positing by connecting-the-dots here - I'm not making any assertions.
GaggiX 3y ago
Nothing really, the source code is also quite old, Cyberpunk 2077 is very different now.
- nxobject 3y ago
  I remember the original leak was announced at the beginning (?) of December 2021 – and that Cyberpunk 2077 at that point was far from fully functional, even after release.
  - GaggiX 3y ago
    Yeah that's why today Cyberpunk is a very different game.

wasteduniverse 3y ago

[dead]