The worst incident in the history of video game development? (1 Viewer)

[Tony-B]

is all I have to say about this!

I hope that Valve can recover from this terrible incident!

 

[JamesHl]

What if a company decides to create a game that pretty much uses the same source code, would this brought before a judge, would a company be compelled to display the code?

Yes. They would show it to the judge in private, it would not be publicly disclosed since it's a trade secret or whatever.

 

[ChrisMatson]

I saw this on Money.CNN:


The complete article is available here.

 

[Rob Speicher]

I think the first couple of posters are confusing the Counter-Strike "hackers", who just download and move a DLL file, and the hacker(s) who stole the source code.

Stupid:
- Using Outlook
- Not patching Outlook

 

[Scott DeToffol]

A very interesting story and very bad for Valve. This is a big wake up call to any company with an Internet connection. There are people out there that just like to do harm. And there are people who will do anything to help them in competitive situations. Every person and every company with an Internet connection is a target.

I hope the FBI catches these peoples and comes down hard.

 

[Jason Quillen]

Even made a Yahoo News Headline.

This stinks.

JQ

 

[JamesHl]

Of course, there are other articles saying that no delay has been announced, and that it would be up to Valve to announce them if there was going to be some sort of delay.

 

[Greg_S_H]

And it just gets worse.

http://money.cnn.com/2003/10/07/comm...ming/index.htm

 

[Eugene Esterly]

You can help Valve Software about the stolen source code to Half-Life 2. If you see any websites/people distrubuting the stolen Half-Life 2 source code or playable versions report it to this email address which is Help Valve

I just emailed Valve to report a website which is distrubuting copies of the stolen Half-Life 2 source code.

 

[brentl]

I wonder about this theft. As was stated above alot of hackers are gamers too and can't wait for this game to come out.

It doesn't look like I'll be playing this game anytime soon, but Valve was so secretive about this project I'm suprised that something as simple as a hacker could ruin Valves hard work.

WHY would they keep any code on an internet enabled machine??

Brent

 

[BrianB]

WHY would they keep any code on an internet enabled machine??

Because developers need easy access to the internet!!

I keep seeing posts refering to source as secretive, magic stuff. Every developer has a copy of the source on their machine for development of their game - they need it. That's perfectly, utterly normal working practice, as is having access to internet email & the web.

 

[Scott L]

Well this incident tells us that this practice isn't safe. If they really want to be hacker free they'll put it on a totally seperate secure network within the building, not connected internet.

The email machines can still be in the building, just on seperate networks. They'll probably do this from now on.

 

[BrianB]

Well this incident tells us that this practice isn't safe. The email machines can still be in the building, just on seperate networks.

So each developer has two machines, hooked up via KVM or something similiar. When he wants to look up some code in MSDN or check some algorithm, he has to switch to the second machine, find it, then copy it by hand, line by line, to the second machine? It has to be done that way - if you suggest copying it to floppy or something, then you're leaving yourself open to corruption via that point of entry. Remember, Valve's "leak" was a specially designed keylogger etc that virus checkers didn't catch - so virusscanning that floppy wont' help.

Is some software developed this way? Sure - expensive security conscious apps. Games shouldn't need to be developed that way.

 

[JamesHl]

Not using outlook express certainly would have helped. It was the entry point for some of the stuff, anyway.

 

[Chad Ferguson]

Just curious but this stuff that was taken and now probably hacked awaiting the release of the game. How is this that much different then when the game is released and they hack it then? Expect cheaters on the games, it's just a matter of finding the right people to play with. Alos, the first thing I will do is play the single which is not really affected by any of this. Release the game, patch the MP later unless I'm miinformed totally on this.
Thanks

 

[Aaron Silverman]

Cutting-edge game developers are using OUTLOOK EXPRESS??? They should know better.