Guy Finds StarCraft Source Code and Returns It to Blizzard
kotaku.com
kotaku.com
Starcraft influenced the culture and politics of an entire nation and became a national sport. It pioneered "e-sports". It's a piece of history, and this disc is standalone a piece of history as well.
I think I know right from wrong, but I would still have absolutely no idea what to do if that disc landed on my doorstep.
Edit: I cannot believe this is such a controversial thing to say. Shame on the people who think this is an easy decision to make, put yourself in someone else's shoes for a while.
If you didn't know anything about Blizzard, what would you speculate? Someone elsewhere in the thread for example is speculating Blizzard would destroy the copy -- if I thought that'd be a possibility, I would personally never send it their way and you could in no world convince me it's moral to send a piece of history to its demise.
As for morality, I apply the golden rule: if someone found the code I wrote for a groundbreaking piece of software, and I didn't want to open source it, I'd really like for them to respect my wishes and return it.
Edit: I'm unable to reply further, but to clarify I was referring to the maxim of reciprocity or "do unto others". If the positions were reversed I'd want my property returned. If I find someone's wallet I'd return it if possible, as I'd want someone to return mine.
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" is my favorite Star Trek quote, but I don't think it applies in this situation as it was intended as a motivation for a personal decision to sacrifice, not to force someone else to sacrifice. That line of thought can get pretty dark pretty fast.
Is that really the golden rule? What about "the good of the many"?
Returning it to Blizzard directly is good for Blizzard. Returning your code is good for you. Realistically, it has little monetary value (all the "value" will be spent on lawyers arguing what the value is), so maybe it's only good for you because it's simpler for you.
What if your sense of morality is not in line with everyone else's sense, and I'm returning code to someone who will not do "the moral thing" afterwards? Does that make me immoral?
Point is, this is not an easy decision at all. It's not an easy answer at all. I'd be petrified and I believe anyone else who spends time to consider the implications would be too.
To expand on this, it's good in general to return leaked code of active-development projects because that helps the social contract of turning work into something that can be sold. So if I found jakebasile's 2015 code in an alley, it would be in some sense good for everyone for me to return it.
But that doesn't apply to a 20 year old master for starcraft. There is no promotion of the useful arts in returning the CD in this specific case, and it's a hugely relevant cultural artifact.
TBH this makes me think of the old practice of smuggling jade artifacts out of China. Hey, it's culturally important, so clearly that means it's ok for other people to take it, right?
And I didn't say that cultural importance is an automatic justification. The new star wars movie also has cultural importance, but there would be large downsides to free-for-all piracy of it during its release year. Downsides that don't exist with 20 year old source code.
That's like saying that robbing Bill Gates and distributing the money to millions of poor people is morally good because it's good for many people.
Unless you systematically take most of the money away from billionaires, which could be totally justified if society wanted to enact such a tax.
In the case of 20 year old source code, there's not really an important norm to uphold.
Your reasoning for that is "it degrades property rights", but you're for publicly releasing Blizzards property for "the good of the many"?
You want the source to be available and you're trying to back into it with some sort of moralistic argument instead of just admitting that you want the work to be available but have no real basis for it outside of personal preference.
Because that's what happens when you try and make a rational argument for why you just want something. You get ridiculous arguments like "it's not ok in this case because property rights, but it's ok in this other case despite property rights".
There are different kinds of property rights.
The property rights for the money you have in your bank account are important. (But if we wanted to add a rule-based tax across everyone that would be okay.)
The intellectual property rights for recently-made things are important.
The intellectual property rights for 20 year old code are not at all important. It's okay if we file off that specific corner of the law.
oh wait.... something is wrong with that thought process, but I'll let you split another hair in your attempt at a meaningful dichotomy.
because I can make up constructs all day that suffered more damages either way.
No.
I can't wait until you find out that sufficiently old intellectual property goes public, while sufficiently old houses don't go public! Have fun blaming that on me splitting hairs when it wasn't my idea.
More seriously, intellectual property is a number of different things lumped together, and they serve different purposes. Copyright exists to encourage new works, and while you can make arguments that there are some benefits from copyright being long-lasting on the creation of works like books and pictures, it's basically impossible to make a similar argument for code.
Blizzard's IP hasn't expired, your argument here holds no water.
By the way, I'm not making any arguments about morality. I'm just pointing out that IP is different from physical property in important ways.
Under the law, damages have occurred, especially if someone then takes that source code and makes it public.
So whether you have 2 copies or 1 copy or umpteen copies, if you've economically affected someone, you will lose that fight in court.
But this is not relevant to this discussion and I think we should keep on topic.
The point is this:
Dylan16807 is just trying to rationalize something that he wants, which is for the source code to be public.
It doesn't matter how IP differs from owning a house. It doesn't matter if it can be copied (and thank you for having the arrogance to explain that on board full of developers, btw...).
None of this matters. What matters is that Blizzard paid for the creation of the code, and they're afforded protections under the law.
It's very simple. I'm saying we should look at the upsides and downsides of each type of IP. This (20+ year old source code) is a type of IP that has no upside. Therefore while it's against the law, there's no purpose in it being against the law, and it's not immoral. Easy peasy.
> What matters is that Blizzard paid for the creation of the code, and they're afforded protections under the law.
You don't think it's possible for the IP rights given by law to have a mismatch with the IP rights that are most moral? Because this conversation thread was about what is good or bad, aka what the law should be, not what the law currently is. Of course it's against the law as it is right now. That's not the only thing to discuss.
First, I never argued that it was or wasn't against the law.
Second, it's not clear that releasing the source would economically affect Blizzard. It's not like someone could start releasing competing StarCraft games. They still don't own the brand etc.
> (and thank you for having the arrogance to explain that on board full of developers, btw...).
I mentioned it because of your argument about a house being 20+ years old.
Even if you ignore the fact that Blizzard owns the rights to the code. Which you shouldn't, but some people here seem to think that's alright.
EVEN IF you ignore that, SC is still televised in South Korea. Releasing that code could affect the integrity of the competitive scene for SC.
But you won't accept that because this isn't really about what's fair, it's about what you want.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_StarCraft_competi...
> Over US$4,000,000 in prize money has been awarded in total, the vast majority of which comes from tournaments in South Korea.[3] For several years after the release of StarCraft II, competitive StarCraft: Brood War was no longer televised. However, in early 2015, the game returned to Ongamenet's televised lineup.
well THAT is actually an interesting argument, unlike rehashing the old argument of whether it makes sense to ignore the enormous fundamental differences between IP and physical property, and getting all worked up when people don't want to play along and pretend to weaken the definition of theft.
how will it affect the integrity of the competitive scene? and will it do so in a bad way, or maybe just change things up a bit?
I actually think that's a way more compelling moral argument than worrying about Blizzard's IP rights.
Actually, no, it's not. I'm not even arguing that the source code shouldn't have been returned to Blizzard. I'm only pointing out that most of the arguments (that I've seen here, anyway) against it haven't been good ones.
> EVEN IF you ignore that, SC is still televised in South Korea. Releasing that code could affect the integrity of the competitive scene for SC.
This actually strikes me as one of the more defensible arguments I've seen here.
we had to invent copyright to mean anything at all, it didn't exist before. but even animals have some basic concepts about actual property rights (they can get righteously angry about it, for instance).
it's the word "property" in "intellectual property" that is misleading (deliberately, like the word "patriot" in "patriot act"). it's just a legal term, it didn't (quite) magically turn information into physical property when we came up with it (just one or two centuries ago).
just the information on the cd, obviously.
degradation of property rights has nothing to do with copyrights.
and suddenly it's very clear, if the round bit of plastic was very valuable (maybe it's gold, maybe it's the only copy), then yeah obviously you're doing right if you give it back.
after you made a copy.
If some distributed the source code, what would happen? It's not like people could start releasing new StarCraft games to compete with Blizzard. And it seems unlikely that the source code is going to give someone some kind of an advantage it creating other competing games against Blizzard.
Obviously legally it's Blizzard's right to keep the code private, and there are times where it's advantageous to do so, but this doesn't really seem like one of those times.
I don't see why. Even if the code was leaked, it would still be illegal for people to use that code. Blizzard still owns the copyright, and I doubt it would be hard to show that a game was just StarCraft reskinned.
> Blizzard doesn't want people making money off their IP, plain and simple.
I'm sure they don't, but it's not clear that it would have any real effect on them. If they've released the game for free, would it harm them in any way?
I don't know if it's right or wrong to distribute the source or to return it to Blizzard. Obviously it's against the law to redistribute it, but I'm not sure that it would be immoral. Mostly, I see a lot of half-baked black-and-white arguments in the comments on this article, and I'm just trying to point that out.
What if you said that after the copyright had expired? Would you still say it's immoral to release it against your wishes?
The golden rule is, like most other unilateral rules, an oversimplification. Of course, that's what makes it attractive — it's an effortless substitute for having to think through the complex and messy realities of any given situation. But let's not kid ourselves that something is automatically good because we would want that thing in Blizzard's situation, case closed.
so does "do unto others", if you follow it.
additionally you just argued that the same moral rules and rights that apply to you, a living breathing individual with an inner drive to enact right over wrong, can be transferred to an entire corporation, a legal construct blind to ethics unless forced by legal rules. which is kinda inhumane.
and, the golden rule is only a good moral yardstick if your choices in what you'd want to have others do unto you are moral in the first place. not a very nice thing to question, sorry, but your hypothetical example does feature you writing groundbreaking software but wanting to keep it closed source. depending on the software and how groundbreaking it is, that's an open question, very much up to discussion.
To poorly translate Victor Hugo : "The principle is twofold, let us not forget it. The book, as a book, belongs to the author, but as thought, it belongs - the word is not too vast - to the human race. All intelligences are entitled to it. If one of the two rights, the right of the writer and the right of the human mind, should be sacrificed, it would certainly be the right of the writer, for the public interest is our sole preoccupation, and All, I declare, must pass before us."
Now everyone's free to be the gremlin sitting on the sack, but if that sack literally is a masterpiece that shaped the whole of civilization, one day people will gently hoist you aside and replace the sack beneath you with a sack of similar monetary value, to put your original sack in museum.
Sorry if that's inconceivable in a black and white worldview. And no - its not communism, that is civilization. A right to destroy art does not exist.
If you believe in private property rights, then sure. If not, then no. Some such as Max Stirner, 19th century philosopher, would disagree with your assertion that it is a moral issue.
No moral or ethical issue whatsoever. Nobody's rights violated. Everybody wins.
It's like I taught my children... even if you don't know whose it is, you know it isn't yours.
And in this case it is even known.
The amount of moral flexibility in these comments astounds me, although it probably shouldn't.
I would say it astounds me to find people who are as rigid as you are, but truthfully, it doesn't.
these are all different from each other. and more importantly, orthogonal to each other.
by orthogonal I mean that given a choice, deciding whether it is right, should be done independently of whether it's legal or easier/harder. think about it. even if you had the power to change law, making something legal won't make it any more right, and vice versa.
it seems to me that this guy made his choice of returning the CD vs releasing the code on the basis that the former is legal and doing the latter (somewhat securely) is harder.
not so much on whether preserving the code, in light of the cultural historical importance is right or wrong.
(you don't need to agree with me, but I'd love to hear a solid argument why the latter would be wrong, that doesn't conflate right/wrong with legal/illegal)
and even then, it's not entirely indefensible to base your actions just on what's legal or easiest. ethics is hard and especially the law provides a nice shortcut if you don't like to think for yourself too much. Just, don't go pat yourself on the back for doing the right thing. You don't get to do that. He does get a ticket and goodies from Blizzard, though. Sweet. Shouldn't taste bitter at all, at least for a while.
The argument in favor of releasing the source code just seems to me to be a dressed-up version of "but I really waaaaaant to!". Wanting something doesn't make it right.
IP rights are a creation of law and not usually (even by those adhering to a view of natural property rights) not viewed as a reflection of natural rights, so you seem to be both rejecting and endorsing legality as the basis of the wrongness here.
Yes, it explicitly does.
> It merely protects them.
Some people believe that certain legal rights reflect pre-existing natural rights. As I stated in GP, it is quite uncommon, though, even among proponents of natural property rights, to view the legal rights in intellectual property as being in that category.
If you believe the IP rights at issue here are natural rights, that's fine, but you should explicitly make the case (or admit that it's a moral axiom you adhere to), rather than just assuming it's an uncontroversial position, because, simply put, it's not.
The entire idea of IP rights as natural rights (and more generally natural property rights in things which aren't naturally limited in concurrent use the way real and tangible personal property both are) is quite controversial, and even the idea of IP rights as useful policy independent of being natural rights (the position implict in the US Constitution and it's provision authorizing creation of such legal rights) is somewhat (though notably less) controversial.
> You're the first person I've ever see suggest that it's controversial to say that authorship == ownership.
The Free Software Foundation is among the many organizations and individuals explicitly rejecting the position that copyright is a natural right.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.en....
In any case, I'm not sure arguments regarding copyright of written works are really all that interesting when talking about closed-source source code anyway. The source code isn't being published to begin with, so all of the usual arguments regarding length of copyright protection are kind of meaningless.
Sure, but that's immaterial. FSF (and many others; again, this is the fairly explici Constitutional rationale) views copyright bit as a natural right, but as a legal right which is desirable, within certain bounds, because managed properly it can produce certain public benefits.
This is at odds with your apparent view that copyright is a natural right.
> The source code isn't being published to begin with, so all of the usual arguments regarding length of copyright protection are kind of meaningless.
The lack of publication actually doesn't render the arguments for time limitations moot, only the argument that copyright in such works provides a public benefit (though that can be remedied by altering the terms of mandatory deposit to apply, instead of within a set time after publication, to apply within a set time after creation, and to adopt as a consequence of deposit failure forfeiture of copyright.)
I don't think anyone disagrees that, when you create the first copy of a new work, that you own that copy (assuming it's not a work-for-hire or something).
There is definitely disagreement around whether you should be able to prevent other people you have given a copy from creating further copies. That ability is what it means to "own" a copyright. And I would argue that that is clearly not a natural right, though possibly something we nonetheless want to enable for some period of time.
This is not always true. Laws for `X` often only exist because a few `donations` were made to the right organizations and some politicians were taken to a nice, fancy dinner by some lobbyists to "talk" about things. In an ideal world, lobbyists educate politicians to make better decisions. In reality the practice is closer to bribery by wine and dining politicians and making large donations to their organizations/charities/political party. So I do not agree with this claim - because I don't believe a large portion of society gives a damn about IP protection laws. Especially in instances where society "loses" because of it (eg. unused patents)
It's not like you found the source to the latest Halo game or something.
This is like finding the source to the original Halo game, of little to no commercial value but of immense cultural value.
Where possible these artefacts are archived so they will be around long after the companies have folded.
Unfortunately it's just not possible most of the time as companies end up taking their software to the grave.
Which makes this all the more depressing. This was an incredibly rare opportunity to archive something of cultural significance to millions of people, completely wasted because it fell into the hands of someone not equipped to deal with the situation properly or contact someone that does.
Abandonware is a thing and I remember there being some legal headway made recently in that respect, but Starcraft isn't abandoned. They just released a compatibility patch and made it free to download.
I don't think it's reasonable to argue against archiving when it clearly has cultural significance.
Sure, legally. But the question is whether we care. Ethics are relative.
>whether we care
But I'm glad that there are those who get it.
Reading and learning from said source code is, and should not ever be illegal.
The source by itself is hardly (monetarily) valuable, pretty much to anybody. Blizzard clearly still has other copies, and anybody else wouldn't be able to do much of anything commercially with the code.
It's quite possible somebody has even already reverse engineered much of it, rendering it even less valuable by itself, even to copy-cats.
Starcraft reverse engineered to run on ARM: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7372414
Pretty much nulls all of the 'no commercial value' arguments I see here.
Even if the code was still similar to the original one, the non-HD version is given away for free...
Q: How did you go about replicating all the unexpected “bugs” that made BW micro
so special? Did you simply reuse code from the original game, or did you find a
solution to replicate the nuances of BW’s gameplay?
A: StarCraft: Remastered is able to achieve this effect as it uses all the same
gameplay code as Brood War. This means that Dragoons and Goliaths are still a
bit derpy in how they react to movement commands. The Reaver’s shot doesn’t
always find a target. Mutas stack.
The fact is that the gameplay is identical enough that old replays from 1.16
will play and work just fine under StarCraft: Remastered.
The code doesn't give you the legal permission to distribute and brand a game Starcraft. The reality is the code has no commercial value, the brand on the other hand may as well be a license to print money.
...its not?
Chiefly because Starcraft is not a normal game.
This is a game that defined a cultural generation in South Korea, established e-sports singlehandedly and in many ways made the RTS genre what it is today.
It should be archived. Even if it can never be released due to copyright or other legal nonsense it shouldn't be left to a commercial entity to ensure it survives.
I found one on Lincoln, but it was just some cat photos and backups of selfies from the cessation of the Civil War at various Reconstruction projects.
This would effectively limit copyright to the products' natural lifecycle and prevent hoarding the bits "just because I can", thanks to copyright imbalance.
It's a bit like losing Leonardo Da Vinci's paint recipes - it's a loss, but it's not a big loss. The important thing about his art is the art itself. The same is true of Starcraft.
But so much was lost from not simply uploading it somewhere from an internet cafe.
It enters the same ethical flexibility as things like wikileaks in my opinion
I agree with you, it is completely unethical and totally self-serving.
https://iapp.org/news/a/ethics-and-the-privacy-harms-of-wiki...
http://www.npr.org/2010/11/30/131699467/is-wikileaks-release...
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/zorn/ct-wikileaks...
http://theconversation.com/wikileaks-journalism-ethics-and-t...
https://www.seeker.com/wikileaks-the-ethics-of-revealing-sec...
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/02/11/februar...
The number of hopeless herbs on here who have so thoroughly internalized "legal == moral" is depressing.
I would love to have it to, but it's hard to fault Blizzard here for anything but "hey it would be really nice if you..."
There is still a vested interest in protecting this game from Blizzard's point of view, and it sucks, but in this case they have a fairly good justification and have been holding up their end of the bargain (re-releasing)
They've been real champs about these older games, like Diablo II getting updates. My heart skipped a beat when we finally got a native OS X client update that wasn't a Carbon app - that was really going above and beyond in my opinion, and their support was great for it despite the hiccups on release.
Blizzard is making a StarCraft remaster right now; who knows how much original source is still in there. My guess is probably a lot, since they want to keep the same mechanics.
It's not their property, it's copyrighted. He indeed had no right to publish the contents but also no obvious obligation to return it. IMO he did a lame thing, the only worse option being uploading it anywhere before the © expires and getting into legal trouble.
For rarer games, and those shipped on DRMed/copy protected media, it's certainly possible to get into a situation at risk of losing all known copies of the binaries!
civil disobedience in my mind is when private citizen stand's up to what he perceives as unjust system or law. And I can't see what unjust you see here in this case.
The way I see it is simple a lost property returned to an owner, and reward for person who found it
http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/macpaint-and-quickdraw-...
Carmack released the Quake1 and QuakeWorld sources, and I think also q2 and q3 eventually too.
StarCraft is ancient and the source is of no commercial value to them any longer. They don't benefit from its secrecy, but we do benefit from its release.
Then again, this is the company that sued open source developers who re-implemented a server (bnetd) for one of their proprietary protocols. It was that day I resolved to never give them money again.
They are doing a remaster right now. It would be reasonable to assume that it has at least some of the original code in it. I also suspect that Blizzard has used the same code base and modified it little by little over time.
Unless an owner of code decides something should run as FOOS, it's basically their own.
As far as I remember, the StarCraft game is already free (which is pretty awesome) [1]. So, maybe it's a matter of time until the source code might be free, too. However, it's up to them.
For the truly curious (which are arguing about the cultural value and so on), it is still possible to look into it using a decompiler. It is messy, but it is possible.
Shit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Fox_vault_fire
Happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_MGM_vault_fire
If something is culturally significant then it should be preserved and these two hyperlinks should easily make the case that preservation requires distribution.
People make mods for tons of games without source code. People are making up excuses and flimsy reasons to get what they want.
This would be relevant if we were discussing US law, but myself and others in this thread are posting replies derived from reasoning beyond Kohlberg's fourth stage of moral development, so please forgive me for saying that the significance of your point here is lost on me.
The preservation of culturally-significant works of art is considerably more important than any definition of ownership found in any law from any country in any time period that you can cite.
> It isn't going anywhere, so even by your own assertion there is no moral right to preserve the source, which isn't needed to enjoy the cultural artifact it creates.
You make an excellent point here, but I'm not convinced that there is no moral obligation to preserve the source code. Granted, it isn't the product, but I don't believe that its preservation value can be easily dismissed given that the product is well-preserved. I will have to think more on this.
The finder has no obligation to risk legal trouble so that a game can be modified, played, or even preserved. I'm all for archiving these sorts of things, and agree there's probably no great reason to keep the source private.
But if I have the (likely) stolen property of a large company and they ask for its return, I'm sure as hell not going to go all cowboy to make some enthusiasts happy.
1. Rip disk 2. Send to archive.org 3. Mail disk to Blizzard.
Blizzard will destroy this copy or at least make sure it never circulates again, by sending it to archive.org you have relieved yourself of the burden of releasing it. They may or may not choose to release it but they will at least keep it archived so that if Blizzard is to be lost then history will not be lost with it.
SC1 is coming up on its 20th anniversary next year, who knows what they'll do for the occasion.
Agreed, but sometimes…
Shit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Fox_vault_fire
Happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_MGM_vault_fire
Preservation requires distribution.
The disc would die in a fire certainly, but so would it if it were at the Archive.
I have no doubt they are very happy to have the original copy back, it probably means quite a lot of the original developers and I would never dream of keeping it from them had it been up to me.
I would definitely hope they keep the hard copy somewhere safe but history hasn't been kind to game source code.
No, you shouldn't. They owners shouldn't be able to destroy it for the same reason we have laws protecting monuments and historical sites. When something has historical or cultural value, the public has a right to preserve it even against the wishes of the owner.
Monuments and historical sites require Acts of Congress or Executive Orders to establish. If you care so much about this game's source code, maybe you should write to your congress critter.
If you don't like Blizzard's stance, deal with them, not criticize someone for not achieving the end you prefer.
The boundaries of legal ownership and those of what some consider morally acceptable might be different, so I don't think it's so black and white.
On the other hand, I agree that people shouldn't be criticizing someone for not doing something illegal, especially because they are the one who would have to face the consequences of taking illegal action.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamecollecting/comments/640iem/foun...
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamecollecting/comments/68xzxt/star...
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamecollecting/comments/68xzxt/star...
You can call the venom in those posts twisted, but that is a very different thing from saying the actual reasoning behind the posts is twisted.
And this is about the data, and possible copyright violations, not the theft of property. Him returning the physical disk is perfectly fine. So throw out that argument.
It's really very straightforward. No gymnastics.
How do you know it is the wishes of the authors? Blizzard didn't write the software, individual programmers (labourers) did, working as a team. Though I'd be interested to know if there's any statement from the developers of Starcraft if they did or didn't want the code shared.
Shit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Fox_vault_fire
Happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_MGM_vault_fire
If something is truly culturally significant then it should be preserved regardless of the wish(es) of its author(s) and these two hyperlinks rather easily make the case that preservation requires distribution.
There's so many holes in this story, it's obvious bullshit and everyone is soaking it up. 100% chance this is a lame viral marketing stunt to drum up interest in StarCraft remastered. It's clearly paid placement, and frankly a bit sensational to even be possible.
Blizzard is known for quietly paying people for product placement and bullshit stories like this. Don't be sheeple.
Edit: I did some reading and other sources actually name the person and mention he's a game collector (with pictures of some of his collection). Surprisingly, this looks to be legit.
http://www.dualshockers.com/2017/05/03/long-lost-starcraft-g...
The company I used to work for always made an archive copy of the exact source code we had compiled for each major release, so that there would never be any doubt about exactly which source code we had compiled to make each version of our game.
And who the fuck makes a "gold source" disc that's also "professionally printed"?
That disc does not look professionally printed. It looks like it was printed on one those cd-rom inkjet printers that where so popular back in the day.
I just think the likelihood of the source being in this format is extremely low and when coupled with the timing of this article it's all but certain that this is a marketing piece.
Looking at the reddit user that found this disc... He was looking for a job at a "big name" tech employer a few months back, and he's definitely into gaming. He mentioned that blizzard told him the disc was stolen, which would be slightly more believable if returning it prompted an investigation rather than showering him with gifts.
Oh it absolutely was. Maybe we shouldn't have and it might or might not have been good idea, but it was very common.
I'm sure that Blizzard does a ton of paid placement. However, StarCraft is such a world-wide phenomenon; they don't have to do any shilling. The simple announcement of SC Remastered was picked up by every gaming news site imaginable. Hell, the new 1.18 patch & free Starcraft announcement were just as popular.
I've been in the computer business since 1983. I've made gold master copies of released software in every project since that era. Its a highly common practice, and a good one, because it means that no matter what the resources and assets of the company are protected.
Also, CD's like this were easily made back in the 90's using CD label printers and gold discs designed for the purpose. It doesn't need to be a professionally produced CD like you infer; CD printers were quite common in those days.
So no, I'm sorry, your claim that its 'obvious bullshit' doesn't really ring true. What is obvious, is that you don't really have the experience with best practices of that era. Remember, this was a period of time before "Web-2.0 style source code repositories for all the things".
I am quite certain this is legit.
That said: if you believe the guy would've been right to distribute the code, it follows that you believe the right thing for Blizzard to do is to release the code themselves. Instead of arguing morality here, one might spend one's energy articulating that argument to Blizzard instead.
https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/tough-times-on-the-road-to-...
I have cds with intellectual property on them. It's not like he's copying it all willy nilly. No different than finding a manual of procedures for some random organization.
The only "real" risk seems to be possessing stolen property (maybe, could have been a gift or souvenir). But stolen 20 years ago and never reported.
I can't understand how keeping the disk is particularly bad. But good for them for giving it back. I think it belongs in a museum, but back home at blizzard is ok too.
From what he wrote, I don't think they said he was under legal obligation to return it to them. I think they said why they wanted him to, they asked nicely, and they thanked him afterward. Seems perfectly appropriate to me.
Instead creating posts and teasing other people (for karma?) he should just leak it. People are saying that it would be wrong etc. For goodness sake this thing is older than half of people on HN. Everything there is outdated and piracy-wise is not much worth.
Instead, preserving it to study and learn things about game development at that time would be far more valuable for the common good.
Given the game recently went free to play and many people still play it, its not surprising blizzard are not releasing the source. If the game had been dead for 5-10 years, then sure, they should probably release the source. Its still going strong and shows no signs of stopping in the next 5-10 years, especially now due to the remaster.
There are plenty of other games out there to learn from using the source, if that's your goal.
> For goodness sake this thing is older than half of people on HN.
Are you saying that half of HN are younger than 19? I would have thought the average age on HN would be somewhere around 30. I would expect the average HN person was a kid or teenager when Starcraft was released.
> Are you saying that half of HN are younger than 19? I would have thought the average age on HN would be somewhere around 30. I would expect the average HN person was a kid or teenager when Starcraft was released.
Maybe its a metaphor? A game of 19 years old could be say of 60 or 70 human age considering how fast game iterates.
Valve basically own a significant fraction of its success to community: CS (based on modder produce) Dota2 (bought from a modder); these 2 are their big revenue sources.
While Blz seems always intended to disallow any modder involvement at all. Most Tower Defense games own their popularity to the early days of SC and warcrfatIII. And Dota is basically just a warcraft III mod.
If Blz can learn anything from Valve, it's that they can capitalize on the fan/moder based community, really easy. They just never did anything like that.
On the contrary, they always want to redo what community did to drive off their creations...
This does not sound rational to me...
While they've missed a few here and there, their development strategy has served to make them approximately a hojillion dollars.
As a fan (I built tower defense, RPG, and Diplomacy maps as a kid--MAN do I miss Diplomacy maps, those were great), I kinda wish they would return to encouraging that stuff and push it to the fore. But I get why they don't.
Once the balance was dialed in (lots of maps had nation-specific special units and stuff, which made it tough), it could create some of the most interesting, dynamic UMS games I ever played. Sometimes they'd go literally hours. Early land grabs followed by huge back-and-forths, usually only limited by the sprite limit (my own maps avoided sprite-y units like Carriers, Goliaths, and Valkyries because of it; lots of Marines and Firebats, trying to make them feel like Diplomacy "armies" that could plausibly bounce off one another).
The only games I can recall that were more fun were Last Man Standing Regicide ("Shimo-style") games in Age of Empires II.
I simply do not understand this. Moders created an entirely new genre and basically brought Competitive Gaming to the masses, yet Blz won't allow modding on Overwatch. I've had discussions with people who support this and their rationale basically boils down to (1) they don't want to fracture the userbase and (2) they love the design and don't want to upset it. Both are ill founded. The userbase is in the millions and mods would get ppl like me to play again. Also, any graphical mods can simply run on my local machine, exactly like DotA2.
The game engine itself is superb and possibly hanfles/plays better than any other FPS with maybe Destiny being the only competition. There is no doubt modders would create a superior gaming experience. Learn from Bethesda
An RTS or an RPG lends itself to modding tools better than an FPS in general.
We got some awesome FPS mods in the past though. Team Fortress and Counter Strike stick out as the most prominent examples.
But other stuff like modes in games: Capture the flag, Gun Game, etc would probably not be a thing without mods for Quake and original Counter-Strike.
"But" should've probably been an "Also". I was only trying to point at the difference between TF, CS and L4D starting as mods and ending up as full games and CTF and Gun Games starting out as mods (even though the CTF concet has existed outside of games long before) and ending up as only game modes in other full games.
I'm not a native :)
Citation needed.
I've played a ton of AAA multiplayer games over the years. Hearthstone is hands down the worst one that I've given a fair chance to (>20-30 hours of playtime). To say that it's better than Counter-Strike (which many regard as the epitome of competetive FPS gaming and has stood the test of time in that role for almost as long as Starcraft has done the same for RTS) is an absolute joke.
To generalize your dislike of a CCG, one of Blizzard's multiple games, into an argument against GP is a joke.
Whether modders would make as positive an impact in HS as they did in Valve games is very unclear, and I say that as the author of a Hearthstone simulator and founder of a community and company heavily involved in Hearthstone modding, reverse engineering and third party tooling.
My point is that Hearthstone is an objectively worse game than Counter-Strike is, in the same way tic-tac-toe is inferior to Chess in almost all respects. I'm not denying Hearthstone is fun, and makes a metric ton of money. I play it a reasonable amount and have spent money on it. But it's not a good game.
I don't see how providing a direct counter-example to an argument is 'generalising', but whatever.
As for the diversity in types of games, you're suffering from recency bias. Until basically a couple of years ago, Blizzard only made point and click type games/RTS-like controls (Star/Warcraft, Diablo). WoW had the same feel as W3, just with a different camera position and WASD movement. Portal (a unique puzzler), Left 4 Dead(unqiue co-op, multiplayer experience, progenitor to Destiny), DotA2(an entirely new genre/RTS evo), and Half-Life(FPS) are at least as diverse as Overwatch(FPS), HotS (yawn, bad design philosophy to leveling up as a team. just like some of us are 10x devs, some are 10x MOBA players), Hearthstone(card game), and WoW.
Their quality control is excellent, I will concur. They rank up there with Nintendo for having extremely polished games with few if any bugs...none gamebreaking that I remember. But the reality is a tightly controlled xperience is just less satisfying and has far less replayability. The crowd is just going to make a better game, period, because they can suit a variety of gamer's preferences. I barely scratched the surface of any campaign in Starcraft 2, didn't like vanilla multiplayer, but played the shit out of the modded custom games.
Look at a game like CounterStrike. I remember getting into that game 18 years ago!!! and it's still one of the most popular esports, twitch channels, is even on cable TV, and still makes boatloads of money.
I really don't care much for PvP FPS experiences, which is why Overwatch, while a fantastic game that actually gets me to play PvP, is unsatisfying. I much prefer co-op games and I really liked the horde mode, but they make it seasonal...so I haven't touched it in months.
What's really infuriating is that I enjoy modding and creating new game modes and OVerwatch's game/gunplay is so sublime that I have tons of ideas. One of the low hanging fruits is adding a MOBA mode with creeps, stat-based leveling and items. Another one is creating maps with more open spaces. or a co-op puzzle mode where you must use certain team configs to solve challenges. There's so many possibilities and with the core engine being so buttery smooth, I see no reason why modders couldn't make the game relevant for 10+ years
Again, I am mystified as to their strategy. Did they resent the creation of DotA, say to themselves never again, and decide to completely abstain in creating modder tools? I'm being hyperbolic a bit...they're entering uncharted territory by making a competitive FPS and want to tread carefully. As I researched, I read they are soon releasing modding tools. Looks like I might be playing overwatch again soon!
I like their games. I like Valve and Bethesda games too.
> I haven't seen exact figures, but you are severly underestimating how much cheddar people drop on stuff like Team Fortress 2 items.
I don't have exact figures either, but whatever people spend on hats cannot possibly approach what people have spent on WoW subscriptions...
According to Wikipedia, Valve's total equity is $2.5 billion while Activision Blizzard's is $8.068 billion. Obviously, one produces many more games, but I still have a hard time picturing something like TF2 coming close to the amount of revenue that WoW or Hearthstone generates.
> WoW had the same feel as W3, just with a different camera position and WASD movement.
I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that WoW and WC3 are similar games. One is an RTS and the other is an MMORPG. When I called Valve/Bethesda games are similar, I was talking about how Valve games all feel like thin skins over the Source of Gamebryo engines. It feels like you could walk out of the facility in Portal into City 17.
> Look at a game like CounterStrike. I remember getting into that game 18 years ago!!! and it's still one of the most popular esports, twitch channels, is even on cable TV, and still makes boatloads of money.
Counter Strike is a great game. I've been playing it all my life, since 1.6. But you know how much money I've spent on Counter Strike over the years? Probably much less than I've spent on Overwatch loot boxes plus the game, and that game only came out last year.
> HotS (yawn, bad design philosophy to leveling up as a team
As someone who is a 1x MOBA player, I like HOTS. I find the way that experience is combined makes games a little bit more competitive but also less toxic (No all chat helps too :)).
> I really don't care much for PvP FPS experiences, which is why Overwatch, while a fantastic game that actually gets me to play PvP, is unsatisfying. I much prefer co-op games and I really liked the horde mode, but they make it seasonal...so I haven't touched it in months.
They have a story-mode coop now, Overwatch Origins. I'm not interested in it, so I haven't played, but it sounds like it might be up your alley.
> Did they resent the creation of DotA, say to themselves never again, and decide to completely abstain in creating modder tools?
Yes, I do think they regretted not capturing the value created by Dota.
I don't think Blizzard games are perfect, I just think their strategy is obvious. Blizzard is going to approach modding with the same care and caution that Nintendo approaches mobile games.
It's not just Blizzard. You're forgetting about the huge juggernaut that is the Call of Duty franchise.
>I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that WoW and WC3 are similar games. One is an RTS and the other is an MMORPG.
Obviously, WoW has an army of creatives making content and developing an immersive world, but WoW is using the Warcraft engine. You can have diverse experiences using the same engine. I was just stating that Blizzard didn't begin to branch out until a couple of years ago.
>But you know how much money I've spent on Counter Strike over the years? Probably much less than I've spent on Overwatch loot boxes plus the game, and that game only came out last year.
Anecdotal data not withstanding, Coutnerstrike still gets roughly 1.7x the viewers on Twitch
> As someone who is a 1x MOBA player, I like HOTS. I find the way that experience is combined makes games a little bit more competitive but also less toxic (No all chat helps too :)).
Different strokes for different folks I guess. The other major sport with 5 players (basketball) is superstar driven. Teamwork is cool, but I just find spectating a singular talent who turns the tide of a game by him/herself more fun and entertaining.
> They have a story-mode coop now, Overwatch Origins.
And it's over!!!!! Grrrr
>Yes, I do think they regretted not capturing the value created by Dota. I don't think Blizzard games are perfect, I just think their strategy is obvious.
Valve may be smaller, but they seem to have a lot more freedom and a lot more diverse business interests...hardware company, the defacto online pc game store, sometimes game developer
>Blizzard is going to approach modding with the same care and caution that Nintendo approaches mobile games.
Sigh, don't get me started. The Switch was such a massive dissapointment to me. Of course it's going to have top quality games, but I find their decision to not include a $5 gps chip a huge missed opportunity. It's dissapointing that Nintendo won't be the trailblazer for AR, location based, or VR games. MArio 64 and Zelda 64 basically set the standarrd for how to develop 3D games while no one on the PS had figured it out at that point.
I could also go on for days about how much of a letdown AR Pokemon became. It captured the attention of the dev community like no other game has. I marvel at what the game could've become if Niantic had allowed this completely self-organizing group of disparate devs to continue hacking away...it could've been a transformative moment that forever changed how games are created and revolutionized the social aspect of it. Sure, the bots were a pain but let's be real. The gameplay was absolutely terrible, the UI even worse. I've seen better core gameplay scrapped together in a 24 hour code jam. Single devs made improvements over the base game, and it took them only a couple of days to redo certain features I was praying for Nintendo to step in as consultants after the game spread like wildfire...
Then again that could have been disastrous too. Nintendo still has not figured out online multiplayer gaming
The Basketball analogy is interesting, and I definitely think that watching Dota is a lot more interesting than HotS, no contest.
You've made a lot of good points, and I hope Overwatch's modding tools are awesome. I think we both agree that opening up Blizzard games for modding would be great, but we can both only speculate as to the effect that snubbing modding has on their business. I think I'm undecided on that issue now.
But what you need to understand about Blizzard is they are extremely conservative about the game experience. They're proud of their work and while they never consider it perfect, they want the one experience for all their players to be consistent and to have the consistent feel of Blizzard polish (which lacks with mods). They're the Apple of game design.
It's also a bit of a different question when you're talking about pre-wow and post-wow Blizzard. Pre-wow it's also a matter of "it's hard". Nowadays it's easier, and their philosophy is I believe slowly changing.
Also, don't forget they re-released Starcraft with better textures recently, so having your sources out there isn't going to improve that game.
Plus, it's their stuff, they decide what to do with it. You can ask all you want about the source code of a piece of software of 1995, but I bet you won't get it from any company just because it is part of history. I don't see the source of Windows 95 lying around on the internet either.
While it's interesting to have the code, there's probably nothing really amazing about it. However, the game is still being played, so releasing the source code may help people cheat.
News flash: it's not your product, you don't own it, and you have no rights to insist on hijacking someone else's product for your own gain.
Shit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Fox_vault_fire
Happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_MGM_vault_fire
If something is culturally significant then it should be preserved and these two hyperlinks should easily make the case that preservation requires distribution.
The code doesn't seem protected by intellectual property but it's a trade secret. Just like Mona Lisa was intellectual property of Leonardo, but the way he created the different paint colours was his trade secret.
A trade secret don't necessarily have to be protected by law, the moment it gets out, then people are free to use it as they see fit. That's what I think about this source code: it got out somehow (even if the way it got out was illegal or not), but the moment it comes to public it becomes general knowledge.
looks like they finally found that long lost source code.
If culture is to be preserved I'm sure some of the original developers would make so. On the other hand, we could definitely do with shorter IP rights like 20-30 years, so that devs could legally release it within their lifetimes.
The tomb and its contents are the property of the Pharaoh in it.