Hacker News Reader

Comment by marban | Hacker News Reader

Any press is good press — I'm not a gamer but can someone explain all the negativity? I assume it wasn't a surprise that another version is in the making.

View on HN

Don't see why the downvotes, this is a good question.

I have a slightly tangential one, too. I don't understand why this leak (of the source code) is such a big deal. I genuinely don't understand. What exactly can people do with the (the best case) a half-baked game? To exaggerate a bit, these days we get even 'finished' games in such a 'raw' state, people barely want them for free.

As for the negativity. I suppose, one could dig some pieces of the main story lines from the source files, and try to predict how the new story is going to be told. But that would be nothing but a speculation. It is impossible to tell what Rockstar are going to do with the game until we see a finished product. And, to state the obvious again, the game is far from finished.

Drawing conclusions from that early (to say the least) build is ridiculous. Do people on reddit have some extrapolated opinions on GTA 7, too?

One thought is that access to the source code (AIUI the source for GTA V was leaked as well as VI) will make it easier to develop hacks, to the detriment of the online experience for the player.

Or, more cynically, to the detriment of the bottom line for R*, as the hacks may give people a way to progress without buying shark cards.

On the upside, maybe it'll lead to some enterprising source divers to repeat that "fixed the insane loading times" feat of a while back.

IP issues aside, the only negative to the game itself is that, since it will likely have an online component that Rockstar is presumably intending to make a very solid profit on, source code availability means it's easier to find vulnerabilities, exploits, mod opportunities, and ways to circumvent their monetisation.

Short answer? Source available = no security by obscurity.

Source code leak means AlterIWNet v2. People being able to pirate a multiplayer game, unlock all microtransactions for free, and mod the game without limits. Obviously great for the game's longevity, but bad for profits.

There are plenty of games with reverse engineered private servers whose source was never leaked.

It was announced already, but I think the issue is that the leaked footage was very rough. I’ve seen a lot of comments from gamers saying they expected it to be further along and more polished, but it’s likely that either the footage is older or they’re not focusing on in engine visuals yet.

Either way, I think the issue from Rockstars perspective is that it’s not a good indication of the game and might contain character, features, and gameplay which won’t end up in the final game. They likely want to control what goes out much more to avoid too much hype or expectations too early on.

Gamers expecting it to be more polished have never worked in games. Things tend to look awful up until close to the end.

This is true. Games generally look like trash up until everything gets put together for actual release, which can be as late as half/one year before it's supposed to hit the proverbial shelves.

Intuitively this makes the most sense to me, because "looking like trash" can mean textures, model fixing, physics, etc. which adds to the immersion but is purely throwaway work if the game mechanic, area, or storyline is changed.

Most people don’t know how most things work. PR is still a thing.

While very true, that's why marketing departments don't like uncontrolled leaks.

On top of it looking unfinished, many locations or features might get cut from the final game. And you don't want a big percentage of your buyers hyped for a feature you never officially confirmed.

> I’ve seen a lot of comments from gamers saying they expected it to be further along and more polished, but it’s likely that either the footage is older or they’re not focusing on in engine visuals yet.

From what I was seeing yesterday, it was pretty agreed upon most of the footage was from 2019. So rather old at this point.

A) It taints the perception of the game beforehand. People look at an incredibly raw bit of gameplay footage and go "wow, this looks like trash!"

B) The guy who did the leaking apparently tried to sell the source code, which is just scummy and would likely result in significant retooling from the devs' side, which means time and effort wasted.

C) While I personally don't subscribe to the glamour and glitz, there is something nice about a clean rollout for something anticipated or a surprise release. I remember seeing the first trailer for Peele's Nope and being incredibly excited because I heard nothing about the movie prior to that. If it was leaked or the screenplay was floating around with spoilers, I'd be somewhat less enthused.

> It taints the perception of the game beforehand. People look at an incredibly raw bit of gameplay footage and go "wow, this looks like trash!"

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I have to say I'm surprised that people would think this. Looking by analogy at big Hollywood movies, movie studios often release their own "behind the scenes" video clips, and as far as I can tell, these clips aren't generally considered to detract from the finished movie in anyway (and I personally find them, and this GTA leaked video, fascinating)

> Looking by analogy at big Hollywood movies, movie studios often release their own "behind the scenes" video clips

More apt analogy would be a workprint of a movie being leaked. This happened with "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" where lots of the special effects were still in progress so the workprint looked really cheap in some parts.

But the people likely to watch a workprint and then form their opinion on that is incredibly small.

Hmm, perhaps. But the GTA leak had a bunch of debug overlays and developer tools on the screen. It was very clearly not a finished product. A workprint for a movie doesn't generally have the same types of visual clues to indicate what a viewer is looking at. So I'm not sure that a movie workprint is the right comparison here.

> Looking by analogy at big Hollywood movies, movie studios often release their own "behind the scenes" video clips

And Rockstar releases those too [0]. The difference is those are all clips they vetted and chose to release. Hollywood also gets very upset about unapproved leaks. Even something as simple as an actor posting an Instagram selfie on a set they weren't supposed to photograph.

[0] https://youtu.be/qquffawsUMw

Why would they need to retool? I don't understand why a source code leak means they have to reprogram the game.

With the source out there, it's easier to hack.

Hack what? Multiplayer?

About half of GTA 5's overall revenue has come from purchases of the multiplayer currency. Multiplayer is a big deal for them.

And? Most of the security is server side, I’d imagine/hope.

So they just re-write all the server stuff from scratch because there may be vulnerabilities in the code that got leaked? And somehow the new code they replace it with won't have vulnerabilities? That doesn't seem rational.

GTA 5 is already so hilariously hackable that I don't think security is on their radar.

The game industry used to believe that any press is good press, but not any more. These days, studios want to control what people see before a game comes out. If they show off some feature, it might change radically or even get dropped before launch, and then you have a bunch of people asking why it’s missing.

Whether you believe “any press is good press”, it’s clear the game industry doesn’t believe that.

How true is this? Cyberpunk 2077 and Dying Light 2 have both been successful despite not coming anywhere close to what was marketed

It was. It has become a meme that GTA6 will come out (similar to HL3). There were rumors but nothing official.

A proper reveal would have generated massive hype, now it's mixed with "hack".

But as the ol' saying goes: never let a good crisis go to waste. Although I think they're in a tough spot since it's probably too early in the development stage to put a spin or reveal anything.

Rockstar had already announced that they were working on it back in February.

https://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/ak73k92o47ko7...

Near the bottom

I was wondering the same. I think GTA is so know that it might have a positive effect instead of the super picky fan base. For my side I have not touched a game for 5 years but I was excited to see GTA6. For me it was good news.

But am I a target audience? I am not sure I would buy it (slow PC, no time).

Tens of millions of people have been waiting for years for GTA VI to release and i am pretty sure that despite this leak people will be extremly for it to launch.

Code leak is never good, video leak is ok'ish code leak is very bad.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com