mcwizardry
Member
I'd be curious to know how that CD ended up in the box in the first place. Did some disgruntled employee steal it? How many copies do you think exist in total?
Yeah, releasing something into the public sphere will always be a net gain for preservation. That doesn't then mean, though, that not doing so is resulting in a preservation risk. To say the preservation of something is at risk, you'd have to make a case that it's uniquely or specifically in a position to be lost. I don't think ""it's in the hands of a company, and companies sometimes lose the 'something' in question" makes a good enough case for undermining IP rights.
Now consider that we're talking about source code that relates to an active IP, and that case looks even more inadequate.
I have made my case, which is 'companies very easily can and do lose source code as long as only they have access to it'. Even if it's an active IP. A great example is Square Enix and the original Kingdom Hearts, or even the Silent Hill HD fiasco because they lost the source for 2 and 3. Those games are also a fair amount more recent than Starcraft!
It can be remarkably easy to lose access to code if you don't adequately take care of it.
I'd be curious to know how that CD ended up in the box in the first place. Did some disgruntled employee steal it? How many copies do you think exist in total?
But isn't this a case where IP rights pretty clearly outweigh preservation imperatives? There's no evidence that returning the source code to Blizzard somehow puts it at risk, while sharing it with the public could have been damaging to an active IP.
What matters isn't what action they'd take right now but what benefits we gain 5, 10, 15+ years down the line.
Doom for example is practically a rite of passage for any system and the only reason that's possible is because we have the source code.
He didn't do the right thing and their reward to him cost them far less than the value of securing the source code.
I at least thought they were going to pay him some cash.
Were I in that position, I'd have anonymously released it in return for the fanbase paying me a chunk of money.
Are you seriously suggesting this guy take the fall for the gaming community as a whole?
That was 20 years ago. People lose things over 20 years, or even throw them out. I worked on GBC games in the early 2000's, you can be sure the company didn't keep source code longer than 5 years let alone 20, especially after the company was sold. A couple employees kept source code for their favorite projects, but that wasn't a company thing.'Losing the source code' is such a cop out. Everywhere I've worked has maintained that stuff somewhere. Considering the size of the team, and the company itself, it's insane to think they wouldn't have access to that somewhere, ESPECIALLY considering how often the game has been patched.
That phrase is right up there with "Starting a new engine from scratch" as things that I never believe when I hear developers say it.
How can so many people defend exposing secrets they have no right to know as being a morally right thing with a straight face? Blizzard did nothing morally dubious by making or selling this game, so taking their trade secrets and making them public knowledge isn't righting some wrong. This isn't The One Ring of Power and they aren't Sauron. This is their property, and "We Could Have Done Cool Shit With It" is not a justification to do whatever the fuck you like with someone else's property. What the fuck. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
He did the right thing, even if not necessarily for the most upstanding of reasons.
Would you say the same if say, Nintendo threatened the person who found the Nintendo Playstation prototype and ordered them to hand it over because it's their property?
Would you say the same if say, Nintendo threatened the person who found the Nintendo Playstation prototype and ordered them to hand it over because it's their property? A lot of things are corporate property and defining things purely in black and white 'it's theirs, therefore they are the only ones who can control it' leads to things like Disney despite the huge cultural and historical relevance parts of their IP may have.
It's not a 1-to-1 situation because of Starcraft Remaster but making the IP argument is a particularly lazy one and a good way to ensure that nothing ever enters the public sphere. I'm not advocating people go out and start raiding corporate HQs for stuff just for the sake of tossing it on the internet but if you collect something incidentally through Goodwill, eBay etc then I don't think you have a moral imperative to return it to the company unless it can be absolutely proven that it was maliciously stolen by someone else.
Would you say the same if say, Nintendo threatened the person who found the Nintendo Playstation prototype and ordered them to hand it over because it's their property? A lot of things are corporate property and defining things purely in black and white 'it's theirs, therefore they are the only ones who can control it' leads to things like Disney despite the huge cultural and historical relevance parts of their IP may have.
It's not a 1-to-1 situation because of Starcraft Remaster but making the IP argument is a particularly lazy one and a good way to ensure that nothing ever enters the public sphere. I'm not advocating people go out and start raiding corporate HQs for stuff just for the sake of tossing it on the internet but if you collect something incidentally through Goodwill, eBay etc then I don't think you have a moral imperative to return it to the company unless it can be absolutely proven that it was maliciously stolen by someone else.
Would you say the same if say, Nintendo threatened the person who found the Nintendo Playstation prototype and ordered them to hand it over because it's their property?
You can't actually damage a still thriving game with your Nintendo Playstation prototype. Like, it represents literally zero downside. You can't even argue any similarity in the strictest sense at all. The source code is the key to basically destroying SC1, and probably the remaster that they're ABOUT to release (Since it has to run so much of the old stuff anyway, to the point that it can cross play and use replays), which has a very real impact for the worse.
Excuse my ignorance, but if he leaked these source code,what would of happened? I don't get it what is a source code?
People in that reddit thread are salty as fuck.
Another oneWell 250$ reward for, as they said, such an important thing he bought legally on the internet... lol
They could have at least invited him to the offices for a free tour...
I'm pretty sure half of those people haven't even played Starcraft.
Yes, but it's Blizzard's decision to do that, not his. It'd be irresponsible of him to release it.
John Carmack released a lot of id software source over the years, but always on their terms; nobody elses.
Well 250$ reward for, as they said, such an important thing he bought legally on the internet... lol
They could have at least invited him to the offices for a free tour...
Excuse my ignorance, but if he leaked these source code,what would of happened? I don't get it what is a source code?
Pretty sure Blizzard never lost the source code since they are updating the original with patches and a remaster, this is simply an asset retrieval, but still awesome on both sides for doing the right thing.
Does it really matter that he didn't leak it? Aside from satisfying people's curiosity I don't see how much would have come from it.
I do love the "do something illegal" line a bunch of people here are taking just because it's a game. Talk about some lapse in ethics.
For those saying he should of uploaded it, how long do you really think that it stay before Ceist and Desist letters and Lawsuits would come out of the woodwork.
It would of really opened up the door for Starcraft modding if the source code was leaked.