Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hackers breach Electronic Arts, stealing game source code and tools

lite.cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 119 posts

Re: Hackers breach Electronic Arts, stealing game source code and tools

#101

Post by jhanschoo »

madflame991 wrote: post #93
jokoon wrote: post #66

Not really sure what this changes for the games released. I would say very little, in a way bad advertising is advertising which is good advertising. It might reveal some part of the scenario or features, and put pressure on the teams, but other than that, who really cares? Fans will talk about it, and that's only what this is. Maybe competitors might get an insight on what games are planning to be, but I doubt that…

Was thinking the same - companies are extremely protective of their source code. How many games out there truly have unique/interesting/hard tech in them? I can think of Spore; I can think of a handful of rendering engines, maybe Stalker, Wow of course but not many more than that

Battlefield's multiplayer code should qualify.

Re: Hackers breach Electronic Arts, stealing game source code and tools

#102

Post by SSLy »

rvba wrote: post #77
DonHopkins wrote: post #61

It reminds me of when unsuspecting thieves accidentally stole a container of Iridium-192 used for industrial radiography from a lab in Mexico, and were eventually arrested and taken to the hospital to be treated for radiation burns. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-32332271 The FBI should keep an eye on hospitals for anyone showing up with burning bleeding eyes and a swelling itching brains and melting fa…

How is this connected to stealing source code of a computer game?

Google the commenter's user name.

Re: Hackers breach Electronic Arts, stealing game source code and tools

#103

Post by DonHopkins »

permo-w wrote: post #92
rvba wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this connected to stealing source code of a computer game?

It’s a joke. EA = bad. Reminds me on the kind of comments that are ubiquitous on reddit, which is one of the main reasons I left there. It’s witty and not dull, but does it bring any value to the discussion? I’d say not really

Hey at least I linked to some actual EA source code that will burn your eyes out. ;)

During that demo around 10:00, I accidentally fat-fingered the mouse and introduced a bug into the outdoor simulation. I couldn't figure out what I'd done or how to fix it, and we hadn't implemented "undo" in the code editor yet, so I just left it in. "There's all sorts of code like this in there. And it's kind of dangerous."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC52jE60KjY&t=9m47s

Re: Hackers breach Electronic Arts, stealing game source code and tools

#104

Post by toyg »

whiddershins wrote: post #99
toyg wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there is no way to ascertain if value has actually been transferred. It's just fingers in the wind. EA could sell their games tomorrow and make exactly the same money they would have made before the hack.

Thise entire line of reasoning is reaching, it is rationalization for unethical behavior. Stop justifying poor behavior. Just stop. Trust me, your cognitive dissonance will reduce, and life will overall get easier.

I doubt life will get easier when I don't question any established power-structure and just do (or pay) what I'm told.

Or rather, somebody's life will probably get easier - just not mine.

Re: Hackers breach Electronic Arts, stealing game source code and tools

#105

Post by scambier »

Otek wrote: post #45
scambier wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Stealing" a digital product implies that every stolen copy is a net loss for the distributor. It's definitely not.

Of course, it's not like if you clone a file on your hard drive 10 times, the manufacturer of what you're cloning loses tenfold. But every person who has used the product without paying for it is such a loss. I don't know what the "every stolen copy" argument has to do with anything. Not everyone who downloaded would have bought. But that can't simply be calculated with some neat "every stolen copy" slogan. It is an…

Your post is a bit unclear to me, I'm not sure which side of the argument you're defending, but

> every person who has used the product without paying for it is such a loss.

No, because like you said, that implies that you'd have bought the product if pirating it wasn't possible. If I want to pirate a game but it's not available, I won't buy it either.

> It is an argument to justify the thieves.

I'm not justifying "theft" - or piracy in this case -, I'm just saying that you can't equate the two. Piracy and theft are two very different things, with different motives, and different consequences of the distributor.

Re: Hackers breach Electronic Arts, stealing game source code and tools

#106

Post by arpa »

Jare wrote: post #39
arpa wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hosting your own lan on openvpn is not trivial, but doable. Or, if you trust the provider, there are a few solutions such as Hamachi.

I don't think EA Sports would want to base their online strategy and business on the ideas being put forth here.

neither do I, but that doesn't invalidate the lan/self-hosted server idea.

Re: Hackers breach Electronic Arts, stealing game source code and tools

#107

Post by m12k »

chrisco255 wrote: post #86

So they basically stole a bunch of technical debt? Does EA owe capital gains tax now?

Hey, it's only debt if there's someone around that needs to pay it down. Once the skeleton crew that was left to crank out DLC's moves on to pastures greener after half a year, nobody's ever touching that shit again.

Re: Hackers breach Electronic Arts, stealing game source code and tools

#108

Post by jokoon »

madflame991 wrote: post #93
jokoon wrote: post #66

Not really sure what this changes for the games released. I would say very little, in a way bad advertising is advertising which is good advertising. It might reveal some part of the scenario or features, and put pressure on the teams, but other than that, who really cares? Fans will talk about it, and that's only what this is. Maybe competitors might get an insight on what games are planning to be, but I doubt that…

Was thinking the same - companies are extremely protective of their source code. How many games out there truly have unique/interesting/hard tech in them? I can think of Spore; I can think of a handful of rendering engines, maybe Stalker, Wow of course but not many more than that

In tech, only ideas gets stolen. There are very few things that are really worth of being secret in software.

For games, hard work is just this: content (which has IP on it), debugging (which is specific to a certain game), handling GPUs (requires engineers, work is obsolete in 3 or 5 years), a few gameplay mechanics (cannot be patented).

Patents only matter when data is about some expensive, long term research that requires physical testing and labs, like a new molecule for a medicine, or some method or building a material.

Even when HL2 source code was stolen, it did not really matter.

Re: Hackers breach Electronic Arts, stealing game source code and tools

#109

Post by jokoon »

jhanschoo wrote: post #101
madflame991 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was thinking the same - companies are extremely protective of their source code. How many games out there truly have unique/interesting/hard tech in them? I can think of Spore; I can think of a handful of rendering engines, maybe Stalker, Wow of course but not many more than that

Battlefield's multiplayer code should qualify.

Netcode technology is not a big subject worthy of secret.

Sure it's complex, but it's very use-case specific. Developers will often talk and share how they solve problems, so...

Re: Hackers breach Electronic Arts, stealing game source code and tools

#110

Post by sys_64738 »

They're claiming no 'user' data was breached. Is this just PR for "we have no clue if all your info (name, bank info, SSN, date of birth, etc) was stolen" or is it "We confidently know because we audited that data access and verified the audit logs were not breached so we know your data is safe."
Post reply on HN