If you don't think Kotaku is a site worth reading, don't read it. But reading cached copies just so you can avoid giving the page view to Kotaku is stupid. If they're producing content you want to read, then just read it!
Presumably people want to read it without supporting them financially. It's not that complicated. If you don't care about blizzard's IP rights, you probably also don't care about giving otaku money for reading their content.
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...
> On the contrary, they always want to redo what community did to drive off their creations...
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.
Kinda. I remember mods which featured a World map, where units would spawn at your capital in set intervals, and you would use them to capture everyone else's cities.
Inspired by and vaguely similar to. Widgets (usually those gray domes) would be placed on a map that may or may not look like, say, Europe, and you'd have N players whose goal was to possess (own structures by) as many of them as they could manage. Structures were usually super expensive, and resources (or, in some versions, units themselves) were acquired only by owning those control points. No allied victories.
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.
>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.
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
I'm not so sure. Skin sales are the entire business model of Dota2 and LoL - the difference is who develops the skins. Valve has shown they rarely want to be involved in dlc and skin creation, they've always been community first in that sense.
An RTS or an RPG lends itself to modding tools better than an FPS in general.
Sorry, I'm a little confused by your response. Are you saying L4D started out as a mod as well and using the "but" in an unusual way or are you unaware that both CS and TF were originally Quake and HL mods?
"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.
See, I think there's a huge difference between Activision Blizzard games and either Valve or Bethesda games. Sure, Valve and Bethesda have probably contributed more gaming experiences to the world across their many games and their liberal policy towards modding. There are only a few Blizzard games, but they're better and they make much more money. It's a tightly controlled experience, but the quality control means Blizzard fans will at least try almost every Blizzard game at some point. Can't say the same for Bethesda. Valve has fewer games, but the experiences are not as different as say, Hearthstone and Overwatch.
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 compare a turn based CCG to a competitive FPS 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.
GP outright stated that Blizzard's games are better than Valve's and Bethesda's because of their strict control over quality/lack of community content.
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.
Overwatch is a far, far better game than TF2 (also a far better comparison) and I would definitely say that one of the drivers for that is Blizzard's quality control.
It's hard to throw out core principles or do massive overhauls without starting over. At that point it's no longer a patch. They had many years to consider what made a game good, and what to improve on, and modernize concepts.
Methinks you're a Blizzard fanboy.Diablo 3 was a critical and personal dissapointment. Starcraft 2 and Heroes of the Storm aren't exactly in my list of top PC games either. And they make more money?
I haven't seen exact figures, but you are severly underestimating how much cheddar people drop on stuff like Team Fortress 2 items.
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.
> According to Wikipedia, Valve's total equity is $2.5 billion while Activision Blizzard's is $8.068 billion.
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
I actually completely forgot about how much of a flop Pokemon Go was once the hype wore off. I was actually thinking more about whatever the Mario game that came out was.
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.
They did capitalize on the modder community in World of Warcraft (almost by accident, thank you Sam Lantinga! and what a success it turned out to be).
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.
The source code shows all details of one of their most popular products. If it got out you can guarantee there will be new exploits, new ways of breaking the game, which in order to keep the game 'fun', will have to patch.
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.
No, actually, if they want their product back, they are obligated to pay however much is necessary to do so. They have no leverage other than that. They're spending a very tiny amount of money to repress something that would become quite popular without them.
That's actually probably completely wrong. Just because the guy got it off of eBay doesn't mean it's not actually property of Blizzard. That's like saying that just because you bought a stolen phone from some guy in an alley, the rightful owner can't demand it back.
That's a bad comparison. A stolen phone is 1) Likely reported stolen. 2) A finite resource. This is a printed CD-R that Blizzard likely didn't know existed.
It really doesn't matter. If they go to the police and say "we believe that to be stolen property, he's refusing to give it back", they're going to come and this whole argument will be rather specious.
At that point that would be really stupid of him, since now they know who he is.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
Maybe its a metaphor? A game of 19 years old could be say of 60 or 70 human age considering how fast game iterates.
What has happened to the pirate spirit that used to exist in this country? That was found booty, nothing more, nothing less. What a shame. Guess I'd better send back to Microsoft that copy of "Chicago" I got from the U. of Florida servers back in the day.
BlizzCon all expenses paid is several grands alone. Whether they should have shelled out for more is another question, but it's certainly not "$20 worth of flimsy plastic crap".
Right. When they fly people in (such as the press) the hotel accomodations alone ends up being worth 1.5-2k for the stay (3-4 nights, $500 ish a night at the Hilton anaheim), and I suspect he's going to be there a bit longer as they'll surely show him around the Blizzard campus in Irvine (and they did say they'll take him out for drinks etc). I would estimate they are likely spending up to 4k usd on this guy, just from what he said they're doing.
That's a joke for what that CD was worth in sheer value to the community of hackers and gamers and modders worldwide for years to come. Once he made that reddit post he sealed his fate. Should hsve just silently torrented it from a coffee shop over Tor. Silly kid.
I too wish I could be spending today looking at the SC gold master source code and playing with it, but it's really arrogant to say with definite certainty what this guy "should" have done.
Selfish for following the law and respecting the wishes of the authors of a work? Jesus, people are really performing some mental gymnastics to justify the hypothetical theft of property in this case in order to arrive at the conclusion that the finder is somehow being selfish.
Sometimes, not most of the time but sometimes, the wishes of an author are bad for the public. In a hypothetical scenario where an author wants to destroy all traces of their work, it's a bad thing to help them.
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.
Brahms destroyed a whole bunch of his works out of his own insecurity that they were not good enough. Brahms is now long dead but his (that were not destroyed) works live on.
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.
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.
I feel bad for this dude. There are a lot of bitter people that are mad at him for doing what he thought was right just because they don't agree with the moral and legal situation.
I would never want to go up against blizzard legal, but I have a hard time with the "trade secret" bit when the box came from eBay. The guy didn't sign a contract with blizzard.
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.
> I would never want to go up against blizzard legal, but I have a hard time with the "trade secret" bit when the box came from eBay. The guy didn't sign a contract with blizzard.
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.
Corporations have a bad track record at preserving stuff like this. Celluloid movies are a great example. And blizzard already lost this one once. But, yeah, this is ok.
That's the beauty of the legal system. The point is not that you are not breaking any laws. It's the process will exhaust you and force you to sign a deal or something. You always lose in this case.
It looks like someone found a copy of Blizzard's copyrighted source code, returned it to Blizzard, and got a reward. Why are people upset about this? It seems like the right thing to do to my mind. If someone found a copy of my own source laying in the street I'd be very happy if they returned it instead of releasing it on the net.
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.
But it's still owned by Blizzard. It doesn't matter how important it was, they still own it. I am 100% sure the guy did the right thing in returning it, not only legally but morally as well. If Blizzard were to MIT license it that'd be amazing but they're the only ones with the power to do so, no matter who finds a copy in a box.
It's unclear whether it's a legal obligation given that the disc was found, it's even less clear whether it's a moral obligation.
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.
It probably isn't strictly a legal obligation to return the physical disc barring stolen property stuff, but it would definitely be illegal to redistribute copyrighted code without a license to do so. Maybe you could claim some type of fair use but it wouldn't be transformative so I can't see how.
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.
> 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.
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.
> Returning it to Blizzard directly is good for Blizzard. Returning your code is good for you.
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.
So it's ok to take other people's property, as long as it's "culturally important"?
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?
The "out of China" part is the problem there. That's a problem that's pretty much irrelevant to a question of whether or not to distribute copies of data files.
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.
This is more like if an annotated original script of A New Hope were to find its way into the hands of a fan and s/he gave it back to Disney instead of copying it.
You don't have the right to determine whether someone else's source code is old enough that it's "ok" to steal. Not the legal right, and not the moral right either.
Obviously I don't have magic law-changing wishes from a lamp. Are you telling me I don't get to have an opinion wrt lawmaking? Because that would be kind of rude and antithetical to a democratic government.
If people want to promote the arts of game development, what does copying the code from a 20 year old game do to further today's useful arts? There are plenty of free game engines out there for someone to use and modify to build the next best game. Using buggy 20 year old code that can't run on modern computers doesn't really seem efficient.
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".
If you look at the other posts I made, it should be more clear.
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.
If I steal your house, that means that you lost it. The same isn't true for the code, as Blizzard would still also have it (along with the right to distribute binary copies of it, which is a million times more valuable).
this distinction does not matter, if you steal my code and release it I can sue for damages exactly the way I would if you were to somehow steal my house.
You don't see any difference between physical property and source code?
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.
So the splitting of the hairs you're attempting is to point out that IP typically expires at some point, and therefore we should all consider anything "old" as effectively having expired IP, regardless of whether that's true or not.
Blizzard's IP hasn't expired, your argument here holds no water.
IP is different that physical property. If someone takes something physical from anther person, the original owner loses that object. But if someone "takes" (copies) source code from someone, the original owner still has it. Now two people have it instead of one.
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.
It's an unimportant distinction for the purposes of this discussion.
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.
> So the splitting of the hairs you're attempting is to point out that IP typically expires at some point, and therefore we should all consider anything "old" as effectively having expired IP, regardless of whether that's true or not.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
> Releasing that code could affect the integrity of the competitive scene for SC.
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.
> But you won't accept that because this isn't really about what's fair, it's about what you want.
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.
"intellectual property rights" aren't even "property rights", they just confusingly use the same terms.
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).
> Your reasoning for that is "it degrades property rights", but you're for publicly releasing Blizzards property for "the good of the many"?
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.
> Returning it to Blizzard directly is good for Blizzard.
I'm not even sure if that's true. It's not like Blizzard didn't already have the source code.
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.
Someone could just reskin assets, change dialog, etc and revamp Starcraft into any RTS game. The AI and game code is what is really important for Blizzard to retain. It isn't the idea that people will compile Starcraft (Blizzard has released the game for free), it's the possibility that someone may profit off of all of Blizzard's efforts in writing the backend code for the game. I think it seems very likely that there would be a sudden influx of Starcraft clones and other RTS games made from the engine flooding every app store. Blizzard doesn't want people making money off their IP, plain and simple.
> I think it seems very likely that there would be a sudden influx of Starcraft clones and other RTS games made from the engine flooding every app store.
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.
> 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.
What if you said that after the copyright had expired? Would you still say it's immoral to release it against your wishes?
> 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.
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.
> That line of thought can get pretty dark pretty fast.
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.
It's not owned by Blizzard anymore, it is a major piece of human culture and should be treated as such.
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."
You seem to hold the right to property higher then anything else. It might shock you but the society has the right to disown you, if your property is needed elsewhere - for example to build a interstate.
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.
While that is true, I still count "getting into legal trouble" as a lose, as Blizzard already has well-payed lawyers. Even if you win in the end, you won't get the time and a compensation for the stress back.
If somebody leaked it, it wouldn't change the ownership or the copyright itself. It would still be Blizzards code. It simply wouldn't be a secret anymore.
Right and wrong is, roughly speaking, defined based on what is good for society as a whole, balanced against the needs of the individual. It has nothing to do with some higher or cosmic absolute truth.
Or don't share your values of right and wrong. It may surprise you, but people have different opinions on this matter and it frames what they do in life.
to be more exact, many people here seem to be incapable to tell right/wrong from legal/illegal or taking the easy/hard choice.
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.
Releasing the code isn't wrong because it's illegal. It's wrong because it's violating Blizzard's rights. They own that code, they created it and they have the right to control its distribution. Just because Starcraft is a culturally significant game doesn't mean it's ok to violate Blizzard's rights.
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.
> Releasing the code isn't wrong because it's illegal. It's wrong because it's violating Blizzard's rights.
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.
The law doesn't grant rights. It merely protects them. And the laws weren't created in a vacuum either. Laws that protect IP rights exist because we as a society believe that IP rights are something worth protecting. Yes, the laws can become divorced from what regular citizens believe they should be; the prime example here is copyright law being extended to cover a crazy amount of time. But I've never heard anyone before express the idea that someone should lose the right to control their own source code after 20 years have passed.
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.
It shouldn't be controversial to say that if you create source code, you own it. In this case the IP right mirrors the more conventional right of if you create a physical object, you own it. And this is no different than saying if you write a book, you own it. You're the first person I've ever see suggest that it's controversial to say that authorship == ownership. So no, I don't think I need to try and defend this position, because it's what literally the whole rest of the world already believes.
> It shouldn't be controversial to say that if you create source code, you own
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.
I didn't realize the FSF adopted quite that position, but I tend to ignore them anyway. Also, the FSF isn't arguing for abolishing copyright, merely reducing its term.
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.
> Also, the FSF isn't arguing for abolishing copyright, merely reducing its term.
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 think there's some ambiguity when you speak of "ownership of IP".
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.
> Laws that protect IP rights exist because we as a society believe that IP rights are something worth protecting.
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.
But in this case, that's Blizzard's right. They own it whether you like it or not. Just because something is important doesn't mean they should lose property rights to it.
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.
There's absolutely no chance in hell the dude saying he sent a copy to archive.org would have stopped those reddit threads from foaming at the mouth. People want the code, not the archive.
It's their right now, but in "life + 70 years" it could have been an incredibly valuable cultural heritage in the hands of the public. Now the game will die when Blizzard chooses to stop adapting the game to new platforms.
In this case, not necessarily. For example, here's a de/re-compiled version of Starcraft for the ARM/Linux-based OpenPandora, with no help from Blizzard:
It's Blizzard's right, but only insofar as that happens to be what copyright terms say right now. Also, something having intrinsic value to society at large outside of the ability of a private entity to benefit from ownership is, quite literally, the reason why people should lose property rights to copyrighted works at some point.
Blizzard does not lose their rights to it when somebody uploads the source code publically. If someone decides to use theor source code that they did not obtain a license for, blizzard can always sue.
Reading and learning from said source code is, and should not ever be illegal.
Intellectual Property isn't property, and publishing things does not deprive anyone of their property rights. It's a kludgy hack set up by Congress to prop
up industry.
Blizzard probably doesn't own all the source to SC1, they could have licensed code from other companies that they can't release even if they wanted to.
Correct: the right to distribute a game with that branding and those mechanics is valuable if you have the means (such as any copy of the source) to do so.
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.
No. They're using the same gameplay code as the original Starcraft:
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 have commercial value because it contains no secrets that would allow you to implement a competitor to Starcraft HD/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.
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.
Registering and getting copyright should depend on providing a no-strings-attached source format to a universal archival organisation. If you intend to sell your product or defend your copyrights you would have to have it registered and archived first. Should you stop selling the product the archive would be opened since you obviously aren't making money off the product anymore.
This would effectively limit copyright to the products' natural lifecycle and prevent hoarding the bits "just because I can", thanks to copyright imbalance.
This was an incredibly rare opportunity to archive something of cultural significance to millions of people
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.
We could of had enthusiastic fans see the inner workings of such a beloved game and tons of articles around the technical details, but instead we protected the intellectual property rights of a billion dollar corporation. Strictly by law, it was "the right thing to do", but it was a real missed historic opportunity.
As much as I would love to see blizzard's code, it is their intellectual property.
This is nothing similar to wikileaks. Wikileaks publishes information that should have been public because it is of public interest and relates to the public yet it is not available to the public.
In this particular and narrow instance, it does seem like Blizzard is making good on going back and updating and maintaining the old code. You can argue the reasons, I suppose, but this seems in line with exactly what copyright is supposed to be protecting here. They're reviving support for the game, updating it for modern machines to receive, and making the previous iteration accessible.
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.
It was being sold up until about a week ago. I'm sure that you can find a store that still sells it on CD.
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.
Parent's usage of "Interest of the Public" here typically means "the welfare or well-being of the general public; commonwealth" and you seem to be meaning the "lot's of people are curious -- culturally significant" kind.
I'll agree it's an unfortunate thing that Blizzard hasn't released the code. Personally I'd love to get at Diablo 1's code too. Maybe they will one day, but that right is theirs even though they are a huge corporation. Copyright law doesn't care about that detail. This thread has a lot of people wanting the guy to go vigilante, which I just can't get behind.
I'm not going to berate the guy for doing what he thought was right, but reading this news doesn't exactly give me a warm fuzzy feeling. Just mixed feelings.
When, in 20 years, we're hearing that this disc got lost again sometime in the bankruptcy chain of Activision Blizzard, we'll see whether corporate archiving or vigilante illegal archiving is more effective.
Is there any risk that the compiled binaries, on millions of computers and available for free and legal download from Blizzard, will disappear in 20 years?
No. But the source is useful for other purposes than compiling , especially with original comments.
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!
It seems that you think that following the law is the right thing to do. That's an understandable point of view. But there's also something called civil disobedience. Sometimes the will of the commons should trump law. Is this one of those cases? Frankly, I don't know or care. But I think if you don't try to understand what you call the "vigilante" point of view, you're doing yourself a disservice.
How is it civil disobedience, if private citizen violates right of another private citizen (or in this case corporation)?
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
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.
> 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.
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.
I like your point. Were I the guy I'd have tried to push an agreement that they'd publish the source of their games once they had been discontinued for over 20 years or something like that.
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.
If something is culturally significant then it should be preserved and these two hyperlinks should easily make the case that preservation requires distribution.
You keep posting this as if it's relevant. Shit does happen, but it doesn't change the facts that Blizzard owns that code. Also, many in this thread are acting as if Starcraft itself is going to be destroyed thanks to this guy returning the code. You can download Starcraft for free from Blizzard [1] and they're releasing a remastered version soon [2]. 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.
People make mods for tons of games without source code. People are making up excuses and flimsy reasons to get what they want.
> Shit does happen, but it doesn't change the facts that Blizzard owns that code.
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.
Damn people are tearing this guy apart, the reddit threads are particularly brutal. It's a video game.
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.
It's actually pretty simple. If you find yourself in the same situation:
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.
I can't make you a legal guarantee of that, but Blizzard will not destroy the copy. It seems unlikely they'll release it any time soon given SC Remastered, but they're not idiots.
I highly doubt it's going to be removed from circulation forever. My guess is it'll be archived internally, the disc itself will end up in their campus museum, and at some point legal will sign off on releasing it to the public.
SC1 is coming up on its 20th anniversary next year, who knows what they'll do for the occasion.
Blizzard already has the source code, in fact it's actively being extended as part of a HD remaster right now.
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.
Yes, and when Blizzard notice that exact same source code you have conveniently appeared on the internet a few months later from an anonymous source, I'm confident they won't inform the police and sue me to fuck.
I would replace step 3 with framing it nicely and hiding it in in a corner in my attic. A couple centuries from now it will end up in a pawn shop somewhere
You buy a box of old documents on Ebay. It contains an original manuscript of The Fellowship of the Ring with J. R. R. Tolkien's edits and notes in the margins. Tolkien's estate demands the copy back so they can burn it. You should mail it to them because they own it, right? It's just a book, right?
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.
>>They owners shouldn't be able to destroy it for the same reason we have laws protecting monuments and historical sites.
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.
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.
Giving back the source code is like burying an ancient Egyptian mummy you just found. Of course the Pharaohs would protest you taking away the mummy but who cares? It is about preserving culture and making its intricate details visible to everyone.
Not like that at all. The source is Blizzard's intellectual property, doesn't matter where you found it (not to mention you're overestimating the cultural value of the source files).
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.
I can't find it viscerally in me to take moral issue with the guy releasing the code. I understand it belongs to Blizzard, but I just don't feel sorry for them. Not defending that, just stating a fact about the absence of an emotion in me.
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.
So, instead of giving back to their community, or giving some underprivileged kid an opportunity to have an amazing experience, or donating to Child's Play, or something for someone who might need some help, Blizzard instead pays for the expensive flight, hotel, con, and drinks for a 32 year old white male computer nerd who accidentally found a CD in a storage unit and then agonized over returning it until being threatened by a lawyer.
And everyone is upset - not from the waste of money or opportunity to do good, but upset that they didn't get to steal someone's property. This speaks volumes about that community's values.
edit: I hit the post rate limiter so I can't reply, so i'll add this: demographics have a direct correlation to opportunities people get (as every startup hiring manager knows) and his particular demographic gets the most benefit even though they need it the least. I'm not saying this as a sjw, I'm just sick of people like myself (also a 32 year old white male computer nerd) getting handed an unnecessarily gratuitous amount of favor while people who could actually use a hand get jack shit. Perhaps my feeling is misguided, but it still felt gratuitous and wasteful.
Wait, is the "32 year old white male computer nerd" just a drive-by stereotype, or did you actually research the real life information of this person just to be able to post this? I'm not sure which is worse.
> Blizzard instead pays for the expensive flight, hotel, con, and drinks for a 32 year old white male computer nerd who accidentally found a CD in a storage unit
I'm all for charity, but wait, so rewarding a person _actually involved_ and who actually did the good (for the company) deed is somehow bad these days?
Also, white male computer nerds are people too, you know.
I tend to feel the same whenever I visit a forum where the "general population" spends time. I learned though not to generalize this over whole demographics - it's just that shitty communities attract shitty people and reward increasingly shitty behaviour.
--
I'm all for diversity and equal opportunities, but making white males feel guilty for existing seems counterproductive to me.
Come on guys... Had any of you made Starcraft, you'd be very happy to have the disc back. Blizzard's behaved ok I believe in flying the guy to blizzcon and giving him the perks he got.
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.
Fair chance Blizzard expected he had at least made a copy. Their being so generous with gifts and inviting him to speak with him personally seems to me a desperate effort to generate even more loyalty in him, which is actually really smart. It's their best chance for very little money and effort to prevent this source code to circulate on the internet.
Thats C++ source from v1.00 pre-expansion, an early version that is quite not the polished game that v1.07/v1.08 was, written on pre-c++98 MSVC code by inexpirienced and overworked programmers, when win95 was the mainstream OS and 128mB of ram was plenty and 3D cards were luxury products(most used motherboard graphics).
When Windows 95 was the Mainstream OS 32 MB was what most people had and 64mb was plenty. Most people used PCI or VLB 2D graphics cards. There was simply not enough memory on the board for IGU. Most PCs had not even got USB by that point.
Many are blaming him for not releasing the source code anonymously.
Do you really think he had the knowledge to do that safely?
He would have already done that if he could. It's really simple, don't play with fire if you don't know how to handle it.
Wtf? Who make a "gold disc" for source code?? Wouldn't the gold master be compiled code? And who the fuck makes a "gold source" disc that's also "professionally printed"? That implies they gave the source to somebody to have the CD made. Yeah right. Also, the game takes up most of a CD, the assets would use far more space than that.
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.
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.
Fair points, but I don't think CD-R was ever used as a serious archive format. Even back then it was known that the inks were prone to fading.
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.
Archival purposes perhaps? I'd like to think that the process for Blizzard to create a CD wouldn't be too difficult.
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.
Umm .. I don't know who pissed in your corn-flakes, but your assumption that this is bullshit because you've never seen Gold Source Masters ever being made is highly, highly specious.
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".
If something is culturally significant then it should be preserved and these two hyperlinks should easily make the case that preservation requires distribution.
I think we are mixing two terms here: Intelectual Property and Trade Secrets.
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.
right, so now you're back to the whole "we should respect property rights... except in this one case, but I'm totally not going to just tell you it's because I prefer it that way! nosirreeeeeeeee! It's because after lots of hand waving morals and 20 years and coOOoooooOOOoode.".
The 20 years is irrelevant to this discussion. Blizzard owns the IP to the software and since ownership itself is a fairly central idea in our legal system the rest doesn't matter anywhere except in your head.
People should be allowed to own things, and they are allowed to own things, and they are allowed to protect themselves from people like you who think your rights and wants as an individual should outweigh their rights and wants as an individual.
Furthermore, just because you make a claim such as "there's no purpose to it being against the law" doesn't make it so.
IP rights go all the way back to the days of Rome, and you'll be hard pressed to find a society who doesn't have a system of laws surrounding IP. That's pretty fucking consistent for something that you claim "has no purpose".
Or maybe it does have a purpose and you're being purposefully obtuse because you want to put your grubby fucking hands on something that isn't yours.
I'm not arguing against the existence of all IP rights. I just think some of the inclusions and durations are wrong. I don't know why you're trying to strawman me into being anti-property and making this so personal. Would you be this rude if I was insisting on 28 years, the original limit? You act like the current copyright lengths are objectively correct, and anyone who disagrees is deluding themselves. Why? And for the record I actually don't want these starcraft files, if that information can let you see past the strawman you've made of me.
> 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. - FooBarWidget
> That degrades property rights, so it's bad for the many. - Dylan16807
Straight out of the horses mouth, that's not a strawman, it's literally what you said.
We shouldn't take money from the rich and give to the poor because property rights, but we should take source code from Blizzard and make it public even though Blizzard has property rights to said code because ... it's 20 year old code.
Which has nothing to do with anything, it's their property, they can do with it as they please.
>Straight out of the horses mouth, that's not a strawman, it's literally what you said.
>We shouldn't take money from the rich and give to the poor
You're ignoring the part where I said twice that taking money from all the rich with a tax would be okay. So "we shouldn't take money from the rich" is not my stance at all.
But sure I should explain a bit better.
Levying taxes on all the rich and giving to the poor is fine.
Taking money arbitrarily from one rich guy can degrade ownership-of-money, which is a bad thing.
Taking copyright away from all old code is fine.
Taking old code arbitrarily from one company can degrade ownership-of-old-code, but that's not really a bad thing, because that type of ownership is unimportant to society.
> You're ignoring the part where I said twice that taking money from all the rich with a tax would be okay
That isn't the point the person you were responding to was making. And you know it, but you're trying to weasel your way out of ridiculousness here.
> Taking old code arbitrarily from one company can degrade ownership-of-old-code, but that's not really a bad thing, because that type of ownership is unimportant to society
Tell that to the banking industry.
And SC tournaments are still televised in South Korea (fyi).
The problem you're running into is that what you're arguing is completely arbitrary. COMPLETELY arbitrary. "old code" doesn't mean shit when we have companies that are still running code that's well over 20 years old.
It's arbitrary on your part because you have an agenda and you're willing to ignore Blizzards rights to code they paid to have produced.
What do I know? I seriously need you to explain what you imagine I'm saying.
> Tell that to the banking industry.
A bank using 30 year old code does not mean that the IP rights to that code are worth a single penny. They use it because they need their systems to be bug-compatible with what they have been doing for decades, and they would not lose competitive advantage if they no longer had copyright over that code.
> And SC tournaments are still televised in South Korea (fyi).
The source code hypothetically being public domain wouldn't affect the art assets, and wouldn't affect the monetization of those tournaments in any way.
> It's arbitrary on your part because you have an agenda
Are you completely opposed to the idea that different realms of copyright might have different ideal lengths of time? There's basically a 0% chance that the current copyright lengths are ideal now and forever.
> They use it because they need their systems to be bug-compatible with what they have been doing for decades, and they would not lose competitive advantage if they no longer had copyright over that code.
You mean in the same way Google is going after Uber for stealing their intellectual property?
You're unreasonable, I'm done with this conversation.
> By the time we hit a similar number of years, those patents will be expired and Uber will be allowed to use the designs.
Bullshit.
The IP is still legally owned by someone else, and they're suing based up on that IP, not just because. The age of the code or technology doesn't enter into it.
I think the copyright on code should be as short as patents. Nice and simple.
Law is hard to do right. Some parts do good and some parts don't. The first few years of code copyright do good. As far as I know the rest of those years don't.
The age isn't relevant, what's relevant is whether the patent/copyright currently exists and who holds said patent/copyright.
And before you continue with this silly argument about age, copyright and patents can be invalidated 2 days after the claim is made. The law doesn't ask how old they are, the law asks if the copyright/patent is still in effect.
You want it to be about the age because you're pushing an agenda, but the law doesn't care about age.
Google isn't going after Uber on the basis of the tech being new, they're going after Uber on the basis of their existing intellectual property.
306 comments
[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 208 ms ] threadValve 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.
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.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamecollecting/comments/640iem/foun...
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamecollecting/comments/68xzxt/star...
$0?
Any modder utilizing the source code would most likely receive a swift Cease & Desist for using their code without permission.
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.
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.
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.
https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/threads/starcraft.73844/
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...
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.
What an age to live in when people are considering theft a good thing.
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.
[1]: https://starcraft.com/en-us/articles/20674424
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.
[1]: https://starcraft.com/en-us/articles/20674424
[2]: https://starcraft.com/en-us/
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.
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.
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.
And everyone is upset - not from the waste of money or opportunity to do good, but upset that they didn't get to steal someone's property. This speaks volumes about that community's values.
edit: I hit the post rate limiter so I can't reply, so i'll add this: demographics have a direct correlation to opportunities people get (as every startup hiring manager knows) and his particular demographic gets the most benefit even though they need it the least. I'm not saying this as a sjw, I'm just sick of people like myself (also a 32 year old white male computer nerd) getting handed an unnecessarily gratuitous amount of favor while people who could actually use a hand get jack shit. Perhaps my feeling is misguided, but it still felt gratuitous and wasteful.
I'm all for charity, but wait, so rewarding a person _actually involved_ and who actually did the good (for the company) deed is somehow bad these days?
Also, white male computer nerds are people too, you know.
Are they, though? Some of the ones on reddit seem like animals.
I tend to feel the same whenever I visit a forum where the "general population" spends time. I learned though not to generalize this over whole demographics - it's just that shitty communities attract shitty people and reward increasingly shitty behaviour.
--
I'm all for diversity and equal opportunities, but making white males feel guilty for existing seems counterproductive to me.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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.
https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/tough-times-on-the-road-to-...
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.
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.
looks like they finally found that long lost source code.
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.
The 20 years is irrelevant to this discussion. Blizzard owns the IP to the software and since ownership itself is a fairly central idea in our legal system the rest doesn't matter anywhere except in your head.
People should be allowed to own things, and they are allowed to own things, and they are allowed to protect themselves from people like you who think your rights and wants as an individual should outweigh their rights and wants as an individual.
Furthermore, just because you make a claim such as "there's no purpose to it being against the law" doesn't make it so.
IP rights go all the way back to the days of Rome, and you'll be hard pressed to find a society who doesn't have a system of laws surrounding IP. That's pretty fucking consistent for something that you claim "has no purpose".
Or maybe it does have a purpose and you're being purposefully obtuse because you want to put your grubby fucking hands on something that isn't yours.
> That degrades property rights, so it's bad for the many. - Dylan16807
Straight out of the horses mouth, that's not a strawman, it's literally what you said.
We shouldn't take money from the rich and give to the poor because property rights, but we should take source code from Blizzard and make it public even though Blizzard has property rights to said code because ... it's 20 year old code.
Which has nothing to do with anything, it's their property, they can do with it as they please.
>We shouldn't take money from the rich and give to the poor
You're ignoring the part where I said twice that taking money from all the rich with a tax would be okay. So "we shouldn't take money from the rich" is not my stance at all.
But sure I should explain a bit better.
Levying taxes on all the rich and giving to the poor is fine.
Taking money arbitrarily from one rich guy can degrade ownership-of-money, which is a bad thing.
Taking copyright away from all old code is fine.
Taking old code arbitrarily from one company can degrade ownership-of-old-code, but that's not really a bad thing, because that type of ownership is unimportant to society.
That isn't the point the person you were responding to was making. And you know it, but you're trying to weasel your way out of ridiculousness here.
> Taking old code arbitrarily from one company can degrade ownership-of-old-code, but that's not really a bad thing, because that type of ownership is unimportant to society
Tell that to the banking industry.
And SC tournaments are still televised in South Korea (fyi).
The problem you're running into is that what you're arguing is completely arbitrary. COMPLETELY arbitrary. "old code" doesn't mean shit when we have companies that are still running code that's well over 20 years old.
It's arbitrary on your part because you have an agenda and you're willing to ignore Blizzards rights to code they paid to have produced.
What do I know? I seriously need you to explain what you imagine I'm saying.
> Tell that to the banking industry.
A bank using 30 year old code does not mean that the IP rights to that code are worth a single penny. They use it because they need their systems to be bug-compatible with what they have been doing for decades, and they would not lose competitive advantage if they no longer had copyright over that code.
> And SC tournaments are still televised in South Korea (fyi).
The source code hypothetically being public domain wouldn't affect the art assets, and wouldn't affect the monetization of those tournaments in any way.
> It's arbitrary on your part because you have an agenda
Are you completely opposed to the idea that different realms of copyright might have different ideal lengths of time? There's basically a 0% chance that the current copyright lengths are ideal now and forever.
You mean in the same way Google is going after Uber for stealing their intellectual property?
You're unreasonable, I'm done with this conversation.
Bleeding edge technology does not even resemble decades-old COBOL bugs.
By the time we hit a similar number of years, those patents will be expired and Uber will be allowed to use the designs.
You've yet again strawmanned me into being against all IP, and not just decades-old technical IP.
Bullshit.
The IP is still legally owned by someone else, and they're suing based up on that IP, not just because. The age of the code or technology doesn't enter into it.
Atleast we agree now, the age of the code is irrelevant.
I think the copyright on code should be as short as patents. Nice and simple.
Law is hard to do right. Some parts do good and some parts don't. The first few years of code copyright do good. As far as I know the rest of those years don't.
And before you continue with this silly argument about age, copyright and patents can be invalidated 2 days after the claim is made. The law doesn't ask how old they are, the law asks if the copyright/patent is still in effect.
You want it to be about the age because you're pushing an agenda, but the law doesn't care about age.
Google isn't going after Uber on the basis of the tech being new, they're going after Uber on the basis of their existing intellectual property.