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Now there can be a new villain group: ScoreTech
If score doesnt release code out soon it will be playing with fire. If ncsoft gets a C&D letter to them telling them not to release before they do, it will be all over but the lawsuits.If its already in the wild they might have some cover. They should have anonymously done it 3 or 4 years ago.
This sure seems to be stirring up the community, especially since it is a community where news comes dripping out slowly for the past few years. It can be fun or maddening to run around building into each other's conspiracy theories and coming up with hypothetical scenarios, and I'm not saying that we shouldn't talk about this, but I just don't want this news to detract anything from the hard work that MWM has been doing /for us, for years, for free/. We have poured a lot of effort and a lot of hope into City of Titans, and I still think this is the most promising project to get a home for our community. If next week, CoT announced that it was ready to launch something that we could all play, and then SCORE opened up their community for everyone to play the old game, I know where my cards would land. As for me and my crew, we still believe in the leadership and the vision of the people who are making a home for us and giving us something to believe in.
I don't post on here very often, but I have followed this project since the kickstarter, and being the luddite that I am, it is one of the tabs that I have permanently open on my phone so I don't have to figure out how to open it and log in every time. Personally I am much happier being here, believing in a project envisioned and discussed by all of us working toward a common goal, as opposed to having been playing the game that we all miss so much, jealously guarding our secret from all of our old friends. I'm not angry with them for wanting to keep their game, but I am thankful for the path that we, the community of backers and team members for City of Titans, have been on. This news is barely a blip on my radar and I am just hoping that our community can maintain our unity until and beyond the launch of our new game.
Thank you to the Missing World Media team for your leadership. I hope you do not get discouraged by the news coming out, and that you all know we are still behind you and pushing for your success.
A big part of the reason why news has been dripping out so slowly is the censorship, gaslighting, and general information control work of the evil conspiracy that is "stirring up the community".
It is hard to talk about something when you either don't know it exists, or any voice is immediately silenced or discredited or both.
And that, is what is so shocking and upsetting about this whole affair.
It's not that a secret CoH server existed for years, though one wonders why the source code was never released into the wild anonymously at some point over that period, especially if preserving the game was, as is being claimed, the primary goal. The issue is that there was a shockingly well-executed, pervasive and persistent disinformation campaign that went beyond keeping the project a secret and into the realm of stifling any discussion of the possibility of private servers existing at all.
And the thing is, what do they have to show for it? They got to have their exclusive little club for a few years, but now the C&D hammer is going to get dropped on their heads, and since they never saw fit to distribute the code, it'll likely be lost forever. Even better, the way they handled all of this may well end up destroying the CoH remnant community because of the extremely deceptive behavior that has been exposed. What's even more alarming is that there were apparently hundreds if not thousands of people that were privy to this and just... went along with it.
Wow, there is a really low bar for evil conspiracies these days.
The funny thing is, if this were better documented, it would make fantastic fodder for social research. You have a pretty textbook case of a conspiracy to hide information from the public in order to protect the interests of a select few. Except, the privilege being so jealously protected in this case was the ability to keep playing a 20 year old video game.
Acts can be considered as a positive or negative regardless of their magnitude. Being an evil conspiracy does not mean you have to kill or enslave the whole world. If you kick puppies and other people help you to do it while lying about it, yeah, you've got an evil conspiracy.
You can be good without revolutionizing history too.
As Lothic mentioned before the whole situation is pretty low stakes but that doesn't cast the people involved in a positive light. It just makes them and evil AND petty.
Also claiming that no one should care about a 20 year old video game is itself pretty funny coming from people frequenting discussion platforms specifically originating from that very topic. Platforms which frequently involve conversations about the good old days and how great things might be in a theoretical future where we can all revel in such times again. The irony seems to be missed every time someone says it.
In both a moral and legal sense, the aggrieved party here is NCSoft. No one else is entitled to this code. The outrage you're peddling here is hilarious because it's not about theft. It's about theft and not sharing the stolen goods.
Saying that City of Heroes is a "20-year old video game" is just a statement of fact.
Frankly, I wouldn't want to play on a resurrected CoH server even if one opened to the public tomorrow. The game was amazing while it lasted, and I'll hold on to those fond memories, but *that* game is never coming back. The community is scattered to the winds and most probably wouldn't come back, and good luck getting people to trust each-other after this. Technology has moved on. Gaming has moved on. The world has moved on. I have moved on. I follow City of Titans not because I want CoH back, but because I want to have the option of playing a superhero MMO that I actually enjoy and doesn't exist in indefinite maintenance mode. I want a game that incorporates all of the lessons drawn from the two decades of improvements in technology and game design and development since CoH went live. I want new experiences, not nostalgia that usually doesn't even hold up well under scrutiny.
"Such times" will not come again. Clinging to the past and hoping to bring back some idealized form of it is foolish. Worse, it's impossible. What we can do is work toward building something new and better. With any luck, CoT will succeed and build a dedicated community and identity of its own, instead of perpetually living in the shadow of a game that is long gone.
My understanding is that SCORE had, not only the game server-code, but Character data, which could be considered much more proprietary. Enough so that NCSoft (The DEVIL!) would be practically required by law to protect it from any other entity.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Hardly. The outrage being thrown around by the truckload on a ton of platforms by everyone on the internet that still remembers CoX is largely stemming from the vile treatment received. Sure, lots of people are sad they can't play the game, and having it waved in front of them and having some distant, easily dehumanized villain yelling "neener neener you can't have it" is going to upset them. Some really sad folks have even come out begging to be let into the clubhouse, and even some pathetic attempts to placate his ego to that end. The gaslighting hasn't entirely stopped, there are still examples of those still sucking up to Leandro.
Anyone can claim they don't care about it now that they know they can't have it. That is the definition of sour grapes.
I'm excited for CoT (and other projects like SEGS) but to pretend that people's upset over this has no value or the feelings of those involved aren't genuine is heading back towards the territory of discrediting people that inflamed this situation. I know this comment was directed at me in particular, but "outrage peddling"? Really? Have you looked at what is going on? I might as well be a frozen piece of rock for all the emotion I've displayed relative to the community at large. Check out reddit, facebook, any number of relevant discords or other forums.....the internet is lit up. It isn't hard to understand the reasons why. Instead this comes across at sneering as the unhappiness of the peasants.
What I believe is more worrying is the idea that they might even have account data - though that seems to be more of an allegation rather than a firm fact.
If that is true thats really dangerous in regards to what details were leaked or given to them - how many people had access to that data in the first place over at either ncsoft or cryptic because if it came from the hands of a staff member that would quite possibly narrow it down to a select few.
They admitted they have account/character data, and that was proven with screenshots and emails. They claim not to have financial/personal data. It wouldn't really make sense for them to have it, usually billing and accounting aren't handled by game devs or sysadmins. It is hard to know for sure of course, since proving a negative is difficult and the source of this claim is, to put it mildly, unreliable.
Well, Leandro is the only public face of SCORE right now, so he's likely going to have to divorce himself from any admin/controlling role (that may explain the servers' current downtime) as he's the only one that NCSoft could deliver a C & D letter to. He'd have no obligation to relay it to other members of the organization, and if this downtime that they've alluded to is associated with "changing" things he's connected with, he could honestly say that he has no ability to disclose who hosts it, where, or how anyone can get in touch with those parties.
The concern I have is there's still a chance that the full data disclosure might cause harm.
Note how Leandro denied ever receiving the personal / payment history, but does not deny the rest. The things that are claimed and backed up in the video strongly suggest they really got access to source code and server data, and that means a breach by somebody within Paragon Studios. Even all these years later, that disclosure can be career-ending if the responsible actor is identified- and potentially even career-damaging to anyone who was at Paragon around that time.
The game industry as a whole is very paranoid and considers all but the most celebrated developers as disposable. No one person is THAT critical to a project that a paranoid boss wouldn't find a reason to replace them if they thought there was a chance that they'd participated in this kind of breach.
Now that it's out in the open, though, you'd think it's safe to share, but if I was in this position (I'm not) and I had been entrusted with this (I wasn't) I'd be very reluctant to do so until I'm 100% sure that any informative timestamps, any legacy check-in/out file metadata, and any possible steganographic fingerprinting that might have been imprinted (yes, I'm that paranoid) was GONE before letting anything like this out of my custody. I'd want to be 100% sure that nothing I put out there helps point to the person who entrusted me with this.
Yes, I do believe that the private servers have a better chance to survive if the code gets distributed- and I'd really like to re-visit many of my old characters and friends (and finish some never-completed stories)-- more than enough to challenge the property-rights claims of NCSoft, but not at the risk of anyone's livelihood.
The silver lining in all this is that the old missions, lore, NPCs, TFs, etc. are not destroyed, overwritten or languishing in the basement of an NCSoft warehouse. They are accessible, at least in some form, to at least a section of the community. While SEGS themselves are apparently not affiliated with SCORE, and are not going to be touching any of that IP (and for good reason), it may now be possible for someone else to fully re-create CoX with the tools they provide and that old server info. At their own risk of course.
At the same time, characterizing anyone who relates to or empathizes with the SCORE developers and Leandro as "sucking up to" him comes across badly.
You may have not intended that statement toward my kind of rationalizing, but it feels you did. To write it off as it sucking up in the hopes of server access is rather ignorant. SCORE managed to run a secret server for hundreds (if not thousands, if accounts are accurate) of players for years without disclosure. That takes a level of security mindedness to pull off. Leandro's gmail was shared on facebook and his name is tied to every news article. The man's not going to trust a single person approaching him right now and should DISTRUST anyone who tries to worm their way in for months if not years. The level of scrutiny on new users should be at a whole new level of paranoia.
I can't imagine many people expressing any level of empathy for SCORE is thinking "man, now's my chance to get in his good graces!"
Had I been entrusted with this breach, I imagine I'd have been paralyzed by fear of being discovered and what that discovery could mean from the people that gave it to me. I'm an overplanner, so I'd have planned contingency upon contingency for every possible person added to the server. If my paranoia won out, I'd probably still be stuck at only two dozen people on the server and spend most of my time tracking back random pings to my IP address in fear of being discovered than I'd get out of playing the game. On the other side, I'm also too much of a sucker for a sob story, so I'd likely have over-shared to everyone I heard pining for Paragon, gotten tricked and received with dozens of C & D orders in the first year... working through contingencies A through PQQ in short order. That server would have gone down more than a... s(orry, family forum.)
Point is: I'm not sucking up to Leandro and SCORE, but I can sure see the pressures they may have been under, and although I'm disappointed at their handling of what was entrusted to them, I'm also disappointed of the vitriol directed at them.
The idea of a C&D being a threat as an excuse to remain secret has largely been debunked since it was shown that the server was hosted in a country and with a service that wouldn't care much about any legal action from NCSOFT (most private servers do this). While it would be possible for someone to cause enough of a stink to get it taken down it would be more cost and effort than it is worth. This is a big part of why private servers for other games work. They would likely send a nastygram to him and may still do that, but it wouldn't stop him from moving the server hosting at most and there isn't much else they can do.
Leandro isn't terribly stupid and planned for that sort of thing. Any time he's tried to play the victim or take the high road about being the savior has been a lie.
He also kept creepy ass obsessive records about his co conspirators that borders on meme-y pepe silvia from always sunny levels. The guy was obsessed about control and power and nothing else.
I didn't mean anyone here was sucking up to Leandro, sorry if it came across that way. I meant there are literally people posting in reddit and elsewhere saying they would do just about anything for access.
I can joke around a lot but there are people actually saying some pretty pathetic things to suck up to him, and also people trying to redirect and gaslight blaming the leaker and community at large. Not a ton of people, but it is happening. I realize not everyone is following this as closely as I am. I should have been more clear that the sycophants I was referring to aren't from this thread.
Also, to specifically answer your worries about being discovered and having everything be ruined: the simple answer to that is to anonymously share the code immediately. Then you have zero worries about being caught since A. No one can ever stop an infinite amount of people with the data and B. You become a much smaller target in a sea of other targets.
Yes.
And far easier than what we* had in mind before.
I always expected a SEGS-like platform that was set to work as a generic engine and thus be more able to weather takedown notices. it'd have an empty content engine, but something others could populate. A group of us spent the last few months of CoH running through every** mission and task force of every contact in the game with loggers and demorecording to capture every dialogue, map used, enemy spawns, locations, etc, thinking that info could be used to populate a naked SEGS engine someday.
*- yes,we. I'll admit to that.
**- every? yes. some poor SOB's spent their last few chances to play the game running through the original Positron TF... just for you. :D
Noted. thanks, and no offense taken. Thanks for keeping it clean
At the risk of spamming the thread, a C&D works in several ways, and only one of them really affects the hosting provider. That is certainly one way- and often the easier path since these organizations have no duty to break the law for their clients, if their country recognizes that law. It's usually easier than concretely identifying the persons who admin that server IRL. (Un)fortunately, Leandro was outed.
With his real identity disclosed and his role practically self-acknowledged, he could get served directly, with lawyers citing his clearly documented leadership in this. He'd likely refuse to comply or pretend that he's no longer part of this after his outing, but if NCSoft wanted, they could press the issue. Since the statute of limitations on the property theft is probably* over, he probably wouldn't be able to use the (US) 5th amendment to legitimately withhold information. That only works when there's some risk of criminal prosecution. He could be held in contempt of court for not answering certain questions like disclosing his other contemporaries who he handed this off to.
Of course, that's all only if NCSoft plays hardball... or at least needs a little bit of a show here. Why would they? Well, they still have one live active trademark ("City of Heroes") in the USPTO database, and not defending ones' claim can have negative effects.
woulda been cool to be able to play tho. also hi
I have a question about the character/account data...
The video shows all the characters the guy had. As I recall, characters were on different shards? Freedom, Virtue, Liberty, and so forth. I know I had several of the same character at different levels on different shards. Does this mean that SCoRE is running that many for just 3,000 players? Seems to be a waste of resources.
So, me being very unknowledgable about these things, would we end up with multiple copies of the same character?
City of heroes had a character transfer tool. I used it mostly to copy characters to the beta server. It seems like they have the databases for the different servers characters, but that doesn't mean they have the shards running. They probably reused the transfer tool to access the character information in each server and copy it to the instance they're using, much like how the beta transfer worked.
Thank you. I forgot about that tool though I had used it many times.
I look at the news of the private server as hope. CoX still lives. I look forward, though, to CoT. Better graphics, a more robust character creator. Hopefully a more robust base builder as well. New. Shiney. Glorious.
CoX introduced me to my Supergroup friends. We still group and game in other games, we RP, we chat all the time. We exchange birthday and Christmas gifts. One travels every year from Australia to visit the rest of us in the US. CoX will alwsys hold a place in our hearts, but we don't need CoX to keep us together.
But yeah, we want CoT. The Character Creator will be keeping us busy for hours (and one member may end up staying up for days tooling around in it the first time). :)
You make a good point about serving the c&d directly. I think Leandro is in Argentina though? So the legal situation may be different to some degree?
He doesn't seem overly concerned about it since he outed himself.
edit: He did share alleged death threats from someone allegedly nearby, and apparently angry internet people found his address, family addresses, license plates, etc within a matter of hours...
...but while I believe people are crazy and enough crazy people with free time and motivation can definitely do that, he also loves to portray himself as a victim when anyone questions his status as savior of the world from what we've seen so far...
Seems like there is another point of vulnerability to me in the subreddit mods. Couldn't NCSoft go after them as co conspirators if they desired? Seems like lots of juicy info could be had if one of them turned.
Pro-tip, it's easy to take something as a personal insult when the word "you" is used
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[color=red]PR, Forum Moderator[/color]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/desvipers-creative-impulsivity]My Non-Canon Backstories[/url]
Avatar by MikeNovember
There was something of a revolution, all the reddit mods fled like cowards and deleted their accounts except one, who stepped down and handed moderation over to new people from the community.
It helped to quiet some things down, especially since some of those new mods were relatively known and one works on SEGS for instance, but.....people are having a hard time trusting anything.
I haven't been able to peel my eyes and ears from this dumpster fire drama for about 48 hours now. It has kind of consumed me. I guess I'm a huge nerd but this is crazy stuff.
edit: hooooboy things have been blowing up. Leandro posted some stuff that came across to a lot of people as manipulative again, but he likely just posted to show his human side of the story too? He was showing pictures of his dead dog and talking about dying friends and some people went ballistic attacking his dog....found some of his friends and scared the hell out of them..he says he hasn't gotten to sleep but two hours lately from the phone and other attacks...
Now he's in the SEGS discord and there is....actually some sane conversation going on. Mostly.
edit again: Oh hey he came in voice chat and this drama could be an HBO series.
oh shit he's actually talking about releasing stuff (after he gets a chance to remove timestamps and other references that could link back to his source). People have brought up the fact that he could have done that half a decade ago....and he's acknowledged it...and he's also acknowledged that he is doing this specifically because he wants the harassment to stop...now he's getting really interesting and talking shop about the hilarious was the game was put together, for example, using excel to build the missions.
The guy has been through some shit lately. He sounds crushed. I feel bad for him but also he created the situation and only opened conversation when it started to hurt so....oof.
edit the third: I think nerd history is being made here. He's on the verge of releasing on the code and the SEGS crew are going to try to help calm down the chan/etc crazies....and now some mystery guy showed up in chat with knowledge and proof he could only have if he knew the original code...so SOMEONE ELSE apparently had a copy of the code too...or....worked on it?... and SEGS set them up in a private room to talk...
the fourth: then someone bust in yelling not to distribute the code because he was in talks with NCsoft to buy the rights and Leandro showed that he had been contacted several times by the guy before, always saying the same thing, never with any results, and said this was part of the reason he hadn't released in 6+ years....the whole thing was very weird.
Thanks for the play-by-play there. I would have liked to have been there. it's disappointing that it came to this shitstorm, but perhaps this gives a path forward.
The timestamps editing and such that he mentioned makes sense to delay this. there's likely a good chunk of the code that's never needed modification, and it's amazing what you can derive with a few open source digital forensics tools. Just a single timestamp for "check-in" date alone would let them know "ok, who did we have working on this at this time, and who had access" and if it's at all near the shutdown, that person is exposed.. or a small group of people get scrutinized to the point that it affects their current jobs. That could still happen- the fact that this unknown-sourced data breach occurred is enough to cast doubt on anyone who might have had Paragon Studios on their resume if this gets widely circulated in the industry. Game companies don't take risks on this, but hopefully we can minimize the future risk.
Once this is public, there will be an urge to discuss it openly as well. I strongly advise against it. If anything, the need for secrecy and paranoia should increase.
Compartamentalize. Place insulation between SEGS, CoT (and all the spiritual successors) and this code. Limit future conversation of the source from these forums, (and reddit, and SEGS chat, etc). If you DO communicate about this, don't use the same public face as you do on those other forums. Don't let anything tie them together. No matter how "conspiracy theory" it may sound, the more pieces of yarn that NCSoft can pin between X and the misappropriated source code, the more credibility they can put behind any claim that one of these successors benefited from it. If you're a volunteer on any of these projects, do not participate or handle it at all. If you're also participating/ volunteering in community X and community X takes a more permissive tone toward that source code, insulate yourself further. Leave nothing that can be perceived as link between that community and anything else. You may think you can discipline yourself to be sure that nothing you see even subconsciously copies over, but the appearance of impropriety can lend weight to their claim. consider any link betwen them as toxic.
Remember what the threat is. You may not see action from NCSoft or think they care, but they ARE and will ALWAYS BE the Sword of Damocles for all these projects. These links may sound tenuous and frivolous, but they won't have to have a winning case against any of these other projects if they decide to move against them -- just deeper pockets and enough suspicious linking to keep them from being laughed out of court.
It wouldn't actually surprise me to learn there might have been several independent "horders" who managed to grab the original CoH code/data before the end. Sure we're now learning about what Leandro and SCORE specifically did with it but let's not forget there were several months between the time we knew NCsoft was shutting the game down and when the game was finally shut down. There must have been plenty of time, opportunity and motivation for multiple Paragon Studio employees to have "illegally borrowed" the baseline before the machines were turned off.
So while Leandro et.al. did whatever they did there could very well be other silent people out there who effectively saved the game to a proverbial thumb drive and just sat on it doing nothing for the last 6+ years. I suppose the real question should be what possible intentions these potential "silent archivers" might have going forward.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Oh come join in, the drama is still going, I haven't slept or eaten this whole time running on adrenaline, Leandro is till here in the SEGS discord and still talking and there is some amazing progress.
Speaking of which are there any CoT devs that have experience with Visual Studio 2005? There's a bit of a roadblock scrubbing the codebase to make sure there are no references to sources or SCORE people before it can be released, which can be done with some scripting. Leandro is pretty sure he's cleaned it up now but he needs a trustworthy capable peer to help double check. SEGS people can't help because if they touch the code they poison SEGS for legal reasons.
I can give myself a crash course, I'm no stranger to other scripting, but having someone with a more known community name with better experience would be ideal.
Despite the whole drama and things that have happened I've come to really like Leandro. Funny and smart. I haven't forgotten the situation and how it came to pass and that he admitted he only engaged the community at large when he felt pain himself (and his friends), but still. He's enjoyable to chat with and is now working with excited and passionate people in a positive environment.
Edit: scratch the 2005 knowledge I can fix this we basically just need someone with a known trusted name in the community willing to hold a hot potato that potentially risks ruining good people's careers and/or jail....
edit2: ok hot potato solved put this moment down in history..
There is still some work to be done before people will be able to actually see something but for now the city is safe and can basically never be killed again...
[img=400x400]https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/012/768/Kamspatacus.jpg[/img]
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Hahaha, yes, exactly
I hope that's ironic.....
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[color=red]PR, Forum Moderator[/color]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/desvipers-creative-impulsivity]My Non-Canon Backstories[/url]
Avatar by MikeNovember
please please please let someone make a home server version that can be run on a windows machine.I could spend now until cot is finished just making and running characters.Just me and my wife.(if I want to live)
EXACTLY!!!!!! People getting so bent because they weren't picked to be part of the bank robbery but I guarantee you as soon as the cops come they'll be glad they weren't part of it. The worst is the threats and internet bullying of those that may or may not be involved.....over a video game. Amazing!! I miss the game too but damn!!
"My momma always told me to beware of girls with enhancement diversification"
Yes and... yes, but it gets messy. Letter of the law is on NCSoft's side, but laws often lag behind tech and reasonable standards. Much of the outrage at NCSoft during the shutdown was that they were entrusted with that community and they betrayed that trust- shutting down the game (that was paid for) and destroying the community. Many people believe that the responsible action would be for NCSoft to have divested itself from the property in some way (including selling it, or letting the community aquire it, etc) when it lost interest in being the community platform's custodian, not destroy it. Laws of property and verbage in the SLA support NCSoft's decisions, but many SLA's are found to be invalidated or unenforceable. Property laws can be changed.
Participants in these rogue servers are more likely to see themselves in league with the activists that oppose unjust laws and immoral corporations, not bank robbers, but self gratification does play a much larger part than your typical selfless protester. The truth is somewhere in the middle
https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/18/whats-going-on-with-city-of-heroes-now-this-game-is-a-unicorn/
Interview with Leandro detailing some things such as potential releasing of the code, etc.
NCSOFT had offers of a considerable sum of money for the IP. They chose to not accept it for obscure reasons of their own. They chose to negotiate in bad faith to keep this going.Today that IP is worth pennies on the dollar. They chose poorly.
I think regardless of Leandro's actual intentions with SCORE (good, bad or otherwise) there will always be a lingering doubt that he was ever keeping his operation secret and cult-like for the "overall benefit" of the [i]entire[/i] community. At this point he's really basically in a "damned if he did OR didn't" position that I'm dubious he'll ever completely overcome.
I've decided I'm reserving my ultimate judgement about what I think about SCORE until the chaos dies down and we see if the CoH code actually gets spread around in a more overtly open fashion. I'm still honestly not sure I'd bother to "play" the game again as seriously as I did before the shutdown but it might be interesting to live in a reality where I know that if I actually wanted to play CoH again it would be relatively easy to accomplish without having to deal with the extra hurdles/drama of a secretive, self-appointed underground cabal.
I think it's generally obvious that NCsoft totally "mismanaged" the entire CoH shutdown and the consequences afterward.
Not only did they knee-cap a viable game that probably still had several more years of profitable life to it but after the fact they stubbornly decided not sell the IP rights at the point when those IP rights were probably the most valuable. As you implied it was nothing but a lose-lose for NCsoft - they needlessly pissed off loyal customers and then preceded to lose a bunch of money hanging onto the IP that's likely now worth only a tiny fraction of its 2012 value. Sucks to be them...
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I disagree completely, if I understand your point right. NCSoft has 0 obligation to sell or give up the code just because they closed down the game. The 'community' holds no weight in what should happen. The law is 100% on NCSofts side until whatever IP laws are expired. It is their game, 100%. No part of it is owed to the community just because they feel angry about losing the game. Their 'trust' that they feel was breached means nothing, legally speaking. There is nothing that the community can do nor is there anything that they should be able to do as they hold no right over any part of the game. It is NCSofts game and the can do with it as they please.
Sure I hate what they did and I agree it seems like a dick move and I would love if they legally released it or sold it...but to say that there should be some way the community can take it from them undermines the freedom of personal property.
EDIT ADDITION: Just because the participants see themselves as a sort of Robin Hood doesnt absolve them from the crime. There is no justification they can give that makes what they are doing right. And its ludicrous to compare them with activists opposing unjust laws. There is nothing morally sound here.
Compulsively clicking the refresh button until the next update.
The CoH code has been released.
https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/18/the-city-of-heroes-private-server-team-has-released-its-code-to-the-world-but-not-the-characters/
EDIT: A partial, albeit large, amount of the code, but not the complete code.
Of course the obvious question now is how much of this will the other existing entities (MWM, SEGS, etc.) look at as a "Rosetta stone" for reverse-engineering purposes? Even if those groups can't literally "cut-n-paste" that old code into their current projects I would think being able to look at that code would be invaluable for the successor efforts.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
The comments here make me appreciate THIS community. I usually hang out on Reddit but one morning I thought I woke up in the Dark Dimension full of Mindless Ones that were, as is their nature, just blasting anything and everything they could. It has been a while since I read so much vitriol in one place and after listening to the first few minutes of the Discord chat, I could hear a person on the point of breaking(Leandro). It was absolutely disgusting to read personal attacks, conspiracy theories of who may have been involved, death threats,doxxing, etc. To do this to people over a game is something I want nothing to do with! All I could think was how was this behavior ok in the light of other misbehavior? I'm also of the same mind that only NCSoft is the only party with any true grievances. To everyone here, thank you for acting like a hero and not letting emotions get the best of you.
[b][color=red]Reward tactics as well as damage dealing.[/color][/b]
This was a big part of why the process took so long once Leandro made the decision to spread the code. The people that could do the most with it couldn't touch it for fear of any work they had done or would do being potentially illegal. SEGS wants to operate in the open, they don't want to be underground at all and don't want any legal trouble.
MWM and other "new game" efforts would have very little to gain from the code honestly. Going over a bunch of it with Leandro was *hilarious*. It has.....some issues. All code does to be fair, it is written by human beings, but....the only people that would get a huge benefit from it would be ones trying to specifically remake actual CoX itself. And SEGS won't touch it. I am 100% there will be additional reverse engineering efforts now though, and the SCORE folks are still going to have their own private setup they always had. They actually made some nice progress and improved a bunch of things. If I was going to play CoX on a private server I would probably want it to be using the upgrades Leandro and friends added.
There is room for them to use it, and someone definitely will! Reverse engineers usually have some people that look at it and then answer questions without passing on the code itself, so they can say they never actually looked at or used the code itself. But SEGS specifically didn't want to touch it at all.
Chase is spot on when it comes to the way culture and laws have been shifting. While the law is currently on the side of companies that do a lot of questionable things relevant to this discussion like charging you for something and having you sign a huge agreement no one reads saying you don't technically own it and they can take it away at any time, as it if was rented, often at the price of a full purchase and without any of the amenities or protections that would come with a traditional rental style arrangement....that is starting to shift as well. Slowly. In some cases. The same is true of IP rights and abandonware. Corporate interests spend tooooons of money bribing...I mean lobbying on these issues, and lots of activists spend a lot of volunteer hours.
As chase said, laws and policies are slow to be enacted and can change - and that usually comes about specifically because of lawsuits and challenges from people pushing boundaries and doing things that have popular support despite being of questionable legality. In most cases this isn't because activists did something that was heinous, it was the current climate that they found unacceptable and enough people agreed with them that there was social pressure to demand change. There have been cases relevant to this situation where judges have given a big old middle finger to companies that were taking advantage of people in obvious ways, such as having extremely long user agreements with outrageous things hidden in them, taking the concept of "fine print" to a new level, as one example. It has been a few years since I had to keep up with tort and contract law, perhaps someone else can continue this aspect of the discussion if they want.
On the flip side, with how many judge appointments have been held so that they could be appointed in this US administration specifically because they are friendly to big money interests.....we could very well see the legal climate turning sharply against popular opinion. Time will tell.
Folks, lets try to keep this from wandering into a conversation about politics.
[color=green]All Purpose Frog[/color]
Wait until you see the... nope, that would ruin the surprise.
For us at MWM? 0%. The word is, don’t look at, download, or in any way, interact with this code. Place 0 risk to the company and CoT.
We’re looking forward, not backward. We’ve already evaluated old data on the old game (not code, data) and have moved well beyond it.
I could quote a movie about something, something, the past, something, something, die, but you get it ;)
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
I mean we probably don't have to "...kill it, if you have to" :p
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[color=red]PR, Forum Moderator[/color]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/desvipers-creative-impulsivity]My Non-Canon Backstories[/url]
Avatar by MikeNovember
Anytime I've been introduced to a product's code, it usually is after a 30-minute preface apologizing for their code's quirkiness, as if I'm going to pass judgement. Every good coder I've met has been a perfectionist that (necessarily) gets their project yanked away before they're done with it... leaving them with this recurring fear that people will judge them badly for their code's lack of elegance. If it works, but is inelegant... it still works, and you're out of time. If it's a little buggy- well, you're still out of time, and we'll patch later. (Later, in this case, translates to "if someone important notices")
When I started in the industry, the adage was "good, fast, cheap. Pick two, you can't have all 3"
In reality, most of commercial code development seems to be "Pick one. The second's a stretch goal."
... and they always pick "cheap"
... and never reach the stretch goal.
Still, it doesn't hurt to tease them a little. If you ever meets a cryptic/paragon dev, maybe paraphrase star wars:
"You launched your game on THAT server code? You're braver than I thought!"
I don't think you understood his point at all, actually. People and, gasp, corporations have responsibilities and obligations that go beyond what they are legally forced to do. Just because you equate legalism and morality doesn't mean that stops.
Why do you have "community" in quotations?
Oh, because you're holding the idea of a "community" up as a ridiculous idea for babies. Deriding the foolish plebs who believe in the quote unquote "community."
Yes, and you'll notice that his post was partly concerned with changing laws. And yes, those laws should absolutely be changed. They are outdated and don't reflect any kind of sustainable view on ethics and consumer protection.
"Trust" is now a ridiculous idea for babies. You heard it here first, folks.
Welcome to late stage capitalism, the best the to ever happen.
Here's a good litmus test for "the right thing to do." Take a note, son. You're going to need this later.
Ask yourself:
Do others want this?
Would this benefit me?
Would this benefit them?
Does this not cause undue harm to anyone?
If you can answer yes to three of those four questions, it's probably maybe the right thing to do. If you can answer yes to ALL of them, like NCSoft absolutely can, it is indisputably the right thing to do. If you don't, then you've done the wrong thing. Just because they're not under a legal obligation to do so does not mean they're in the right. Just because you equate legalism with morality and capitalism with a good idea does not in any way change that.
lol
I bought a game in 2005 called City of Heroes. I actually have the box and disc sitting in the top of my closet right now. And now, despite whatever personal effort I exert, physical, mental, or financial, I can no longer play it. This happened because laws cannot adequately keep pace with an ever-evolving digital marketplace, and people are allowed to sell "subscriptions" and "licenses" to things that would, in the past, simply become your property upon purchase. This is about as anti-consumer as it gets, which is another way of saying that a corporation has restricted your freedom.
AlsopersonalpropertyisSatan'sillusionyesI'mahippie
I agree that it doesn't exactly have the gravitas of opposing Jim Crow laws in Alabama during the sixties, but this is still a small part of a much larger problem. Pretty much everybody agrees that shutting down City of Heroes was a bad idea, and I'm not just talking about the "community." Archival panic is real. We have already lost access to a huge portion of our history, and despite how silly you may think the issue is, City of Heroes was a formative game in the overall development of MMOs. The fact that nobody can go back and study it makes some professors weep in PhD.
Really? Because from what I can tell, you never presented a moral argument. You presented legal arguments protecting bad business practices that led to (again, despite how silly you think the idea is) very real pain for a lot of people. In particular, as a person on the spectrum, City of Heroes was an integral part of my personal development. For a while, it was the only real way I had to communicate. The fact that a company in Korea bought out the actual makers of the game -- the game that helped me so much -- and then said that I can no longer use it leaves me with not the tiniest shit to give about their "personal property."
Taking it away brought pain. Bringing it back would bring joy. I think Robin Hood would approve.
K, Bullfrog already said chill out on the politics.
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[color=red]PR, Forum Moderator[/color]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/desvipers-creative-impulsivity]My Non-Canon Backstories[/url]
Avatar by MikeNovember
Aside from some minor bellyaching about capitalism (which is the devil, all hail Lenin [or was it Lennon?]), nothing there was political, friendo. It was mostly about the flaws of legalism as a moral foundation.
I'm one to talk, but bring the tone a but more abstract, if you can.
[hr]
[color=red]PR, Forum Moderator[/color]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/desvipers-creative-impulsivity]My Non-Canon Backstories[/url]
Avatar by MikeNovember
Uh, hey, Dark Cleric, what you said was bad and wrong, but exactly in that order, because wrong is not always bad?
...Or was it the other way around?
I mean the opposite, talking about large issues (late stage capitalism, legalism, morality) in abstract terms not personal insults.
Also what's more political than talking about "late stage capitalism" :p
[hr]
[color=red]PR, Forum Moderator[/color]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/desvipers-creative-impulsivity]My Non-Canon Backstories[/url]
Avatar by MikeNovember
Saying something was bad and wrong isn't a personal insult. It's not insulting to have your views challenged. I admit I was (and am, and will probably continue to be) condescending, but I kept all the things I was thinking about his mother to myself. Because that would be insulting, and pointlessly so. But saying, in an argument about morality, that a moral stance is bad is the fundamental basis of the argument itself. Making that more abstract would be "I disagree for reasons, probably," and he already crossed that line by passing moral judgments on people who want to play the game they bought.
Well have a seat and let me tell you what I think about Trump.
Please, pray tell, expound on what responsibilities corporations have that go beyond what they are legally forced to do. Please.
Because the person I was replying to used that term and I was quoting him/her...do you not know what it means when a word has quotes around it?
No, i'm holding the idea that a "community" in the context of this discussion has ZERO authority over what happens with CoH.
Ethics? Really? NCSoft made the game, THEY own the game, what they do with it is their own prerogative.
Ok, you obviously have the reading comprehension of a toddler. Noticed how I said "legally speaking" at the end? You must not have.
So just because you want something you should be able to take it if the owner isn't giving it to you?
Again, your lack of reading comprehension is astounding. I never said they were in the moral right, I said the people that want to force NCSoft to give it up or, worse, steal it, are in the moral wrong. Stealing is wrong, in case you didn't know. Not that you would think it is.
You bought the game with all the information you needed to understand the subscription service. If you weren't okay with losing access to the game when the servers dropped then you shouldn't have bought the game. But guess what, you still have the game. It's up in your closet. They didn't take it from you. Their servers though, are no longer 'on' and so they stopped charging you the subscription. If you feel that they are somehow in the wrong for stealing your game go and file a lawsuit, claim that NCSoft stole what was yours and lets see how far you get.
Again, please go work on your reading comprehension. Unless you are saying that forcing someone to give up property and/or stealing is moral...there is no moral argument from that side.
Calling it "bad business practice" is your opinion, not a fact. If they felt it wasn't worth their resources, they have every right to stop it. Shit, even if they felt like it was still viable and just wanted to be dicks about it...its well within their rights. It's their game. How are you not grasping this simple concept? Property...ownership...they're very simple ideas.
And led to pain for a lot of people??? Are you saying that because you got your feelings hurt that they turned the servers off they should be forced to give up their rights to the game? What the hell kind of world would you have us live in?
It's a good thing the law doesn't give a shit about you not giving a shit about personal property...otherwise every butt hurt person would be sueing every company on the planet.
Compulsively clicking the refresh button until the next update.
Again, go work on your reading comprehension. It'll help on these forums.
Compulsively clicking the refresh button until the next update.
folks... please. if we can't keep the thread on topic, it might be best to let it end peacefully before the arguments and name calling?
[color=green]All Purpose Frog[/color]
Wait until you see the... nope, that would ruin the surprise.
[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics[/url]
You were not quoting him/her. Picking a single word from a response and also using it is not a quote. "I" "am" "not" "quoting." The inclusion of quotations in this context is subtextually derisive, meant to ridicule the idea that the "community" is a real entity with influence, meant to undercut the idea of ethical and moral responsibility on the part of the offending party. For evidence, look at your very next block quote, and fuck off with the bad faith arguments.
Thus.
It's telling that you react with incredulity to the idea of ethics.
Again, I'm going to say, slowly: Morality =/= legality. I owned the game. Now, apparently, I don't. Is this right?
*I* have the reading comprehension of a toddler? Funny. The entire point of my post is that you are equating right and legal. Thus, the "legally speaking" part of your post was not only read and understood, but consequently, THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE POST.
Well, yes. If by doing so, the owner doesn't actually lose anything, and I gain, there is literally an inarguable net profit for the world. It may be small, and it may just be the people who want the thing can have it, but that's exactly what I think. Capitalistic dipshittery aside, I'm not walking into someone's house and stealing their couch. I'm playing a video game that they're currently making no money on and offering no way to access. I would love to give them money for City of Heroes. I was, for seven years every month. But now they refuse it, and I have a box.
There are no losers in emulation for a dead game.
Your constant personal attacks are astounding. It's almost like, in lieu of merit, you're relying on ad hominem.
Also, hold the fucking phone, kiddo. You just did a mental gymnastics routine that would make Ollie North's spine spontaneously snap in half. NCSoft isn't right. But the people who try to correct their wrongness -- wrongness that was done to them, because this is a moral argument about who is in the wrong in this situation, and thus a party must be injured -- are wrong? When, as previously stated, their form of correction costs NCSoft absolutely nothing in terms of property and damages them in no way?
Holy shit. Wow. What.
See, the entire point of what I wrote is that this type of system is *wrong.* It's predatory, injurious, and seemingly designed to cause a whole host of problems (including the aforementioned archival panic). You pulling out the "but it's legal" argument again in response to an entire litany of reason why it shouldn't be means that I can't finish this sentence in a way that would adequately express my opinion of your intelligence without getting banned, especially considering the numerous snide comments you've made about mine.
Forcing someone to give you their wallet at gunpoint might be an ethically shaky proposition, even by my hippie liberal standards. Forcing someone to give you a copy of a digital archive (which is essentially a limitless resource that they do not lose upon transfer) that they are not currently using and never planning to use again is a cut and dried necessity going forward in the digital age. See: Archival panic.
Again, the "but it's legal" thing. It is legal. It is not right. You refuse to distinguish the two, and that's where I have to stop the sentence again or otherwise a desviperr will get mad at me.
What kind of world do you live in where someone's pain doesn't factor into an argument about morality?
Oh, right, the world where morality and "but it's legal" are the same thing. Forget I asked.
[/quote]
Okay, I don't want to bust out your whole "reading comprehension" thing, but the fuck even is this? At what point did I ever bring up lawsuits for my feelings? In what way is this relevant? Why can you not understand that the entire point of what I said is that the law is wrong?
Oh, also, go fuck yourself, you illiterate baby. Don't ever insult my intelligence when you immediately and completely failed to understand anything I said. You're a fucking idiot, moral coward, and you don't know how words work. Sorry desviper.
Sorry Bullfrog.
and that's enough for now. we're going to put this thread on hold for a bit.
[color=green]All Purpose Frog[/color]
Wait until you see the... nope, that would ruin the surprise.
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