The article claims/repeats the claim that this cost valve $250 million, but I don't see how. If the leaked version wasn't very playable the damage can't come from lost sales
yeah that is just "let's throw random numbers to victimize ourselves even more".
I don't think a lot of people downloaded the unfinished source code, compiled it, played the game and never bought the conplete game.
The worst that happened were people making memes with some 3d and graphics assets which didn't cost anyrhing to Valve. Quite the opposite it was free advertising.
The justice department has absurd ways of determining how much damages were caused by unauthorized access. Kevin Mitnick talks about it in his book "Ghost in the Wires", but he was accused of causing $1.5mil in damages to DEC or Sun or something because he copied code, printed it out on paper, and kept it for himself (he didn't distribute it to anyone else). Fortunately, he was ultimately only ordered to pay a few thousand in restitution.
Not that I can speak for this specific story, as I have no firsthand testimony, but Mitnick is a notorious embellisher, downplayer and (anecdotally) liar.
In around 10th grade a friend and I got the leak just as it came out and then used it to make the characters lips sync to our voices for a chemistry class project. The engine worked, the lips matching word tech was awesome, and people couldn’t believe what we pulled off.
Imagine that intro scene in HL2 where you walk through a trap door Pepsi vending machine and behind it there’s a lab - and instead of talking about HL2 stuff, Alyx and company talk about sampling and testing local natural water sources.
Props, my friends just played through the demos for the most part. Quickly we learned the e3 demo was scripted when it was ostensibly the enemy so reacting to the environment
But I did use it as inspiration for an 3D engine project at school, they had geometrical formulas I had trouble to find online, at least efficiently implemented. It helped a bit in reverse engineering their map format too so I could just display any sort of already made map.
I imagine that if I branched out in gaming it would have been a nice bonus, it's not everyday you get to see the competition's code. I suppose they lost in opportunity cost to license their thing, a bit ?
Hard to say - I don't think Valve was ever big on licensing their technology. Source was used for dozens of games in the end (https://vghe.net/source-engine.html) which isn't too bad, but Source 2 licensing isn't even offered.
It's literally SDK, if you care to actually read your link. Not the engine itself: the game-specific logic DLLs (client.dll and server.dll in the game's folder) that hook into the engine, and can be modified to make mods. Valve started publishing those with the release of their first game in 1998.
If you are familiar with the latest version of Unreal, then it's like having access to the "Games" project in your solution and only some headers from the "Engine" project.
Yeh I recall the leaked version quickly gained a poor reputation. I had zero interest in downloading or playing it. Not surprised that sales of the final release were unaffected.
Some of it may come from them rebuilding a lot of the game after the leak, but that was arguably an unnecessary exercise to protect their IP. Even then, not close to that figure. Federal agencies are keen to protect corporations' quarterly profits, even if it ruins people's lives. Nothing new about that.
