"Lineage III Code Compromised - $1 Billion in Damage, Claims NCSoft"

[Ether]

NCSoft's forthcoming Lineage III MMO's code has apparently been compromised by 7 former employees, according to Digital Chosunilbo.

The employees have been accused of disclosing the game's code to an unnamed Japanese game company and the incident is being investigated by the Seoul Metropolitan Police. They also are accused of disclosing the game's design in September.

The article also alleges very serious management problems in the unit at NCSoft with 90 employees quitting in the wake of the removal of their supervisor.

An NCSoft spokesman estimated the damage at 1 Trillion Won (about $1 Billion).

Ouch, ouch, ouch.

Now the damage estimate is probably a "bit" high. However, the design and architecture of an online game could be very valuable to a competitor.

Since many Western MMOs are running in the tens of millions of dollars, the value of this code is quite high.

The question that immediately follows is - did NCSoft adequately protect this data? Software that costs many millions of dollars to develop should be protected against disclosure by employees and certainly should not be freely available to the development team.

Regrettably, there have been a number of code compromises out into the "hacker underground" that have been admitted to. Industrial espionage probably happens more often than anyone wants to admit and rarely gets detected or prosecuted.

There are no magic bullets. Hire trustworthy employees, don't make data available to people who don't need it, track who has had access to what data in case a prosecution is necessary.

source: PlayNoEvil Game Security, Game Cheating, Gold Farming and RMT News & Analysis

Pretty much copy pasted. Who thinks this will have an affect on Aion? My friend reckons if the stolen material isnt recovered, that could mean a lot of trouble for ncsoft, which "gg[s] L3/aion"

Thoughts?

[Ipmia]

dont think this will affect AION dev really... Its like wondering if the PS3 failure will affect the TV buisness from SONY

Lineage 3 developpement have team managment problems as far as i can remmeber.. it was already changed ( or did they left ?) once.

[Mark]

Yeah, they had some major problems and got rid of some people (you can read about that too, somewhere). I hope it doesn't affect Aion. I wasn't too interested in L3 anyway.

[DKShadow]

All I can say is that I'm glad to see L3 is actually happening.

[Ipmia]

Originally Posted by DKShadow

All I can say is that I'm glad to see L3 is actually happening.

same here, appart the bot/farmer issues its still the best FFA mmo i ever played

[Pancak3s]

I will have barely any interest in L3 if Aion turns out good.

[skimike]

90 employees is significant for any development house, especially since you can't just drop a new programmer into place; there's a significant learning curve involved in getting new programmers familiar with code someone else wrote.

I could have sworn I read somewhere that Aion started out as Lineage III, then became its own animal, then NCSoft started work on a new Lineage III, then put the brakes on the project for whatever reason, and now they're working on it again. And now this... While it's not certain doom for Aion, it's also not "good news". Anything that bites into NCSoft's bottom line can affect development and dates across the company.

With such gross misconduct of its employees, I wouldn't be surprised if NCSoft halts development for a few days to "educate" its employees on corporate policy (as well as, perhaps, re-writing some of that corporate policy). It's standard faire. When I was in the military and the Walker spy case happened, we all received "training" because of it. In the private sector, when someone would steal from the company, we all received "ethics training". When someone would say something inappropriate to a co-worker, we all received "sensitivity training".

Wish we had the full scoop on what happened. 90 people leaving because of the removal of their supervisor? That's some employee loyalty right there.

[Mark]

Skimike, you're thinking of an old press release on NCsoft's corperate website. Go to their PR section and search for Aion and you might find it. It basically says Lineage 3's name was changed to Aion. Then they decided to do Lineage 3 after all and just have Aion as a new IP.

[FeyraN]

NOOOOOOOOO MY LINEAGE 3!!!!!!!! =( i hope it gets released soon

[plasma06]

The same code leak effected half life 2 and it set the game back by 6 -12 months.And if they say it will not effect the they are lying.
Aion should have secret staff we should not be effected.

[Mark]

Originally Posted by Mark

Skimike, you're thinking of an old press release on NCsoft's corperate website. Go to their PR section and search for Aion and you might find it. It basically says Lineage 3's name was changed to Aion. Then they decided to do Lineage 3 after all and just have Aion as a new IP.

Quoting myself, lol. Here it is!

http://ncsoft.com/eng/ncpress/View.asp?hseq=92

From way back in 2003...

Also, “Lineage Forever”, which was known to be the Lineage 3D-version development project, is now being developed under the new brand of “Aion”. As an ambitious next-generation work of NCsoft which follows on Lineage and Lineage II, Aion is aiming for an intense cyberworld environment centered around confrontation between the gamer and the game environment which distinguishes it from existing online games that are based on contact and conflict between gamers who are connected to the game space.

[BaGGs]

BaGGs smells l3 private servers !
The same damn thing happened 4 years ago with l2 and then pirate servers started to pop up...

[DKShadow]

Originally Posted by BaGGs

BaGGs smells l3 private servers !
The same damn thing happened 4 years ago with l2 and then pirate servers started to pop up...

Lol, I thought 4 years sounded wrong, so I went on and checked to find out that Lineage II actually released 3 years ago TODAY, to be exact. Happy 3 years, L2

I really hope they keep botting and **** out of Aion and L3 - It's what made me leave L2 back in the day.

[Ipmia]

Originally Posted by DKShadow

Lol, I thought 4 years sounded wrong, so I went on and checked to find out that Lineage II actually released 3 years ago TODAY, to be exact. Happy 3 years, L2

I really hope they keep botting and **** out of Aion and L3 - It's what made me leave L2 back in the day.

in the US... but about 6/8 month before that in corea.

[DKShadow]

Originally Posted by Ipmia

in the US... but about 6/8 month before that in corea.

I know that much and I figured someone was gonna say that. But korean release isn't worth anything to most of us, so bleh. Don't burst the bubble!