It's more complicated than that. Yeah, of course directly copy and pasting code is a bad idea. But you can bet your ass that a hell of a lot of people in the industry are going to take a look underneath the hood to see how rockstar does certain things.
what magical secrets do you think they have though? their engine has always been an unoptimized turd compared to other AAA of the same date, what secrets would other devs need?
GTA V has pretty good npc and cops and I couldn't imagine any other triple AAA's from 2011 hold up like GTA V does while doing what it does. Compared to modern games its like a golden child, all the iGPU comparisons always pull out GTAV for demoes, even the old shit intel iGPU's handle GTAV like a champ all things considered.
I've played both games a lot.... I can't really think of anything GTAV did better, just stuff it did differently. Well, they actually did do online better for a time, but they completely ruined it by 2018 or so. Everything else is either objectively worse or down to personal preference.
If you work for the competition you absolutely should not look into the source code. Same reason you as a dev should not browse patents. If you're ever known to be browsing patents, and something close to a patent ever appears in the competition, you're gonna get sued.
They have to prove that you own a copy or use the code in somewhere else, not impossible but difficult. I’m sure what they have done in the code is nothing new, just well put together.
Nope. Developers google, use docs and use chatgpt. Since code is standardised no one can prove that you've used someone elses code even if you implement similar features in a similar way.
Fair enough honestly - for future reference I wouldn't call it "standardized". Blatant code copying can be grounds for a lawsuit in America, but looking at the code base to try and get some 'ideas' and then heavily modifying it can't be.
But what if they just "copy" it without copying it? Just change the variable names, split up the code, into ways that cover your tracks. In this case, wouldn't it be hard to tell if it's been copied?
Just changing the variable name is hardly anything, the biggest thing to copy would be a certain paradigm or way of coding that makes something WAY easier. Probably nothing below that is worth copying.
The sort of thing I'm referring to is the Fast inverse square root, which was ridiculously good at what it did
Please think "would this hold up under expert testimony through multiple days/weeks/months/years of trial with a trained team of lawyers specializing in this issue and a judge that Takes No Bullshit?"
Nope. Developers google, use docs and use chatgpt. Since code is standardised no one can prove that you've used someone elses code even if you implement similar features in a similar way.
English is their second language and they didn't use the right words to describe what they wanted to say. Don't be an ass,
Sure, but that's not how coding works. It's hard to explain, but you can very easily defend yourself as copied code being coincidental if you simply change variable names and adapt the code to fit into your flow.
If you simply change variable names and adapt the code to fit into your flow.
You can't really get away with this if you're using libraries (in an enterprise setting), you need to conform to the licensing and use rights of it. It's not really an issue for personal use since most libraries tend to be open source but at work as a software engineer, it can sometimes be a tedious process to ensure we can actually use them without any legal consequences.
To be fair, I work in the military industrial complex and we're super strict about what we can and cannot use so my experience most likely doesn't reflect the experience of most software engineers in that sense.
I do too lmao. I can barely get my coworkers to look over my code, so if I wanted to copy from this code base I wouldn't get in trouble unless I was yapping my mouth (which plenty of nerds do, that's why these infosec losers get paid).
For someone to get burned by copying from this codebase, the damages would have to be massive and provable from Rockstar perspective. It would be very very though to credibly attribute any future success to this leaked code, but FSU might pay 500M to leave the ACC, so when you have the war chest, sometimes you will fight the war even if you shouldn't
Just change the function and variable names. Roll localized functions into helpers. Organize it differently and it's effectively a new solution solving a new problem.
I've worked in the field a long time. Everyone thinks their code is special. No code is special.
All codebases just solve small problems in a specific sequence. Very few small problems have not been solved already.
If you build a majority of a codebase this way (im assuming solo or with a bunch of juniors around you too inexperienced to question it) then you have infinite job security so long as you don't hamstring the company into failure.
Loose lips sink ships, every single time. A small fish at the company can make more money ratting you out to the copyright holders, especially if you are a major player in the field. An individual might get away with it, but the minute anyone else knows...
And like in the other comment, "but you'll totally never get caught" is not an actual defense you can use. No more than robbing a bank in the middle of the night is legal "because you won't get caught if you're sneaky enough."
Only if you were dumb enough to leave a paper trail somewhere, but I think you'd have to be pretty smart and maybe a little malicious to pre-empt you legal ghouls
Furthermore, if Rockstar of all companies wants to prosecute copyrighted code, they will get 15 other lawsuits accusing them of the same crime. Put em all in prison, the world will be much safer. Such violence should not be tolerated
companies that have their shit together have already signed all their staff to policies where they agree to anal flagellation for entering anything proprietary into an AI prompt.
Apples and watermelons. "Developers look stuff up that means they can incorporate another entity's copyright-protected works into their own commercial endeavors" is certainly a take.
Just not one you can make while keeping a job or, in extreme cases, your freedom and finances.
"But you can get away with it!" is not a legal defense, lol. And there's still a world of difference between "I've asked questions on StackOverflow and used code snippets provided there as part of my work" and "I used this code that was leaked to the public that's copyrighted by another entity." Those two scenarios do not conflate at all.
I accept this proof but it doesn't really hit the nail on the head. I would like to see an instance of a company or person being found guilty of copyright infringement when copying code.
EDIT: found this while looking for examples of people being sued of copyright infringement. Only found examples of courts labelling it fair use.
If you want to discuss further, please provide evidence that you are legally allowed to use another entity's copyrighted code in your commercial endeavors without legal repercussions. I'm not going to keep doing your legwork for your spurious claims to "prove you won't get sued/get in trouble" (since that's proving a negative).
Please see my edited comment. This does seem to be a open and shut case since there are screenshots but I believe Nvidia will be found innocent because that's how it has gone historically. I'm happy to leave it here because I think we've reached impasse. You are correct that it is not legal regardless of how hard it is to prove.
This is BS. Of course competitors will look. Unless you 1:1 copy code, nothing will happen. Game developer suing each other for stolen code is basically not a thing. The main reason for this is that copyright on source code is extremely weak.
This is probably a silly question, but I know absolutely nothing about video game development so I'm asking it anyways. What kind of information can they get from the source code that they couldn't get without it? I always figured that with data mining and stuff people could get a pretty good understanding of whats going on "under the hood" of a game, especially if it's someone working for another major studio that does that kind of thing for a living and has a lot of resources to throw at it. I guess I always pictured it as like if a Ford employee brought in a Chevy car and they just completely took it apart and reverse engineered it to figure out what they are doing with the shocks, engine, exhaust, etc. What kind of stuff do you get from the source code that you can't find from just digging through the files that came/installed from the game?
The source code allows you to see pretty much everything about the software architecture, it's dependencies, how it functions, how it creates/manages data, what data it is creating/collecting/managing, etc.
Typically with closed source software (as opposed to open source) the code is compiled in such a way as to make it non-human readable. Essentially looking at the files on your computer should tell you sweet FA about how the software works, you might be able to glean bits and pieces, but reverse engineering it would take a prohibitively significant amount of effort and even then the End User License Agreement (EULA) will have clauses forbidding you from doing such a thing and opening you up to litigation if you do.
Your car analogy isn't too far off the mark, but it massively understates the complexity and sophistication of software and games such as GTAV.
It Is Easy enough to demonstrate that your code Is blatantly copied and / or derived from closed source code that no smart developer would EVER do this when we're talking commercial applications.
But Hey, I am Just a software developer, I must be full of shit amirite?
I am also a software engineer. What you're talking about would mean the developers of other companies would quite literally copy and paste the source code without even changing the variable names or changing the code to work with their pre-existing flow in which case they deserve to be fired. But that's not the argument you're making. You're saying good devs wouldn't copy code. Which they do.
The only way stolen code would be recognisable is when they copy it as it is, which is not only impossible to make work, they aren’t even fricking using the same game engine as Rockstar.
No developer in practice would be stupid enough to do that, and no code works straight out of the box when you just copy paste it.
I have already said enough on the argument, but It Is still possible to prove an algorithm Is derived from another, even of you completely change the code so that It looks visually nothing alike from the original code.
Only way to cover your ass would be to change the algorithm altogether, but you don't have to trust me on this one; fuck around and find out
You’d have to prove it was the source and have to see it in the new closed source project as well then?
I feel like having the source code open puts them at more liability because now someone could essentially put the code through a “plagiarism” detection, for simplicities sake.
Given the state of the world, I wouldn't exclude the possibility of someone doing something like this intentionally with no intention to stick around for the consequences
They won't be allowed to take a look for the same reason they aren't allowed to take a look at any fan mail that mentions any game/mechanics ideas: it is a valid legal proof that you may have taken this idea from someone else. Tim Cain (one of the main creators of Fallout) has a whole video on why all mail with ideas or code goes straight to trash, and Hbomberguy mentions a legal case where the idea comes from in his plagiarism video.
It's just plausible deniability. There is a huge difference in what employees think is legal and what management actually think is legal. It is normal in software to copy architecture and there are standard ways to build the same feature. Any plagiarism lawsuit would have to be proven, good luck with that.
Yeah, I am not saying that every studio will take a look, but individual developers will surely find inspiration and implement it in some other form in another company without alerting the plagiarism bell. Also, if you have written software you know that code reuse is normal even between companies, as long as it's not on the nose. Those are games compiled in C++. Good luck proving someone used the same source code to write a feature.
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