'Stalker' team under fire for ripping textures?
polycounter lvl 18
doh!
I've had first hand experience of reporting this going on to EA management when I worked there, and them wanting to simply brush the issue aside. It was a pretty bizarre episode in my career there.
To be honest, I'd actually be surprised If there was any legal pursuit of matters, but I could be wrong. But still, it's pretty embarrassing.
In the case of Stalker, it was quite probably an oversight on the developers part more than deliberate plagirism, so just remember to be *uber* careful where you get your shit from kids!
I've had first hand experience of reporting this going on to EA management when I worked there, and them wanting to simply brush the issue aside. It was a pretty bizarre episode in my career there.
To be honest, I'd actually be surprised If there was any legal pursuit of matters, but I could be wrong. But still, it's pretty embarrassing.
In the case of Stalker, it was quite probably an oversight on the developers part more than deliberate plagirism, so just remember to be *uber* careful where you get your shit from kids!
Replies
I haven't played the game yet but I have high hopes for the content. I've always loved the idea of a game set in Chernobyl and I was excited to hear about someone making one. But the first game shots I saw where pretty disappointing, bad stretching on shoulders, awkward poses, last gen environments... It seemed to smell of DBZ mod team gone pro.
This latest news isn't doing much to sway me from that opinion.
That said, Stalker's character art and animation is decidedly mediocre. The first-person sprint animation is actually hilariously bad, and watching enemies switch weapons or put away objects is an exercise in bone-breakingly horrendous limb positioning.
AZ: I somehow doubt that id software are in the habit of getting specific lighting textures off commercial CDs... sure, for explosion effects or sound effects there will likely be outsourcing to commercial mass-market effects, simply because it's more efficient than trying to record all your own sounds or get a dedicated particle guy focused on doing realistic explosion sprites, but for specific in-game textures like light shaders... that stuff will almost certainly be in-house and custom.
I'm not speaking from experience though, so I may be wrong. Just a personal hunch
MoP, I'll pick it up and check it out. My expectations are set pretty low right now so I bet it surprises me =P
AZ: I somehow doubt that id software are in the habit of getting specific lighting textures off commercial CDs...
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I figured the same, I just thought it would be kinda funny if that was the case
That said, I think it was probably accidental. My guess is it was placeholder stuff left over from very early development. A silly thing to do, but not too much of a stretch for the imagination.
The file names not being changed are a dead give away, if that is true. However they might have been using them as temp textures and just forgotten to take them out? I'll cut them a little slack but its still a stupid thing to do.
MoP, I'll pick it up and check it out. My expectations are set pretty low right now so I bet it surprises me =P
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Well even if its a placeholder texture use something that isnt in another game,choose something thats such shit that it would never make it into the game.
Its unexcuseable,i dont think going to another games assets would ever cross my mind when it comes to something like this.
I would probably agree with Daz, that it wasnt intentional. Still it's somewhat a shame that someone just ripped off content from another product, placeholder or not..
I'm sorry but there's no excuse for that, at all.
Even if it was place holder. Who in their right mind takes another game's asset? I can see asset sharing within different teams of a development house.
It shows the contents of someone's folders and 4 open files in photoshop with text edited in asserting which game each is from. Do you really consider this irrefutable proof!? Usually in previous cases, people post in game screenshots showing the assets in question side by side, which offers a much more convincing case.
It's not like I'm saying it couldn't be true, but guys, its EARLY APRIL, AS IN NEAR APRIL FOOLS DAY. People can fling up quick imagery like that in five minutes and fool enough folks. You guys really should be demanding better proof for such serious accusations.
actually i've seen this several times - producer wants effect like in game xyz. easiest way to please him is to just get that exact same effect and go from there.
now if your dev team changes several times like it apparently was the case with stalker, chances are you forget about some things...
not to say that kind of thing is justified or anything, but it surely is not an unheard of practice.
I've actually got the special edition here but have been too busy to install it, I'll probably take a look this evening.
I'm more worried about how THQ will view the situation, and whether GSC will be able to acquire further funding - or whether they'll get dropped. I'm enjoying the game so far, and it would be a shame for this to get blown up into a major battle.
Also I noticed that the Russian version of the game has a Samsung logo on the PDA, I wonder if that was removed in the English version because it'd be more likely to get hit by legal departments?
It's not like I'm saying it couldn't be true, but guys, its EARLY APRIL, AS IN NEAR APRIL FOOLS DAY. People can fling up quick imagery like that in five minutes and fool enough folks. You guys really should be demanding better proof for such serious accusations.
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Last time I checked April fools day was about childish pranks, not slandering companies reputations. I think that's an extremely unlikely outcome.
I posted the story because this stuff is important to be aware of as professional game artists. It *does* happen, I've seen it with my own eyes.
I don't think it will be persued, either by ID or Valve, it would just be too costly. It's still a dumb thing to do - even if they were placeholders for content to be added later. Best practice is of course to use obvious placeholders, like brightly coloured textures with 'test' written all over them. I think these just slipped under the radar, as has been said before.
I'm more worried about how THQ will view the situation, and whether GSC will be able to acquire further funding - or whether they'll get dropped. I'm enjoying the game so far, and it would be a shame for this to get blown up into a major battle.
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Pursued maybe not but you can rest assured 1 or 2 heads rolled after this.
No, they also made Fire Warrior and American Conquest.
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They also made the excellent (IMO) 'Codename Outbreak' which itself 'borrowed' from the Predator and Aliens franchises. Thinking about it, there's a lot of Codename Outbreak's gameplay and visual stylings in Stalker.
Well, I'm not defending stalker's innocence anymore, but out of curiousity, might it be some sort of stock texture? I know HL2 was really big on photo sourced textures...
Plus the fact that they have exactly the same file name seems a tad concerning...
Anyway, have these been confirmed to being used <u>in</u> the game? Or as someone suggested, older placeholders? I could see it either way as per what you all have said being from a country less stringent on copyright issues.
ElysiumGX: As for "they're just textures" and "I don't see this as being a big deal" ... when does it become OK to rip other games' source textures as your own? Is it ok if you use, say, less than 5 textures as long as they're under 128x128 pixels? What if you steal a whole wall texture, or a whole tiling environment texture set?
I reckon it should be all or nothing, you can't have "degrees" of it being ok to steal textures. If you take money out of someone's pocket, you've stolen from them. Doesn't matter if it was $5 or $500, you've still taken something that wasn't rightfully yours. It's not a "shades of grey" issue here, there are just some things which you do not ever do.
The flashlight is a good case in point. You can clearly see the Doom flashlight shape in the middle, with some extra light-spill around it.
Usually when a game is being built for a gold copy, only assets actually being used by the engine will be placed into the final shipping game folder and archives.
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Hot Coffee?
To be honest I think games tend to ship with whatever is getting added to the builds. Game development is still far from being professional!
On the stalker texture issues, it could be an awful mess that the artist who added them left before it shipped (long development, highly possible) but there are also a millions of circumstances that it could be.
If the company gets into trouble, I hope they go after the guy who put those textures in there. It specifically states in my contract at work that if I was to use copy righted images I would be held responsible.
The point he was making being that if it's on the gold disk, it's in the game.
*edit* re-read your post sorry. I guess you did get his point, but are making the point that not every games company uses the build system that I described. Well they should, dammit
ElysiumGX: As for "they're just textures" and "I don't see this as being a big deal" ... when does it become OK to rip other games' source textures as your own? Is it ok if you use, say, less than 5 textures as long as they're under 128x128 pixels? What if you steal a whole wall texture, or a whole tiling environment texture set?
I reckon it should be all or nothing, you can't have "degrees" of it being ok to steal textures. If you take money out of someone's pocket, you've stolen from them. Doesn't matter if it was $5 or $500, you've still taken something that wasn't rightfully yours. It's not a "shades of grey" issue here, there are just some things which you do not ever do.
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QFT
But i could be wrong.
But even so ... it's bad form, IMO. As I think someone pointed out earlier, placeholders should be obviously so, preferably with the word "placeholder" stamped across the front, to avoid this very problem.
If the person responsible is found out, I hope he gets in a lot of trouble for it. I don't want to see GSC Game World go under just because of one stupid employee... unless they actually knew about it and just turned a blind eye.
However, saying that the filename for an "imp" light was meaning "impact" doesn't explain the fact that the majority of their "lights" texture folder is pixel-for-pixel identical to Doom3's lights folder.
Still waiting to hear more about that one, it could well be that the light textures were from a pack too but I somehow doubt it.
they're not from a pack, kenneth made them, lol he even remembered making them while looking at the 2 shots side by side. and its not just 2 textures, its a whole lot of stuff, so far all i know is the stalker team guys called in and apologized and i think they'll make up somehow and everyone will be happy.
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so no bloodspilling?, now the world of gaming is laughing at id-fans for being so fanboyish, when reality is different.
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Not sure what you mean by that...