[w4rh4wk5]

> But it is unlikely that any mainstream competitor to EA would ever use such stolen data.

I appreciate them acknowledging this fact. It bothers me how many people think that leaking the source code of a game engine is an actual problem for the company.

Just because the code is available doesn't give you a license to use it. And the ones that don't care about having a license would not have used / payed for it in the first place.

Regarding knowhow behind modern engines, Unreal and CRYENGINE's source code is available on GitHub. Engineers often publish research papers about their methods and reverse engineering isn't as infeasible as one might think initially.

Also, speaking about Frostbite and what we've read about in the past (see Anthem), I highly doubt a developer can be productive using it while lacking official support.

[alkonaut]

> I appreciate them acknowledging this fact. It bothers me how many people think that leaking the source code of a game engine is an actual problem for the company.

If it makes the creation of exploits (cheats) easier, then I think it could a big headache for a game company. I’d at least find it a lot easier to try to exploit a game a have the full source code for, than one I have to reverse engineer.

Cheating was so rampant in earlier titles that if it had been just slightly worse I’d probably have stopped playing.

Obscurity is weak security though of course.

[m-p-3]

Yeah, I think the only ones that will actually make use of that are cheat developers and maybe game modders to obtain a deeper insight in the game.

[NeoVeles]

This is something that a lot of folks seem to not understand. Usually when there is a leak of proprietary software, most others developers that are working on similar programs (both open and closed) will try to distance themselves from any potential contamination. Having identical code or abnormally similar code turn up in another project is essentially guaranteed grounds for a law suit.

[silvaring]

You know that EA have a windows desktop client they are still trying to crystalize into the PC gaming world right? I can imagine this hack may have quite an impact on that whole project, especially if the data related to that particular piece of software.

[dagurp]

> It bothers me how many people think that leaking the source code of a game engine is an actual problem for the company.

It shouldn't be unless they're doing something unethical in loot boxes

[5e92cb50239222b]

>And the ones that don't care about having a license would not have used / payed for it in the first place.

Speak for yourself. I don't play at all these days, but when I did, I was almost always running a "pirated" version from my favorite torrent tracker, and only after purchasing a license which was almost never used (because of DRM, not being able to run it under Wine, or other reasons).

[ksec]

After watching Battlefield 2042 trailer I am interested whether they have a new version of Frostbite.

[alkonaut]

In earlier releases they bumped the version of frostbite to “frostbite 2” etc, but now I don’t see these big announcements so maybe it’s more a slow evolution now and not huge releases? There are certainly new engine features vs previous releases, but I haven’t seen if they call it a new “version”.

[baud147258]

since EA doesn't seem to be in the business of selling their engine to other companies, they don't really need to make big announcements with dazzling preview videos

[alkonaut]

They did toot the horn with “now with Frostbite 2!” before. I think maybe it stopped being iterated on that way and just became a living codebase that their internal projects consume or fork as needed.

Or maybe they used to sell it externally before?