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Wrench
Joined: 07 Apr 2005
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 Posted: Tue May 01, 2007 6:51 am Post subject: Why Korea can't be trusted with investment and IP.. |
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http://games.slashdot.org/games/07/04/30/2033218.shtml
Shack News and the Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo are reporting that sourcecode for the MMOG Lineage III may have been stolen. As the third Massively Multiplayer game in a huge-selling South Korean series released by publisher NCSoft, over a billion dollars may be lost as a result of this theft.
"The Seoul Metropolitan Police said Wednesday that seven former NCsoft employees are suspected of having sold the technology to a major Japanese game company. The seven left the Korean firm in February and allowed the Japanese company to review the software during a job interview. Police believe that the technology might have been copied during the demonstration."
OUCH |
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splok
Joined: 30 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 1:46 am Post subject: |
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While there are plenty of reasons to have concern about Korea andIP protection, this doesn't sound like a very good one. Any company in the world can fall prey to trusted employees selling info, secrets, or (in the case of software companies) entire products to other companies.
and the "over one billion dollars may be lost" is purely comical. It's not as if there are no other companies making mmo's. It's not like you need decades of research to crank out a mmo codebase. I'm sure any decent software company could replicate it for few million at the most. Secondly, for them to lose one billion dollars, they would not only need to realistically that much revenue based entirely on that title or codebase, but they would also have to lose said revenue as a result of the theft, which is a ludicris assertment. If L3 is going to be popular enough to gross $1B, then some cutrate clone of it isn't going make much of a dent. |
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mikekim
Joined: 11 Aug 2006
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 7:11 am Post subject: |
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| its billions of won. millions of dollars. |
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splok
Joined: 30 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 9:40 am Post subject: |
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| mikekim wrote: |
| its billions of won. millions of dollars. |
from the article:
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| An NCsoft spokesman estimated the potential damage at over W1 trillion (US$1=W927) considering that the combined sales of "Lineage I" and "Lineage II" topped W1.5 trillion. |
I won't even bother being skeptical of the 1.5trillion in sales because I don't feel like working out what I think is more likely, so lets just assume that it's true... and lets forget about any other problems with the numbers too...
for them to claim that much in damages, they have to be able to make a reasonable assumption that L3 will sell as much as L1 and L2 combined over its life AND that the theft of the source will somehow decrease those sales by 2/3.
all in all, purely insane.
Hell, people have nearly perfectly emulated servers for WoW, but do you see 8M people playing on them? No. If some random company in Taiwan released a perfect WoW clone, would 6M of WoW's subscribers suddenly jump ship? No. MMO's aren't a commodity. People know the difference. |
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Demophobe
Joined: 17 May 2004
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 3:25 pm Post subject: |
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| splok wrote: |
Hell, people have nearly perfectly emulated servers for WoW, but do you see 8M people playing on them? No. If some random company in Taiwan released a perfect WoW clone, would 6M of WoW's subscribers suddenly jump ship? No. MMO's aren't a commodity. People know the difference. |
So.....? |
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pkang0202
Joined: 09 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 4:02 pm Post subject: Re: Why Korea can't be trusted with investment and IP.. |
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Lets see.... Enron. WorldCom. Blackberry. Microsoft. Vonage.
Lets not forget about the Chinese. Piracy and IP theft in Korea doesn't come remotely close to matching that of China. |
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rocklee
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 4:07 pm Post subject: |
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Everybody copies from everybody else.
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| Lets not forget about the Chinese. Piracy and IP theft in Korea doesn't come remotely close to matching that of China. |
No more than that of Korea. In fact it was really difficult and dangerous to buy pirated DVDs when I was there. |
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mnhnhyouh
Joined: 21 Nov 2006
Location: The Middle Kingdom
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 4:30 pm Post subject: |
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| rocklee wrote: |
Everybody copies from everybody else.
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| Lets not forget about the Chinese. Piracy and IP theft in Korea doesn't come remotely close to matching that of China. |
No more than that of Korea. In fact it was really difficult and dangerous to buy pirated DVDs when I was there. |
Whereas in Cambodia every market frequented by western tourists has store after store full of the latest music, movies and software. Adobe Photoshop CV2 for USD$4.
h |
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splok
Joined: 30 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 7:12 pm Post subject: |
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| Demophobe wrote: |
| splok wrote: |
Hell, people have nearly perfectly emulated servers for WoW, but do you see 8M people playing on them? No. If some random company in Taiwan released a perfect WoW clone, would 6M of WoW's subscribers suddenly jump ship? No. MMO's aren't a commodity. People know the difference. |
So.....? |
Um, so the assertion that this theft will cost them 2/3 of their customers is crazy...? I thought that was pretty clear. |
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Wrench
Joined: 07 Apr 2005
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 7:55 pm Post subject: |
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| FTA really pushed the IP bit for this reason. |
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