18
votes
CD Projekt Red's internal systems were compromised, attacker left ransomware and a threat to release their data, including the source code of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3
@CD PROJEKT RED:
Important Update pic.twitter.com/PCEuhAJosR
I'd bet the source code, like many games, is only useful for research purposes anyway. Nobody's going to start a new project with stolen code.
It sucks they got attacked, but it doesn't seem to have severely impacted their processes. Hopefully any work on Cyberpunk isn't lost.
The consequence for many game makers of losing control of source code is the major assist this provides to game crackers seeking to pirate and remove DRM controls from the game. This consequence isn't applicable to CDPR.
I didn't even consider that, but their model actively discourages piracy anyway, at least as much as a release model can, so you're right there.
I don't really think that has been the case for a while? I could be wrong but I believe that unless you have your own in-house DRM, utilizing a company like Denuvo just results in baking your standard binary into their specialized VM. I don't know if inspecting the game source would help at all vis-à-vis cracking the game?
Depending on how complete the source is, it may be possible to compile it and distribute what is essentially an internal, unprotected engine binary.
Knowing what the protected binary does may be useful to crackers analyzing the protection, though I don't know enough about modern-day cracking to say for sure. Other than that, no, I don't think it's likely to be directly helpful.