Black Mesa Leaked

[Dowie]

Black Mesa has been leaked to the internet as of a day ago. The team are asking for help tracking down links etc to this leak.

Heres their news post:

Well, now we know how Valve felt.

Yesterday we received reports of a possible security breach when images from Black Mesa, not previously taken by developers, were distributed on a Half-Life forum. When other forumgoers asked about the media, he released images of Black Mesa’s file structure and two in-game images of areas not previously shown to the public, due to their unfinished nature. At this point, we believe that he has acquired a recent build of our work, in the moments leading to a substantial code update known as "alpha-6".

The details of how the content was leaked are being kept in-house as they pose a serious security threat, but we have already improvements to hopefully prevent another breach like this. We are looking to pursue possible legal action which may affect those who aid in the distribution of the stolen content.

We have been working hard to consolidate our content and create a more complete Black Mesa and here we find our tireless efforts rewarded with a content leak. At this stage it is obvious that any content distributed is premature and does not reflect the intended final version of Black Mesa.

We cannot convince anyone to not download the content, but we are asking that you make the right choice and assist your fellow developers in their time of need. We do not expect this attack to affect Black Mesa’s present speed of development for very long, but we will be taking security precautions to ensure that this does not happen again before development resumes. We are asking the community at large to assist us by linking any leaked media and/or leaked content to us immediately. Please email us at [email protected] if you have any information that might assist us.

More information as it arrives.

 

[Llama]

Oh ****

 

[$kelet0r]

nooooooooooooo
they worked so hard

 

[Insano]

It's not a built that leaked, only a couple of screenshots of unfinished areas.

 

[Dowie]

No it is a build that was leaked, the screens are of the leak.

 

[Insano]

Ah right, my bad.

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

I've HAD it with these motherf**kin' hackers on this motherf**kin' Internet!

 

[theGreenBunny]

Who cares? Unlike Valve's code + 'beta' leak, this does zero actual damage to them, seeing as no code was leaked and the mod is not commercial. So people get to walk around their unfinished stuff, and oh my they might even show other people screens! They'll have to close down now D: D: D:

"We know how Valve felt"? My ass. Drama queens.

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

"The details of how the content was leaked are being kept in-house"

Maybe nothing should've been said, thus no one would have known....Maybe I'm just thinking logically.

 

[Sprafa]

as someone else said, they have no legal terms for squat. If they can prove they had any creative input on it, plus that it did no harm to the team, there's no legal argument. I'm sure there was no NDA signed either.


This is the most ridiculous stunt. If the team was a circle of friends instead of "random assortment of people in a random assignment", there wouldn't be grudges inside the team anyways.

 

[Insano]

Who cares? Unlike Valve's code + 'beta' leak, this does zero actual damage to them, seeing as no code was leaked and the mod is not commercial. So people get to walk around their unfinished stuff, and oh my they might even show other people screens! They'll have to close down now D: D: D:

"We know how Valve felt"? My ass. Drama queens.

Offtopic:

theGreenBunny, stay with us for 8 more posts.

Then you have reached the 1337 level and be able to die in peace.

 

[Crispy]

I think it was an incredibly unwise move to make this news public before properly attempting to quarantine the leaked files.

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

Don't we have any Black Mesa reps in this forum? I seem to recall there being someone who spoke of the mod with "we" pronouns.

 

[RabidMonkey]

as someone else said, they have no legal terms for squat. If they can prove they had any creative input on it, plus that it did no harm to the team, there's no legal argument. I'm sure there was no NDA signed either.


This is the most ridiculous stunt. If the team was a circle of friends instead of "random assortment of people in a random assignment", there wouldn't be grudges inside the team anyways.

Developers must sign an NDA when they enter the team.

I don't think it's your place to comment on our team being a bunch of random people. Many of our active developers are friends with each other, and many of the team members are in close contact with the rest of the team. We know each other fairly well, and those that do not communicate nor update on their status are fired.

I now know how it was leaked and know that the content is not available for public download. The guy gave our repository information to some of his friends. They each downloaded a copy from our server. They didn't torrent it and mass-distribute it on the internet. (To my knowledge at this point, anyway.) All we're asking is for a little help in tracking down such files if they indeed do appear and you happen to see one. I don't think it's too much to ask, considering that it's our hard work that we've spent many hours, even weeks or months on.

 

[Xune]

Who cares? Unlike Valve's code + 'beta' leak, this does zero actual damage to them, seeing as no code was leaked and the mod is not commercial. So people get to walk around their unfinished stuff, and oh my they might even show other people screens! They'll have to close down now D: D: D:

"We know how Valve felt"? My ass. Drama queens.

So true. It's a mod which will eventually be given away to whoever want's it. They haven't spent years developing an engine, they're just porting one game to another.

The team are doing a great job but they don't need to blow this out of proportion. The only downside of this leaked content is that people will get to see the changes to the Black Messa facility before intended. OH NOES, ALERT THE INTERNETS!!

 

[sabre0001]

can they seriously take legal action?!

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

can they seriously take legal action?!

Not really since the people that "leaked" it were given ftp/user name/passwords to the place they host their files. It's their own fault for trusting such a person that would do this.

 

[RabidMonkey]

Not really since the people that "leaked" it were given ftp/user name/passwords to the place they host their files. It's their own fault for trusting such a person that would do this.

Not when they signed a non-disclosure agreement.

 

[JFry]

Wow I can't believe the negative reaction of some of the people in this thread. The team has every right to be upset, just because it isn't a commercial game doesn't nullify that.

 

[Xune]

Is someone going to use this content to make thier own version of Black Mesa? Will someone be making financial gain at the teams loss? No.

So what's the problem? All we're seeing is slightly unfinished shots of a mod. We see that on the news page of this site every day, no one has died thus far.

 

[Pajari]

Wow I can't believe the negative reaction of some of the people in this thread. The team has every right to be upset, just because it isn't a commercial game doesn't nullify that.

It's not really a negative reaction, I just think people are a bit put off by the drama over a truly trivial and victimless crime.

 

[Lupus]

We view our work being stolen as a problem, and being our own work WE should be the ones who decide what to show and when.

And we are aiming to try and really impress people when they see it, not go "Meh, seen it before in the alpha, just looks touched up now".

I doubt many people would be thrilled if someone hacked into their email account and read private emails (and posted some up for others to see). True we are going to be releasing it for free anyway, but when WE feel it is ready.

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

You are not taking any financial lose from this "leak", thus a judge would probably dismiss this before even gets a trial. Sure it sucks your stuff was passed around before you wanted but you just gotta pick up and continue on with it.

 

[Lupus]

Could you please point me to where it says we are taking legal action? This is news to me.

 

[Pajari]

We view our work being stolen as a problem, and being our own work WE should be the ones who decide what to show and when.

Okay, I'll be angry for you when something is stolen. I'll help track down the bastard myself.

And we are aiming to try and really impress people when they see it, not go "Meh, seen it before in the alpha, just looks touched up now".

Your team could release an unskinned, unanimated pre-alpha render of a wood stick and it would far surpass anything done by ninety-five percent of the media the rest of the mod world has ever released. You don't need to worry about not impressing people. And if yout release is only an incremental improvement on the alpha, then it's still a release and it's still probably going to be fun anyway. Somebody that doesn't play a mod because its alpha screenshots were underwhelming probably has a stick wedged firmly in his posterior.

I doubt many people would be thrilled if someone hacked into their email account and read private emails (and posted some up for others to see). True we are going to be releasing it for free anyway, but when WE feel it is ready.

That's an entirely different thing. I'm not planning to release my emails to the public at any time in the future, but you are planning to release the mod.

 

[Lupus]

The mod is in continual development; there have been areas that have been completely redone (and some still to be redone), so there is no guarantee that anything we currently have is definitely going to be released.

So it isn't an entirely different thing as some of it will not be released to the public in the future.

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

"We are looking to pursue possible legal action which may affect those who aid in the distribution of the stolen content. "

 

[Lupus]

Ah, was late when I initially read through the post, must have forgotten that part.

 

[gweedodogg69]

where are these pics!!?>>!>!

 

[Crispy]

I dunno, maybe you should go find 'em, Lassie! :O

 

[jheaddon]

Wow I can't believe the negative reaction of some of the people in this thread. The team has every right to be upset, just because it isn't a commercial game doesn't nullify that.

It's unfortunate that these forums have fallen that way.

People seem to forget that this was our own sweat and blood that we didn't want shown at the time.

Yes we made a "boo boo" but telling people is the right thing, we don't want people getting confused about screenshots that are out there, them having to download it to prove its our work.

 

[Double_Blade]

That's bad news. And of course, I am keen on waiting for the Black Mesa: Source. I can't believe that the developers were working so hard on the game but yet, something goes wrong.

I hope they find the culprit in time.

 

[jheaddon]

We've already been sent a large amount of information on the culprit and thanks to our fans we have shut down a handful of forum threads and web sites hosting the images of our leaked build, which we would have been unable to do on such a scale if we had kept the news quiet.

 

[Dowie]

Congrads, hopefully this can be put behind us now.

 

[Sparda]

****ing mother ****ers we all should own them.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

It's unfortunate that these forums have fallen that way.

People seem to forget that this was our own sweat and blood that we didn't want shown at the time.

Yes we made a "boo boo" but telling people is the right thing, we don't want people getting confused about screenshots that are out there, them having to download it to prove its our work.

The forums haven't "fallen" any way - people are always going to have opinions, and some of those are going to be contrary to the ones you seem to be soliciting.

Were I in your situation, I would have just ignored it. There's no way on earth that you're going to stop the spread of these files, and legal action against the perpetrator(s) is pretty much untenable. So depriving them of the attention and validation that they're after would seem, to me, the best course of action.

 

[jheaddon]

I'd beg to differ actually, but hey feel free to think otherwise.

The only reason we posted about it was due to there being a lot of questions asked regarding it, which we couldn't ignore as it was spreading further.

If we hadn't opened up about it then the files would have spread much further than they have, luckily for us.

We're well aware that legal action against the perpetrator/s is limited (almost nill) but were are more interested about how it happened in the first place and making sure it will not again.

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

which we couldn't ignore as it was spreading further.

Yes you could of, now you openly say it was "leaked" more people will actually go for it, thus shooting yourself in the foot. Should've stayed quiet in the first place because it seems it didn't even take a day to figure who did it.

 

[Double_Blade]

We've already been sent a large amount of information on the culprit and thanks to our fans we have shut down a handful of forum threads and web sites hosting the images of our leaked build, which we would have been unable to do on such a scale if we had kept the news quiet.

Wow, that's great news. Good luck on your development though. As a matter of fact, looks like some other HL2 mods had just simply died down.

 

[Crispy]

Wow, that's great news. Good luck on your development though. As a matter of fact, looks like some other HL2 mods had just simply died down.

Some, but not all.