care to explain why or are you just relying on ad hominems and gotchas. I might throw in an old debit card number for you if you answer.
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‘Barging in backstage uninvited’ or: How I learned to stop worrying and love corporate espionage #gigaleak
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Yes. They should. The creative process is just as interesting as the final product. Things like that deserve to be out there for enthusiasts.
Edit: Before anyone tries to have a gotcha here, as an artist, the only reason I don't preserve and make my roughs public is because it's tedious to export every version of something you're doing, and takes up a lot of space. If I could do that easily, or had the sort of resources for preservation that Nintendo has, for instance, I 100% would make all of those public.
Yes anything produced by a company is free for me to steal because I want to and I'll use bullshit platitudes about private property not existing and everything being free to justify it, even though when it would apply to me I'll just deflect
Is the artist Nintendo Co. Ltd.? If even one person who worked on these games said "yeah, release it" then it belongs to the public
The only thing I'm not cool with is the old chat logs - while there may be info of historical value there, in the current climate, it's likely to be weaponized or abused, so it can get buried.
As for the source code, if the game's been out for 10+ years, you're not going to be losing out on any financial benefits from it being disclosed, outside of a company that just constantly does porting of back-catalog or you've somehow been keeping it going for all that time (like CSGO, WOW, TF2, etc...). So there doesn't seem to be much of an ethical issue with it existing in the open, especially since it's not like Nintendo or any other game studios have been open about their in-house preservation efforts and the many cases where studios got rid of/lost their source code.
As for the source code, if the game's been out for 10+ years, you're not going to be losing out on any financial benefits from it being disclosed, outside of a company that just constantly does porting of back-catalog or you've somehow been keeping it going for all that time (like CSGO, WOW, TF2, etc...). So there doesn't seem to be much of an ethical issue with it existing in the open, especially since it's not like Nintendo or any other game studios have been open about their in-house preservation efforts and the many cases where studios got rid of/lost their source code.
Of course it's interesting but I can't buy into the argument that it "deserves" to be released. I don't see any compelling argument here that anyone "deserves" a look into someone's creative process.
The fact that you're not willing to just give out your private info shows you don't actually believe what you said.
Most of those letters are released with consent and not stolen though?
There's a difference between physical property (the things you listed) and intelectual property, though. Physical goods have the "problem" of scarcity, whereas intelectual property doesn't, and so they must be treated differently. For example, if I have an apple and you a banana, and we trade them, now I would have a banana but no apple and you would have an apple but no banana. If I tell you an story and you you tell me another story, now we both have the same stories.
The source code contains personal communications and notes that can be harmful to the people involved in making it. Many of these people are still alive and working and this kind of intimate view of their work is embarrassing and potentially could be actively harmful to them. While 25+ year old internal emails are not the end of the world it is still an obtrusive breach of privacy. No one wants that released and it being released doesn't really add any value to the conversation while it actively encourages people working now to cover their tracks and delete information in case it was ever to leak.
Oof, never seen someone go this hard on the "PROTECT THE CORPS" train, jeeeeez.
Yes it is. As it says on all copyrighted material, it belongs to Nintendo Co. Ltd. as an entity. And only the entity, not individuals within it, is able to make decisions regarding its use.
This is why musicians working on games usually don't have the right to release their music independently, because it doesn't belong to them. (Some do, but it depends on the work contract, and in the vast majority of cases, individuals do not own their work, only the entity does.)
I would like you to right now in this thread post your real name, address, phone numbers, place of work, credit card numbers, bank account, your doctor's address and all relevant health information, social security number, name and address of your family members and any information posted above that you may have of them.
We're all entitled to information, so you owe it to all of us to just hand over the goods.
All individuals have a right to privacy and have a right to keep aspects of their work private, even if that work legally belongs to a corporation. Corporations are still made up of individuals who are deserving of the same rights we afford to ourselves. To deny them their rights because you want goodies is selfish
In as much as they can be. Families that donate their ancestors' things to a museum or collection aren't always doing it with the approval of that ancestor.
Thank you both for these long and intelligently articulated rebuttals, my opinion on this subject is now forever changed
I think that postmortems on video game development are always interesting, but what elevates these is that Nintendo has guarded their IP in so many ways over the years, often to their detriment. They essentially fetishized and deified the development of these games, so now that people FINALLY get a peek behind the curtain, something as benign as "beta Yoshi" becomes the Ark of the Covenant.
I think that if they fed the obvious consumer need for retrospectives on their game history, including better ways for people to actually play these games legally, this would have still garnered attention but not in such a Streisand Effect manner.
That of course is separate from the localization and dev tools that were unearthed, which as a software engineer, you'd hope one day people could see the sweat of your labor as long as it's not filled with embarrassing and unnecessarily vulgar comments. (Something I've never had the freedom or desire as a software engineer to do.)
From a preservation standpoint, this is obviously a win - we KNOW how these companies (specifically Square) have literally thrown away source code and assets after games have shipped, which is just insane malpractice. We have no guarantee that Nintendo wouldn't be equally as careless. Now that it's on the Internet, it cannot be lost.
I think that if they fed the obvious consumer need for retrospectives on their game history, including better ways for people to actually play these games legally, this would have still garnered attention but not in such a Streisand Effect manner.
That of course is separate from the localization and dev tools that were unearthed, which as a software engineer, you'd hope one day people could see the sweat of your labor as long as it's not filled with embarrassing and unnecessarily vulgar comments. (Something I've never had the freedom or desire as a software engineer to do.)
From a preservation standpoint, this is obviously a win - we KNOW how these companies (specifically Square) have literally thrown away source code and assets after games have shipped, which is just insane malpractice. We have no guarantee that Nintendo wouldn't be equally as careless. Now that it's on the Internet, it cannot be lost.
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Ah yes, NINTENDO CO. LTD. A truly sublime artist, one of the best, along with GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY, TWENTIETH CENTURY STUDIOS INCORPORATED, and BERTELSMANN SE & CO. KGAAA.
Because your anarchic view on information has little logic to do with the real world nor the fundamental consumption of media. If the world resembled anarchy in any fashion, you might have ground to stand on. Most people are fine with the leak existing but, take issue with that people say we are owed this information. Even in anarchy, people would understand you don't need to know literally every single thing on an ancillary topic
User Warned - Thread Whining
Only creators will have the empathy to understand how much this sucks, while the rest will be all like "but muh preservation, but big corporations, but they wouldn't have released it anyway and I deserve to know".
This is stolen shit, it shouldn't have seen the light of day until the creators said otherwise.
Funny how can be banned for the dumbest shit on this forum but theres a warning in the original thread about not questioning the legality or morality of these actions. What the actual fuck is wrong with this forum and their cherry picked moral battles.
This is stolen shit, it shouldn't have seen the light of day until the creators said otherwise.
Funny how can be banned for the dumbest shit on this forum but theres a warning in the original thread about not questioning the legality or morality of these actions. What the actual fuck is wrong with this forum and their cherry picked moral battles.
Nintendo owns that art if it was made by somebody employed by them. Nintendo isn't a person (regardless of how corporations are seen by right wing law makers). So what here is really worth kicking rocks over? Some developer might be embarrassed they said something homophobic in an internal email? The theoretical monetary loss from Nintendo?
People are losing their homes/jobs/lives right now in a country that's dealing with a pandemic while falling into fascism. Forgive me if I can't spare any empathy for this intellectual property leak.
So uh, what you're arguing is that anything that exists in digital form is magically immune from private property laws? Are you nuts?
Then please dump your entire hard drives, SD cards, phone memory, e-mails, etc. on a public space. I'm waiting. Its not private since it's digital, right?
How is any company expected to make money if anything they produce that is digital should be available for free to anyone according to your twisted logic?
I never thought I'd see the day when a user proclaims "fuck corporations and capitalism" and "fuck all the labourers" at the exact same time. But here we are.
It's funny how a lot of you are conflating personal information with game source codes. First of all, leaking personal correspondence is bad, no exuses for that.
But leaking stuff like source codes, sprites, etc. can only be a good thing. It has a historical and educational value and should absolutely be released to the public after some defined amount of time. No one is hurt by doing that and if you think that Nintendo, a global corporation, is suffering some significant damage (or any at all), I can only laugh at that.
But leaking stuff like source codes, sprites, etc. can only be a good thing. It has a historical and educational value and should absolutely be released to the public after some defined amount of time. No one is hurt by doing that and if you think that Nintendo, a global corporation, is suffering some significant damage (or any at all), I can only laugh at that.
People tend to ignore that while corporations are a monolith, they're also filled with individual people.
You seem to be focusing a lot on this email thing, which isn't what 99% of people online are looking at. They like the luigi model in sm64 or Super Donkey sprite or moomin bowser. Also, I'm not sure why we should give corporations the right to privacy when they profit off of our personal data.
and the emails thing really isn't a major deal. If I were leaking these things, I wouldn't leak them but I didn't, so alas, they're out there. When someone taps into koizumi's bank account, get back to me. Until then you're cherry picking little concerns to defend your caping for a company that will sell your buying history to a data firm without a second thought.
Yeah, I can see this is a pretty major one, and the inclusion of dev conversations is legitimately shit. So maybe it being such a big one is a key proponent of it being so controversial. It certainly does seem to have made a bigger splash that past leaks however, so I was taken aback at how much it seems to have popped up on Social Media etc.
Yeah, there's definitely something to be said for both respecting the artists/creators if they don't wish to have those kinds of things shared, but it is also to be balanced against the good that it can do being released, though, it certainly looks like there is an amount of carelessness with how this was released, with no real curation at all... Which, I suppose gives again, an argument between releasing it as is, without any personal bias or ensuring sensitive stuff is removed.
Thanks to all of you for the responses though, given me more to think about on it.
No. Don't try to read into what is not there. I'm saying literally what I wrote, that they are different and must be treated differently. An exemple of it being treated differently: If I buy a wooden chair, I own it and can do what I want it, I can cut it up and repropuse it for something else for exemple. The guy that made and designed the chair can't do anything about that. However, under current copyright laws they can stop me from copying their design.
Those models and sprites were also made by private individuals who last I checked didn't consent to that work being leaked. It's not just e-mails
It's an invasion of privacy definitely by anyone viewing the stuff. If someone stole it, it's a crime as well. People worked hard to code this stuff and nobody is entitled to it. If this is ok, we might as well do away with the patent system since all knowledge apparently belongs to everyone.
We're going to those lengths because some people are arguing all information should be accessible.
Your argument also isn't great though because lots of companies have proven that private information is useful in a lot of ways and have worked hard to erode the very idea of private information. For example medical history could potentially help create new medical breakthroughs, but should your medical history be avaliable to the public at large? People deserve agency over some level of personal information.
This thread is pretty funny. Is it because...of the company involved? There have been plenty of source leaks in the past, and I do not seem to remember this sort of uproar.
I for one welcome these leaks, as it gives a fascinating window into game development. At the end of the day I'm not profiting off of this, but the companies will continue making millions, so I'm not really bothered over this.
I for one welcome these leaks, as it gives a fascinating window into game development. At the end of the day I'm not profiting off of this, but the companies will continue making millions, so I'm not really bothered over this.
These are some of the most important and timeless games of our nascent medium. They deserve to have their development documented in as great a detail as possible for future generations to refer to.
That said I am against those emails being leaked also and believe those should have been pruned out of the archives prior to dissemination.
That said I am against those emails being leaked also and believe those should have been pruned out of the archives prior to dissemination.
User Banned (1 Day): Antagonizing other users
It's because it's big and it's Nintendo. Both of these things make people care about the leaks, and it being Nintendo makes people's emotion attachment to the brand go off.
Easy to handwave away concerns when you also want to know what's in the box
Unless Miyamoto's address is encoded into Yoshi's skin, I don't see why I should have any issue with 25 year old sprites being leaked. They're pixels, dude.
Ultimately, these asset leaks are just video game curiosities, and I don't think their artistic value should be put on such a pedestal nor do I think their unveiling is worthy of the words "public benefit." The private messages included in this without the knowledge or consent of anybody involved even less so, we have no business seeing that stuff.
As outside observers, these leaks satisfy our curiosity and search for information, it's very neat and enlightening seeing all this. For the original artists and writers, this sudden unveiling of old creations might be surprising and fun to some of them. It might also be upsetting and embarrassing to some of them. Some of them could be scared of backlash from the public or from the company that they work for or used to work for. For the megacorporation with ownership of the assets and power over the original creators, it ultimately does no harm to their profits. They might ignore this incident, they might simply pursue legal action against the people responsible for the leak, they might reprimand or punish creators whose work was stolen. We don't really know, I think it's worth thinking about.
Speaking simply as a creative myself, I would hypothetically be pretty embarrassed and bummed out to have old WIPs stolen and shared without my consent, and I would be kind of upset to see old doodles given more importance by the public than me as a person. But that is simply how I would feel in that hypothetical scenario, and that's before even taking into account how huge and well-known these projects are, and how they are under the ownership of a large corporation.
I think the discussion over what leaks like this could mean for the people who originally made the assets, and about the relationship between preservation and respecting the original artists, is worth having. I don't think this situation is black and white and it's unproductive to reduce it to that.
As outside observers, these leaks satisfy our curiosity and search for information, it's very neat and enlightening seeing all this. For the original artists and writers, this sudden unveiling of old creations might be surprising and fun to some of them. It might also be upsetting and embarrassing to some of them. Some of them could be scared of backlash from the public or from the company that they work for or used to work for. For the megacorporation with ownership of the assets and power over the original creators, it ultimately does no harm to their profits. They might ignore this incident, they might simply pursue legal action against the people responsible for the leak, they might reprimand or punish creators whose work was stolen. We don't really know, I think it's worth thinking about.
Speaking simply as a creative myself, I would hypothetically be pretty embarrassed and bummed out to have old WIPs stolen and shared without my consent, and I would be kind of upset to see old doodles given more importance by the public than me as a person. But that is simply how I would feel in that hypothetical scenario, and that's before even taking into account how huge and well-known these projects are, and how they are under the ownership of a large corporation.
I think the discussion over what leaks like this could mean for the people who originally made the assets, and about the relationship between preservation and respecting the original artists, is worth having. I don't think this situation is black and white and it's unproductive to reduce it to that.
I don't like these leaks. This work is not public information. If they wanted it public it would have been open-sourced ages ago. It goes against the golden rule for me, I wouldn't want this done to my work with out my consent.
The amount of threads here enjoying the leaks has been off putting to me personally.
The amount of threads here enjoying the leaks has been off putting to me personally.
Folks on this site can't get enough of NDA-shattering leaks for video games that aren't even out yet and worship the insiders who deliver them, so the idea that there is any meaningful discussion to be had here about the ethics of leaking beta material from decades-old games is laughable. I can literally spot people clutching their pearls in this topic who I saw not even a week ago frothing at the mouth over potential Nintendo Direct leaks in the speculation thread.
The only thing from this recent info dump that shouldn't have been spread around are the message logs between Argonaut staff, which had nothing to do with beta material and were only shared because of the questionable language they contained.
The only thing from this recent info dump that shouldn't have been spread around are the message logs between Argonaut staff, which had nothing to do with beta material and were only shared because of the questionable language they contained.
An individual Yoshi sprite sheet may be harmless, but the collective size and amount of data in these leaks is absolutely not OK, which have also included OS source code and the contents of emails. It's absolutely careless and thoughtless to be dumping all of this without any regard to the people involved.
User banned (1 month): trolling over multiple posts, antagonising other users, multiple prior bans for trolling
