We're finished researching the Source Code leak.
Author: Big Chungus,
published 8 months ago,
As you know, source code stealing is a serious allegation, and is illegal.
One of our junior developers had raised a concern that a given product already on the market had either used source code from us, or had been based on an earlier build of our own respective product, due to a number of similarities in technology, folder structure, the way our games both handle respective files, and so forth. These were allegations this independent contractor made.
Firstly, we [u]aren't[/u] going to get legal (in this case).
After significant research and reverse engineering, we found that the potentially offending title - despite a number of similarities, was possibly based on a build so early and has diverged so substantially from our final product that the vast majority of source code in their own project was different or had been rewritten at worst. Initial concerns were that the offending title had ripped off a build in 2015, but these fears were unfounded. If it were based on our product, it would have had to been based off a build that was done a few months after initial release that was leaked to Facepunch or somewhere else in 2011, several months after development work started on the initial project - 14 years ago. I did the initial concept work and have written all code in our project myself for the past 14-15 years and started the sprite work back in 2009. So far back that the details are hazy on my end. Which means that if that project was derived from a very early build of our product, it would have to have been so early that the other developer would have spent around anywhere from 1/2 to a quarter of his life on the project. We're not about to sue when someone has been working on the project for that long, if that is indeed what happened. It's his life's work in that scenario, and I completely respect that because I've been working on mine just slightly longer.
That being said, it also appears that if that were the case, the entire project had been entirely rewritten at some point, or expanded on so much that the other product wouldn't be considered a derivative work - or at least I wouldn't consider it such. It's also completely different from our game. Even then, the possibility was also presented that the other title had independently created his project from scratch himself, possibly from seeing initial builds of our product, or somehow - coincidentally we had come up with the same technology themselves, due to the same language, same folder structure, using similar libraries, and so forth. The language both are games use was dominant in 2011.
The possibility of the other title using later code - without having access to their source to see is probably also unfounded. We did however notice similarities in code structure in both our games, including matching internal constants, but admittedly most of the code was rewritten, if so.
These are the facts.
Considering all that, we've decided not to pursue legal action at this time and haven't even bothered to contact a lawyer for it. We are however going to continue to watch and ensure that our source code isn't being used in other projects in the future going forward.
We [b]are[/b] indeed going to release the source code to our project sometime in the future.
But not yet.
When that happens, people are welcome to use the technology themselves and create derivative works with the source code under the GNU GPL.
Thanks,
Reptilian Games, LLC