My question is why? That’s protected IP—if you use it you’re opening yourself up to basically a slam dunk lawsuit. I guess if some rich person in China bought it that doesn’t matter.

The Witcher 3 is a great game, and I think it’s impressive in a lot of ways, but it’s not like it’s doing something incredibly special in the realm of game engines. Hardly seems worth millions of dollars to get code you can’t really do anything with.

Interestingly the story was updated to include the detail that a deal was made for the code outside the auction which they accepted. The researchers believe that’s basically just a lie to save face after not making any money trying to sell it. Probably for reasons you mentioned.

The Witcher 3 is a great game, and I think it’s impressive in a lot of ways, but it’s not like it’s doing something incredibly special in the realm of game engines. Hardly seems worth millions of dollars to get code you can’t really do anything with.

Are source code leaks even that big a deal? Is there anything ever so proprietary that it can ruin a company? Most game engines do pretty much exactly the same types of things no?