NCsoft, Korea’s largest game developer, and makers of City of Heroes/Villains, Guild Wars and the Lineage series has more money than you do.
Strangely though, you have never had the source code from an upcoming hit game stolen from you, while NCsoft, a company who you would imagine could hire guards or dogs or even really mean, tiny bats, recently lost a good deal of the source code for the upcoming Lineage III due to theft by a former employee.
According to Korea’s Chosunilbo, via Gamasutra, the seven employees believed to have been involved in the codenapping left NCsoft in February of this year, and may have shown the code to a “major Japanese company”. Not only are they suspected of presenting the Lineage III code to their prospective employer, they are also thought to be guilty of disemminating the code via email into the wilds of the Interweb. As you know, a young codebase alone in the dark corners of the Internet is a vulnerable target to many of the hungry predators that lurk therein. Not only could it be sodomized, but I have no idea where this analogy is going.
The Seoul Metropolitan Police are currently investigating the theft, and if convicted, the former employees could face horrendous tongue-cuttings, assault with hammers, and any number of other vaguely Oedipan punishments.
