It is authentically known that material was leaked before March the second “Stalker” is the responsibility of the VK fan audience administrators. In more detail about the conflict and the reasons for its occurrence, we told in the previous material. But with the release of a playable test version, the story is much more interesting. Studio GSC Game World in its appeal accused Russian hackers of the theft, and they shifted responsibility to the authors of the game themselves, they say, paying little attention to the company’s security. Let’s try to figure out together who is still responsible for the leak and how it will affect development.
How it was
Despite GSC’s developers accusing hackers from Russia of theft on Twitter, the actual course of events could be different.
Test builds intended to debug and polish certain mechanisms were uploaded by developers to torrent trackers so that remote workers could quickly access all the necessary files. Actually, these 200 gigabyte archives were in the public domain without any privacy settings. Any stranger can find these files and download them to your PC.
As a result, the test builds were not found at all by Russian hackers or Stalker fans, but by Western data miners. The 200 GB archive, and even from the official developer server, looked very tempting. It downloaded without much fuss and inside was a raw build of STALKER 2. Dataminers shared their find on the imageboard, and only then did information about the playable build spread around the world.
Thanks to the March release of the game’s design documents, the Herald of the Same Stalker community on VKontakte came under close scrutiny from fans of the STALKER universe. Through this group, the Russian-speaking community learned about the build and received a download link. Therefore, many Internet users believed that the administrators of the fan community were responsible for the leak of the early version of the game on May 30. No one went into too much detail about exactly how the download link got into the hands of the fans.
Initially, the trial version of STALKER 2 was encrypted and may take a long time to crack. To find a solution, the community administrators hooked up their well-known coder, who began parsing the drain files.
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A few days after the publication, namely on June 1, the decryption keys were published by enthusiasts of the RedProjects Discord server. They didn’t even have to hack and code anything. The necessary line of code appeared to be in the test logs of the build itself. It turned out that none of the developers followed the test builds and didn’t care about their protection.
Thanks to the found decryption keys, anyone could run a test build on their PC and extract the packed assets through a special program for the Unreal Engine 5 engine.
The management of the GSC Game World studio responded to the leak by posting a call to players on the project’s official Twitter page. They blamed Russian-speaking hackers who have been attacking the company’s servers for a year and a half. The developers also urged fans not to watch the early version of the game and wait for the full release.
The public administrators on VK posted their appeal in response, accusing the developers of lying and manipulating. The guys claimed that they were not hackers at all and only informed the fan community about the possibility of downloading an archive with a test version. Finally, administrators have nothing to do with Russia, they are citizens of Ukraine. Below is a quote while retaining style and punctuation.
“In summary, even the leak of 15 GB of data and development in the game was made by Ukrainians and nothing more. In the recent build leak, GSC Game World themselves are to blame, mostly Ukrainians (Czechs). The Americans discovered the leak and we, Ukrainians too, subsequently discovered it and started spreading it. And all this without resorting to hacks and using “vulnerabilities”.
From all of the above, it can be seen that there were no Russian-speaking hackers, no one deliberately tried to hack into the developers’ servers.
After the publication of the test archive on the network, different opinions were formed about everything that happened:
- The tapping of the test version of the game is part of a PR campaign. GSC has practiced this approach before during the development period. Shadow of Chernobyl. That’s why there are so many different builds of previous games on the internet, including developments on the canceled ones STALKER 2 preview 2011.
- A hacker attack has occurred and there are data miners or other unknown persons behind it. It is important to understand that the archive of design documents dated March 15 ended up in the hands of fans in March, not through hacking, but through open interaction with the developers (even before the infamous world events). That is, administrators and other members of the sensational VK group are not hackers or those who try to disrupt development. They also banned members in their group who openly call for a boycott of the release of STALKER 2. And we talked about the reasons for leaking design documents and the disagreements between the group admins and GSC community managers in a separate article.
- The third reason is the most realistic. The test rig fell into the hands of users through ordinary human inattention. The developers did not take into account that people from outside the company can access the torrent server. Also, they did not clean the builds of the keys and any decryption methods. And remote testing always involves risks.
It’s hard to say how the leak will actually affect the course of development, but studio staff say they’re continuing to work on the game as usual.
Who do you think is responsible for the leaked test version of STALKER 2?
To sum up the above, the STALKER 2 test build leak has further worsened mutual understanding between the developers and Russian-speaking fans. While some are blocking fans on the official Discord server and canceling sales in the Russian region, others are contributing to the proliferation of design documents and leaked early builds.
The STALKER series stays in the spotlight thanks to dedicated fans. Developers are at least obligated to listen to their opinions. Users, in turn, must reduce the level of toxicity and be understanding with SGR employees who find themselves in a difficult situation. We hope that the developers and the fan audience come to an understanding and stop putting spokes in each other’s wheels.
Source: VG Times
Christina Moncayo is a contributing writer for “Social Bites”. Her focus is on the gaming industry and she provides in-depth coverage of the latest news and trends in the world of gaming.