https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/15/score-city-of-heroes-emulator-leak/
Not going to repeat what these articles cover (and if one looks even further, the drama that has ensued since then).
Myself, I’ve always been a proponent of provisions which allow for the ability to experience offline play of online only games that have been shutdown. That is effectively in regards to code that emulates the server. Where I have reservations is when it comes to creating the server side backend in order to actually run publicly available private servers (that is, when the decision is made to run it as a service available to the public without the approval of the original rights owners).
Basically, I am for offline use only purposes where I can personally experience at least parts of a game which is what I did with one of the few available emulators for the early client build of TERA (in order to re-experience the original Island of Dawn starter zone). I’m also all for archivists and preservationists being able to reverse engineer the ability to create the server side code in order to bring the game client back to life again (without the DMCA getting in the way). What I am not an advocate of are those who decide to run the game as an actual public service without some form of tacit agreement by the original rights owners (since it is their intellectual property).
This is why on one side, I do understand where the lead developer of the project comes from when it came to keeping things under wraps. NCSoft continues to leverage IP from City of Heroes (they did with their MOBA which they closed down; Master X Master) and so I too would be wary of being on the receiving end of a cease and desist. Had this project been more public, NCSoft would’ve likely used the full extent of the law to protect their IP (they have to if they want to protect their trade marks, service marks, and copyright for that property).
While the majority of IP is packaged with the game client (assets such as graphics, audio, animations, character models, etc), there are portions of the server that can still run afoul of the DMCA (specifically when it comes to circumventing any encryption or proprietary protocols used which needs to be deciphered first in order to properly create server code that works with a particular game client build). That is what the U.S. Copyright DMCA exemption was for regarding the ability for archivists and preservationists to be able to reverse engineer such online only games (it would exempt those individuals from the DMCA).
It becomes a different matter when someone decides to run it as a service from some offshore data center where the country that houses those servers, does not respect the intellectual property rights of others (and by extension, do not recognize laws like the DMCA). It’s one thing to run this code locally (as a local server binary) or even for a small number of people. Once it goes public though, there this thing called scale and that costs money (you need enough server resources to handle the load for the main game server, the chat server, the instance server, the authentication server, and the database server). This could be actual server blade(s) or if a small enough load, handled on a single VPS. You also need to have sufficient network bandwidth provisioned.
This project was sort of in between based on the following (from 2013) where donations were taken for the server subscription where it was invitation only to support several hundred (NDA’d) individuals.
As soon as I read the tax stuff with the person who was handling the donations, I was like, “ok” (it also made me wonder how they even managed to seriously approach NCSoft with an offer to acquire the IP because something like that is in the millions of dollar price range even if the plan was to just obtain a license since fully acquiring all of those rights would probably be well beyond their financial capability given the above donation discussion…)
Digressing, I do get the rationale for the project team keeping things on the lowdown (smaller target on their back being one of them) but wonder about the “private secret playground” aspect. And that aspect has caused this uproar by fans of the game (more so when it was learned that player character data sans personal information had been culled server side before NCSoft shut the service down). Just that little detail is something that can be parsed further though.
Developers are often times worried about their server side files. So there are agreements that exist between developers and publishers; publishers themselves normally have tight controls as to those who have access to those files while developers often times have “kill switches” (not going to get into that). With that said, server files are known to leak every now and then. Actual data files as it relates to players is a different security matter though. The fact that the person sending the SCORE project those complete character data files via encrypted networks and subsequently vanishing, has insider written all over it.
I also saw the thread on Reddit asking that the SCORE project source be released (and a cross post to /r/MMORPG) to create the multi-headed hydra effect. That is easier said than done though. If you take a look at community sites where people attempt to create emulators, there is a common theme with different groups/projects all trying to recreate the wheel. The common question is why don’t these differing groups combine their efforts? The answer to that is simple; human nature. We’re instinctively territorial beings so people often times have this sense of ownership even when it comes to recreating something they don’t necessarily have the rights to. In this case here, someone has to do the original legwork of deciphering information like the client/server protocols, cracking packet encryption, mapping opcodes, and coding the game systems. Those folks don’t want someone else to just simply swoop in, and fork what they have for their own use. This is why so many projects exist, but most never go anywhere. And the ones that do exist, many end up dying when the original developer loses interest/disappears and takes all of that source with them.
It’s why I never considered commissioning someone to do that legwork for Devilian because ultimately, it’s hard to even write an agreement that you can hold someone to unless all parties agree to signing an actual legal contract (and in this space, you aren’t going to find many who will agree to those sort of terms).
But this private server/emulation thing goes back to this “games as a service” business where players are at the mercy of the game developer and publishers with nearly zero recourse (in the event of the game service being closed) besides the reverse engineering of such online only games where archivists/preservationists/museums can now legally file for that DMCA exemption). That exemption of course does not apply to those looking to somehow profit from these emulators/private servers where the efforts in that case, becomes counterproductive since it ends up standing on shaky legal ground. In other words, it would be more productive for those talented individuals to work with archivists/preservationists/museums as opposed to this silo’d approach that is prevalent in the community.
