Source Code of CS: GO and Team Fortress 2 Leaks

[AleksandarK]

Source Code of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Team Fortress 2 got leaked today. It seems like Valve hasn't been careful with control of its output, and a few leaks came out. All of the licensees of the Source Engine, a multi-platform game engine used in all Valve's games like Dota 2, Half-Life, and CS: GO, have been empowered by Valve with access to the source code of 2017/2018 versions of CS: GO and Team Fortress 2. Someone down the line, however, took that opportunity and access to leak the source code. The original news source is the SteamDB Twitter account, so we don't have any link to the actual source code.

This pretty big news since CS: GO can be considered as the most popular game on the Steam platform, and IP that Valve holds on it is very valuable. The 2017/2018 version that is leaked is probably outdated by a mile now, but it still represents an act of theft and should be treated as such. We are yet to see the response from Valve and how they will handle this situation.


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[Regeneration]

I'd be worried about potential new hacks but the game is already full with cheaters anyway.

 

[noel_fs]

literally who cares, as for most popular game in the world thats not even true

 

[Cheeseball]

literally who cares, as for most popular game in the world thats not even true

May not be the "most popular game", but it is the most played game on Steam for the last few years counting.

 

[lexluthermiester]

What does anyone want to bet that Valve "leaked" it themselves?

 

[FreedomEclipse]

What does anyone want to bet that Valve "leaked" it themselves?

I am also curious. After all, wasnt TF2 originally a mod for CS that was community made that was so good that valve ended up recruiting the mod developers to make an actual standalone game?

Maybe valve are fishing for talent and one guy suggested leaking the code and hiring the person who made the best mod with the resources.

Id worry about the security aspect of it but the game is full of hackers anyway since it went F2P. I wonder how easy it is to circumvent valves VAC anti-cheat system. Though its probably not fit for purpose anymore since there are so many hackers in game.

 

[birdie]

This might lead to quite nasty games hacks and exploits, including remote.

You'd better have a separate non-administrator user account to play these games on public servers for a while. Nothing changes for you if you're playing on official Valve/FPL servers. Maybe for a long while.

 

[londiste]

cstrike15_src?

 

[Fluffmeister]

The code is dated, but John Carmack will no doubt point out the bits that were his.

 

[evernessince]

I can only imagine the financial damage the hacker would be ordered to pay to valve for leaking the source for those two games. They better hope they never get caught.

 

[Assimilator]

What does anyone want to bet that Valve "leaked" it themselves?

... why on Earth would they?

 

[noel_fs]

May not be the "most popular game", but it is the most played game on Steam for the last few years counting.

actually, from 2017 to 2019 pubg was the most popular. and previously to that dota2 was more popular. thats what a quick look at steamcharts tells me.

which surprises me, i would have thought that csgo was losing popularity due to its problems with servers/netcode and cheaters

 

[efikkan]

I'm actually surprised this kind of stuff doesn't happen more often. Projects like this probably have 50 or more people checking out the source code throughout the product lifecycle.

While source code is certainly valuable, I really don't think it's such a big deal if it's leaked as it used to be. If you're a competitor and get access to the source of a competing game engine, source code these days is complex enough that you can't just copy & paste code, so at most you're looking at getting inspiration from it, and then crafting your own solution. The alternative would be to derive your own engine from the "stolen" code, which is possible, but still may require years just to get familiar with a large complex codebase, and by that time it shouldn't be a problem for the original owner.

I think code like this which are released (intentionally or unintentionally) is mostly relevant for hobbyists. Id used to release the source of their engines, which in turn spawned a huge pile of hobby projects and probably a few making a career out of it.

Id worry about the security aspect of it but the game is full of hackers anyway since it went F2P. I wonder how easy it is to circumvent valves VAC anti-cheat system. Though its probably not fit for purpose anymore since there are so many hackers in game.

Well, anyone who is worried about their source code exposing flaws knows their code is flawed. If it's solid, exposing the code shouldn't defeat any kind of real security.

 

[Cheeseball]

actually, from 2017 to 2019 pubg was the most popular. and previously to that dota2 was more popular. thats what a quick look at steamcharts tells me.

which surprises me, i would have thought that csgo was losing popularity due to its problems with servers/netcode and cheaters

Well, regardless where it is in the top 3, CS:GO is still an extremely popular game. Any low-level hacks/tools made from this leak will be very detrimental.

 

[lexluthermiester]

... why on Earth would they?

One possibility could be claim it as a loss of revenue and take it out of their taxes..

 

[efikkan]

Well, regardless where it is in the top 3, CS:GO is still an extremely popular game. Any low-level hacks/tools made from this leak will be very detrimental.

Why does so many think the source code will enable people to cheat so much easier?
In CS:GO all the input events are sent to the server, so your ability to manipulate the game simulation is very limited. You could of course manipulate what the user see on the client side (like see-through walls, guides etc.), but people have already made that without the source code.

 

[Cheeseball]

Why does so many think the source code will enable people to cheat so much easier?
In CS:GO all the input events are sent to the server, so your ability to manipulate the game simulation is very limited. You could of course manipulate what the user see on the client side (like see-through walls, guides etc.), but people have already made that without the source code.

Well, ya kinda said it there. It may make it easier for them now that they have the code itself. Just being able to see the internals means that a competent coder can spot bugs that could allow for more exploitation.

 

[efikkan]

Why does so many think the source code will enable people to cheat so much easier?
In CS:GO all the input events are sent to the server, so your ability to manipulate the game simulation is very limited. You could of course manipulate what the user see on the client side (like see-through walls, guides etc.), but people have already made that without the source code.

Well, ya kinda said it there. It may make it easier for them now that they have the code itself. Just being able to see the internals means that a competent coder can spot bugs that could allow for more exploitation.

As I said, input events are sent to the server, which calculates the next state of the game. Even if you found something to exploit, you're still limited to being able to send valid events to the server to achieve what you want. Knowing the source code is not likely to give an upper hand when the simulation is controlled on the server side.

What I said in bold there is changing what the client side sees on their screen, not changing what the game simulation does. Such tools have existed for a long time, and is not as much exploitation as it is just manipulating the data that is already in memory.