S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Steals from id and Valve?
Speculation has been brewing on various message boards that GSC Game World’s first person shooter, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, stole many texture files and such from games such as Doom 3 and Half-Life 2.
A user had posted images with comparisons of lightimages from Doom 3 to the game in question. The filenames were surprisingly the same, but the files in S.T.A.L.K.E.R’s seem to be visually modified, such as changing certain aspects of the file. Surely it was just a coincidence, right? Well, another image popped up comparing the water texture from Half-Life 2, and it was the same story. The two textures were strikingly identical and no one can deny the fact that these are indeed the same textures.
id Software CEO Todd Hollshead responded with the following:
I’ve seen a post on a web forum that claims DOOM3 assets are used in another game, but we’ve been working hard on Enemy Territory: Quake Wars as well as our own internal project and have not had the time to fully investigate or otherwise verify that the claim is true. Only from what I’ve seen on the Web, it’s concerning. However, it may turn out to be nothing. Nevertheless, it would be improper to make any decision about a course of action until we find out whether the claim is true, and what assets from DOOM3, if any, have potentially been used.
This is quite dissapointing, but this obviously means that the developers of S.T.A.L.K.E.R did not have permission to use these files. If the two companies decide to take this to the courts, GSC Game World is in a lot of trouble.
Read (ShackNews)