Tabula Rasa accused of using Auto Assault codes
Over on Tobold’s personal MMORPG-dedicated blog, one reader commented that he is 100% sure that the upcoming MMO Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa from NCSoft Austin is using the codes of NetDevil‘s now-defunct game Auto Assault. The reader said:
The character models are the same, the UI elements are the same, some of the music is even the same! I looked at some of the quest rewards in Tabula Rasa, and they even use the same exact item fonts that they did in Auto Assault!
Former NCsoft Community Manager Jeremy Dalberg was able to picked up the comment and went on to say that the two are independent projects even though NCSoft used to published Auto Assault. Then Dalberg added:
The similarities may or may not be there – I would not call it a fact that elements were shared though. But regardless, I don’t see what the point of this supposed similarity is? Is NCSoft accused of stealing NetDevil code and assets?
Is NetDevil accused of stealing NCSoft code and assets? If there is some sharing of assets and it is all legal, is that a bad thing in that case and why?
We have to keep in mind that Auto Assault is a shooter MMO that featured cars while Tabula Rasa isn’t. Tobold himself commented that there’s a big possibility that the developers wanted to “salvage” some source code from AA hence the similarities.
Over on Tobold’s personal MMORPG-dedicated blog, one reader commented that he is 100% sure that the upcoming MMO Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa from NCSoft Austin is using the codes of NetDevil‘s now-defunct game Auto Assault. The reader said:
The character models are the same, the UI elements are the same, some of the music is even the same! I looked at some of the quest rewards in Tabula Rasa, and they even use the same exact item fonts that they did in Auto Assault!
Former NCsoft Community Manager Jeremy Dalberg was able to picked up the comment and went on to say that the two are independent projects even though NCSoft used to published Auto Assault. Then Dalberg added:
The similarities may or may not be there – I would not call it a fact that elements were shared though. But regardless, I don’t see what the point of this supposed similarity is? Is NCSoft accused of stealing NetDevil code and assets?
Is NetDevil accused of stealing NCSoft code and assets? If there is some sharing of assets and it is all legal, is that a bad thing in that case and why?
We have to keep in mind that Auto Assault is a shooter MMO that featured cars while Tabula Rasa isn’t. Tobold himself commented that there’s a big possibility that the developers wanted to “salvage” some source code from AA hence the similarities.
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