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Warner Bros. Fights 'Mortal Kombat II' Source Code Leak
GitHub has removed a recent "Mortal Kombat II" source code leak following a request from Warner Bros. Discovery. The leak purportedly reveals unused artwork and an alternative storyline for the iconic arcade game, first released by Midway in 1993. Three decades later, the current rightsholder seems keen to plug the leaks.
[...] Warner Bros. and NetherRealm are not solely focused on new content, they're very protective of historical rights as well. That became apparent over the past few days after the 1993 source code for Mortal Kombat II leaked online.
The leak was met with excitement by gaming history fans, who discovered unused artwork and an early or alternative storyline.
The files in question were posted to a GitHub repository by the user account 'Historical Source,' which has leaked many other game assets in the past. While many of those remain online, Warner Bros. was quick to object.
(Score: 2) by tekk on Wednesday January 11, @11:13PM (1 child)
I've wondered about this for a bit, maybe we have a lawyer on the site who could chime in, but could they not just authorize the use? "This github repo and its forks may use these characters as they were in 1993 for the purpose of historical preservation and education" or whatever
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday January 11, @11:44PM
I don't know but I doubt it. Considering that anyone can fork anything on Github and they can download anything and use in other projects that are then not on Github. That said it would seem it is a bit late to try and protect actual Mortal Kombat II (and other things) as far as code and assets go, after all there are clones and copies of the actual game(s) for various systems already, MAME romes are not hard to come by either etc.
While they are not source code all the assets can be ripped out and such. So I guess all they have left is try to uphold the law and the image of the story and characters. After all they are a lot more valuable these days then some early 90's source code for a game everyone can play at their leisure for free these days anyway. In that regard I think the graphics, characters and story are more valuable then the actual source code, from a lawyer perspective at least.
The Historical Sources doesn't really appear to do much with the stuff they have, it's just there as a repository for others to have a look at. Preservation and showcase of how they did it back in ye' olden days. But I could be wrong about that, but I think that is the intent of the place.