Gangs of London code leaked, Sony not amused
by Ludwig Kietzmann 
{ Aug 3rd 2006 at 9:25PM }
An internal beta of Gangs of London, a forthcoming spectacle of urban violence on the PSP, has been leaked onto BitTorrent sites across the net. After vowing to never again take firewall advice from Gabe Newell, Sony Computer Entertainment UK urged gamers to avoid downloading the game -- not because it's illegal or morally reprehensible, but because the game is so full of bugs. "It is not the complete game and it has anomalies in the code since it hasn't been through our QA process yet."Content with having spared code kleptomaniacs the inconvenience of encountering technical anomalies, Sony's David Wilson goes on to condemn piracy, noting that "there are proven links that exist between counterfeiting and organised crime and that has some serious consequences (and victims) that people should give due consideration."
Be sure to give this issue your due consideration before purchasing the game later this year and running about London, stealing and killing things.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Wolfrain @ Aug 3rd 2006 9:50PM
I don't see what the fuss is about Homebrew?
The PMP software is alright nothing special (I would not personally install them on my PSP), emulation of old consoles can only be a good feature but it too is a touchy subject about copyright and there are better devices for the job but people who go out and be cheap skates by supporting piracy by downloading ISOs, deserve to be shot with a firing squad in my opinion. The fools don't seem to get they they make the developers lose revenue therefore in the long run the developers have to make up for the losses and so the quality in a future game drops or they make the game more expesive to buy therefore gamers get punished with high priced games and/or bad quality games. Regardless of what SOny has done in the past with the root kit malarky they have every right to bring out the new firmware and if they could force them on every PSP just because of piracy.
I don't want to hear excuses like "I download ISOs when I get the game so that I can run it off the memory stick so that it saves battery life." You lying to me and you. The homebrew games are as much quality as cell phone games. The utilities are really buggy.
About Gangs of London how retarded can the devlopers be leaking it on to the internet. Someone needs better security.
Dan @ Aug 3rd 2006 9:51PM
where do the established links between organized crime and big business ever go? no one mentions... Should we avoid buying as a result? How about with the gov't? Stop voting maybe? hands tied my friends, hands tied and some of us needs to die.
cringer8 @ Aug 3rd 2006 9:53PM
So by downloading and playing this stolen beta you are supporting organized crime.
There have also been links between organized crime and terrorists (because I said so), so really, you're supporting terrorists.
These same terrorists have been linked to Iraq (because Bush said so), so you would be, in essence, supporting terrorism in Iraq. How unpatriotic. You want our troops to continue dying? And for what? A sneak peak at a game? For shame.
Support our troops, don't download this torrent.
God bless America.
1up_clock @ Aug 3rd 2006 10:05PM
"ORGANIZED CRIME IS BAD SO PLEASE SPEND MONEY ON OUR GAME ABOUT ORGANIZED CRIME."
That's pretty much what I'm hearing.
Felix Andrews @ Aug 3rd 2006 10:24PM
The irony is absolutely magnificent. I don't know whether to laugh at Sony or applaud them.
Blarry @ Aug 3rd 2006 10:29PM
If the game's beta then it's been through a shitload of QA testing. Games can't declare beta until 95% or so of the projected bug totals have been found. So is Sony bullshitting or is it that Joystiq knows very little about the industry it covers? I'm thinking it might be a bit of both.
Fan @ Aug 3rd 2006 10:37PM
"That's pretty much what I'm hearing."
Its seems your hearing is damaged. There is nothing similar between real crime and a game about crime. Please dont be stupid.
Also stealing games via torrent sites damages the gaming industry. Dont do it unless your an ass poor student or something.
Pal @ Aug 3rd 2006 10:53PM
"Also stealing games via torrent sites damages the gaming industry. Dont do it unless your an ass poor student or something."
Well, that's a bad comment, isn't it? "Ass poor" is a self-declared rank for most. If you save a dollar a day, you can buy a Greatest Hits game in twenty days. That's 18 $20 games or 9 $40 games a year, which is very fair. Buy used and you can buy even more games in one year. Stop buying so much candy and save up!
Peter S. @ Aug 3rd 2006 11:08PM
I hate it when people act like it's OH-SO-HARD to save up for games. The prices won't be coming down any soon, so just accept it. Plus, if you can't afford them, get a job or at least work more or whatever. Just don't think you're some kind of hero for sticking it to the man or whatever BS excuse you have.
Grant @ Aug 3rd 2006 11:22PM
"there are proven links that exist between counterfeiting and organised crime and that has some serious consequences (and victims) that people should give due consideration."
That one's an absolute classic. The Sony PR department is either incredibly stupid or have a really good sense of humor.
idioteraser @ Aug 3rd 2006 11:32PM
Ahem beta doesn't mean it is 95% free of bugs. There are different stages of beta. There are beta builds that crash every 30 seconds.
apoc06 @ Aug 4th 2006 12:48AM
organized crime? WTF?
release groups = organized
stealing an unreleased game = crime
I see where they are trying to go, but come on now... I think the only reason they are up and in arms is due to the fact that they haven't received any revenue on the sale of the game yet. If the game was already platinum, no one would care. No one says anything about the fact that Liberty City Stories is being pirated right now.
Piracy isn't going anywhere. Piracy didn't cripple the PS1 or the PS2. I think that the piracy and homebrew angles have sold more PSPs than any software Sony publishers have created so far. That's why you rarely get a direct condemnation like this from any Sony rep. They prefer you not to put the spotlight on it, because it is both their magic mushroom and kryptonite at the same time.
Hmmm... if you download a game and play it, that makes you a thief. If you like it and then go buy the game, what would that make you? I gave up on homebrew personally [upgraded], but where are the rest of my downloadable demos?
anonymous @ Aug 4th 2006 3:23AM
apoc06, you shouldn't have upgraded. Your downloadable demos are on bittorrent. Play it for more than an hour? Buy it.
Ludwig Kietzmann @ Aug 4th 2006 5:47AM
Blarry,
Clearly, this is some sort of outrage. You'd better inform SCEA UK right away what can and what can't be deemed an internal beta. I hope the game developer doesn't actually think THEY get the right to call the milestones!
Geez, it's like they know very little about how this industry works.
Ivan_PSP @ Aug 4th 2006 6:19AM
Anyone who downloaded illegal games is a bum that should be in prison you all just poor Sony RuLeZ
idioteraser @ Aug 4th 2006 6:59AM
Piracy didn't cripple the PS1 or the PS2. I think that the piracy and homebrew angles have sold more PSPs than any software Sony publishers have created so far.
Well sony doesn't make any profit of sold psps. They make profit from psp game sales which are considered to be in the toilet due to piracy among other things.
Piracy did hurt the dreamcast since guess what like Sony Sega was dependent upon third parties and if those third parties don't see their games making a profit they go to a console whose games sales are much better.
Piracy does hurt the game industry many game development projects have been canceled due to piracy as well as the mere fact piracy increases the cost of goods since the companies have to make up the losses somehow.
Gazbin @ Aug 4th 2006 7:26AM
Yeh, the game is all buggy and not that good so it looks like its the finished PSP game. But if Sony is concerened that the downloaded game won't provide "the complete experience" than I'm happy for them to send me a replacement. Otherwise, I could probably add a few lines of code to emulate the extra long UMD load times to simulate the finished product.
By the way I found out about the link to the torrent because Osama emailed me and said "Gazbin quick download this game as doing so benefits us terrorists because... because... I don't know just do it".
Gazbin @ Aug 4th 2006 7:36AM
Now I remember it wasn't Osama that tipped me off about the Torrent it was Joe Montana - apparently if I download the game I can purchase tech support and game hints from the mafia.
Oh yeh, and Tony said that "Sony is a bunch of dirty filthy Kokar-roaches!"
DCFC Fan @ Aug 4th 2006 8:46AM
First off, I agree that it is ridiculous to imply that by downloading this leaked beta you are supporting organized crime. It's lame for him to mention that in this scenario.
BUT - What he has said has been proven. There is a link between piracy and organized crime, though in the US it's primarily seen with bootlegged and cammed movies. I'm sure it goes on with music and games, too, but not to the extent that movies are pirated in this country. His "links" also I'm sure are referring to eastern Asia, where piracy is a huge phenomenon with millions of dollars to be made. When you get into the millions, that's when the organized crimers decide to get involved.
So while his statement isn't untrue, giving it as a reason not to play a leaked beta is total jackassery.
Rob @ Aug 4th 2006 8:58AM
Blarry - All Beta means is "feature complete". Granted, that doesn't mean people use it that way (I'm looking at you MS)
Yoshi Likes Boys @ Aug 4th 2006 10:29AM
Personally, I have a CS degree and do lots of programming on my own as a hobby. I LOVE the homebrew scene on various consoles, and being able to tinker and write my own apps. Sony's continued urge to lock out homebrew since they were unable to design a system that was piracy-proof has led to me being UNABLE TO PLAY new games that I purchased without giving up on the homebrew software that I've already developed on my own. You should have seen the look on my face when I first purchased Smackdown vs. RAW 2006 only to find out that it wouldn't run on my PSP without the upgrade, and the loss of functionality that comes with it.
Sony, you are welcome to do whatever you can to thwart piracy, I encourage it as it is a scourge on this industry thanks to all the degenerates out there, but when you treat your paying customers like common criminals, you take away their incentive to support you at all.
Microsoft's absurd levels of anti-piracy that have stood in the way of homebrew development on the XBox 360 have simply and surely killed any interest I would have had in the console, where the XBox was helmed by one of the strongest homebrew scenes in history, netting, among other things, the best Media Center application in creation, at any price. Ironically, the high-level of anti-piracy has essentially backfired, as the only exploitative system available for the 360 is the firmware exploit which will ONLY allow you to play pirated games, leaving homebrew, once again, out in the cold. I find that QUITE amusing, personally.
In summary, while I support anti-piracy efforts wholeheartedly, the fact that I'd need to turn to piracy and backup exploits just to get a game that I paid full price for running on the PSP that I paid full price for without breaking functionality that it had when I bought it is ludicrous.
mars @ Aug 5th 2006 5:37PM
I think that the level to which piracy effects the PSP is much greater than the level to which it has effected other consoles (with the possible exception of the Dreamcast). I think we are reaching a point where development for the system is too expensive and piracy of the games is way too easy. The rising cost of games disenchants consumers and the loss of revenue disenchants the developers and publishers.
The PSP and Dreamcast, as far as I know, are the only systems which allow for the play of pirated games without the need for a mod chip. Sure you can play pirated Nintendo DS games, but you need to make another $80 investment and wait to weeks for it to show up. With the PSP people can decide they want to play pirated games now, and have library full of ISOs and a system capable of playing them in a handful of hours. Sooner or later this will kill the system.
Sony needs to legitimize some homebrew capabilities to keep people happy. If they created a new firmware with a sandboxed development platform people could still get thier jollies from streaming internet music and tetris clones, while Sony could make ISO booting more difficult without looking like their strongarming the little guy.
Duncanyoyo1 @ Oct 17th 2006 4:01PM
Well, i personally dont think thi will be bad for the game. It's bad enough as it is. I recently purchased the game and man, it isn't what it looked like it was going to be. In the demo i got fron SONY it was well, lackluster. I thought the actual game would be better then the demo.And on the HOMWBREW subject, I myself use homebrew and have a 1.5 PSP. Homebrew isn't bed for the PSP, in fact 4 of my friends got a PSP after they saw my PSP running homebrew. But on the ISO subject i feel thet people should buy games, not download all of them. I have a few ISO but they are all copys of games that i leagally own, and bought myself. If you to wish to run homebrew you can check out www.psphacking101.com, that site does not indorce piracy.In fact many people have been banned because they post illegal links.People should buy games, lost of games. We don't want another DREAMCAST do we? Ganag Of London is an o.k. game over all, but a lot of my friends that have played it don't like it. But I like it just fine, one of my friends doesn't like the freeroam mode, he would rather it be like GTA where you can free-roam or do missions without going back to the main menu and choosing a mission. But I like the way the free roam is.Sometimes i want to do a mission, and sometines i don't.
(whatever u want it to say here), Duncanyoyo1