Game Developer Caught Hiding BitCoin Mining Code In Their Game!

newtekie1 · May 2, 2013

[sigquote]Competitive video gaming community E-Sports Entertainment Association secretly updated its client software with Bitcoin-mining code that tapped players' computers to mint more than $3,600 worth of the digital currency, one of its top officials said Wednesday.[/sigquote]

Read More here: http://arstechnica.com/security/201...-software-added-to-video-game-sparks-outrage/

MT Alex · May 2, 2013

Wow. An interesting read.

NinkobEi · May 2, 2013

Is mining bitcoins really that profitable? or do you have to infect hundreds of pcs to make any kind of decent money?

DannibusX · May 2, 2013

Mining bitcoins is profitable if you hide bitcoin mining software in your product.

I guess some people's GPU's melted down because of this.

Jstn7477 · May 2, 2013

ESEA is an eSports league and I heard about this about 2 days ago from users on a competitive Team Fortress 2 site. They have an anti-cheat client that has to be run during matches, and with thousands of members with high end GPUs, an employee thought it would be funny to do this. From what I heard, ESEA was originally testing Bitcoin mining functionality in their client (to be opted into by the players) but testing stopped and I guess an employee took code that wasn't removed from the client and made it work stealthily without user suspicions until now.

Kreij · May 3, 2013

What transpired the past two weeks is a case of an employee acting on his own and without authorization to access our community through our company’s resources.

Translation: We got caught and needed a scapegoat.

SaltyFish · May 3, 2013

"But for the record, I told jag he shouldn't be lazy and run the miner in a separate process," he wrote in a post, referring to one of his software engineers with the screen name Jaguar, who didn't take steps to conceal the Bitcoin miner. "Rookie move."

Translation: I'm not really sorry for this. The only thing I'm really sorry for is not having taken better steps to conceal my shady acts.

That's... surprisingly honest.

Peter1986C · May 3, 2013

TBH even if Bitcoin was only used completely legally and with all participants' consent, I still would object to it. It is scarcely a decent (read: widely accepted) payment method, allegedly allows unlawful anonymous transactions, and eats a lot of resources that would much better be used while crunching numbers in an attempt to help humanity.

TheMailMan78 · May 3, 2013

Bitcoin is for naïve idiots anyway. They should throw the book at these morons.

Divide Overflow · May 3, 2013

On skimming this thread title I immediately wondered if the company in question was EA.

TheoneandonlyMrK · May 3, 2013

TheMailMan78 said:
Bitcoin is for naïve idiots anyway. They should throw the book at these morons.

I agree ish but bit coins in principle don't sound that bad though.
Hugely offensive use of others power and tech though , many fold or crunch on their own pc and even both of those idle whilst gameing if setup right , id be screaming if this was done on my computer but I don't, and now won't use esports games.

Wrigleyvillain · May 3, 2013

Chevalr1c said:
allegedly allows unlawful anonymous transactions

Allegedly? :laugh:

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Game Developer Caught Hiding BitCoin Mining Code In Their Game!

newtekie1

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