PSO2 Devs Comment On Data Mining Effort

Several weeks ago during the Phantasy Star Online 2 alpha test, the client software was leaked to the general public. It didn't take long for the community to begin extracting information about the game from that software.

Apparently the developers have caught wind of the datamining effort and have commented on it on Twitter. The general thought seems to be that the developers are surprised that the client software is already being taken apart "overseas".

I can't read Japanese, so I'd rather not try to infer the tone of the post based on translations posted on the Internet. However, I still can't believe that the PSO2 developers actually had the audacity to post something like this.

First of all, don't forget that the client was leaked, most likely by a Japanese participant of the Japan-only alpha test. Maybe Sega of Japan should look around in its own country for whoever leaked the client in the first place before complaining about the users of the leaked client "overseas". Besides, we can't play the game, so what else would we do with it?

Second — Sega of Japan is pretty naïve if they think the Japanese participants of the alpha test aren't doing something similar with the client as we speak. They can't play the game right now, either, so what else would they do with it? Maybe the Japanese do a better job of hiding their "evil" doings. Still, it's unfair to single out the US/EU community for doing it.

Lastly — curiosity is a part of human nature. People are datamining PSO2 because they're interested in seeing what the game might be like. Writing software is my full-time job, and like most professional software engineers, I'm well aware that there are people out there who like to decompile or reverse engineer computer programs to find out more about them. Unfortunately, some people do it to try and discover exploits in the code — thankfully, nobody seems to be doing that with PSO2. The bottom line is that Sega put free software out on the Internet for people to download; they should have known that it was only a matter of time before somebody started mining it. I'm not sure why they're so surprised.

Obviously Sega of Japan has the right to express their displeasure over the datamining of their game. However, it's unfair and a little disappointing to see them single out the US/EU community like this.