On December 09 2025 17:22 iPlaY.NettleS wrote: The screenshots for the upcoming Game of Thrones RTS that apparently use Frost Giants snow play engine look really good actually.Maybe he's just hoping the 5 million will help the company limp into later next year after that game releases and encourages other companies to use that engine if it all works well.Not sure how much he is making on licensing for that game, limited info.
Wait what? I thought that was cancelled? Or was it another GoT game that got cancelled? I'm confused. You got any sources?
Game of Thrones: War for Westeros is an upcoming RTS by PlaySide Studios, who have shipped RTS games in the past and presumably have their own engine already.
The only person in the entire world who ever said that it may have used Frost Giant's "engine" is one random guy on Reddit who provided no evidence and never posted again, after having made only this one post.
For a brief moment people on /r/Stormgate got all excited when it seemed like this random guy had revealed the existence of this game before it was announced, but then someone actually checked and his Reddit post came out after the game had already been announced.
To make matters even more confusing, the random Reddit guy said he overheard some developers saying they "switch to Snowplay and waste one year" which, depending on how you read it, could mean that the developers tried out Snowplay and then abandoned it after a year of work.
Meanwhile, Tim Morten even shouted out Game of Thrones: War for Westeros on LinkedIn once as one of the upcoming RTS games he was looking forward to, yet he didn't bother to mention any connection Frost Giant whatsoever.
On December 10 2025 00:33 WombaT wrote: I don’t even know if it’s something they can license to others commercially. To my understanding it’s just some propriety layers built atop UE5 for RTS-specific functionality, something UE5 isn’t great at out the box. It’s clearly something FG can do for their own game, as they did it, but I’m unsure if it’s something they can actually sell.
The main issues with trying to sell Snowplay commercially are that there is no documentation and no support.
How does the netcode work? How does the pathfinding code integrate with objects in Unreal? How does literally anything connect to anything? The only people who would know are former Frost Giant employees, who never had time to document it and have probably forgotten a lot of the little details. To figure out how to use it would likely take more time than just building it again from scratch.
And Snowplay was only ever used for one game, which wasn't even finished, and shipped with critical bugs like units randomly dropping player inputs. It also struggled with high unit counts.
Clearly, Frost Giant wanted to be able to license Snowplay to other studios, but simply wanting something doesn't make it happen. Any potential customers would have been turned off by the lack of documentation and support, and that's before Frost Giant went radio silent.
On December 10 2025 01:53 JimmyJRaynor wrote: eh, how do you "lock it down". the author takes the knowledge and skills and every code snippet with him. then, go somewhere else, change it by 10% and call it something else. I did that with Stonefield Reports 17 years ago. coupla years later I did it with a language compiler. The vast majority, given the opportunity, does this.
Ok Jimmy whatever you say. Companies just let folks abscond with the source code they got paid for years to develop and repurpose it. Happens all the time, and totally isn’t an area companies have clamped down on in the intervening years
On December 09 2025 17:22 iPlaY.NettleS wrote: The screenshots for the upcoming Game of Thrones RTS that apparently use Frost Giants snow play engine look really good actually.Maybe he's just hoping the 5 million will help the company limp into later next year after that game releases and encourages other companies to use that engine if it all works well.Not sure how much he is making on licensing for that game, limited info.
Wait what? I thought that was cancelled? Or was it another GoT game that got cancelled? I'm confused. You got any sources?
Game of Thrones: War for Westeros is an upcoming RTS by PlaySide Studios, who have shipped RTS games in the past and presumably have their own engine already.
The only person in the entire world who ever said that it may have used Frost Giant's "engine" is one random guy on Reddit who provided no evidence and never posted again, after having made only this one post.
For a brief moment people on /r/Stormgate got all excited when it seemed like this random guy had revealed the existence of this game before it was announced, but then someone actually checked and his Reddit post came out after the game had already been announced.
To make matters even more confusing, the random Reddit guy said he overheard some developers saying they "switch to Snowplay and waste one year" which, depending on how you read it, could mean that the developers tried out Snowplay and then abandoned it after a year of work.
Meanwhile, Tim Morten even shouted out Game of Thrones: War for Westeros on LinkedIn once as one of the upcoming RTS games he was looking forward to, yet he didn't bother to mention any connection Frost Giant whatsoever.
On December 10 2025 00:33 WombaT wrote: I don’t even know if it’s something they can license to others commercially. To my understanding it’s just some propriety layers built atop UE5 for RTS-specific functionality, something UE5 isn’t great at out the box. It’s clearly something FG can do for their own game, as they did it, but I’m unsure if it’s something they can actually sell.
The main issues with trying to sell Snowplay commercially are that there is no documentation and no support.
How does the netcode work? How does the pathfinding code integrate with objects in Unreal? How does literally anything connect to anything? The only people who would know are former Frost Giant employees, who never had time to document it and have probably forgotten a lot of the little details. To figure out how to use it would likely take more time than just building it again from scratch.
And Snowplay was only ever used for one game, which wasn't even finished, and shipped with critical bugs like units randomly dropping player inputs.
Clearly, Frost Giant wanted to be able to license Snowplay to other studios, but simply wanting something doesn't make it happen. Any potential customers would have been turned off by the lack of documentation and support, and that's before Frost Giant went radio silent.
I mean we don’t know they haven’t documented it, maybe there’s exhaustive stuff there. I wouldn’t wager on it, but hey.
I’d say one of the problems in licensing is if it’s even licensable in the first place. And if it is, x other game company is going to have to pay both a UE5 licensing fee to epic, and then a Snowplay license on top.
An obvious additional problem is that, on current evidence it’s not even that good anyway. It’s got pretty obvious performance issues. Its pathing isn’t best in class either, Zero Space looks considerably better there.
If you had a module that was say, SC2 level good in terms of engine functionality, or indeed, better then yeah that’s something you can sell to other RTS developers. I can’t say I’ve seen it
I mean we don’t know they haven’t documented it, maybe there’s exhaustive stuff there. I wouldn’t wager on it, but hey.
We can safely assume there is no documentation. I worked for 10 years as a technical writer and tools programmer at a division of Activision. We had hundreds of employees and only two tech writers, making it impossible to keep up with documentation. Nevertheless, we managed to have an internal documentation site and maintained what little docs existed and tried (usually in vain) to get help from the developers to extend it.
The thing about developers is that they hate writing documentation. And honestly, I don't really blame them. It takes time away from writing code, adding features, and debugging. But sometimes you really do need it, so management sometimes begrudgingly pays for some resources to create it. For some companies, like Epic, a big part of their business model is in licensing their engine, so they need vast teams with hundreds of tech writers to write public-facing Unreal Engine docs.
Frost Giant was a startup trying to write a new game, and building out their own internal libraries as they went. They had at most 50 employees and zero technical writers. I can guarantee you that no documentation work was done. When would they ever have had time to do it?
I’d say one of the problems in licensing is if it’s even licensable in the first place. And if it is, x other game company is going to have to pay both a UE5 licensing fee to epic, and then a Snowplay license on top.
This is true, and it vastly limits their audience to studios that are a) writing an RTS and b) are committed to Unreal Engine 5, which is like, zero studios right now?
An obvious additional problem is that, on current evidence it’s not even that good anyway. It’s got pretty obvious performance issues. Its pathing isn’t best in class either, Zero Space looks considerably better there.
Indeed. Even given the limited market, they might have found some takers if their "engine" was best-in-class, or did something that no other RTS game could. Like, say, support thousands of units or insane games like 50 vs 50. Like Beyond All Reason does. With its free and open-source engine.
On December 10 2025 01:53 JimmyJRaynor wrote: eh, how do you "lock it down". the author takes the knowledge and skills and every code snippet with him. then, go somewhere else, change it by 10% and call it something else. I did that with Stonefield Reports 17 years ago. coupla years later I did it with a language compiler. The vast majority, given the opportunity, does this.
Ok Jimmy whatever you say. Companies just let folks abscond with the source code they got paid for years to develop and repurpose it. Happens all the time, and totally isn’t an area companies have clamped down on in the intervening years
yep, with cloud saves and work-from-home hybrid schedules it is easy for coders to use their work in other places. It has been going on forever and continues to this day. What do I mean by "forever"? Welp, in 1979 the guys who founded Activision took their code with them. Just look at what Atari produced and what Activision produced in 1980 and 1981. Everything went with the talent. This is still happening today.
On December 10 2025 01:53 JimmyJRaynor wrote: eh, how do you "lock it down". the author takes the knowledge and skills and every code snippet with him. then, go somewhere else, change it by 10% and call it something else. I did that with Stonefield Reports 17 years ago. coupla years later I did it with a language compiler. The vast majority, given the opportunity, does this.
Ok Jimmy whatever you say. Companies just let folks abscond with the source code they got paid for years to develop and repurpose it. Happens all the time, and totally isn’t an area companies have clamped down on in the intervening years
yep, with cloud saves and work-from-home hybrid schedules it is easy for coders to use their work in other places. It has been going on forever and continues to this day. What do I mean by "forever"? Welp, in 1979 the guys who founded Activision took their code with them. Just look at what Atari produced and what Activision produced in 1980 and 1981. Everything went with the talent. This is still happening today.
On December 10 2025 01:53 JimmyJRaynor wrote: eh, how do you "lock it down". the author takes the knowledge and skills and every code snippet with him. then, go somewhere else, change it by 10% and call it something else. I did that with Stonefield Reports 17 years ago. coupla years later I did it with a language compiler. The vast majority, given the opportunity, does this.
Ok Jimmy whatever you say. Companies just let folks abscond with the source code they got paid for years to develop and repurpose it. Happens all the time, and totally isn’t an area companies have clamped down on in the intervening years
yep, with cloud saves and work-from-home hybrid schedules it is easy for coders to use their work in other places. It has been going on forever and continues to this day. What do I mean by "forever"? Welp, in 1979 the guys who founded Activision took their code with them. Just look at what Atari produced and what Activision produced in 1980 and 1981. Everything went with the talent. This is still happening today.
You’re talking absolute shite
this is not a rebuttal. there is no clear legal definition between "snippet of code" // "boiler plate template" and "large chunks of code". The costs of detection and litigation are staggering. And again, the careful players change it by 10% and move on..A proper 10% change makes automated detection impossible.
On December 10 2025 01:53 JimmyJRaynor wrote: eh, how do you "lock it down". the author takes the knowledge and skills and every code snippet with him. then, go somewhere else, change it by 10% and call it something else. I did that with Stonefield Reports 17 years ago. coupla years later I did it with a language compiler. The vast majority, given the opportunity, does this.
Ok Jimmy whatever you say. Companies just let folks abscond with the source code they got paid for years to develop and repurpose it. Happens all the time, and totally isn’t an area companies have clamped down on in the intervening years
yep, with cloud saves and work-from-home hybrid schedules it is easy for coders to use their work in other places. It has been going on forever and continues to this day. What do I mean by "forever"? Welp, in 1979 the guys who founded Activision took their code with them. Just look at what Atari produced and what Activision produced in 1980 and 1981. Everything went with the talent. This is still happening today.
You’re talking absolute shite
this is not a rebuttal. there is no clear legal definition between "snippet of code" // "boiler plate template" and "large chunks of code". The costs of detection and litigation are staggering. And again, the careful players change it by 10% and move on..A proper 10% change makes automated detection impossible.
On December 10 2025 01:53 JimmyJRaynor wrote: eh, how do you "lock it down". the author takes the knowledge and skills and every code snippet with him. then, go somewhere else, change it by 10% and call it something else. I did that with Stonefield Reports 17 years ago. coupla years later I did it with a language compiler. The vast majority, given the opportunity, does this.
Ok Jimmy whatever you say. Companies just let folks abscond with the source code they got paid for years to develop and repurpose it. Happens all the time, and totally isn’t an area companies have clamped down on in the intervening years
yep, with cloud saves and work-from-home hybrid schedules it is easy for coders to use their work in other places. It has been going on forever and continues to this day. What do I mean by "forever"? Welp, in 1979 the guys who founded Activision took their code with them. Just look at what Atari produced and what Activision produced in 1980 and 1981. Everything went with the talent. This is still happening today.
You’re talking absolute shite
this is not a rebuttal. there is no clear legal definition between "snippet of code" // "boiler plate template" and "large chunks of code". The costs of detection and litigation are staggering. And again, the careful players change it by 10% and move on..A proper 10% change makes automated detection impossible.
It's funny how Spartak's Reddit posts show up in here. The rest of the video was okay, even if it didn't say anything we haven't all said a thousand times before.
On December 10 2025 01:53 JimmyJRaynor wrote: eh, how do you "lock it down". the author takes the knowledge and skills and every code snippet with him. then, go somewhere else, change it by 10% and call it something else. I did that with Stonefield Reports 17 years ago. coupla years later I did it with a language compiler. The vast majority, given the opportunity, does this.
Ok Jimmy whatever you say. Companies just let folks abscond with the source code they got paid for years to develop and repurpose it. Happens all the time, and totally isn’t an area companies have clamped down on in the intervening years
yep, with cloud saves and work-from-home hybrid schedules it is easy for coders to use their work in other places. It has been going on forever and continues to this day. What do I mean by "forever"? Welp, in 1979 the guys who founded Activision took their code with them. Just look at what Atari produced and what Activision produced in 1980 and 1981. Everything went with the talent. This is still happening today.
Jimmy is partially correct here. It's shockingly easy to take source code. At my last job, everyone had read access to everything in our private GitHub, obviously not write access, but you need to see code from other teams to understand how it works sometimes.
The tricky part is the legal issues. If you start up some new company and they find out you stole code from your old one, you're cooked. Changing things by 10% won't cut it. It's too obvious if you took stuff. Lots of companies have their source code stolen, but you never really hear about companies that monetized the theft. Google almost lost a huge lawsuit to Oracle over header files, which is insane.
The knowledge part is often more important anyway. Knowing what code to write is 95% of the effort in programming; the rest is just typing. If you just remember why you did things a certain way, you can do it again with not that much effort. Even the Activision guys didn't copy/paste code from their old Atari games. Their skillset was understanding the completely bonkers Atari 2600 chipset, and knowing how it worked. That skill and experience enabled them to make games that were better than Atari could.
I'd rather hire that James Anholt guy instead of "licensing" whatever it is he made at Frost Giant.
On December 10 2025 04:59 Jeremy Reimer wrote: Changing things by 10% won't cut it. It's too obvious if you took stuff. Lots of companies have their source code stolen, but you never really hear about companies that monetized the theft. Google almost lost a huge lawsuit to Oracle over header files, which is insane.
you don't hear about it because the stories are boring.
On December 10 2025 04:59 Jeremy Reimer wrote: Even the Activision guys didn't copy/paste code from their old Atari games. Their skillset was understanding the completely bonkers Atari 2600 chipset, and knowing how it worked. That skill and experience enabled them to make games that were better than Atari could.
Interestingly, the sunset effect in those early 1980-2 Activision games was developed by Bob Whitehead in 1978 while working at Atari.
After the programmers founded Activision, Atari's lawyers threatened to sue for theft of proprietary techniques. In a humorous response, David Crane created a tech demo showing the "Venetian blinds" used to simulate a window with a sunset, where a player could virtually raise and lower the blinds. This demo was never intended to be a common in-game asset across all their games, but rather a technical demonstration used to mock Atari's lawyers, proving that the technique was a general programming skill, not a stolen company secret.
These are the kinds of weeds you get into when trying to go after coders for theft of code.
This demo was never intended to be a common in-game asset across all their games, but rather a technical demonstration used to mock Atari's lawyers, proving that the technique was a general programming skill, not a stolen company secret.
And that was the whole point. The skill and knowledge about how to push the crazy Atari 2600 chipset to do interesting things was what was valuable, not the code itself. Note that Atari didn't even try to sue for theft of code; they tried to sue for theft of "proprietary techniques", which are not copyrightable, and not proprietary unless you can produce a patent.
There have been a lot of stupid patents in computer software (the infamous XOR display patent that contributed to Commodore's bankruptcy was one of them) but most of the really dumb ones have expired by now, or they're locked up in megacorporations that use them the way superpowers use nuclear weapons. In any case, patents weren't even what we were talking about.
It's funny how Spartak's Reddit posts show up in here. The rest of the video was okay, even if it didn't say anything we haven't all said a thousand times before.
I suppose he got butthurt when I called him out on his video that listed Stormgate as one of the top 5 worst RTS games (in which he apparently doesn't even argue that it is one of the worst RTSes ever made). The point remains that shitting on Stormgate is not going to be a sustainable business model. He might get maybe one more video out of it.
It's funny how Spartak's Reddit posts show up in here. The rest of the video was okay, even if it didn't say anything we haven't all said a thousand times before.
I suppose he got butthurt when I called him out on his video that listed Stormgate as one of the top 5 worst RTS games (in which he apparently doesn't even argue that it is one of the worst RTSes ever made).
I kinda doubt that he was "butthurt" about some random comment on the Stormgate subreddit, but whatever. Your quotes were used as an example of the kind of insane defending of the game and/or the company that went on post-release.
Since you didn't watch the other video either, here's what he actually said in it:
The title "Top 5 worst RTS games" is meant to improve clicks, just like every YouTube title.
At the beginning of the video, he explains that he isn't counting tiny RTS games made by one or two developers, or shovelware from the 1990s, or things like that, because it wouldn't be fair.
Instead, the video lists the top five worst RTS games that were highly anticipated by the community before they were released.
Of which Stormgate is absolutely in the top five. It ended up at #2, which I think was totally fair.
The point remains that shitting on Stormgate is not going to be a sustainable business model. He might get maybe one more video out of it.
It was never a sustainable business model. The number of videos on Stormgate's epic failure is actually rather low compared to, say, videos about Concord, or Marathon, or talking about the downfall of Blizzard.
On December 10 2025 07:25 _Spartak_ wrote:The point remains that shitting on Stormgate is not going to be a sustainable business model. He might get maybe one more video out of it.
i can't believe you put this on a silver platter for me. Stormgate is not a sustainable business model.
Update on the Stormgate ladder: a new guy joined the Discord and played the one guy who was streaming. He got bunker rushed. Twice. Apparently there were 3 people in total on ladder at the time, out of 34 total online.
But don't worry, everything's going to turn around soon!
I wonder what "if all goes well" means in this context? EDIT: For that matter, what does "There are some things we need to work out right now" mean? What exactly needs to be worked out? Does Gobsmack not know how to click the Build button in Unreal? Or did someone lose the passwords to the servers? What exactly is preventing them from shipping this patch?
On December 10 2025 01:53 JimmyJRaynor wrote: eh, how do you "lock it down". the author takes the knowledge and skills and every code snippet with him. then, go somewhere else, change it by 10% and call it something else. I did that with Stonefield Reports 17 years ago. coupla years later I did it with a language compiler. The vast majority, given the opportunity, does this.
Ok Jimmy whatever you say. Companies just let folks abscond with the source code they got paid for years to develop and repurpose it. Happens all the time, and totally isn’t an area companies have clamped down on in the intervening years
yep, with cloud saves and work-from-home hybrid schedules it is easy for coders to use their work in other places. It has been going on forever and continues to this day. What do I mean by "forever"? Welp, in 1979 the guys who founded Activision took their code with them. Just look at what Atari produced and what Activision produced in 1980 and 1981. Everything went with the talent. This is still happening today.
It seems pretty clear that Monk had no idea what he was doing.
A video about the game failing even manages to mention Spartaks moderation behaviour. Even people on reddit talking trash and he's trying to correct them while being downvoted into oblivion. Actually hilarious.
It's funny how Spartak's Reddit posts show up in here. The rest of the video was okay, even if it didn't say anything we haven't all said a thousand times before.
I suppose he got butthurt when I called him out on his video that listed Stormgate as one of the top 5 worst RTS games (in which he apparently doesn't even argue that it is one of the worst RTSes ever made).
I kinda doubt that he was "butthurt" about some random comment on the Stormgate subreddit, but whatever. Your quotes were used as an example of the kind of insane defending of the game and/or the company that went on post-release.
I mean the example he is using for me being "insane" defending the game was me arguing that the IGN reviewer who gave the game an 8/10 must have thought the game was good with some flaws instead of being bought off my Frost Giant. Surely he could have found a better example of me having an unresonable take about the game lol. He is just being lazy because he knows that he can just say "Stormgate bad" and get tons of views and praise at this point. He should improve his content for the future when he won't be able to rely on his "shit on Stormgate" videos, hence my sustainability comment. At least he stopped using an outdated Amara model in his thumbnails about the game, which is progress.
It's funny how Spartak's Reddit posts show up in here. The rest of the video was okay, even if it didn't say anything we haven't all said a thousand times before.
I suppose he got butthurt when I called him out on his video that listed Stormgate as one of the top 5 worst RTS games (in which he apparently doesn't even argue that it is one of the worst RTSes ever made).
I kinda doubt that he was "butthurt" about some random comment on the Stormgate subreddit, but whatever. Your quotes were used as an example of the kind of insane defending of the game and/or the company that went on post-release.
I mean the example he is using for me being "insane" defending the game was me arguing that the IGN reviewer who gave the game an 8/10 must have thought the game was good with some flaws instead of being bought off my Frost Giant. Surely he could have found a better example of me having an unresonable take about the game lol. He is just being lazy because he knows that he can just say "Stormgate bad" and get tons of views and praise at this point. He should improve his content for the future when he won't be able to rely on his "shit on Stormgate" videos, hence my sustainability comment. At least he stopped using an outdated Amara model in his thumbnails about the game, which is progress.
11k views so far, not bad at all for a smaller channel. I don't think he needs your advice on how to be successful considering you spent $500 on vapour ware and have to spend your weekends defending your behaviour on a forum.
You may need to read what I wrote again (which isn't limited to that comment based on your answers so far). I didn't expect his "Stormgate bad" videos to do poorly. I am saying he can do a poor video and still get many views on such videos for now.
EPT
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