'S.T.A.L.K.E.R.' Art NOT Stolen
Valve Confirms They Used Same Middleware
http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38945
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After years of delays S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl finally reached the hands of gamers last month to good reviews. Not a month has gone by and reports began circulating over the weekend on the Internet that Kiev based developer GSC Game World may have lifted some of the art for the title from perennial favorites Doom III and Half-Life 2. The reports gave texture examples that looked suspiciously close to the aforementioned titles from id Software and Valve respectively.
People in the development community put the pieces together and discovered that Valve and GSC Game World used the same middleware from Marlin Studios for both their titles. The offending textures between HL2 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. were confirmed to be from one of the studio's texture packs, which Valve admitted to using, and the shared textures between Doom III and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. have been written off as a standard Impact Light texture.
People in the development community put the pieces together and discovered that Valve and GSC Game World used the same middleware from Marlin Studios for both their titles. The offending textures between HL2 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. were confirmed to be from one of the studio's texture packs, which Valve admitted to using, and the shared textures between Doom III and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. have been written off as a standard Impact Light texture.