> But it is unlikely that any mainstream competitor to EA would ever use such stolen data.<p>I appreciate them acknowledging this fact. It bothers me how many people think that leaking the source code of a game engine is an actual problem for the company.<p>Just because the code is available doesn't give you a license to use it. And the ones that don't care about having a license would not have used / payed for it in the first place.<p>Regarding knowhow behind modern engines, Unreal and CRYENGINE's source code is available on GitHub. Engineers often publish research papers about their methods and reverse engineering isn't as infeasible as one might think initially.<p>Also, speaking about Frostbite and what we've read about in the past (see Anthem), I highly doubt a developer can be productive using it while lacking official support.