Feargus Jewhart
Savant
I do know how programming works and the idea that Cleve stole code from Wizardry is unconvincing. You can lift maybe some parts like inventory handling or some other relatively self-contained system but even so you'd still need to integrate it with the rest of your shit. If I lift an A* example off the internet and modify it to work for my game does that mean I stole the code? To claim yes is a stretch to me.
The alternative is what? he lifted everything, kitchen sink and all? That's even more unlikely. The sheer amount of spaghetti would make the stolen code unusable even to a veteran programmer unless he wrote it himself and if he wrote it himself, who cares? Fuck companies that go "you wrote the code while working for me, I own it.". You don't own shit bitch. It's code not poetry. Go fuck yourself.
The only way which it would make sense in is if Cleve or someone else implemented a system in a certain way for Wizardry and then Cleve implemented it in Grimoire the same way. Which is not stealing code, it's *how coding works*. You can't exactly steal logic or a system like you explained, it actually needs to be implemented. If this is stealing, every single coder has stolen, does it daily and using any known algorithms is stealing.
It's the equivalent of taking the suspension from a Lada and trying to fit it into a Mercedes, it's not gonna work out without modifying the suspension so much it will be nothing like the original Lada suspension.