People keep misunderstanding why this is huge deal.
Obv razor is not going to file suit for copyright, that’s just dumb, but the big news is that they are using a cracked version and selling it as a legitimate one. This means they somewhat approve of the crack in the game in that fashion. That is surreal and also proves a bunch of arguments against DRM. That is the real news here.
What does it prove and how? It just seems like they are being lazy.
At the very least it’s tacit agreement that cracks are an important part of digital preservation.
Feels like there should be class action lawsuits for the people who purchased what they thought were legit copies of the game.
If it’s through steam then there are receipts about what binaries where installed; and at the end of the day it’s legally their game so if they sell it then it is automatically legit.
This is also why Nintendo feels they can sell emulators they didn’t write with the Mini consoles and the VC & Nintendo Online…
Could you elaborate more on the Nintendo issue?
I know nintendo has come down HARD on game modding. Even for games that are decades out of circulation.
Can you expand on the whole emulator thing?
This means they somewhat approve of the crack in the game in that fashion
No it doesn’t lol
“We absolutely disapprove of cracks! Here, buy this cracked game.”
Well I know it makes sense in corpo-world, just not in a world that runs on logic and common sense.
It just means someone was lazy and hoping nobody would notice, it says absolutely nothing about how much they approve of it lol
Both could be true, such is the nature of speculation.
It’s like how the “You wouldn’t download a car” video has pirated music in it.
That’s just an internet myth that everyone wants to be true.
It was a completely different obscure anti-piracy commercial.
https://torrentfreak.com/sorry-the-you-wouldnt-steal-a-car-anti-piracy-ad-wasnt-pirated-170625/
This isn’t really news. It’s likely a result of a cost benefit analysis combined with c-suite direction. It’s really not that big of a deal at all. It’s like Nintendo being criticised. What a colossal waste of energy to care.
This reminds me of when Nintendo was caught selling ripped ROM’s from a pirate site in the WiiShop lol.
Also reminds me of the time Microsoft was using a cracked version of SoundForge to make system sounds:
http://www.techpavan.com/2009/05/24/microsoft-deepz0ne-pirated-cracked-sound-forge-windows-xp-audio/
Oh, I almost forgot about that one lol.
IIRC it didn’t end with the wiishop either. Off the top of my head, there was some controversy surrounding the NES/SNES Classic consoles. I think they used emulators that were written by pirates, instead of writing their own?
They did, if I remember correctly,
This is not just Rockstar, and it’s been pretty common for years. Bunch of developers when moving to digital versions and not using CDs simply packaged the digital games with no-cd cracks found on piracy sites instead of reworking the code.
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I’m not very savvy for piracy, so I think I need an explanation.
Rockstar grabbed the crack made by Razor 1911 and put it on the Steam version of Midnight Club 2 instead of taking out the DRM themselves.
Is grabbed a euphemism for stole?
Id say it’s more nuanced. The game is theirs? Some might say they stole their work… But the game is theirs and they never contracted or even gave permission for the work to be completed? I’d say it’s unethical still since they have the resources to accomplish this on their own.
unethical
Lol we’re lucky there isn’t a keylogger trojaned in there. That’s the next step for crackers. Get something in there that will activate when it recognizes it was repackaged on steam.
Bitcoin miner, do it on a graphics-heavy game so you know the computers it infects are likely to have beefy GPUs
It’s literally stealing. If anyone steals any part of their software, usable or not, they’ll sue them. This makes them hypocrites.
“Stolen” isn’t the right language to use for something that’s been intentionally made available free to anyone who wants it.
It’s not the right language for copyright infringement either, but it still gets used.
Yes it is. Just because you’re distributing your software for free, it doesn’t mean you’re implicitly giving others permission to
They’re not distributing the crack though. They’re distributing the game with the crack applied.
Domi think that should matter? Yes, of course. Does the law? That’s actually kind of a gray area.
To play a game without buying it need to be cracked, or in other words the security in place needs to be hacked. In the olden days you would borrow your friends game of a copy and place a no-cd hack on it, so that you could use it. With online security this was more difficult and people had to make a new crack to let the drm think is was connect to the server and all was oké. Most companies bought DRM software from third party developers that got implemented into the games gold release (the version that goes on ace or store). To remove this DRM cost time because the game and assets need to be recompiled without this DRM system, most of the time even braking some checks.
So as a solution here and not spending time on development time, to just a piece of software from a “pirate” group. Although most of the time the group who made the crack never distributed the game as a torrent, some third party groups made bundle torrents where at one go you had the game and crack.
Historically, games would refuse to boot unless you had the game disc inserted. Even if the game was fully installed and didn’t need the disc to run, requiring the disc was a primitive form of DRM.
One of the most common forms of cracks was a NoDisc crack, which did exactly what it says on the label; It removed the requirement for you to insert a disc. This was usually just a quick file replacement. So it was easy to take the game disc to your buddy’s house, use it to install the game on their computer, apply the NoDisc crack, and then your buddy could play the game whenever they wanted without using your disc. This was many people’s first intro to piracy. Obviously game publishers hated this, and constantly played whack-a-mole to shut them down. On the data preservation and user friendliness side of things, NoDisc cracks were popular because they allowed you to play your games without digging through your giant book of CD’s. It also meant you weren’t locked out of a game just because your little sibling scratched your CD.
When transitioning to digital sales, the disc requirement obviously won’t work. You can’t require a disc when the user never actually received a disc. So the game publishers had to remove the disc requirement when they put their game up for sale on Steam. And this is showing that in the official Steam release, a pirate’s signature is found. They simply used a NoDisc crack (from one of the crackers that they had constantly been battling) on their own game, to remove the disc requirement. Instead of finding an “official” way to do it, they just used the most straightforward route.
And yet game publishers still constantly harp about piracy.
Rockstar also used the Razor crack in the Steam version of Manhunt
I saw something the other day that looked at how rockstar anti piracy measures were breaking legitimate games bought on steam. Resonated with me as I bought manhunt to play on steam deck but it crashes at the end of the first level. So this would suggest that not only have rockstar implemented something that breaks games bought through legitimate avenues, but that those same games might be the result of code they “stole” for want of a better word.
XD holy shit, how is that even possible?
Too lazy to remove old DRM, so they just use a pirated .exe file.
So we all should pirate their games and point to this as exhibit A if they try to sue us.
What about GTA IV? The only legit crack I’ve ever found had that stupid loud jingle splash screen. Is that the official version now?
It doesn’t matter who made it, Rockstar still owns it. Why bother doing something over when someone else did it for you for free? If someone steals my family portrait and paints a Stormtrooper on it, I’m still allowed to hang it up in my living room.
Oh come on
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It means they’re a bunch of twats that have never considered the future or their customer’s needs (some game devs and publishers release non-DRM versions eventually)
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You can’t guarantee how safe the crack is. If there was some really cleverly hidden malware, now it’s on them
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Cracks may still be imperfect and have issues. Again if something doesn’t work, now it’s on them
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Just how stupid does it make them seem? All this time fighting piracy and now they’d be lost without them. Because we know how the likes of R* handles their old properties. If they had to do it themselves, it would be a fuckup
Whatever it is these kinds of arguments are trying to criticize, I don’t think the resolution is one that is favorable to gamers.
I’d rather have a cracked cheap DRM-free copy than one whose new price factors in development to do correctly.
Points 1 and 2 are jabs at the company postures sure but once you peel that back don’t tell me you want them back on the DRM train. Who cares if the company position seems silly.
So the only two options are to keep drm forever, or use cracked versions? Ever heard of GOG? Just how much do you think it costs to make two builds of a binary?
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Do you guys think Rockstar did this, or a Valve employee? If you’ve ever seen the interview with the GOG CEO, he mentions how they routinely have to use these files they find on the internet to get the games to work. Who’s going to prosecute this, Razor, for copyright? Oh, wait. I’d just be a bit more leery if there’s some latent malware in there. But, then again, I wonder if older malware even still works in the new version of Windows. Not that they patched some hole, but more that MS has just evolved Windows and now some things that the MW used to be in one spot are in a new spot, or just outright don’t exist.
Definitely rockstar indeed manhunt, another of their games, has the same razor hex sign in the game files, and I’m pretty much sure rockstar did this, because manhunt is unplayable on steam because all the antipiracy measure in it are trigghered, and the funny thing is that is not happening because of the crack but because rockstart added the steam drm in a non code section of the game that trip a Data Execution Prevention.
So if i get manhunt from a trusted repacker theres a good chance it will work better than the legit one?
Yes
Valve won’t touch game files, way too much liability and not nearly enough incentive given the money machine that steam is. This one is definitely Rockstar, and I’m betting they just don’t have the capability of compiling the pc version anymore.
Valve just manages the storefront, and provides a OS/libraries to improve capability on Linux OS with proton.
