[HN Gopher] Rockstar is selling cracked game copies on Steam
___________________________________________________________________
Rockstar is selling cracked game copies on Steam
Author : robbiet480
Score : 318 points
Date : 2023-09-05 17:01 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| ghusbands wrote:
| Note that, as mentioned later in the twitter thread, the
| executable in the screenshots (testapp.exe) is not used. It was
| briefly used like a decade ago but has since been replaced; they
| just haven't removed it from the distribution, for some reason.
| tj-teej wrote:
| Related story, I remember years ago as a kid I bought a Prince of
| Persia PC game at a yardsale (on a CD), but early on in the game
| there was a riddle where you needed a password to get through
| this door, it was some cryptic message of a few numbers.
|
| I don't remember the exact format but it turned out the riddle
| was instructing me to go to page X, line Y and character Z of the
| manual for the game!
|
| I remember being so sad that I couldn't play anymore because I
| didn't have the manual but in retrospect I wonder if this was an
| anti-piracy strategy
| spelunker wrote:
| I remember doing this for the original X-COM: UFO Defense.
| Actually I wonder how the Steam versions of these games work?
| Do they just include a PDF of the original manual?
| bri3d wrote:
| Yes, this was a common copy protection in old games!
|
| There's a big list on mobygames here:
| https://www.mobygames.com/group/9360/games-with-manual-looku...
| xxs wrote:
| >I wonder if this was an anti-piracy strategy
|
| Totally, and exceptionally common. It was popular in the '80
| and the early '90.
| rsstack wrote:
| Sim Earth had the same thing! It would ask you a question like
| "How many moons does Saturn have?" and the manual had some fact
| sheets at the end with all the numbers. Wikipedia was not
| around yet, and their fact sheets having slightly different
| numbers than encyclopedias due to different sources and publish
| date (moon counts change often, and measurements in meters for
| anything astronomical have randomness due to imprecisions).
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| It was common as well to use these things called Code Wheels:
|
| https://archive.org/details/code-wheels
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_wheel
| pimlottc wrote:
| > https://archive.org/details/code-wheels
|
| Oh dang, these are fun, I remember the classic Monkey Island
| "Dial-A-Pirate" wheel [3]
|
| FYI you can use these without downloading the whole
| collection:
|
| - Under Download Options, click "SHOW ALL" to see the list of
| files [1]
|
| - Find the zip file for the game you want and click "View
| Contents" [2]
|
| - Click the "HTM" file listed [3]
|
| Kudos to the kind soul who took the extra effort to package
| them as single-file self-contained html docs!
|
| 1: https://archive.org/download/code-wheels
|
| 2: https://ia904503.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/
| 22...
|
| 3: https://ia904503.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/
| 22...
| milesvp wrote:
| I remember when I was young getting a game from my older
| sister's college boyfriend. Gave me the game on disks, and also
| a photocopied manual just for this same purpose. Used to be
| super common for games to use these kinds of checks for anti
| piracy. I thought it was super funny though, because the game
| was pretty old, and I was confused why this guy didn't know how
| to find a cracked version of the game to avoid having to pull
| out a 60 page manual just to play.
| AbraKdabra wrote:
| GTA IV has something similar, if you play a cracked copy
| eventually the camera starts to wobble and it makes it
| impossible to play, and it makes it look like a bug. I remember
| thousands of players asking in the forums why their camera was
| shaking without knowing they're telling everyone they had a
| pirated game. Hilarious move from Rockstar.
|
| For those wondering, yes it happened to me, it was absolutely
| infuriating like "man this fucking game is full of bugs", lol.
| szatkus wrote:
| This was even more confusing for me, because the versions of
| those games I played were usually already cracked and accepted
| any input. So I was wondering what's the point.
| apples_oranges wrote:
| This reminds me of a (popular) iOS game that had a little bug. I
| reported it hoping for a quick fix and they replied that the
| developer was no longer available to fix it, but they can refund
| me the app price..
| Agingcoder wrote:
| Razor 1911 ! I had completely forgotten about them. They cracked
| games in the 1990s, and if memory serves well, there was a nice
| ascii art logo that came with games.
|
| Apparently they've been active again since 2010, but in my ( much
| older ) mind, steam has made piracy mostly obsolete.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_1911?wprov=sfti1
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| I think the appeal of cracks is still there for the technically
| minded. Learning reverse engineering, understanding how to
| circumvent technologies.
|
| That seems to be the real point for these groups. Reputation
| from reverse engineering. I certainly enjoyed my time writing
| them. I don't know of any group that does this and doesn't
| support the developers of the IP in question. You still end up
| buying the software.
| abestic9 wrote:
| As good as Steam might be, it's still required for the games
| you purchased to run, and that doesn't align with some people.
| You own your games on Steam as much as you own your music on
| Spotify. So priacy is still alive and well, and a lot of the
| arguments I see for it is stripping DRM and ownership.
|
| I prefer Steam over other platforms because multiplayer is
| effortless, with a friend or at a LAN party that means means
| more time actually playing the game. But if it's not on Steam
| or not everyone can afford it, we're probably playing a
| cracked, portable copy.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Havoc wrote:
| Razor should sue rockstar for IP theft.
| elvis70 wrote:
| Didn't Microsoft published a Word document from a "pirated" Word
| release in the past?
| jrflowers wrote:
| Once again Razor 1911 shows up as an important part of the
| software archival ecosystem. Good people.
| Thaxll wrote:
| This is not new: https://torrentfreak.com/ubisofts-no-cd-answer-
| to-drm-080718...
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| I don't have examples handy, but I'm pretty sure I recall
| something similar being done for some CD-ROM re-releases of
| games with floppy-based copy protection.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Maybe Rockstar has former, maybe even current members of Razor
| 1911 among their staff.
|
| I mean, the scene is not a reliable way to pay the bills. You
| need to find a "real job" at some point, and the skills you get
| by cracking software and making demos could find good use in the
| video game industry.
| capableweb wrote:
| Why is this hex dump being used as a verification rather than
| just showing the two (supposedly the same) hashes of the entire
| executable themselves? Should be a quick 20 minute job for
| whoever call themselves "journalists" today.
|
| I suppose it's possible for that particular string to get into
| the binary by some other means. Maybe failed anti-circumvention
| that checks for known strings in its own directory or something
| similar?
| asddubs wrote:
| why not use the hex dump, it says the name of the cracking
| group, that's more easily verifiable than comparing hashes to
| files you might not have
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| First problem: You presume this person has another executable
| of provable provenance to check against.
|
| Second problem: There could be many different official
| executables for this game. Each would have a different hash.
| Provenance proving applies here too.
|
| Third problem: Two hash values doesn't communicate the actual
| story as well as what this person (who may or may not be a
| journalist, that appears to be your assumption) chose to do.
| Zetobal wrote:
| I don't know why I have to write this comment but not every
| twitter user is a journalist...
| wtallis wrote:
| The location of the string is pretty telling: right after a 256
| byte header, and occupying the first few bytes of a long run of
| zeroes. This isn't how you'd expect to find a constant embedded
| by a compiler or linker as part of code implementing a check
| for the presence of a crack.
| usrusr wrote:
| First time I hear someone suggest that hashes might be a
| superior form of journalism. The cracking group signature is a
| smoking gun. Hashes would only show that the steam binary isn't
| bit-wise identical with the original release, which _any_
| solution to "steam release can't require a CD check" would
| imply.
|
| (well, "smoking gun" in quotes, because I don't really see
| Rockstar doing anything wrong here. Would it have been better
| if they had zeroed out that string?)
| Twirrim wrote:
| I don't see any reference to them being a journalist, anywhere?
| Why are you expecting some random person who saw and got
| frustrated with something and shared it, to be a journalist?
|
| Are you a journalist because you're frustrated that this person
| isn't being a journalist...? That's kind of the same logic.
| pengaru wrote:
| Rockstar owns the copyright, they can do whatever they want with
| their games.
|
| It is rather odd however, and paints Rockstar in a very negative
| light as a trustworthy purveyor of binary distributed software.
| Do you want to receive l33t warez when paying for software?
|
| I expect reproducible binaries produced by a controlled toolchain
| from a responsible developer. Linux distributions have higher
| standards for binaries they distribute for _free_ ffs.
| incrudible wrote:
| > I expect reproducible binaries produced by a controlled
| toolchain from a responsible developer.
|
| I would estimate the number of videogames published for Windows
| PCs matching all of these critera to be roughly 0.
| pengaru wrote:
| It's not like windows game developers are universally
| incompetent. They have their source so they can reproduce
| their binaries at will. They understand the risks of malware
| and how embarrassing it would be to unwittingly ship some, so
| they should know better than to be shipping releases built
| using their personal machine they also browse the web with.
|
| For Rockstar to be shipping pirated cracked binaries as their
| own demonstrates a profound lack of responsibility and
| professionalism as software developers.
|
| But I'm sure there's a non-zero amount of windows game
| developers being careless/sloppy in general too.
| lousken wrote:
| Wouldn't it be just easier for everyone not to include DRM in the
| first place? Waste of money, vast majority of zoomers dont use
| cracks anyway.
|
| (I am talking with the context of current games using denuvo, not
| this specific case)
| Reubend wrote:
| Could we get some more context than this tweet (which doesn't
| really explain what's going on)?
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| I didn't feel old today until I jumped on HN and saw someone
| who didn't know what 'cracked' means in the context of PC
| games.
| IshKebab wrote:
| He knows what cracked means. I think you misunderstood.
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| Not much room to misunderstand, and if he knows what
| cracked means what's going on should be obvious.
| paint wrote:
| This seems like a weird hill to die on? yes it's obvious
| that rockstar (apparently) uploaded a cracked version of
| their game to steam. It's not obvious why they chose to
| do that (ie "what is going on")
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| I'm not dying on any hill, I think that's a weird comment
| to make, let alone to make an issue out of my original
| comment at all.
|
| The way the comment was phrased read as though they
| didn't understand what had happened, not that they didn't
| understand why. Especially since no one has an answer to
| that, so no one can offer an explanation.
| paint wrote:
| [flagged]
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| That's not a particularly productive reply. Thanks for
| your input, I guess.
| barbs wrote:
| > _Be kind. Don 't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't
| cross-examine._
|
| > _Please don 't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including
| at the rest of the community._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| Yes. And what would you consider "keep malding" to be? In
| any case, I edited my reply to remove the snark.
| barbs wrote:
| Not necessarily. You could understand that a cracked PC
| game means its copy-protection has been removed by
| someone illegally but not have a detailed enough
| understanding of the process to understand the tweet.
| Personally I'm not familiar with Razor1911 so I wouldn't
| have understood the significance of that string in the
| hexdump if it weren't for the context provided by other
| comments here.
| robbiet480 wrote:
| The game shown here, Midnight Club II, required the CD to be in
| the drive to play it. With the advent of Steam and companies
| releasing older games on Steam, they needed a way to bypass
| that check. Bypassing a CD (commonly called No-CD) was a very
| common crack/DRM bypass back in the day. Rockstar didn't want
| to bring up old source code and find someone who understood it
| enough to remove the check, so instead they just installed a
| No-CD crack into the existing EXE and uploaded the thing to
| Steam.
| rpdillon wrote:
| This is a great example of how today's "piracy" is tomorrow's
| "only working copy left". I wish there were a more formal way
| to explicitly allow this, though I'm probably just pining for
| shorter copyright terms. This game was released 20 years ago,
| longer than the original U.S. copyright term of 14 years.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Disney lawyers, meanwhile, are looking to extend copyright
| to 50 years beyond the life of the author's 3rd generation
| descendant or the heat death of the universe, whichever
| comes last.
| ewzimm wrote:
| Did anyone at Rockstar ever confirm that it was an official
| decision?
|
| I wonder if they did assign someone all that and they took a
| shortcut.
| kolanos wrote:
| Did Rockstart have to license Razor1911's cracking software?
|
| It would be ironic if Rockstar was in violation of
| Razor1911's copyright.
| yomlica8 wrote:
| Are we sure they didn't just lose the source code entirely?
| rightbyte wrote:
| Probably unbuildable anyways without a lot of effort if you
| can't recreate the workstation that was building it.
| fragmede wrote:
| These days you'd save a VM image, but if we all move off
| x86, what good will that do?
| Moomoomoo309 wrote:
| QEMU can run VMs that are a different architecture than
| the host. There's obviously a performance penalty to
| doing that, but it can be done.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| Sounds like Razor could sue Rockstar for copyright
| infringement. That would be hilarious.
| jiofj wrote:
| They could. They would lose, though
| bogwog wrote:
| Because Rockstar is a huge company, or because the dev
| wouldn't have a case?
| wongarsu wrote:
| A No-CD crack might not be transformative enough to
| warrant copyright protection as derivative work in the
| US. But they could sue in a jurisdiction that is more
| likely to give them a favorable outcome. Handling of
| derivative works and the minimum threshold for copyright
| varies considerably between countries.
| Guvante wrote:
| Likely Rockstar would counter sue for violating their
| original Copyright and the terms of use attached to them.
|
| At best it would be a wash, there is a decent chance the
| damages for the countersuit would lead to a net loss.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| The can sue them for anti-circumvention statutes in the
| DMCA. But not for infringement, since the developers did
| not do the infringement, they only enabled it.
| therein wrote:
| After some short searching online, looks like for
| copyright infringement litigation, the statute of
| limitation is three years.
| freejazz wrote:
| I don't think people on HN understand what a derivative
| work is, considering how often I see it referenced
| incorrectly. You can't make a derivative work without a
| license. That's why it's derivative. It derivates from
| the copyrighted work and is therefore within the domain
| of the copyright and under the control of the copyright's
| owner.
|
| A Harry Potter spin-off about Hermione (I don't know
| anything about HP, sorry in advanced) is a derivative of
| the original Harry Potter work. As I'm sure you are well
| aware, you cannot sell copies of your Hermione spin-off,
| because that'd be copyright infringement, _because it is
| a derivative work_.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| I'm not sure about american law but in EU (at least
| Sweden) you def get copyright to detivative work even if
| you don't have a license. If I create a derivative work
| based on Harry Potter the result will be that I have
| copyright to the derivative work BUT not to Harry Potter
| (I wish) so while I own the rights to my work I can't
| produce (etc) the work (at least not in a commerical
| capacity) because JK rowling owns the Harry Potter
| rights. However JK does not have the right to use my
| derivative work without a license from me.
|
| A maybe more clear example is music. Songwriting is
| covered by copywrite. Singing is also covered by
| copywrite. If A writes a song and B sings the song
| without A:s premission it can be copyright infringment.
| However, A can not take a recording of B:s song and copy
| and sell it without B:s consent because B has the
| copyright to the performance (even if the performance was
| a copywright infringment).
| CapstanRoller wrote:
| >you cannot sell copies of your Hermione spin-off,
| because that'd be copyright infringement, because it is a
| derivative work
|
| But you can distribute it for free, as fanfiction.
|
| Also, a no-CD crack does not contain any of the original
| work. It's akin to a program that you can use to modify,
| say, your legally-purchased Harry Potter ebook in order
| to change all instances of "wand" to "wang"
| bragr wrote:
| Fan fiction is illegal, or at best in a deeply gray area,
| it's just that most people realize suing your super-fans
| is a bad move. There are exceptions of course, Anne Rice
| was famously super litigious over any attempted fan
| fiction of her characters which generated a lot of bad
| feelings online.
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/88gqjz/anne-rice-really-
| hate...
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| Paramount suing Star Trek fan productions is another
| great example. They recently took down the Wolf 359 audio
| book project for example.
| bri3d wrote:
| If the patch is distributed on its own, without the
| original binary, is it still a derivative work? Is the
| unique, creative work of writing "perform XYZ instruction
| at XYZ address," in lieu of the original executable,
| still derivative?
|
| This is actually an unanswered/unproven question that
| comes up quite a bit in automotive tuning, where
| individuals and tuning companies modify OEM calibrations
| and create application software patches which, while they
| are unique and perform stand-alone functions, run on top
| of OEM ECU software.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| The history of General Computer Corporation's[0] arcade
| enhancement boards is an interesting example of this kind
| of "derivative" work.
|
| GCC made an enhancement board for Missile Command and
| later for Pac Man ("Crazy Otto", which became "Ms. Pac
| Man"). Rather than employing simple "ROM hacks" as other
| enhancement board manufacturers did, GCC specifically
| built their enhancement hardware not to contain any code
| copied from the original game ROM. Their hardware patched
| the existing ROM only by overlaying their code onto the
| original ROMs, not by copying any of the original
| code[1].
|
| There's some neat detail in the background slides
| here[2]. I'd love to hear that talk but I'm not
| immediately a recording of it.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Computer_Corpor
| ation
|
| [1] https://web.stanford.edu/class/sts145/Notes/3_game_bu
| siness/...
|
| [2] https://trilobyte.com/pdf/golson_ReplayFX_2015.pdf
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I don't think people on HN understand what a derivative
| work is, considering how often I see it referenced
| incorrectly.
|
| Very true.
|
| > You can't make a derivative work without a license. T
|
| You _can_ , but it is a copyright violation to do so
| _unless_ an exception (like Fair Use) applies.
|
| A derivative work is also a work eligible for copyright
| in its own right, and as such is copyright by the creator
| by operation of law when fixed in a tangible form,
| _whether or not_ it also violates someone else's
| copyright.
|
| > It derivates
|
| "derives"
|
| > from the copyrighted work and is therefore within the
| domain of the copyright and under the control of the
| copyright's owner.
|
| No, producing it is within the legally exclusive rights
| of the copyright holder subject to the limitations on
| those rights, but once created the copyright in the
| derivative is not under the control of the copyright
| holder of the original (though transferring or licensing
| back may be part of the resolution of copyright violation
| lawsuit over its creation.)
| itiro wrote:
| Most DRM crackers aren't in it for money but to prove DRM
| is a flawed and ridiculous concept.
|
| That was my scene back in the day when there was less
| risk of the Feds kicking in the door. At least back then
| most of us saw it as a learning experience.
| parineum wrote:
| What's the copyrighted work here?
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| Both the original game and the no-cd crack are
| copyrighted works.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| Former cracker for rzr here :) did not do this game
| unfortunately.
| apgwoz wrote:
| Oh, you "didn't" do this game, _wink_ _wink_ , nudge
| nudge. ;)
| effingwewt wrote:
| Thank you for your service o7
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Razor1911 was the cracking group in this particular case.
| OnlyMortal wrote:
| Heh. I recall their demos on the Amiga.
| tpmx wrote:
| Probably Norway's most long-lived and industrious
| software export success. Founded in 1985.
| readyplayernull wrote:
| Somehow I expected them to be founded since 1911,
| cracking those Analytical Engines.
| nikanj wrote:
| It's 0x777, making fun of all the l33+ 666 groups
| OnlyMortal wrote:
| 666. My favourite error code to return when there's a
| "wtf" error.
| gintoddic wrote:
| understated context here
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| That's hilarious. I wonder what the license model is for the
| crack that they used.
| muttled wrote:
| If there's not a name for it yet, can we call it "All's
| Fair in Love and Warez?"
| mcronce wrote:
| Also known as the AFLW 1.0 License!
| rootw0rm wrote:
| it's the "all rights reversed" license
| CameronNemo wrote:
| [flagged]
| novok wrote:
| That sounds like zit lol
| CameronNemo wrote:
| It sounds like something else too. Email press@twitter.com
| to find out.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2023/03/20/1164654551/twitter-poop-
| emoji...
| [deleted]
| demarq wrote:
| Cracking was a 90s term for pirating software
| itsnotlupus wrote:
| Cracking is about removing anti-features, typically copy
| protections. It pairs well with pirating, but neither one
| strictly requires the other.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > Cracking is about removing anti-features
|
| Anti what features? Piracy?
| function_seven wrote:
| Anti-backup, Anti-I-don't-have-a-cdrom-on-this-machine,
| Anti-I-lost-the-stupid-dongle, etc.
|
| Like parent says, cracking and piracy pair well, but I've
| had to do it many times just for compatibility reasons,
| on software I had purchased.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| And just anti-convenience! Nobody wants to swap CDs
| purely to tick a checkbox.
| xxs wrote:
| The anti-what-word-is-on-the-17th-page-3rd-paragraph-of-
| the-handbook was a very common on for so many games.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| pirating software (movies, and music) is a term from the 90's
| by the MPAA, Riaa, and Games industry in attempting to link
| the act of simple copyright infringement, a civil non-
| criminal violation of the law to violent robbery on the high
| seas...
|
| Cracking is a method of removing undesired features or
| inclusions from software, often licensing controls, or other
| anti-consumer features.
|
| Many many many people "cracked" their software who where not
| eganged in the act of copyright infringement, they legally
| owned the software but for a number of reasons has no desire
| to run the invasive software bundled with the game or content
| they purchased.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-05
| mattw2121 wrote:
| The term "pirate" definitely predates the 90's and RIAA,
| etc. We used it quite liberally in the 80's BBS era.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| Another alternative to cracking was to use something like
| DAEMON Tools to emulate the CD in the drive with an .iso so
| you could legitimately play multiplayer games without
| having to deal with stupid CD checks.
| dylan604 wrote:
| my favorite use was for software that required a USB
| dongle. if you lost the dongle, you lost access to the
| software. there is not "back up" option. so the cracking
| community came up with a way to emulate those dongles. the
| obvious abuse followed. we used the software for legit 1:1
| installs to physical dongle on blade servers where all of
| the dongles could not be installed
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| My favourite failure case of this is dongles on hardware
| devices, like lighting controllers. Especially when the
| dongle does in on an exposed edge of the device and can
| get knocked loose.
|
| I've heard stories of them getting disconnected because
| they were bumped, and the whole unit goes dead five
| minutes later. At least it's not immediate.
| justapassenger wrote:
| > Many many many people "cracked" their software who where
| not eganged in the act of copyright infringement, they
| legally owned the software but for a number of reasons has
| no desire to run the invasive software bundled with the
| game or content they purchased.
|
| Yes, many people. But not "many many many" people. You try
| to make it sound like cracking to pirate was minority use
| case.
|
| It was a valid use case, sure, but as big as using torrents
| to download Linux ISOs.
| PeterisP wrote:
| I seem to recall that for some games the community
| recommended fix for performance problems was to install a
| crack so that the game wouldn't try to read stuff from
| the CD, which might be slow depending on the drive you
| have, and would be _very_ slow if the CD has some scratch
| so the drive repeatedly attempted to read the same spot
| until it succeeded.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Sure, and I don't question that. But at the same time -
| 99% of people outside of western countries had pirated
| copies of games (because it was legal in many countries,
| plus paying normal price was often month+ salary for a
| single game). Tons of teenagers from western countries
| (main gamers back in the days) had pirated games, unless
| they came from a rich family.
|
| Cracks helped to fix some serious usability issues (as
| DRM removal nowadays also helps with), but let's not
| rewrite history to pretend that was what majority of
| people used them for.
| mjg59 wrote:
| The use of "piracy" to describe unauthorised publication of
| a copyrighted work dates back to the 18th century, it's not
| something the MPAA came up with.
| timmb wrote:
| That was the scariest term they could come up with? The
| romantic swashbuckling seafarer, antagonising empires and
| declaring his own rules? Surely they could have done
| better.
|
| 'software fraud', 'software theft', 'forgery'... hmm well
| there's a reason I don't work in marketing obviously.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| They did those as well, and they also paid for extensive
| marketing material to make it seem like buying a cracked
| game was directly contributing to a mafia that was
| planning on killing your granny.
|
| Do you not remember the ads? The "you wouldn't steal a
| car"?
|
| Piracy is just what they were able to get. Should have
| hired the bank's PR managers, who turned "failing to do
| due diligence on a customer's identity" into the
| customer's problem.
| jstarfish wrote:
| > This explains the myth of the retail MC2 crashing on Vista -
| the game is most likely innocent, as the demo works great out of
| the box. IT WAS AGAIN THE CRACK breaking it.
|
| Myth? Innocent? That game was totally unplayable when it first
| came out (for 98/ME?) so I doubt Razor made anything worse. I'd
| get most of the way through any race before the game randomly
| crashed.
|
| It would be funnier if it weren't so absurd, since I'd have to go
| through finding the opponent in the world, chasing them to the
| starting line _and_ doing the race itself each time.
| dalore wrote:
| He commented on that comment, it wasn't the crack.
|
| > This gets better - Razor's crack is fine, the reason both
| Midnight Club 2 and Manhunt crashed when these cracks were in
| use was the fact that Steam DRM included a .bind section that
| was code _not_ marked as code - thus tripping Data Execution
| Prevention
| madars wrote:
| There's probably an even stronger claim. It is not that Razor
| is not making things worse, rather a release from a reputable
| group is a strong indication that it works and that it will
| continue to do so many years in the future after activation
| servers are long gone/DRM methods are deprecated/etc. Quality
| and reliability is probably the reason why Microsoft used
| DeepzOne's Sound Forge [1] and Turner Classic Movies used
| subtitles from Karagarga [2] :-)
|
| [1] https://boingboing.net/2006/07/19/windows-xp-sounds-cr.html
| [2] https://torrentfreak.com/turner-classic-movies-airs-a-
| film-w...
| paxys wrote:
| While not too big a deal on its own, if the binary was doing
| something it wasn't supposed to (which was/is common with cracked
| games from untrustworthy sources) it would open Rockstar up to a
| mountain of liability.
|
| I'm guessing this is some subcontractor taking shortcuts rather
| than an official company policy approved by legal.
| toast0 wrote:
| Razor1911 isn't an untrustworthy source though.
| paxys wrote:
| Just because it says Razor1911 in the binary doesn't mean it
| actually came from that group though.
| [deleted]
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Many years ago, I worked on a product that provided a bunch of
| old emulated games. We properly licensed them, but many of the
| license holders no longer had the original ROMs, ripping the game
| data off of some of the really old consoles was quite difficult,
| and the only ROMs available publicly were cracked copies with
| demo's added. That was the birth of the demoscene, which was
| awesome, but bad for us trying to legitimately provide these
| games. So we ended up cheating. We used the cracked versions of
| these games, but we always loaded the games from a state just
| past when the demo would play, making them look normal and legit.
| Thank God all those early cracks put their demos only at the
| start and not, like, between levels 1 and 2, or we'd've been
| screwed.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| It would be kind of sad/funny if one of the games had a bad
| crack and the game itself was broken and not caught by QA. For
| example, Earthbound has one final check that would cause the
| game to freeze and delete your save at the final boss.
| avg_dev wrote:
| man that is absolutely brutal
| Darmody wrote:
| To me it happened the other way around.
|
| The original game from Steam won't run on Linux but if I
| change the .exe for one that is cracked, it works.
|
| I've been keeping that .exe for years.
| ineedasername wrote:
| It's actually kind of like a bizarro version of open source:
| someone or some group may be the initiator of a project but some
| of the community that grows around the project also contribute
| back to it, making it a symbiotic relationship. Just, in the
| bizarro version, there's an even more complex ecosystem filled
| with people who get to play a game where they hunt down some of
| the members of this community and make angry faces at them and
| sometimes put them in jail.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| https://nitter.unixfox.eu/__silent_/status/16983459248402968...
|
| Who could have thought what a company with billions of revenue
| would use the cracks from RAZOR1911 for IP they are _selling_ to
| the end users?
|
| Shocking!
| ezconnect wrote:
| Does RAZOR1911 have a legal way to have a share of revenue
| since they are using his hard work?
| threeio wrote:
| Razor1911 is a cracking group from the mid 80s on... but it
| would be fantastic wouldn't it? :)
| monocasa wrote:
| At least some did. CD Projekt Red got started as a cracking
| and translation group. At the time (Poland before the fall
| of the iron curtain) there wasn't actually anything illegal
| about what they were doing; copyright wasn't really a
| concept in their legal system at the time, particularly for
| software.
| Zetobal wrote:
| They disbanded some years ago :*(
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| They are not entitled to anything. Rockstar can use their
| crack as much as they want.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Anyone a little savvy would have guessed that.
|
| I'm betting even at the time of the game's release, it was so
| fragile that someone breathing wrong on the build machine would
| cause the build to fail. Any time the Windows machine displayed
| the numeral 1 in the systray, it would be unbuildable. And on
| Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays it would just fail to compile.
| That there were only 3 employees who could get it to work at
| all the last 3 months of development... and they all quit years
| ago.
|
| Now? Now it won't build on Windows 11, or even on the old XP
| machine they dug up. It's so riddled with Denuvo or whatever,
| that they'd have to spin up a team of 12 for two months just to
| delete that, and only for them to discover it won't build
| afterwards.
|
| And, whatever else, they sure as hell don't have anyone who's
| good enough at assembly and IDA Pro to crack themselves.
| Probably too cheap to even get the single seat license for IDA
| Pro.
| bluejay2387 wrote:
| Kind of mind blowing to see a name (Razor1911) from my C64 days
| make an appearance again 0.o
| meesles wrote:
| They've been a consistent name in cracking since then!
| nxobject wrote:
| I wonder if they're like the Bourbaki group in mathematics -
| an anonymous group where members elect other members, with a
| trivial amount of cloak-and-dagger secrecy from the public.
| echelon_musk wrote:
| This is more common than you might expect.
|
| The Windows port of Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents under
| Pressure being sold on Steam is the DEViANCE crack.
|
| Open the game's exe in a hex editor and you can plainly see
| "DEViANCE".
| monocasa wrote:
| I seem to remember hearing that wrt roms on at least one of the
| NES|SNES|PS1 Classic systems.
| barbs wrote:
| Yeah same, although I think it was the ROMs distributed in
| the Wii Shopping Channel?
| RajT88 wrote:
| System sounds *.wav files were also produced with cracked
| software at some point (no clue if this is still in Win10):
|
| https://www.techrepublic.com/forums/discussions/windows-uses...
| lelandfe wrote:
| I'm impressed both that you had a nearly 20 year old link
| ready, and that this URL still works.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Fans did the work for them, likely illegally, and it remains
| within Rockstar's right to use it
|
| analogous to free work-for-hire
| h2odragon wrote:
| could the NoCD crack author do a DMCA takedown on these games
| now? Would it even need to be the author issuing such a request?
| capableweb wrote:
| You need to either be or represent the copyright holder. I'm
| 99% sure most warez groups have no interest in exposing
| themselves to any legal systems when it comes to what they do.
| h2odragon wrote:
| If I say I represent such a group, then; is it likely that
| anyone will disagree? DMCA cases seem to be about who has the
| scarier looking letterhead anyway.
|
| To whom would I have to prove or disprove my standing to take
| Rockstar games down, I wonder? Does Steam have any right to
| refuse such a request just because it's patently absurd?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >DMCA cases seem to be about who has the scarier looking
| letterhead anyway.
|
| This is only true of Youtube, where their "DMCA" process is
| entirely extralegal, which is why there is no penalty for
| an incorrect takedown request.
|
| If you file a DMCA, and Valve ignores it, you have to take
| it to court, where a judge will decide whether you prove
| you are the rightful copyright holder. As in the case with
| google, a company is free to take down content for any
| reason, including for bogus DMCA claims.
| baby_souffle wrote:
| > If I say I represent such a group, then; is it likely
| that anyone will disagree? DMCA cases seem to be about who
| has the scarier looking letterhead anyway.
|
| If you say you represent them, all the scary letter heads
| will go to _you_.
| dalore wrote:
| You could say you wrote the source code for the cracker,
| but you did not distribute the pirated software, that was
| someone else.
| elil17 wrote:
| Imagine you did this and ended up in court. If you admit
| you lied on the DMCA request, you'd be admitting to
| perjury. If you continue to claim to be the cracker,
| Rockstar could sue you for damages from IP theft.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Perjury is only if you make a statement under oath
| knowing it to be a lie. The DMCA doesn't require you by
| statute to tell the truth. As long as you tell the truth
| under oath on the witness stand, if it got that far, then
| you'd be fine from a criminal prosecution perspective.
|
| Of course, you'd probably get counter-sued for a number
| of civil torts for being a fuckhead.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| It does. Each DMCA requires "A statement that the
| information in the complaint is accurate, and, under
| penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act on
| behalf of the copyright owner."
| PeterisP wrote:
| Especially do note that you _could_ lie on all the other
| parts of the complaint, such as the issue whether the
| violation actually occurred, but the one thing that 's
| under the penalty of perjury is whether you're actually
| representing the copyright owner.
| elil17 wrote:
| What you said is not true. The text of the law
| specifically clarifies that a false DMCA takedown request
| is perjury.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| You need that in the sense that it would be a legitimate
| notice.
|
| No requirement such as that is part of the DMCA, and there is
| no penalty in statute for making illegitimate notices.
| tus666 wrote:
| Would be funny if the hacker sued rockstar for profiting off his
| work.
| o0banky0o wrote:
| razor1911 never started owning it when they made the crack, so,
| fair.
| sixthDot wrote:
| Modified or not, legally R.S. Games owns it anyway.
| mabbo wrote:
| They don't own the no-CD crack. So technically, they are
| selling software they pirated.
| [deleted]
| ohnoesjmr wrote:
| They are not shipping the crack. They are shipping their own
| binary that has been modified by the crack.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Those modifications have a copy-right they do not own...
| Steltek wrote:
| A compiler author does not own the output of the
| compiler.
| neurostimulant wrote:
| They can copyright certain sequence of bits though, like
| console makers did a while ago to enforce licensing (e.g.
| can't boot this rom without these sequence of bits, but
| this sequence of bits is actually a nintendo logo which
| cannot be distributed unless you have nintendo's
| permission).
| lxgr wrote:
| Is that always the case, or does it depend on the
| compiler's license in the end?
| alphablended wrote:
| No, but any other source (eg. headers) used during the
| compilation process might be owned by a third party.
|
| A crack does not compile anything, but even if you go
| that road, it will be argued anyway that the patch which
| is applied is copyrighted.
|
| Now, of course, it's another thing to prove that the
| patch may indeed be copyrighted...
| jerf wrote:
| I've been waiting for ~23 years for the copyright system
| to grapple with the implications of 1. having a
| copyrighted work A 2. taking someone else's "patch"
| (mod/crack/whatever, I call it "patch" as a general term)
| B and 3. combining them on your local computer to produce
| a final work C. We techies have been arguing about who
| has what rights, who can block who from doing what, who's
| responsible for what, etc. in that situation for at least
| that long, when the mood strikes us. I'm still unaware of
| any really clear precedent on this and I'm pretty sure
| legislation remains utterly oblivious that such a thing
| is even possible, or how powerful it is. I've been on the
| lookout for even a hint of this for a long time and
| there's hardly been anything.
|
| I guess the economics just haven't worked out to produce
| a true showdown. Game mods are in my opinion the clear
| favorite for where this would finally rise to a court-
| level problem, and clearly there's been a lot of conflict
| in this space, but nobody yet has been foolhardy enough
| to build a large enough _business_ on selling some mod
| that when the owner tries to shut them down they actually
| go to a full-on, precedent-setting legal battle. (After
| all, economically, when you get to that level of
| capability, why not make your _own_ game that you
| _clearly_ own? That path has been trod many times.)
|
| So, my best answer to your question is, honestly nobody
| really knows what kind of rights Razor may or may not
| have to the final product of their crack, especially
| since it is not the crack itself being distributed.
| PeterisP wrote:
| The general principle of copyright law is that
| copying/distributing work that combines multiple
| copyrightable parts requires the permission of every
| author/copyright holder. Copyright law does not attempt
| to establish a single owner for any given work, it's
| perfectly fine with multiple parties having copyright
| protections over a single work, in which case any of them
| has a practical veto to doing anything with the joint
| product, as permission to use 99% of the work isn't
| sufficient.
|
| For a very common example, let's look at a translated
| book. Copying and distributing such a book requires
| separate permission from both the author of the book and
| the author of the translation; the translation is a
| derivative work, it's covered by the copyrights of the
| original book and the author, but the translator also
| holds independent copyright on the translation in
| addition to the author's interest.
|
| IMHO a derivative work of a program patched with someoone
| else's code (no matter how small, as long as it meets the
| very low copyright law bar of 'the slightest touch of
| creative input') is quite similar.
|
| But the specific case of Razor 1911 might be disqualified
| by US copyright law section 103a which says "[...] but
| protection for a work employing preexisting material in
| which copyright subsists does not extend to any part of
| the work in which such material has been used
| unlawfully."
| TylerE wrote:
| A much better analogy would be how writing code in an
| open source editor, compiled by an open source tool chain
| does not make the resulting binary open source.
| thereisnospork wrote:
| They are also (arguably) selling software
| written/designed/intended for the express purpose of
| bypassing copyright protections, which as I understand is in
| and of itself a no-no under the DMCA regardless of underlying
| ownership.
|
| I ANAL of course.
|
| edit: per the sibling comment the crack might not be
| included, so this might not apply.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _a no-no under the DMCA regardless of underlying ownership_
|
| The "regardless" part is wrong. It is permissible for the
| owner of the software to include software for the express
| purpose of bypassing the protections they themselves placed
| on their software. Why would you think that the software
| owner isn't allowed to do that?
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| It would be permissible, if the "software for the express
| purpose of bypassing the protections they themselves
| placed on their software" was their own software.
|
| It's not permissible for them to make available other
| people's "software for the express purpose of bypassing
| the protections they themselves placed on their software"
| without the express permission of those _other people_.
|
| Neither statute nor case law sets a lower limit on the
| size of software that is protected by copyright... but if
| there were a lower limit, then it is clearly down towards
| the hundreds (or even dozens) of bytes. The crack
| certainly doesn't sit underneath that lower limit.
|
| It'd be like purloining just one source code file,
| including it in your commercial software and relying on
| the defense "hey, it was only a few hundred lines long".
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _without the express permission of those other people._
|
| That is false. They simply have to use the other
| software, i.e., the crack, within the terms of its
| license.
|
| In this case, the crack was distributed widely with a
| permissive use license. My hazy memories of that era
| specifically mention giving them credit and nothing else.
| There was definitely no commercial use restriction.
| anakaine wrote:
| There is the matter of enforcement, however. If something
| is completely unenforceable, such as in this case where
| the owner is using a pirate groups bypass, then it may as
| well be permissible. It's not expressly permissible, but
| the perceived breach is also not enforceable, so the
| argument becomes a moot point.
|
| Also, the patches typically had no license terms attached
| to their usage, or if they did it came in the format of
| attribution. The implications here is debatable, but we
| again come back to enforcement to close out the otherwise
| circular argument.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that the lack of license terms doesn't
| make it a free-for-all, instead it means that there is no
| possible licensed use at all.
|
| If you pick up a copy of Photoshop and can't find the
| license for it, you don't get to go down to the street
| corner and sell bootleg copies. That defense won't hold
| when you're in district court fighting to stay out of
| federal prison, anyway.
|
| And while it's true that this will never be enforced, if
| there are no principles here, then there can be no guilt
| from illegally copying these games.
| monocasa wrote:
| Practically (since no prosecutor is going to take this up
| on their own), you'd need someone dumb enough to
| affirmatively say "that's my circumvention tool that's
| illegal under the DMCA" in order to show standing for a
| civil case.
|
| So even if there was a no commercial use license somehow,
| it feels kinda like jury nullification where it's not
| explicitly legal, but de facto legal because of structure
| of the rest of the judicial system.
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| Even if the crack was included it wouldn't apply.
| shmerl wrote:
| Good, they shouldn't have been DRMed in the first place, then
| they won't need to be cracked.
| jdjdjdjdjduuuu wrote:
| At least its not DRM copies....
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