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Rockstar Ships Max Payne 2 Cracked By Pirates
Jamie noticed a fairly amazing little story about Rockstar shipping a version of Max Payne 2 via Steam that was actually cracked by pirates to remove the DRM. The going theory was that it was easier for them to simply use the pirate group's crack than to actually remove their DRM themselves.
Just goes to prove that DRM only hampers legitimate paying customers. Pirates simply laugh (usually with a jolly "yar!").
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
Most likely they simply found themselves unable to build the old codebase. You'd need a seven year old version of whatever build environment they were using, tons of other severn year old bits and pieces and a seven year old OS version. You'd probably need a seven year old machine too, and all the peripherals that go with it. Bits rot when left alone..
Using a cracked version is expedient, and clever.
On top of that they're using someones elses work and profiting from it.
I wonder if the pirate's code was published via a version of GPL? /sarcasm
I'm sure that if the original 'crackers' sued them Rockstar would be happy to meet them in court.
Take the word "pirate" out of it and it's really a story of "programmers take code from somewhere else and use it for their own", and we know that never happens.
The bigger problem is the game industry is always telling us game cracks are full of viruses and trojans. And while I generally don't believe them, I wouldn't use a 3rd party game crack on a pc that had any sensitive information on it. In this case, they are redistributing a binary that they didn't code, and without extensive analysis (ie more work then creating a new patch from scratch) have no way to tell it does not contain malicious code. The fact that Rockstar distributed a binary of unknown origin with no Q+A done on it is a bad, bad thing.
The usual argument is that cracked software is dangerous, because it contains malware of various sorts. Rather difficult to support that argument, when you then go out and ship the same "malware" as a legitimate part of a software release.
If you steal your own wallet back from a pickpocket, you're not going to jail.
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Not to continue with your car analogy, but... :)
A lot of the "standard" equipment in modern performance cars were inspired by "hotrod" enthusiasts of the 1930 and on, who would take a vehicle, lighten it swap engines, modify away from factory specifications, end up with a much more powerful cars. As it became apparent that consumers would spend good money for the same type of performance, these changes were adopted in. Being that the major manufacturers started adopting these changes in, the aftermarket crowd has continued to improve them even more.
Significant time and money was spent by enthusiasts and aftermarket companies to develop and test their aftermarket parts, which some of have eventually shown up in factory vehicles. I doubt even a small percentage of the people who put in the work got any sort of reimbursement from the manufacturer. It's never been a game of "I hope I impress the manufacturer and get a job". It's always been "I want my vehicle to be bigger, better, and faster". For most of us, when we see a car that includes the changes we would have done on previous generations, we're impressed.
Now on the topic at hand, I do agree that it was wrong for the author to use code by a third party. I'm sure many (likely including the author) were happy that it was done, so the modifications were no longer necessary. It would not have been practical for them to attribute the work to the third party author, so maybe by leaving enough of his code in so the top of their banner was visible was all the attribution they could give. It may not have been a "FU, we stole your code", but a "thank you, we liked your change so we included it."
Since these cracks and cheats are done (primarily) for free, and handed out liberally, there is no monetary loss, because there was no monetary gain to begin with.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.