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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.
So Rockstar needed crackers help to release an old game in a digital download version? Maybe now it makes companies think that games without DRM are superior to DRM-laden versions, if even they need cracked versions to re-release the games whose developers are already gone.
On top of that they're using someones elses work and profiting from it.
Someone at kotaku's comments also noticed they're using cracked executables for the original Max Payne.
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
I think they confused "booty" with "boot sectarrrrrrrr"
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
"Pirates sue Rockstar for using and distributing unlicensed cracks."
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
I'm sorry, we're talking about "software pirates" which are different from the high-seas privateers which were more prevalent in the 1800's or off the shores of Africa. It's the frame of context which makes the "software" implicit, as the swashbuckling variety would unlikely be patching executables in Rockstar videogames.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
I prefer the term “Software Pillagers, Murderers, Rapists, and Generally Really Bad People”.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
The game with the crack is simply a derivative of the original game. The pirates have no copyrights concerning any derivatives of Rockstar's original work, so they have no grounds to sue.
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
Did they remove the rootkit?
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
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.
"Pirates sue Rockstar for using and distributing unlicensed cracks."
There's another way you can sue them. Abondonware rights were added to the DMCA that made it legal to crack games that are "no longer being sold or supported" for your own personal purposes of archival. Now, it's still illegal to distribute those cracked games. So the people who cracked it might have a claim that they cracked these games for their own archival purpose after Max Payne left stores and did not distribute them. But the great part is that you don't need to sue them, you can write that up in a letter notifying the ESA who will take them to court and, effectively, may sue the copyright holders for distributing a cracked game even though they own the copyright on it. After all, it just might fit the description of abandonware and set precedent one way or the other.
I hope the crackers seriously stick it to them. Copyright length, game DRM and licensing really don't make any sense to me. Honestly I really am upset that I paid for ~$40 for Contra on the NES back in 1990 only to have to pay $8 for it on the Wii today with no ability to transfer it from that device to another. How many more times must I pay for the Contra license to what is the exact same game?
My work here is dung.
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.
just because they usually distribute a new exe instead of a patch doesn't really change anything. Unless they wrote the new exe from scratch, which I highly doubt, it's still an unauthorized derivative work, and thus Rockstar owns the copyright to it.
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.
One of the Rockstar coders was a member of Myth.
(you think I joke, but crack / warez teams are often loaded with industry insiders...)
Back when Babylon 5 was still being produced, some licensing issue had held up making any models of the ships being produced as toys, which prompted some outfits to start making their own models and selling them illegally.
JMS even mentioned one of these being shut down, but being impressed by the quality of these models, apparently made with nothing more to go on than screen caps.
In an episode soon afterwards one of the characters on the show was shown using a very detailed model of one of their ships... when questioned whether these two events were related, JMS' only response was "waste not, want not..."
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Did anyone state that no QA had been done? I would assume (read: HOPE) that Rockstar had the brains to test the hell out of this binary before saying "Well, let's just release it and see what happens..." Granted, probably as much maybe a little more work than patching it themselves, but it would behoove them not to check the code or at least monitor the data paths of the executable before blindly putting it to market. Maybe they even worked WITH the cracking group to gain the source-code so they could ensure there was nothing malicious(er) going on.
This seems to prove that DRM is bad even for the companies that use it.
DRM on old software no longer maintained could make it difficult for companies to redistribute their old software via new channels in the future. Imagine how many DRM'd CD/DVD games there are that may never be made available through online distribution systems like Steam because the copyright owner can't break the CD/DVD requirement mechanism and are unable to recompile the code to remove that restriction.
Do you think the people who implemented such DRM back in the 1990s and early 2000s ever thought about such a possibility?
What future distribution channels will be created that current software won't be distributed through because of limitations created through implementing DRM? Maybe there's a whole new industry about to be born around legally cracking DRM for copyright owners? Or does the DMCA make cracking DRM illegal even if it's done by or on behalf of the copyright owner?
It's is technically possible that there is a Somalian pirate who is also a software pirate - sort of a double pirate.
Ye scury dog, we knows ye like plunder, so we put a pirate in your pirate so's ye can plunder while ye plunder! Arrrrrrrrr!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Companies would be better off to dump DRM all together and realize that they would do better competing with pirates if they provided the product DRM free in a similar distribution model. Steam is more like a service so it is a good compromise.
This is large scale commercial piracy. This is exactly the kind of thing that copyright laws are supposed to protect against.
But the warez group won't bring suit because of its own unclean hands.
[EDIT]
Not anymore!
There is a war going on for your mind.
US law states: "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."
So it all stems from a guy named Daniel Defoe misappropriating the word near the turn of the 18th century? What a vivid imagination that guy had. Didn’t he also write “Robinson Crusoe”?
~ ~ Yes, I realise it didn’t start with him. Amusingly, though, it was originally used metaphorically.
For instance... (from 1603)
Banish these Word-pirates, (you sacred mistresses of learning) into the gulfe of Barbarisme: doome them euerlastingly to liue among dunces: let them not once lick their lips at the Thespian bowle, but onely be glad (and thanke Apollo for it too) if hereafter (as hitherto they haue alwayes) they may quench their poeticall thirst with small beere.
A terrible metaphor, but it seems to have stuck.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Pirates and privateers are similar but distinctly different. One group are thieves on the sea, and the others are thieves on the sea with permission from the king of one country to attack the vessels of another country.
No. Copyright only applies to creative and original works. This microscopic patch that just NOOPs out a few calls to DVD checking routines is neither creative nor original. The game used generic DVD checks that many games did, so it's entirely possible the pirate team cracked it entirely by rote, just fed it into a generic cracker, and got the binary back out. In the same way, Adobe has copyright on Photoshop, but NOT on any photo that's ever been edited in Photoshop. Myth's tool would be copyright by them, the hand full of NOOPs inserted by that tool certainly are not.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI