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Australian Federal Court Grants Publisher of GTA V Game Right To Search Homes of Five People Accused of Making Cheat Software (bbc.com)
The publisher of video game Grand Theft Auto V has been granted the right to search the homes of five people accused of making cheat software. From a report: The court order allowed Rockstar Games and its parent company, Take-Two Interactive, to search two properties in Melbourne, Australia, for evidence related to a cheat known as Infamous. The Australian federal court has also frozen the assets of the five, who have not yet filed a defence. The cheat went offline six months ago. It allowed players who paid about $40 to manipulate the gaming environment, generate virtual currency and use a "god mode" feature that makes players invincible.
Was patching the game not an option?
... all of this because the stupid half of mankind couldn't see buying drm enabled games and feeding microtransactions to companies would allow them undermine game ownership. Thereby taking away what every normal person who used to own their games do what they will with them, because they paid for it. This sick authoritarian feudal model is disgusting.
Hold on -- a private company can be given the right to search somebody's home in Australia? They have literally been given the legal right bust into multiple private citizens' homes? WTF? Is this life imitating art or some kind of crazy distopian future?
All of this can be described as Ass Access
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
It only took you 3 months to condemn an entire country of around 25 million people? Efficient as it is prejudiced! Do me a favor and use your amazing skills in North Korea next.
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I expect that if a private research lab discovered someone had taken samples of something they were working on then they might need to be involved in identifying who they thought had taken it, and law enforcement would likely need their assistance in identifying it when a search for it was conducted. Cops aren't experts on plasma physics, advanced chemistry, gene engineering, or even software, for that matter. The government still had to be convinced to furnish a court order, so the decision was still where it should have been. And no, if you bought some produce at a grocery store and discovered some weirdo in the parking lot was spraying it with weedkiller while you were putting it in your car, you would probably welcome the grocery store's help in resolving the matter--and the grocery store would want it resolved even more than the customer because such illegal behavior directly damages their livelihood. It's not even stealing in this case, just vandalism. Cause, effect, and response. No one should be surprised.
These actions about GTA V mods are about mods that affect progression in online mode, as a Motherboard article linked from BBC's article clarifies, not so much about mods that affect only the offline experience.
Now to extend your analogy: Like other tabletop games, physical copies of the Monopoly property trading game support offline multiplayer. If Hasbro and EA were still offering an online version of Monopoly, and someone were cheating in that game, Hasbro and EA might be justified in seeking a civil search warrant.
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If it would have been free, there would, most likely, not an issue.
e.g. in Belgium the courts will not go after somebody sharing music. Sell 1 CD and you are toast.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Actually, no. Hasbro got you covered, fam.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Get off your high-horse about "intended experiences" and other such crap; and just put the cheat codes back into your games. Then people won't bother to waste time hacking at your code so they can race up & down Vice City Beach in the tank, with recoil of the back-facing gun making you zoom along faster than the Vice cops' Infernus, before they actually unlock all of the other islands.
Not everyone enjoys games in the same way. The way some people enjoy the game you develop will not be the way you envision. And THAT'S OKAY! Hell... I'm not sure I've *ever* not used the money cheat in a Maxis game. I have more fun building cool cities, neighborhoods, and houses than I ever care about the day-to-day lives of my sims. The GTA games, I'd always play through once before exploring the cheats. But even if I hadn't; I've already paid. And how I get the most fun out of the game is none of your damn business.
Imagine all the people...
but when that EULA in front of a judge what will happen??
When your defense wants it read page by page in court?
When the jury needs to read over each page with lot's of questions for the court when they get confused?
At the very least in case with an 100 page EULA they may just deadlock.
I so wish they'd do that. The game as described in the official rules is bad but playable. The game played with the rules that people actually use is absolutely atrocious.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Love the game, hate the cheating... it's going to kill the whole thing.
...in a civil search like this what happens if everything is encrypted (as they should be), and/or in a cloud provider's storage?
Do they have the "right" (using the term loosely) to seize devices they can't access like the US Border Patrol can?
After 6 months, doubtless the victims (eg, those being searched) would have had time to prepare.
To be judged by a kangaroo court.
These weren't just cheaters, these were people profiteering off of making cheats. If you agree with Rockstar selling virtual money, or not, this shows that people were willing to pay money, thus a credible monetary loss for Rockstar under the law.
Adding on top of this that the cheat product, affected other people's use of the original product.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
Put all this time and effort into validity checking all events that happen in multiplayer and banning accordingly. Someone can't gain more than X money in 5 minutes, can't take X amount of shots from a gun without dying, can't be off the ground outside a vehicle for more than X seconds etc. Put in these basic cheat checks for a little CPU overhead or even review the data server-side and data, no more cheaters.
GTA V is a cash cow for Take Two. It is obviously in their interests to come down hard on people selling tools that deprive the company of revenue either directly or indirectly by griefing / cheating other players. It's too bad for the perps if they live in a country where they can be pursued through the courts.
but when that EULA in front of a judge what will happen??
EULAs have a tendency not to carry much weight in Australia. It becomes more of a legal / law based issue than an EULA based one.