Take-Two Sues Enthusiasts Behind GTA Fan Projects Re3 and ReVC
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Take-Two Sues Enthusiasts Behind GTA Fan Projects Re3 and ReVC
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Re: Take-Two Sues Enthusiasts Behind GTA Fan Projects Re3 and ReVC
#2Do the enthusiast devs have a legal leg to stand on? The repositories cited - like the re3 one on github - don't contain the original GTA3 game assets. It's all "new" code that runs the original game assets, or emulation/simulation wrappers to get OpenGL or DirectX to function like an old PS2 renderer. To play the re3 version of the game, you need the original GTA3 game for PC. To me, it seems more like SCUMM VM or a high-level emulator. Is that copyright infringement?
Re: Take-Two Sues Enthusiasts Behind GTA Fan Projects Re3 and ReVC
#3Do the enthusiast devs have a legal leg to stand on? The repositories cited - like the re3 one on github - don't contain the original GTA3 game assets. It's all "new" code that runs the original game assets, or emulation/simulation wrappers to get OpenGL or DirectX to function like an old PS2 renderer. To play the re3 version of the game, you need the original GTA3 game for PC. To me, it seems more like SCUMM VM or a…
It’s tricky (obviously) but the code itself is certainly protected. If they decompiled the code and just cleaned it up it’s very grey. If they simply studied it’s workings and coded it fresh that’s pretty clearly not infringing. But if take-two can point at chunks of code that’s exactly the same they have a bit of a leg. Mainly though they know they won’t fight back so why not just sue? They have nothing to lose.
Re: Take-Two Sues Enthusiasts Behind GTA Fan Projects Re3 and ReVC
#4Do the enthusiast devs have a legal leg to stand on? The repositories cited - like the re3 one on github - don't contain the original GTA3 game assets. It's all "new" code that runs the original game assets, or emulation/simulation wrappers to get OpenGL or DirectX to function like an old PS2 renderer. To play the re3 version of the game, you need the original GTA3 game for PC. To me, it seems more like SCUMM VM or a…
My understanding is that the code is directly reverse engineered/decompiled from the original code, so while it doesn't contain game assets, it's based on (compiled) code copyrighted by Take-Two.
Re: Take-Two Sues Enthusiasts Behind GTA Fan Projects Re3 and ReVC
#5Do the enthusiast devs have a legal leg to stand on? The repositories cited - like the re3 one on github - don't contain the original GTA3 game assets. It's all "new" code that runs the original game assets, or emulation/simulation wrappers to get OpenGL or DirectX to function like an old PS2 renderer. To play the re3 version of the game, you need the original GTA3 game for PC. To me, it seems more like SCUMM VM or a…
It's reverse engineered using IDA and such. I think even the class/functions names are the same since the developer forgot to strip one of the binaries.
As much as I support this kind of project, I would say they are legally screwed. But they already knew that when they started.
Re: Take-Two Sues Enthusiasts Behind GTA Fan Projects Re3 and ReVC
#6Do the enthusiast devs have a legal leg to stand on? The repositories cited - like the re3 one on github - don't contain the original GTA3 game assets. It's all "new" code that runs the original game assets, or emulation/simulation wrappers to get OpenGL or DirectX to function like an old PS2 renderer. To play the re3 version of the game, you need the original GTA3 game for PC. To me, it seems more like SCUMM VM or a…
It’s tricky (obviously) but the code itself is certainly protected. If they decompiled the code and just cleaned it up it’s very grey. If they simply studied it’s workings and coded it fresh that’s pretty clearly not infringing. But if take-two can point at chunks of code that’s exactly the same they have a bit of a leg. Mainly though they know they won’t fight back so why not just sue? They have nothing to lose.
>If they decompiled the code and just cleaned it up it’s very grey.
This is from the CODING STYLE document:
"Don't just copy paste code from IDA, make it look nice"
https://github.com/GTAmodding/re3/blob/master/CODING_STYLE.m...
Re: Take-Two Sues Enthusiasts Behind GTA Fan Projects Re3 and ReVC
#7Probably someone in the upper management of take-two had the idea of downsizing their legal department. That department have decided to demonstrate how incredibly useful they are, by suing a few people from Germany, New Zealand, Turkey, and United Kingdom.
> Defendants are well aware that they do not possess the right to copy, adapt, or distribute derivative GTA source code, or the audiovisual elements of the Games, and that doing so constitutes copyright infringement.
I think the opposite is true, what they did was fair use. The defendants are outside US, pretty sure everything they did was 100% legal in their jurisdictions.
> Defendants have made the Games fully and freely available to the public
They have made the game engine (the .exe) freely available to the public. To run the game, one also needs assets of the game.
Assets require overwhelming majority of disk space, take overwhelming majority of development budget to produce, and can be obtained legally by buying the original game.
Re: Take-Two Sues Enthusiasts Behind GTA Fan Projects Re3 and ReVC
#8Man, regardless of who is in the right legally, I wish these big corporations had a better sense of humor and would understand and appreciate that the people who go to these lengths to understand and recreate the original code aren't their enemies, but their biggest fans.
Re: Take-Two Sues Enthusiasts Behind GTA Fan Projects Re3 and ReVC
#9I am no legal expert, but the gamer in me instinctively sides with DMCA recipient. I am tired of the lazy ports, rushed remasters and overall shit show that gaming industry has become. It does help that I don't play as much as I used to, but I would like to have a better world for my children:P
Re: Take-Two Sues Enthusiasts Behind GTA Fan Projects Re3 and ReVC
#10>As per legal requirements, Github complied with the takedown demand but, as TF noted at the time, the team behind the projects had the option of filing a DMCA counter-notice if it was confident that its work is permitted under copyright law.
>After assessing its options, that’s exactly what the team did, leaving Take-Two just a couple of weeks to file a lawsuit to prevent the content reappearing on Github. When that time expired, the coding platform restored ‘re3’ and ‘reVC’, as per the law.
As far as I can tell, this is a pretty generous take on what happened.
The Take-Two counter notice [1] was filed by td512, who had a fork of the re3 repo, but doesn't seem to have any commits in the repo, so it's kinda hard to call him part of the team. And his reasoning for filing the counter notice was that the repo contained "no code owned by Take Two", which is a bit questionable (I guess it's now up for the court to decide) since the code is decompiled and then cleaned up. Meanwhile in May, Ash R., who I believe is part of the re3 team (and is in fact beind sued as Doe 1), posted on Twitter [2] about how the team was close to filing a counter notice before the news of the repo being restored hit the news, potentially tanking the whole project.
[1] https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2021/04/2021-04-0...
[2] https://twitter.com/Ash_735/status/1391916368166113280
EDIT: Actually, it looks like there are two more counter claims as per the suit, however they seem to have been filed after the initial counter claim was filed and indeed after the repository was restored / news of the restoration were reported on. The first [3] seems like a carbon copy of the first claim while the second one [4] seems a bit more carefully worded.
[3] https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2021/05/2021-05-1...
[4] https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2021/06/2021-06-1...