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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

#61

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

Const-me wrote: post #56
klodolph wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's decompiled and cleaned up. I have personally gone through the commit history of this project and read the source code. It is absolutely clear that this is based on the output of decompilers like IDA Pro and Ghidra. You can see how variables are not defined as ordinary variables, but as hard-coded addresses which are then cast to pointers of the appropriate type. The code is littered with unnecessary casts that a…

> here's a sample of code from the re3 repository in question. Do you have a link? I have downloaded all 3 branches (master, miami and lcs), searched for these constants and got nothing. The code you have copy-pasted crashes on Windows with 100% guarantee. You see, lower 2GB (or optionally 1GB with the /3GB kernel switch) of address space is reserved for the OS kernel.

It's probably an old commit

Re: Take-Two Sues Enthusiasts Behind GTA Fan Projects Re3 and ReVC

#62

Post by quakeguy »

dasKrokodil wrote: post #8

Man, 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.

I‘d simple offer employment if i where in the position to do so. Let them improve the games from within, they surely showed talent and knowledge. Legal action can have the opposite effect here.

Re: Take-Two Sues Enthusiasts Behind GTA Fan Projects Re3 and ReVC

#63

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

doublerabbit wrote: post #55
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's something I really appreciate about Sega's handling of Sonic IP: as long as you aren't trying to make money you can pretty much get away with anything. I think Sonic's continued popularity is in no small part due to this policy.

>I really appreciate about Sega's handling of Sonic IP: as long as you aren't trying to make money you can pretty much get away with anything. I disagree. Sega can be an awful-bully when it comes to their IP. It wasn't until the SteamDB issue went viral that they backed-down [1] and the Streets of Rage remake. [2] [1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/03/sega-forces-mistaken-... [2] https://www.destructoid.com/sega…

Well I did specifically say the Sonic IP. Maybe things are changing at Sega though. That would be a shame.

Re: Take-Two Sues Enthusiasts Behind GTA Fan Projects Re3 and ReVC

#64

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

jrm4 wrote: post #53
everyone wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal department / managers etc. needed something to do.

IAAL, and this is actually pretty accurate. Also of note, there is a princple within the law that basically suggests "if you don't vigorously defend your IP, that can be taken to mean you don't much care in the future as well." Honestly, in our modern environment, I don't find that much compelling (as something to really worry about from a developer POV), but it does exist.

> a princple within the law that basically suggests "if you don't vigorously defend your IP, that can be taken to mean you don't much care in the future as well."

I thought that was only trademarks?

Re: Take-Two Sues Enthusiasts Behind GTA Fan Projects Re3 and ReVC

#66

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

quakeguy wrote: post #62
dasKrokodil wrote: post #8

Man, 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.

I‘d simple offer employment if i where in the position to do so. Let them improve the games from within, they surely showed talent and knowledge. Legal action can have the opposite effect here.

> I‘d simple offer employment if i where in the position to do so.

That doesn't provide the same buzz as ruinous legal action

Re: Take-Two Sues Enthusiasts Behind GTA Fan Projects Re3 and ReVC

#67

Post by GranPC »

Const-me wrote: post #56
klodolph wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's decompiled and cleaned up. I have personally gone through the commit history of this project and read the source code. It is absolutely clear that this is based on the output of decompilers like IDA Pro and Ghidra. You can see how variables are not defined as ordinary variables, but as hard-coded addresses which are then cast to pointers of the appropriate type. The code is littered with unnecessary casts that a…

> here's a sample of code from the re3 repository in question. Do you have a link? I have downloaded all 3 branches (master, miami and lcs), searched for these constants and got nothing. The code you have copy-pasted crashes on Windows with 100% guarantee. You see, lower 2GB (or optionally 1GB with the /3GB kernel switch) of address space is reserved for the OS kernel.

It looks like that's code from a very old commit. re3 was initially built by injecting code into the regular GTA 3 binary, and slowly replacing methods inside the game with drop-in replacements that functionally worked the same. When enough of these replacements were built, it was then converted to a standalone binary.

Re: Take-Two Sues Enthusiasts Behind GTA Fan Projects Re3 and ReVC

#68

Post by doublerabbit »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #63
doublerabbit wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I really appreciate about Sega's handling of Sonic IP: as long as you aren't trying to make money you can pretty much get away with anything. I disagree. Sega can be an awful-bully when it comes to their IP. It wasn't until the SteamDB issue went viral that they backed-down [1] and the Streets of Rage remake. [2] [1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/03/sega-forces-mistaken-... [2] https://www.destructoid.com/sega…

Well I did specifically say the Sonic IP. Maybe things are changing at Sega though. That would be a shame.

That you did; it's been a long day. My bad.

Re: Take-Two Sues Enthusiasts Behind GTA Fan Projects Re3 and ReVC

#70

Post by dognotdog »

klodolph wrote: post #14
Const-me wrote: post #7

Probably 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,…

> 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. There's just no way that it's fair use to distribute a decompiled copy of a game. Reverse engineering and decompiling are generally legal, but they don't strip away copyrights from the code. Think about it this way... compiling source code does not change wh…

It seems like using something that's reverse engineering to achieve "interoperability", in this case playing the games on modern hardware, is generally legal in the US/EU, as long as you also own a license to the original, which seems like is a requirement to use the Re* versions, as you need the original game assets.

Decompilation / reverse engineering is very different from "transcribing" a play. Transcribing a play, you would get back an almost exact copy of the source material, whereas decompiling is more akin to taking a car and measuring all the bits of it. You would certainly not get the original drawings or CAD files back out of it. You do not decompile "source code", but machine code, and the source code you get back is not a recreation of the original copyrighted code, but the decompiler's analysis of the machine instructions, stripped of the original design and intent (the creative work part which makes source code copyrightable in the first place).

Measurements (or information) in general is not copyrightable, despite what IP protectionism claims, and in this analogy the machine code is much closer to the mechanical pieces of the car that make it work than the original designs. Either way, the fair use / reverse engineering provisions already create an exemption.

The questions is wether there are enough legal loopholes to squash these generally allowed uses through some other parts of the law or licensing terms, eg. by claiming that some IP (patents, trade secrets) are infringed some other way by publishing the reverse engineered code.

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