Rockstar is selling cracked game copies on Steam

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 05, 2023, 6:11 PM UTC

abestic9 wrote: post #53

Agingcoder wrote: post #29

Razor 1911 ! I had completely forgotten about them. They cracked games in the 1990s, and if memory serves well, there was a nice ascii art logo that came with games. Apparently they’ve been active again since 2010, but in my ( much older ) mind, steam has made piracy mostly obsolete. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_1911?wprov=sfti1

As good as Steam might be, it’s still required for the games you purchased to run, and that doesn’t align with some people. You own your games on Steam as much as you own your music on Spotify. So priacy is still alive and well, and a lot of the arguments I see for it is stripping DRM and ownership. I prefer Steam over other platforms because multiplayer is effortless, with a friend or at a LAN party that means means…

Post by yomlica8 » Tue, Sep 05, 2023, 6:14 PM UTC

robbiet480 wrote: post #4

Reubend wrote: post #2

Could we get some more context than this tweet (which doesn't really explain what's going on)?

The game shown here, Midnight Club II, required the CD to be in the drive to play it. With the advent of Steam and companies releasing older games on Steam, they needed a way to bypass that check. Bypassing a CD (commonly called No-CD) was a very common crack/DRM bypass back in the day. Rockstar didn't want to bring up old source code and find someone who understood it enough to remove the check, so instead they just…

Post by jiofj » Tue, Sep 05, 2023, 6:18 PM UTC

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #41

robbiet480 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The game shown here, Midnight Club II, required the CD to be in the drive to play it. With the advent of Steam and companies releasing older games on Steam, they needed a way to bypass that check. Bypassing a CD (commonly called No-CD) was a very common crack/DRM bypass back in the day. Rockstar didn't want to bring up old source code and find someone who understood it enough to remove the check, so instead they just…

Sounds like Razor could sue Rockstar for copyright infringement. That would be hilarious.

Post by rightbyte » Tue, Sep 05, 2023, 6:22 PM UTC

yomlica8 wrote: post #63

robbiet480 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The game shown here, Midnight Club II, required the CD to be in the drive to play it. With the advent of Steam and companies releasing older games on Steam, they needed a way to bypass that check. Bypassing a CD (commonly called No-CD) was a very common crack/DRM bypass back in the day. Rockstar didn't want to bring up old source code and find someone who understood it enough to remove the check, so instead they just…

Are we sure they didn't just lose the source code entirely?

Post by asddubs » Tue, Sep 05, 2023, 6:26 PM UTC

capableweb wrote: post #15

Why is this hex dump being used as a verification rather than just showing the two (supposedly the same) hashes of the entire executable themselves? Should be a quick 20 minute job for whoever call themselves "journalists" today. I suppose it's possible for that particular string to get into the binary by some other means. Maybe failed anti-circumvention that checks for known strings in its own directory or something…