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Rockstar is selling cracked game copies on Steam

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Re: Rockstar is selling cracked game copies on Steam

#81

Post by Guvante »

wongarsu wrote: post #79
jiofj wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could. They would lose, though

A No-CD crack might not be transformative enough to warrant copyright protection as derivative work in the US. But they could sue in a jurisdiction that is more likely to give them a favorable outcome. Handling of derivative works and the minimum threshold for copyright varies considerably between countries.

Likely Rockstar would counter sue for violating their original Copyright and the terms of use attached to them.

At best it would be a wash, there is a decent chance the damages for the countersuit would lead to a net loss.

Re: Rockstar is selling cracked game copies on Steam

#82

Post by toast0 »

paxys wrote: post #56

While not too big a deal on its own, if the binary was doing something it wasn't supposed to (which was/is common with cracked games from untrustworthy sources) it would open Rockstar up to a mountain of liability. I'm guessing this is some subcontractor taking shortcuts rather than an official company policy approved by legal.

Razor1911 isn't an untrustworthy source though.

Re: Rockstar is selling cracked game copies on Steam

#83

Post by pengaru »

Rockstar owns the copyright, they can do whatever they want with their games.

It is rather odd however, and paints Rockstar in a very negative light as a trustworthy purveyor of binary distributed software. Do you want to receive l33t warez when paying for software?

I expect reproducible binaries produced by a controlled toolchain from a responsible developer. Linux distributions have higher standards for binaries they distribute for free ffs.

Re: Rockstar is selling cracked game copies on Steam

#84

Post by qingcharles »

elil17 wrote: post #59
h2odragon wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I say I represent such a group, then; is it likely that anyone will disagree? DMCA cases seem to be about who has the scarier looking letterhead anyway. To whom would I have to prove or disprove my standing to take Rockstar games down, I wonder? Does Steam have any right to refuse such a request just because it's patently absurd?

Imagine you did this and ended up in court. If you admit you lied on the DMCA request, you'd be admitting to perjury. If you continue to claim to be the cracker, Rockstar could sue you for damages from IP theft.

Perjury is only if you make a statement under oath knowing it to be a lie. The DMCA doesn't require you by statute to tell the truth. As long as you tell the truth under oath on the witness stand, if it got that far, then you'd be fine from a criminal prosecution perspective.

Of course, you'd probably get counter-sued for a number of civil torts for being a fuckhead.

Re: Rockstar is selling cracked game copies on Steam

#85

Post by ewzimm »

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…

Did anyone at Rockstar ever confirm that it was an official decision?

I wonder if they did assign someone all that and they took a shortcut.

Re: Rockstar is selling cracked game copies on Steam

#87

Post by RajT88 »

echelon_musk wrote: post #22

This is more common than you might expect. The Windows port of Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents under Pressure being sold on Steam is the DEViANCE crack. Open the game's exe in a hex editor and you can plainly see "DEViANCE".

System sounds *.wav files were also produced with cracked software at some point (no clue if this is still in Win10):

https://www.techrepublic.com/forums/discussions/windows-uses...

Re: Rockstar is selling cracked game copies on Steam

#89

Post by ArnoVW »

Guvante wrote: post #81
wongarsu wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A No-CD crack might not be transformative enough to warrant copyright protection as derivative work in the US. But they could sue in a jurisdiction that is more likely to give them a favorable outcome. Handling of derivative works and the minimum threshold for copyright varies considerably between countries.

Likely Rockstar would counter sue for violating their original Copyright and the terms of use attached to them. At best it would be a wash, there is a decent chance the damages for the countersuit would lead to a net loss.

The can sue them for anti-circumvention statutes in the DMCA. But not for infringement, since the developers did not do the infringement, they only enabled it.

Re: Rockstar is selling cracked game copies on Steam

#90

Post by sillysaurusx »

qingcharles wrote: post #84
elil17 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you did this and ended up in court. If you admit you lied on the DMCA request, you'd be admitting to perjury. If you continue to claim to be the cracker, Rockstar could sue you for damages from IP theft.

Perjury is only if you make a statement under oath knowing it to be a lie. The DMCA doesn't require you by statute to tell the truth. As long as you tell the truth under oath on the witness stand, if it got that far, then you'd be fine from a criminal prosecution perspective. Of course, you'd probably get counter-sued for a number of civil torts for being a fuckhead.

It does. Each DMCA requires “A statement that the information in the complaint is accurate, and, under penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner.”
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