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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

#41

Post by baobabKoodaa »

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…

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

Re: Rockstar is selling cracked game copies on Steam

#42

Post by Ekaros »

ohnoesjmr wrote: post #24
mabbo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't own the no-CD crack. So technically, they are selling software they pirated.

They are not shipping the crack. They are shipping their own binary that has been modified by the crack.

Those modifications have a copy-right they do not own...

Re: Rockstar is selling cracked game copies on Steam

#43

Post by timmb »

phpisthebest wrote: post #28
demarq wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cracking was a 90s term for pirating software

pirating software (movies, and music) is a term from the 90's by the MPAA, Riaa, and Games industry in attempting to link the act of simple copyright infringement, a civil non-criminal violation of the law to violent robbery on the high seas... Cracking is a method of removing undesired features or inclusions from software, often licensing controls, or other anti-consumer features. Many many many people "cracked" the…

That was the scariest term they could come up with? The romantic swashbuckling seafarer, antagonising empires and declaring his own rules? Surely they could have done better.

'software fraud', 'software theft', 'forgery'... hmm well there's a reason I don't work in marketing obviously.

Re: Rockstar is selling cracked game copies on Steam

#45

Post by Twirrim »

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…

I don't see any reference to them being a journalist, anywhere? Why are you expecting some random person who saw and got frustrated with something and shared it, to be a journalist?

Are you a journalist because you're frustrated that this person isn't being a journalist...? That's kind of the same logic.

Re: Rockstar is selling cracked game copies on Steam

#46

Post by TylerE »

Ekaros wrote: post #42
ohnoesjmr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not shipping the crack. They are shipping their own binary that has been modified by the crack.

Those modifications have a copy-right they do not own...

A much better analogy would be how writing code in an open source editor, compiled by an open source tool chain does not make the resulting binary open source.

Re: Rockstar is selling cracked game copies on Steam

#47

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #3

https://nitter.unixfox.eu/__silent_/status/16983459248402968... Who could have thought what a company with billions of revenue would use the cracks from RAZOR1911 for IP they are selling to the end users? Shocking!

Anyone a little savvy would have guessed that.

I'm betting even at the time of the game's release, it was so fragile that someone breathing wrong on the build machine would cause the build to fail. Any time the Windows machine displayed the numeral 1 in the systray, it would be unbuildable. And on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays it would just fail to compile. That there were only 3 employees who could get it to work at all the last 3 months of development... and they all quit years ago.

Now? Now it won't build on Windows 11, or even on the old XP machine they dug up. It's so riddled with Denuvo or whatever, that they'd have to spin up a team of 12 for two months just to delete that, and only for them to discover it won't build afterwards.

And, whatever else, they sure as hell don't have anyone who's good enough at assembly and IDA Pro to crack themselves. Probably too cheap to even get the single seat license for IDA Pro.

Re: Rockstar is selling cracked game copies on Steam

#50

Post by andrewmcwatters »

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

I think the appeal of cracks is still there for the technically minded. Learning reverse engineering, understanding how to circumvent technologies.

That seems to be the real point for these groups. Reputation from reverse engineering. I certainly enjoyed my time writing them. I don't know of any group that does this and doesn't support the developers of the IP in question. You still end up buying the software.

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