Take-Two filed a lawsuit against the reverse-engineered GTA III and Vice City developers

No more money for take two sound nice now

The only thing is you know nobodys going to do that gta 6 is going to be the best selling game when it comes out i personnally havent liked a gta game since vice city

I'm very sorry to Electronic Arts (EA) for losing "the worst game publisher in the world of the year" title. This year "competition" is so damn tough.

On a side note, does anyone else find it kind of amusing that someone's doing a stickler-for-the-details lawsuit over a game that glorifies and indeed is entirely about violent lawbreaking?

Indeed! For a moment I totally forgot what "Grand Theft A." was about ... totally amusing indeed!

I sometimes wonder why developers having so much talent put so much time and effort into projects that they know, are a legal minefield on the best of days. They could take the idea and implement a GTA-like game from scratch that they'd own 100%. Yes, it would take longer, since they'd need to create the assets and levels, too. But it would be theirs and theirs alone, and there would be no constant fear of hordes of greedy corporate lawyers breaking down their door.

That being said, while I am against abolishing copyright, it needs to be scaled back to sane levels. Copyright on software needs to expire after 20 years at latest. Not getting extended on Disney's request for all eternity every time Mickey Mouse is set to become public domain.

Plenty more is argued as well of course. In the notice it complains how the code now runs on platforms it was never released for where the "Defendants have sought to exploit a potential market that belongs exclusively to Take-Two", it argues against new cheats enabled in the source code which "are strictly prohibited under Take-Two’s terms of service". It goes further, complaining about modding which Take-Two say "encouraging users to further infringe the original Games and to violate their agreements with Take-Two that prohibit such activities".

Runs on platforms it was never released for: that's great, someone improved the original. You didn't release and you think you can complain, because of the potential market that you want to reserve. Because people that already bought (you need original assets) need to buy again for a different platform, which is already bad.

Making mods illegal? That's both stupid and evil. Cheats on single-player also are none of your business, suing people for that is utterly stupid.

They probably are legally correct... because those laws are utter bullshit.

I'm very sorry to Electronic Arts (EA) for losing "the worst game publisher in the world of the year" title. This year "competition" is so damn tough.

It's actually bit funny as Electronic Arts has done something that's quite opposite what Take-Two is doing right now. The source code of Command & Conquer: Remastered Collections is available in Github with a GPLv3 license (though they have supplementary conditions to the license, which GPLv3 actually allows for certain things). In that particular case Electronic Arts actually collaborated with the modding community. I have probably forgotten some of the details, but Noclip has done documentary with some additional details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MUDQYWk6qY

So releasing remastered version can be handled differently.

Sentence about lost of market, because game will be available on new platform is stupid. People must still buy an license to play on these new platforms, so Reverse Engineering team made a big gift for Take Two. It must not port game code to the new platform, so save many money. And it will receive profits, because users of these new platforms will buy an game licenses.

Defendants have sought to exploit a potential market that belongs exclusively to Take-Two

Yep, completely agree. Since you need the original game to use this re-engineered engine, T2 still own the market, still get all profits. Indeed, they do so without any support burden, or risk.

Nearly... oh so nearly picked up GTA-V in the last sale, but glad I didn't now. Last GTA I paid for was 3, funnily enough, back on the PS2, I think, or maybe PS3. I used to work in the same building as the R*N guys too. Of course, this isn't about them as devs, just their knee-jerk publishers.

Not really, with a free implementation of GTA3 you can buy say the cheap pc version to get the assets and then use this free port to have the game on the Switch, meanwhile T2 want you to pay a premium to be able to play GTA3 on the Switch so the free version have "taken that market away from T2".

Claim 28 is quite damaging to the reverse-engineering team:

28. Papenhoff has admitted that the source code developed via the re3 and reVC
projects is not original, but rather is (and was intended to be) a copy of the original. In fact,
Defendants have bragged that their derivative source code was created by working backwards
from Take-Two’s final “machine” code to re-create the human-readable code in which GTA was
programmed:

“GTA 3 and Vice City were originally written in [programming
language] C++ . . . The compiled executables that are shipped are in
machine code. So the general task is to go from machine code back to
C++. . . . To go back to C++ is by no means a simple 1:1 mapping, but
over the last 10 or so years decompilers have appeared that help with this
process. . . . So what we typically do is work with the output of the
decompiler and massage it back into readable C++.” Id.

If this is true and it appears to be so, then this is in fact copyright infringement and not something that any of us really can defend.

They recreated the C++ code from the machine code disassembled, then patched it to compile on different platforms... From my understanding that's still one valid way of reverse engineering. The other method of course is to study the data files and create code around interpreting it. Copyright infringement would only be if they literally took the original source code and copied it. That's the part that is copyrighted. Using a disassembler is not illegal in any sense of the word.

Using a disassembler just to look at the code is not illegal no, but if the binary machine code is copyrighted to T2 then the disassembled C++ code is also copyrighted to T2 since its derived from the copyrighted binary. There is precedence here in Sega vs Accolade where the appeals court decided that disassembled code is "fruit of the poisonous tree".

However they also decided that it fell under the fair use doctrine since "disassembly is required for humans to understand object code", but as I see it this does not apply here since the disassembled code was not used to understand how the game engine worked, it was used 1:1 to create the base source code of the project.

Arguing that this is legal would IMHO break the copyright protection that we have on GPL:ed code, in that companies can take our code as base and then do "changes" to it and now claim their own copyright on it and make it proprietary.


Last edited by F.Ultra on 3 September 2021 at 8:13 pm UTC

And this is why I am a proponent of mandatory open sourcing for ALL published and sold software five years from date of first sale, or one year after last update with NO EXCEPTIONS.

IP Law is currently nothing more than a giant hammer used by corporate legal to beat the little people over the head with and it's their turn to be on the receiving end.

Well, the dissasembled parts were to get them in trouble.

I disagree though that it's a market belonging to T2, since it's a market they never catered to and a market by definitoon does not belong to anyone, and I disagree that it caused T2 any harm financially, since you require the base game, and game enhancements and mods hardly do them harm if you are required to buy the original copy from T2, rather the opposite would be the case.

Sentence about lost of market, because game will be available on new platform is stupid. People must still buy an license to play on these new platforms, so Reverse Engineering team made a big gift for Take Two. It must not port game code to the new platform, so save many money. And it will receive profits, because users of these new platforms will buy an game licenses.

Defendants have sought to exploit a potential market that belongs exclusively to Take-Two

Yep, completely agree. Since you need the original game to use this re-engineered engine, T2 still own the market, still get all profits. Indeed, they do so without any support burden, or risk.

Nearly... oh so nearly picked up GTA-V in the last sale, but glad I didn't now. Last GTA I paid for was 3, funnily enough, back on the PS2, I think, or maybe PS3. I used to work in the same building as the R*N guys too. Of course, this isn't about them as devs, just their knee-jerk publishers.

Not really, with a free implementation of GTA3 you can buy say the cheap pc version to get the assets and then use this free port to have the game on the Switch, meanwhile T2 want you to pay a premium to be able to play GTA3 on the Switch so the free version have "taken that market away from T2".

Well, perhaps some hard-core modders will get this working on Swtich, but it's not quite there yet. I agree that this is probably the mindset of the executives at T2 making this decision.

I guess it's like DRM, a little. The executives/publisher thinks they're protecting sales, but the reality is that I'm not buying their game as a result of their actions. Hopefully I'm not alone, but sadly enough people do buy/play Denuvo-encumbered and similarly restricted DRM titles that the executives/publishers don't get the message.

I'm very sorry to Electronic Arts (EA) for losing "the worst game publisher in the world of the year" title. This year "competition" is so damn tough.

Goddamit, yeah. Between Activision (and Blizzard especially), Zenimax, Bethesda, Ubisoft and EA, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Pretty depressing.

As I understand new world, corporations split the "markets" between them and became upset someone got to their territory. The claims is so anti-market and anti-capitalistic as whole so I wonder what is going on.

Anti-market perhaps, although markets have always had a lot less of the whole freedom fairy dust than many people are led to believe. Anti-capitalistic, no. We think of markets and capitalism as being near-identical, but they aren't. Capitalism as such has little to do with markets, let alone free ones--monopoly is the objective of every capitalist who gets far enough. The fundamental points that make capitalism a system distinct from other systems is private individuals invest money (capital) to get a profit, employing wage labour to cause the profit to happen. Usually, that involves selling something to someone in something you could call a market, but sometimes it involves outright stealing, sometimes it involves direct selling solely to government as in US defence procurement, sometimes it involves the company store in the company town, where the miners or whoever buy your stuff at your price or they starve. All still capitalism, just not very markety. You can definitely have both markets without capitalism, and capitalism without markets.
(You can also have capitalism without the limited liability corporation)

You (same as politicians) mixing capitalism - private ownership, free market with corporativism - that think you talk about. Its distict thing.

Claim 28 is quite damaging to the reverse-engineering team:

28. Papenhoff has admitted that the source code developed via the re3 and reVC
projects is not original, but rather is (and was intended to be) a copy of the original. In fact,
Defendants have bragged that their derivative source code was created by working backwards
from Take-Two’s final “machine” code to re-create the human-readable code in which GTA was
programmed:

“GTA 3 and Vice City were originally written in [programming
language] C++ . . . The compiled executables that are shipped are in
machine code. So the general task is to go from machine code back to
C++. . . . To go back to C++ is by no means a simple 1:1 mapping, but
over the last 10 or so years decompilers have appeared that help with this
process. . . . So what we typically do is work with the output of the
decompiler and massage it back into readable C++.” Id.

If this is true and it appears to be so, then this is in fact copyright infringement and not something that any of us really can defend.

Since running the software requires the original data files, it is easily defended as a case of fair use. If it turns out not to be so in the courts, it'd be time to ask some pointed questions as to why copyright law is so broken that it isn't.

I really am not a fan of Take-2 or RS. Mainly because of this sort of BS and also the fact they continue to put casino's essentially directly into their games.

Not saying they don't make great games; its just hard to enjoy the fruit when its handed to you by the devil himself... :-)

Claim 28 is quite damaging to the reverse-engineering team:

28. Papenhoff has admitted that the source code developed via the re3 and reVC
projects is not original, but rather is (and was intended to be) a copy of the original. In fact,
Defendants have bragged that their derivative source code was created by working backwards
from Take-Two’s final “machine” code to re-create the human-readable code in which GTA was
programmed:

“GTA 3 and Vice City were originally written in [programming
language] C++ . . . The compiled executables that are shipped are in
machine code. So the general task is to go from machine code back to
C++. . . . To go back to C++ is by no means a simple 1:1 mapping, but
over the last 10 or so years decompilers have appeared that help with this
process. . . . So what we typically do is work with the output of the
decompiler and massage it back into readable C++.” Id.

If this is true and it appears to be so, then this is in fact copyright infringement and not something that any of us really can defend.

This shows that plaintif and you did not understand what reverse engineers say:
1. GTA code was written in C++
2. They managed to create their own code in C++ working in the same way as GTA code.
If you read they took original GTA code, you need to check your sight.

They managed to create their own code in C++ working in the same way as GTA code.

This can be argued, since they did decompile it and use the decompiled code with tools to get code that behaves like the original. Ofc there is more involved than just that, but it's basically using the original code, decompiling it and using tools to get manageable C++ code and work from there - and that can certainly be argued as copyright infringement.

Personally, if they never framed it the way of decompiled code but a green field approach, they'd probably have a better ground at court.

It is so much involved it is barely can be considered derived work; also their process using incremental code replacement using dll injection means that no decompiled code is used in the code base, so the claim of that is totally pointless.

IIRC as long as their code contains none of decompiled code they are safe in the court. As for market claims it is very unfair power game there which is kind of depends on court bias. I seen courts where such bold claims made judge very angry...

Also they provide no proof of any of their claims and no actual valid logic behind that, so it is yet to see what the decision will be...