Well this is a shame but in many ways to be expected. Take-Two Interactive Software, the parent company of Rockstar Games, has filed a lawsuit against the developers of the reverse-engineered GTA III and Vice City code.
This is a bit of an ongoing saga, as Take-Two first got the GitHub repositories taken down, which were later restored when the developer of a fork submitted a counter-notice which wasn't argued so they all went back up. The repositories are still live on GitHub right now. The notice mentions this with Take-Two saying the counter notices were "were made in bad faith, and knowingly and deliberately misrepresented to GitHub the contents".
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".
As a result of the code being public, Take-Two are claiming it the "Defendants have caused and continue to cause irreparable harm".
Take-Two are looking to get damages paid which as of yet "are not currently ascertainable", so they want it to be worked out. On top of that they want the "maximum statutory damages of $150,000 for each work infringed" and they also want their "attorneys’ fees and full costs" paid as well.
The point about cheats is a funny one. Single-player games from the early 2000s have cheats added in? Extra modding too? Oh no, how completely terrible for people to further enjoy them.
Why was this lawsuit coming to be expected? Well, reverse-engineered code tends to be a grey area with it often being against the law, and code from leaks is a big no for all sorts of obvious legal reasons. That said, the source code did require people to actually buy the games for the data, so Take-Two would have still be getting revenue thanks to it.
Sadly though, like most major publishers, they shy away from any sort of open source. In this case, Take-Two and Rockstar are reportedly doing a big GTA Remastered Trilogy so moving to fully protect their code was obvious.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: slaapliedjeSure, and if the bible was still in copyright that would almost certainly be illegal.Quoting: F.UltraAnd to quote Papenhoff for the third time since you keep ignoring it: "So what we typically do is work with the output of the decompiler and massage it back into readable C++." - that is his own words - not mine - and it's from those that I base my comments on that it looks like they indeed did commit copyright infringement.Isn't that basically the equivalent of taking the original Aramaic version of the Bible, that Rockstar had the King James Version, then dumping it into a translator, then cleaning up the code for modern English? (sorry been on a 'History' channel kick).
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 7 September 2021 at 6:52 pm UTC
Quoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: F.UltraNo one have claimed that "you can just decompile" and have a finished product, nor do I see how piracy can be any more rampant. Is there a game or application in history that isn't pirated?Simple, if you could 'just decompile' (other wise translate the binary to source code that works in a compiler) than you could remove any copy protection checks easier than the current method of hacking the binary.
#1 that would required a build environment matching that of the original build, which for various reasons can be quite difficult to get hold of.
#2 actual copy protection is usually built with decompilers in mind so they apply various tricks and run the result through the existing decompilers to make sure that they have obfuscated their code enough.
#3 the manual cleanup needed is a far more labour intensive effort than hacking the binary. Note that GTA3 was a bit of a special case here since the binaries was not stripped so all the debugging symbols where present, but still the generated source code needed manual cleanup before it compiled, do take a look at that 1h video that I linked above, it shows the steps for the litter function in GTA3.
MasterSleort Sep 8, 2021
slaapliedje Sep 9, 2021
Quoting: MasterSleortI wonder if the so called remake that TakeTwo / Rockstar are making is actually based on the reverse-engineered code from this repository.I was thinking the same. Though you would think if they had the source code they wouldn't need to.
I think they are like Bethesda, where Doom (2016?) Had an internal port working flawlessly on Linux, but they killed it so us neckbeards wouldn't get to play it. We showed them! Basically they want to be the only ones who get to say where / when their games are played. Any open source engine of that is capable of letting people play it where they damn well please should be shot down as soon as possible, right?
Quoting: rustybroomhandleAmusing comment from Nightdive studios on the topic:
https://twitter.com/pripyatbeast/status/1433925671995068418
QuoteYou do this to a game @NightdiveStudio is working on and you get offered a job.
Shame that Night Dive cannot release enhance edition of No One Lives Forever due to Warner and Activision's block despite already obtained its source code.
Last edited by rea987 on 13 September 2021 at 8:40 am UTC
slaapliedje Sep 13, 2021
Quoting: rea987Seriously? That is an awesome game that deserves a re-release, hard to find now.Quoting: rustybroomhandleAmusing comment from Nightdive studios on the topic:
https://twitter.com/pripyatbeast/status/1433925671995068418
QuoteYou do this to a game @NightdiveStudio is working on and you get offered a job.
Shame that Night Dive cannot release enhance edition of No One Lives Forever due to Warner and Activision's block despite already obtained its source code.
Quoting: slaapliedjeSeriously? That is an awesome game that deserves a re-release, hard to find now.
https://www.thegamer.com/no-one-lives-forever-the-operative-legal-issues-explained/
https://www.thegamer.com/no-one-lives-forever-nightdive-update-interview/
https://www.kotaku.com.au/2021/04/the-sad-story-behind-a-dead-pc-game-that-cant-come-back/
Not a fan of linking Kotaku at all but afaik latter is the original article.
Last edited by rea987 on 14 September 2021 at 6:47 am UTC
Quoting: rustybroomhandleAmusing comment from Nightdive studios on the topic:So why isn't Doom64 supported on Linux? There's a Linux version of the engine already...
https://twitter.com/pripyatbeast/status/1433925671995068418
QuoteYou do this to a game @NightdiveStudio is working on and you get offered a job.
areamanplaysgame Sep 18, 2021
QuoteIn the notice it complains how the code now runs on platforms it was never released for
Am I missing something? I thought there was an exception in the DMCA for exactly this - making software more useful to end users.
Quoting: Ardje"Defendants have sought to exploit a potential market that belongs exclusively to Take-Two"
A market is where you exchange value for value.
You can't exactly say that giving away for free something is exploiting a market, because then you do not understand capitalism. Exploiting means you gain something of monetary value. None of the hackers gained something.
Eh... there's a whole cesspool full of commerce clause case law about this. If you are giving something away that someone else intended to profit from, you are a participant in the market because you are reducing demand for the commercial product.
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