GTA III & Vice City reverse-engineered code taken down on GitHub again by Take-Two DMCA

GTA DMCA: Take-Two

I just find it weirdly funny that a title who's sole premise is to promote car theft, prostitution, drug crime, gang warfare and violence to police is now relying on a posh LA lawyer to prevent "loss of sales" due to a fan effort. It's kinda pathetic.

I say "loss of sales" and not "piracy" here too, because this fan effort required the original games to play. GTA 3 is £5.99, as is Vice City. San Andreas is £9.99.

So what's the betting that the "Trilogy" remake will be more than £22...

Because if it's less... well that would be even funnier. Cost of huge lawsuit to shut down fan effort that promotes sales of ancient games, only to create their own version that costs less again. It would be the kind of brain dead thinking you often see from publishers (re: DRM).

I just find it weirdly funny that a title who's sole premise is to promote car theft, prostitution, drug crime, gang warfare and violence to police is now relying on a posh LA lawyer to prevent "loss of sales" due to a fan effort. It's kinda pathetic.

I say "loss of sales" and not "piracy" here too, because this fan effort required the original games to play. GTA 3 is £5.99, as is Vice City. San Andreas is £9.99.

So what's the betting that the "Trilogy" remake will be more than £22...

Because if it's less... well that would be even funnier. Cost of huge lawsuit to shut down fan effort that promotes sales of ancient games, only to create their own version that costs less again. It would be the kind of brain dead thinking you often see from publishers (re: DRM).

Are you sure that the sole premise of these games are to promote said criminal behaviour? I would claim that the sole premise is to allow a gamer to take part of said illegal activities in a pretend matter.

It would be the kind of brain dead thinking you often see from publishers (re: DRM).

I don't think it's brain dead to defend your own intellectual property. You will have to be on the extreme left politically to think so.

I just find it weirdly funny that a title who's sole premise is to promote car theft, prostitution, drug crime, gang warfare and violence to police is now relying on a posh LA lawyer to prevent "loss of sales" due to a fan effort. It's kinda pathetic.

*insert not sure if serious emoji*

Quoting: scaine
It would be the kind of brain dead thinking you often see from publishers (re: DRM).
I don't think it's brain dead to defend your own intellectual property.

I don't think so, either.

I do think they are stupid to go about it in that way, but they are fully in their right to do so and anyone creating a reverse-engineering project like that should really know what they are (potentially) getting into.

The guy who created Daggerfall Unity, for example, actually contacted Bethesda beforehand (or at the beginning anyway) to check if they're fine with what he does.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 4 October 2021 at 10:53 am UTC

I just find it weirdly funny that a title who's sole premise is to promote car theft, prostitution, drug crime, gang warfare and violence to police is now relying on a posh LA lawyer to prevent "loss of sales" due to a fan effort. It's kinda pathetic.

*insert not sure if serious emoji*

Not really serious, no. But I enjoy the irony of it.

It would be the kind of brain dead thinking you often see from publishers (re: DRM).

I don't think it's brain dead to defend your own intellectual property. You will have to be on the extreme left politically to think so.

True, in general. But there's a line (really old games, which probably doesn't apply here since T2 are still selling the games in question) and there's positive engagement with your fanbase, which they've positively ignored.

As I say, time will tell. If they release their Trilogy at a higher price, it's simple greed. If they release it at a lower price, it's a stupid move that costs them: in sales, in legal fees and in reputation with their fanbase (whatever that might be worth).

I just find it weirdly funny that a title who's sole premise is to promote car theft, prostitution, drug crime, gang warfare and violence to police is now relying on a posh LA lawyer to prevent "loss of sales" due to a fan effort. It's kinda pathetic.

I say "loss of sales" and not "piracy" here too, because this fan effort required the original games to play. GTA 3 is £5.99, as is Vice City. San Andreas is £9.99.

So what's the betting that the "Trilogy" remake will be more than £22...

Because if it's less... well that would be even funnier. Cost of huge lawsuit to shut down fan effort that promotes sales of ancient games, only to create their own version that costs less again. It would be the kind of brain dead thinking you often see from publishers (re: DRM).

Are you sure that the sole premise of these games are to promote said criminal behaviour? I would claim that the sole premise is to allow a gamer to take part of said illegal activities in a pretend matter.

I mean... wow. Yeah, I mean in-game. I wasn't implying that GTA fans like to kill cops in real life? I kinda thought that was obvious, but I suppose I didn't state that explicitly.


Last edited by scaine on 4 October 2021 at 11:49 am UTC

If they release their Trilogy at a higher price, it's simple greed. If they release it at a lower price, it's a stupid move that costs them: in sales, in legal fees and in reputation with their fanbase (whatever that might be worth).

It's not just "simply greed". To defend your properties do come at a cost. To choose not to defend your property because the bottom line isn't green enough - now that's rather what one should call greed. To drop it because it doesn't lead to short term immediate economical gain.

It would be the kind of brain dead thinking you often see from publishers (re: DRM).

I don't think it's brain dead to defend your own intellectual property. You will have to be on the extreme left politically to think so.

So, you accept DRM and find it a normal/good way (maybe the only way?) to defend their intellectual property?
You accept a system that restrict your freedom of what you buy only because it protect corporations and give them more power?
You will have to be on the extreme right politically to think so.

If anybody wants a copy of the code let me know.

Whenever you want to learn the true intent of another person/organization, always watch what they do, not what they say. And Take Two's actions say they specifically want to prevent people from playing their games unless they submit to a very strict platform+software configuration.

I mean... wow. Yeah, I mean in-game. I wasn't implying that GTA fans like to kill cops in real life? I kinda thought that was obvious, but I suppose I didn't state that explicitly.

Thanks for the clarification, you had me really worried there for a moment!

Interesting TorrentFreak article that goes a bit more in-depth about the lawsuits: https://torrentfreak.com/github-removes-gta-fan-projects-re3-revc-following-new-take-two-dmca-notice-211004/

Quoting: scaine
It would be the kind of brain dead thinking you often see from publishers (re: DRM).
I don't think it's brain dead to defend your own intellectual property.

I don't think so, either.

I do think they are stupid to go about it in that way, but they are fully in their right to do so

Scaine didn't comment on whether they are within their rights to do so. I don't think it's illegal for me to, if I legally own a firearm, use it to literally shoot myself in the foot. But it would be brain-dead for me to do it.

If they release their Trilogy at a higher price, it's simple greed. If they release it at a lower price, it's a stupid move that costs them: in sales, in legal fees and in reputation with their fanbase (whatever that might be worth).

It's not just "simply greed". To defend your properties do come at a cost. To choose not to defend your property because the bottom line isn't green enough - now that's rather what one should call greed. To drop it because it doesn't lead to short term immediate economical gain.

You do realize the the whole and only point of laws about "intellectual property" is to allow money to be made from it, right?

Also the whole and only point of the existence of limited liability corporations. Greed is technically their sole raison d'etre.

So, if an entity dedicated solely to making money deploys legal powers created solely to let entities make money, in such a way as to lose them money . . . that's just brain dead. There's no higher purpose to those powers, using them to lose money is just failing on the only level available.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 4 October 2021 at 4:56 pm UTC

So, you accept DRM and find it a normal/good way (maybe the only way?) to defend their intellectual property?

Yeah, the reality being as it is, I support DRM 110%. Of course I do. Especially as a software developer myself for many many years I can *totally* relate to the challenge it must be for the company to suffer a grand scale theft of their hard work and investments.

I do not know your age but you may not have been around back then, but around the turn of the century piracy was well on the way of destroying the entire PC platform as a gaming platform. It was so bad that the developers only had a window of a few days of sales after release before it *completely* died out due to piracy. Dead. What the shops didn't sell the first couple of weeks would very likely be a loss, collect dust.

Back then, when you entered a game store, it was all about consoles. The practically piracy-free platforms completely covered the walls, from floor to roof. A corner deep down in the store there was some top selling PC titles. The rest of the shelves were consoles, consoles, consoles.

Valve pretty much single handedly, via Steam, saved the PC platform as a viable market for games.

You accept a system that restrict your freedom of what you buy only because it protect corporations and give them more power?

I experience ZERO restrictions on Steam. Zero. Never ever in my 16 years on Steam have I experienced any kind of hindrance. I play anytime anywhere on whatever computer I may have had over the course of these years.
Quite the contrary, what I experience is a free cloud save of all my savegames forever, and a free storage of my entire library of games, ready and available to be installed on new machines whenever, wherever. This service is something I'd PAY for, gladly.

We gotta stop being so damn anal about reasonable DRM systems. It's just fanatic.


Last edited by Beamboom on 4 October 2021 at 5:23 pm UTC

You do realize the the whole and only point of laws about "intellectual property" is to allow money to be made from it, right?

Just like any other profession. Are you "greedy" because you work? The laws are there to protect you from theft and exploitation of your work, regardless if you make bicycles, write books or create software.

I can't believe we're still having these discussions around piracy. I really honestly can't believe we've not gotten further.


Last edited by Beamboom on 4 October 2021 at 5:18 pm UTC

Yeah, the reality being as it is, I support DRM 110%. Of course I do. Especially as a software developer myself for many many years I can *totally* relate to the challenge it must be for the company to suffer a grand scale theft of their hard work and investments.

While that's true, I don't see how it applies here.
This open source project did no harm to anyone - no money was made with it and it did not allow anyone to play the game without paying for it.
Reverse engineered code is also generally not the same as the original code - unless Java, but I have my doubts Vice City was written in Java ;)

Of course, you could just download a pirated copy, and use the assets from that in order to use this project - but if you got as far as downloading a pirated copy, you already did the thing, so...

As I said, they were fully in their right to stop the project, I just completely fail to see how not doing so could have done any damage to them.

You do realize the the whole and only point of laws about "intellectual property" is to allow money to be made from it, right?

Just like any other profession. Are you "greedy" because you work? The laws are there to protect you from theft and exploitation of your work, regardless if you make bicycles, write books or create software.

I can't believe we're still having these discussions around piracy. I really honestly can't believe we've not gotten further.

As far as I know I was not having a discussion about piracy, because there is in this case no allegation that piracy is going on.
As to what the law is for . . . individual people do what they gotta do. If the law and the system that the law creates is bad, that does not mean everyone living in it is bad. In Pinochet's Chile, the government disappeared thousands of people and was vicious and oppressive. Does that mean every schmoe working for the government, say in vehicle registration or teaching primary school, was evil? Of course not. So no, if I criticize the current system of "intellectual property" that does not mean you are an evil person for working within it. That's how the game works, you're just playing. So please stop taking it all so bloody personally.
But anyhow, the system of intellectual property we have was not put in place for people like you; you are a grudgingly accepted side effect. The current length of US copyright protection, for instance, was put in place specifically for Disney--it is unlikely that you have a real use for copyright protection that lasts until your death plus fifty years. And no real person can afford to patent anything any more.

You talk like anyone who isn't pleased with the current "intellectual property" system must want lawlessness and anarchy. I can't speak for anyone else, but my position is that, duh, bad systems should be replaced by better systems, not by nothing. People tend to by hypnotized by how things currently work where and when they happen to be, into thinking that's the only way things could possibly work, or the only way things could work well. But they worked differently in the past, they work differently in different places, and they will work differently in the future, so refusing to so much as entertain the possibility of things being different is a kind of madness.

As far as I know I was not having a discussion about piracy, because there is in this case no allegation that piracy is going on.

You got a point in relation to the IP protection, but also DRM were pulled into this discussion further up here so I kinda mentally bundle it all up in one juice :D

But really, the ROOT of all this is prevention of exploitation of others work. That's what the laws are meant to protect. And I don't think "greed" is the correct term to describe this, unless we call ALL production for money "greed".

And of course, on an intellectual level we could perhaps say so, as long as we're over the minimal level for survival. But it becomes quite a hippie-talk then. Not that I mind hippies. In fact, I'm fairly solid over on the left side of politics myself. ;)