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

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 ;)

I absolutely agree that this case seem, at least at first glance, as too harmless to make a fuss about.

But! Any decision sets a precedence. How can they "look past" this initiative and then strike down on another that share some of the same properties? Won't they then have a weaker case? Where is the line drawn? What will lawyers use against them around the next corner?

Because, to be honest I seriously doubt anyone in Rockstar really see this particular project of any significant harm at all. I really do not. Not isolated. It's in the larger scheme of things they need to act on this.

Of that I am fairly certain.


Last edited by Beamboom on 4 October 2021 at 6:12 pm UTC

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.

Nothing to add about anything else you said, but c'mon. I'm a staunch Steam defender, but even I've had rubbish experiences with it. I used to travel a lot, so just firing up games on my laptop would often fail if I hadn't launched in the two weeks prior to that travel. I had to do this stupid "launch the game" dance any time I was faced with 5 hours on a train.

Not to mention that if Steam is down these days, a lot of your games are down too. Offline modes works for some of them, but not all.

Yes, Steam's DRM is very low-impact. But it's still, ultimately, anti-consumer. You are paying for it. The data they collect on your gaming habits is how they justify charging devs 30% for their platform. If a product is "free" (Steam itself, is free), then you're the product. I'll still use it, but I won't stick my head in the sand about what it's costing, just like I use an Android phone - you weigh up the convenience against the loss of your privacy. Sometimes it's worth it (Steam), sometimes it's not (Denuvo).

Beamboom, you seem to not understand difference between a law and a DRM, for you it's the same?
The subject of piracy is really off topic there, I spoke about DRM because Scaine mentioned it and what you replied about that...
Telling me your perception of history of piracy etc is useless, and my age is useless too.
People of about all age and all experience in tech say that DRM is a real issue, but you doesn't seem to understand.
It's not the same issue as a law which have to defend a corporation/product/anyone/anything by a political way, the purpose of a DRM is to control you and to forbid you to do some things, by a technical way, despite the laws. It's absolutely not the same thing.
It means that the technical has replaced the political, it's serious. I thought it was obvious but it seems not after all.
It's my last post about that.

If a product is "free" (Steam itself, is free), then you're the product.

While I agree with this concept in general, I'd want to argue that Steam is far from free. You pay for it directly in money--it's just that, like some sales or value added taxes, it doesn't show up on the sticker price that 30% of your purchase went to Steam. Sure, they're gathering data on us and stuff, but their core revenue model is much less subtle than that. Sure, we're "the product" in the sense that Valve is essentially saying to developers: The people want to come here to do their buying, so if you want to be bought from you'd better be here too. But their business model is less handing our information over to people who will pay for it, than handing over our mere presence and willingness to buy. Given that, they depend on customers being pleased with Steam--finding it convenient and ideally even enjoyable to spend time in while not actually playing games as such, the better to entice us to buy more games.

So while I'm sure they're happy to spy on us, I would say that if there ever comes conflict between the spying and the market share, if some instance of spying becomes disliked by Steam users to the extent that some might leave, Valve would definitely consider user market share more important than user market information and publicly dump whatever was pissing people off. Those 30%s are much more important than gathering more information. This is far from being true of all "free" online services.

The eternal question about Steam is not so much how they're getting money from us when the service is "free" as whether the services they provide are actually worth the 30% (ish) tax we pay them on every game we buy. I personally still have no idea what the answer to that is--I don't think the information we'd need to evaluate it is available.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 4 October 2021 at 11:11 pm UTC

Ah, moron lawers at that again. Also there is no judicial decision about even starting the processing of the case which looks wacky at beast. But I guess they could win in corrupt system of corporate kindergarten there. Any bets? Will greed + stupidity + money win again?

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.

Nothing to add about anything else you said, but c'mon. I'm a staunch Steam defender, but even I've had rubbish experiences with it. I used to travel a lot, so just firing up games on my laptop would often fail if I hadn't launched in the two weeks prior to that travel. I had to do this stupid "launch the game" dance any time I was faced with 5 hours on a train.

Not to mention that if Steam is down these days, a lot of your games are down too. Offline modes works for some of them, but not all.

Yes, Steam's DRM is very low-impact. But it's still, ultimately, anti-consumer. You are paying for it. The data they collect on your gaming habits is how they justify charging devs 30% for their platform. If a product is "free" (Steam itself, is free), then you're the product. I'll still use it, but I won't stick my head in the sand about what it's costing, just like I use an Android phone - you weigh up the convenience against the loss of your privacy. Sometimes it's worth it (Steam), sometimes it's not (Denuvo).

On Steam it depends on game, some don't bother how you play them, some constantly check Internet and refuse to play offline even being SP-only, some refuse being played not in country you bought it in (i.e. no hotel fooling on business trips), some add online requirement, Denuvo, EAC, and custom DRM together to SP game (having some coop PvE) and you constantly have trouble with it doing nothing remotely unintended. So depending on your taste you might have very different experience.

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.

Nothing to add about anything else you said, but c'mon. I'm a staunch Steam defender, but even I've had rubbish experiences with it. I used to travel a lot, so just firing up games on my laptop would often fail if I hadn't launched in the two weeks prior to that travel. I had to do this stupid "launch the game" dance any time I was faced with 5 hours on a train.

Not to mention that if Steam is down these days, a lot of your games are down too. Offline modes works for some of them, but not all.

Yes, Steam's DRM is very low-impact. But it's still, ultimately, anti-consumer. You are paying for it. The data they collect on your gaming habits is how they justify charging devs 30% for their platform. If a product is "free" (Steam itself, is free), then you're the product. I'll still use it, but I won't stick my head in the sand about what it's costing, just like I use an Android phone - you weigh up the convenience against the loss of your privacy. Sometimes it's worth it (Steam), sometimes it's not (Denuvo).

On Steam it depends on game, some don't bother how you play them, some constantly check Internet and refuse to play offline even being SP-only, some refuse being played not in country you bought it in (i.e. no hotel fooling on business trips), some add online requirement, Denuvo, EAC, and custom DRM together to SP game (having some coop PvE) and you constantly have trouble with it doing nothing remotely unintended. So depending on your taste you might have very different experience.

Yeah. But it's all different because Valve themselves don't give a damn. It's down to the specific game companies.

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.

Nothing to add about anything else you said, but c'mon. I'm a staunch Steam defender, but even I've had rubbish experiences with it. I used to travel a lot, so just firing up games on my laptop would often fail if I hadn't launched in the two weeks prior to that travel. I had to do this stupid "launch the game" dance any time I was faced with 5 hours on a train.

Not to mention that if Steam is down these days, a lot of your games are down too. Offline modes works for some of them, but not all.

Yes, Steam's DRM is very low-impact. But it's still, ultimately, anti-consumer. You are paying for it. The data they collect on your gaming habits is how they justify charging devs 30% for their platform. If a product is "free" (Steam itself, is free), then you're the product. I'll still use it, but I won't stick my head in the sand about what it's costing, just like I use an Android phone - you weigh up the convenience against the loss of your privacy. Sometimes it's worth it (Steam), sometimes it's not (Denuvo).

On Steam it depends on game, some don't bother how you play them, some constantly check Internet and refuse to play offline even being SP-only, some refuse being played not in country you bought it in (i.e. no hotel fooling on business trips), some add online requirement, Denuvo, EAC, and custom DRM together to SP game (having some coop PvE) and you constantly have trouble with it doing nothing remotely unintended. So depending on your taste you might have very different experience.

Yep. Luck of the draw though. The nature of the DRM isn't described anywhere that I know of.

While I agree with this concept in general, I'd want to argue that Steam is far from free. You pay for it directly in money--it's just that, like some sales or value added taxes, it doesn't show up on the sticker price that 30% of your purchase went to Steam.

Your logic is understandable. But in real life, it's not you who pay that fee - it's the distributors.

Case in point: Look at the price of a new game being sold inside VS outside Steam. More often than not the price difference is neglectable, if at all existing. The prices of the products are based on what the market is willing to pay, not the cost of the distribution.

Also keep in mind that Steam provides a distribution network that is worth a LOT. It's not just an additional fee like a tax, it's also a valuable and effective service provider.

Fact of the matter is that Steam provides a massive global marketplace that is highly lucrative, and it's the sellers on that marketplace - the developers and distributors - who pay to have a stand on that market. The alternative is much lower sale - something that requires a much higher profit per sale for the same end result.

Beamboom, you seem to not understand difference between a law and a DRM

DRM is the tools they use to uphold and defend their legal rights. That's the relation.


Last edited by Beamboom on 5 October 2021 at 9:19 am UTC

Hey, everything has gone offtopic anyway, so I might as well mention that strictly speaking DRM's purpose nowadays is instead basically to try and prevent pirated copies for a few days, because that's when the majority of their sales will take place. It has very little (I dare say nothing at all) to do with legal rights.

... It's not for "just a few days". But that aside: Piracy is a breach of their IP rights. Theft of their property. And they are in their legal rights to do so, based on the laws around protection of property, both of the intellectual and physical nature.

Then one can argue that the protective laws related to this stretches a lot FURTHER than just piracy of their products. That is true. But DRM is one of the practical means to protect their rights of their own products. Just like locks and guards and surveillance cams in the physical world.


Last edited by Beamboom on 5 October 2021 at 9:46 am UTC

Even Denuvo have admitted that yes, it's just for a few days. It's not like a company is going to remove DRM after a few days, but that's the reason they put DRM in to begin with.

It's obviously the reason, at least we can agree on that. :D

It also of course depend on the product. Some releases have a much longer lifetime than others. Some titles are sold for years after the release. As you too obviously are well aware.

Piracy in this case is not theft, it's unauthorised copy.

This is just pedantic. For all practical purposes it's theft to avoid paying for a product and obtain it for free. In the digital realm that means copying - yes. But again, that's just pedantry.

It's about what it's always about: money.

Uh... yes. Same reason a shop owner locks his doors, or you close your car when you leave it. That's all about money too - you will have to pay for a new car if it's stolen and you don't want that. For economical reasons.

It's why you go to work too - it's all about the money, as it always were for everyone. We construct our entire lives, every single one of us, around the transfer of value, in the shape of money in trade for goods.

We gotta stop demonising money as something only "evil corporations" are "obsessed by". Our entire social structure - including all that's good and comfortable in our lives, everything that enables us to live our lives to the fullest, is built on that construct.

So, yes, that goes for the employers out there too. Of course. It's all about the money for everyone, in all our aspects of life.

Any - ANY - company is in it for the money, mirv. From the smallest little tiny two party indie studio to the globally branched enterprises with thousands of employees.
When they work on UX, mechanics, map design, character development, storyline... It's STILL all about the money.
The money for salaries, fixed expenses, return of investment to the investors, the money to continue being in business. That's why the writers write, the designers design, and the engine coders code the engine. Money. Not a single one does it for free. Money is the criteria.

Just like you and I, in our job. We may TALK about other stuff, DO other stuff, but we're there for the money. The money is the reason why we work. That doesn't mean they also have OTHER motivations for what they do. Some of us are lucky enough to work with stuff we love, but if it wasn't for the money we'd at the very least done a lot of that stuff differently. We can all agree on that.

Same with communication. Every single press release by every single company in existence is released with money being the bottom motivator. Promotion is done because of money. Trailers are made because of money. All communication towards player base, media, social platforms - rooted in money as the fundamental motivator.

So yes - it's always about the money, because that's why they do it. If they just did it for fun, and they didn't have bills to pay from it, only then can you talk about something not being about the money.

Let's be real here: The fundamental root of every single activity done by a any commercial actor is money. Including every single employee and contractor.


Last edited by Beamboom on 5 October 2021 at 1:57 pm UTC

Not every action performed by humans is driven by money.

... Like gaming - that's not driven by money for most of us. :)

But our society, how thousands and millions of people with no emotional or social relation to each other can function, how it's all glued together, essentially boils down to money. If we took down the economics, the society as we know it would completely collapse.
We live and thrive and do our activities - money driven or not - on top of a social construction held up and running by money.

While I agree with this concept in general, I'd want to argue that Steam is far from free. You pay for it directly in money--it's just that, like some sales or value added taxes, it doesn't show up on the sticker price that 30% of your purchase went to Steam.

Your logic is understandable. But in real life, it's not you who pay that fee - it's the distributors.

In real life, you say? I think that's a misuse of the term. In real life, all the money in the gaming industry comes from the people who buy the games, which necessarily includes that 30%. What you mean is that in a rather abstract way, it's the distributors rather than the buyers who end up with less.
Still, that doesn't make your actual point wrong, it's just not a phrase suited to what you seem to really be trying to say. I don't think the reality of pricing is quite as cut and dried as you're suggesting. My traffic, for one, doesn't actually bear the prices most distributors set--I mostly only buy things on sale. But still, you have a point.

But it's a point that's irrelevant to what I was saying, and most of the rest of what you say is if anything underlining what I was saying. Yes, as you say, and as I was saying in different words, Steam provides a global marketplace--the key feature of which is that people buy things in it, for money that Valve gets part of, not that Steam harvests their information. This is the distinction I was drawing.

Beamboom, you seem to not understand difference between a law and a DRM

DRM is the tools they use to uphold and defend their legal rights. That's the relation.

There is nothing either inherent to the nature of DRM or generally in the way DRM is deployed in practice that limits it to upholding and defending legal rights. To the contrary, it can and often does limit and control consumer behaviour in ways that companies have no legal right to enforce.

I don't know a ton about how this works out in games, but I do know something about copyright vis-a-vis print media in academic settings. DRM on e-books systematically disables on a practical level consumers' fair use rights, as just one example--fair use rights that tend to be quite important in academic settings, in both teaching and research.

DRM is just kind of power game so unless strictly limited they will start your hard drive scanning, check for the content they don't like, mine cryptocurrency on your PC and sell your personal data found on your hard drive. Just because they can. The second people stop caring about DRM it will strike hard, so you're supposed to NEVER stop being against it. It is not about copyright of the company, it is about how much you will give up so the company have control what you do. The only reason most DRMs now don't try to sell your credit card data/IDs, etc. to the paying party are because people do care about that. The morals are left outside and key thrown out a long time ago. Let them have their way and you will have to show your mug on your webcam at all times and never write anything bad on reddit. Just to protect their intellectual property from you thieves.

In real life, you say? I think that's a misuse of the term. In real life, all the money in the gaming industry comes from the people who buy the games, which necessarily includes that 30%. What you mean is that in a rather abstract way, it's the distributors rather than the buyers who end up with less.

Well, it's quite the "chicken and egg" question, isn't it. From where did the consumers get their money? Money is a fixed amount in a constant circulation (until the national banks prints more money). So the industries empower employees to be consumers of the products from the industries by paying their salaries to create the products to consume. A constant circulation.

But my point was of course that many people think of Valves cut on the Steam marketplace like a "tax" applied to them. And that is simply not the right perspective. Distribution holds a cost also outside Steam. Servers are not free. Transaction handling. Bandwidth. Infrastructure. Security. Software solutions. Onboarding. Market reach. Operational staff. It costs.

I mostly only buy things on sale.

Me too, except for the big BIG titles where I just can't wait. I believe this goes for a lot of us.
But the same principle applies. We represent a segment of the market that do not want to pay that full price the others find it worth. They later sell at a lower price to cover that segment too, at a stage in the life cycle of that product where the "full price segment" is finished served. For each copy sold, the less the production cost per product becomes and the lower the price can be and still provide a profit. This is especially true in the digital realm.

as I was saying in different words, Steam provides a global marketplace--the key feature of which is that people buy things in it, for money that Valve gets part of, not that Steam harvests their information. This is the distinction I was drawing.

Ah! Yes, absolutely. Their primary "product" is the marketplace, not the user data. totally agree. The user stats is however a very good bonus. To see the common hardware setup for example, is very likely of great use. Or how many has added your title to their wishlist.

it can and often does limit and control consumer behaviour in ways that companies have no legal right to enforce.

Oh yes. There's examples of really horrible, intrusive DRM that goes way, way beyond the reasonable. I would say we saw that especially in the beginning of DRM (Sony, anyone?).
As also Slapin is stating below:

DRM is just kind of power game so unless strictly limited they will start your hard drive scanning, check for the content they don't like, mine cryptocurrency on your PC and sell your personal data found on your hard drive. Just because they can. The second people stop caring about DRM it will strike hard, so you're supposed to NEVER stop being against it.

SOME would do as you say, some indeed have, and that should and must be reacted properly upon. As also have been done. Both from user groups and regulatory institutions like the EU.

But it is important to maintain a nuanced perspective on things. We should acknowledge that the need for DRM is legit, Just like anti cheat. It causes problems for non cheaters, but we understand the need for it.

But it needs to be a good solution for both. And if we acknowledge the need for some sort of way to make life harder for illegit usage, this whole discussion about DRM can get on a more realistic and constructive path.
Being categorically anti DRM is in my opinion just as irrational as being against any form of anti-cheat.


Last edited by Beamboom on 6 October 2021 at 12:05 pm UTC

Considering these games have no Linux port, really Take 2 is just shooting themselves in the foot. I won't be buying the trilogy for PC at all. I don't pay for emulating games, software running in WINE/Proton isn't worth the hastle.


Last edited by DMJC on 6 October 2021 at 9:25 am UTC

software running in WINE/Proton isn't worth the hassle.

Really? ... Have you tried?

For a vast amount of titles it literary is the exact same procedure as on Windows. Click install, "play" and off you go.

But it is important to maintain a nuanced perspective on things. We should acknowledge that the need for DRM is legit, Just like anti cheat. It causes problems for non cheaters, but we understand the need for it.

But it needs to be a good solution for both. And if we acknowledge the need for some sort of way to make life harder for illegit usage, this whole discussion about DRM can get on a more realistic and constructive path.
Being categorically anti DRM is in my opinion just as irrational as being against any form of anti-cheat.

It is not, not at all. But whatever...

software running in WINE/Proton isn't worth the hassle.

Really? ... Have you tried?

For a vast amount of titles it literary is the exact same procedure as on Windows. Click install, "play" and off you go.

Yeah, agreed. Strange take... unless they mean, I don't know, like ideologically?

And thanks to FSR, while it's not as simple as "click play", I can run some Windows games much better than Windows can. My YT video on Cyberpunk in another thread demonstrates that - if I were playing on Windows, I'd be suffering sub-60fps at 1080p. On Linux, with the FSR fullscreen "hack" on ProtonGE, I'm getting 60fps at 4K. Absolutely immense.