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

Quoting: TheSHEEEPThis 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

Quoting: BeamboomI 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.

Quoting: scaineIf 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?

Quoting: scaine

Quoting: BeamboomI 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.

Quoting: slapin

Quoting: scaine

Quoting: BeamboomI 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.

Quoting: slapin

Quoting: scaine

Quoting: BeamboomI 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.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyWhile 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.

Quoting: CyrilBeamboom, 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

Quoting: GuestHey, 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