GOG does this too they will sell you cracked games and the money goes to whoever currently owns the IP, there is almost no point giving money to GOG at that point since they don’t do anything and the IP holder didn’t do anything either. Actually GOG might steal mods and claim they made them like with system shock.
Just a point against the second thread you linked, Gog selling cracked games, according to the thread you linked, allows them to be run without a disc on modern hardware
The crack also means it’s not altering the source code, according to the user’s in that thread
As for the first thread, yeah that’s pretty shitty.
I don’t think this is about removing copy protection to sell it.
It is more about that the crack they are now selling officially has been seen as illegal by the publisher/game developer itself. People have worked on this for no monetary compensation and therefore provided free labour to remove DRM. Now the publisher is banking on this free work, pretty much legitimising the crack. But none of the money actually goes to anyone who cracked the game, since that was still illegal.
If the publisher had just removed DRM themselves and sold those copies, no one would be outraged. But they exploit the work of people they keep condeming for cracking their games.
Well, if someone spray painted the door of my car without my permission, it’s vandalism but still my car. If it later turns out that it was done by Banxie and that “vandalism” is worth millions, I can still sell my car however I like and owe Banxie nothing.
Btw, freeware is a thing. Did those cracks ever get released without the permission to freely distribute? If not, those cracks may be used by the rights holder however they like. That’s not the problem. Releasing broken shit is the problem.
Seriously… a car analogy. Wow. And a pretty bad one at that.
But I will help you fix that analogy for free, since I feel nice today. A crack for DRM isn’t like adding artwork to a car to make it worth more.
If anything this is about a car that has certain defects that make it work less well than it should. E.g. you cannot switch into gear 5. It runs slower than it could. So people go and fix that, for free. Now the automobile maker takes that free fix and sells all new cars with it. Is that ok? There, still a crap analogy but arguably better than yours.
You ask if the cracks are released with permission to freely distribute? Actually no, they are not. Because they are marked illegal by the law. They should not be distributed since thats against the law. But its of course convenient for the publisher to use that work and distribute themselves. They are technically breaking the law themselves since they are applying illegal cracks to their own software. So thats ok then?
So people go and fix that, for free. Now the automobile maker takes that free fix and sells all new cars with it. Is that ok? There, still a crap analogy but arguably better than yours.
OK, cool. Too bad you forgot that in modern jurisdiction buying a game is merely like leasing a car. So yeah, if a workshop fixes the car for free the actual owner of the car can make use of those fixes however he likes.
Maybe target your energy at the actual shitty thing Rockstar does: Selling broken games. The means how they removed Securom is irrelevant. The fact that the games are broken garbage is not.
It’s not GOG that does that. A lot of developers that publish there having lost the source code or the tools and knowledge to build it upload cracked or patched releases themselves. And it’s not a GOG thing either, as for example Sam & Max: Hit the Road is just the cracked DOS game bundled inside a ScummVM runner on both Steam and GOG releases.
This honestly sounds like the perfect distribution model. You get the game, IP holder gets paid, no one is bothered by DRM. If you don’t want to pay because you don’t want to pay, well that’s up to you.
Like I’m kind of confused by the premise of your argument and excuse me if I got it wrong but certainly you’re not saying if you pay, it better have some kind of DRM?
Look if i’m going to buy torrented and cracked files owned by whatever billion dollar company has vacuumed up a 1000 ip’s in a go I at least want to know 0 effort has been put into packaging the game and that all I’m doing is buying a pirated version of the game with other peoples stuff resold without credit or reimbursement. Like cracks and mods they package into these releases.
Well with system shock 2 they just downloaded mods and fixes and added it to the game and then claimed they worked on them. Given that one would think that’s basically all they do.
Nintendo did the same thing. I don’t remember the exact details, but they took a pirated copy of NES Super Mario Bros and were reselling it on another platform. As much as a dislike Nintendo and Take-Two/Rockstar for their business practices I can understand that it’s probably easier to just take back “stolen” and modified code and use it for themselves instead of repeating the process of getting around old copyright BS in order to resell the game.
Tldr: Nintendo outsourced the work for dumping NES ROMs and developing a NES emulator for GameCube and that contractor added the standard headers to dumps they made from original cartridges provided by Nintendo. Someone saw the headers and drew conclusions.
Rockstar used securom for the original disc release
Razor (an infamous piracy group) cracked the game shortly after release but only for Windows XP (Vista didn't exist yet)
Rockstar released the game on Steam "without securom" but in reality is just using Razor's crack
Fans eventually (like a decade later) realize there's Razor signatures in the executable on Steam
Rockstar pushes an update with a new executable, however this wasn't properly tested and is broken due to how the anti-piracy acts.
Here’s a link to the thread on nitter in case anyone can’t view Twitter.
But holy cow, that’s uh… I’m not even sure what to say about that.
Edit: Apparently the link breaks for some mobile users and Kbin users due to the underscores, [nitter.net/__silent_/…/1698345924840296801](I believe this one should do the trick).
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