Rockstar uploading pirated game to steam?

Irony: Did Rockstar upload a pirated version of Max Payne 2 to Steam?

 

hahaha this is hilarious.
rockstar should fire that guy, and hire the myth group.

 

LOL. This has got to be the funniest thing I have read in a long time.

Funniest part of the article:

But I am very curious as to what will happen with Rockstar, or the employee that did this.

 

Looks like there might be a job opening soon...

 

But wouldn't the cracked .exe fail with the new patches? That's not very bright haha.

But it is quite funny

 

lol
this is as funny as a Sapphire employee posting a guide on how to install some driver that had a screenshot of his hdd that showed a bunch of directories and a 'vista crack'

 

link plzzz

 

Because it's the same guys who are techie enough to know that they can get softwares for free. It's only when it's in their interest that that they bring out the intellectual property signboard. I won't be surprised if that isn't the only guy with pirated software in software development community.

 

Why work when he can get the job done for free?

 

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I don't think it is the issue that people are making it out to be.

Its their intellectual property, so they cant be accused of piracy. They own it. So there are no legal implications here at all.

And by using a cracked version, they are just turning the tables and using coding work done by a pirate as part of something that they are going to be making money on. As opposed to the other way around.

And as for the fact that the employee downloaded a cracked version, again, there is nothing unusual there. He will have the full backing of his superiors. You can be sure that every software company downloads cracked versions of their own software the minute it hits piracy channels. It is perfectly legal and they use it to try and improve their security measures and/or identify the pirate.

 

^ I was thinking that... I don't think there's really anything wrong here but whatever

 

Textbook example how warez (free) stuff turns into pirated product (you pay someone for it)

 

Where are all the conspiracy guys who think that this is a publicity stunt to promote Max Payne 3?

No one?

Ok, seems to me that I will have to start the rumor: They are just doing it to get people's attention on the Max Payne series.

 

Imagine how easy it is to crack a game that you worked on?

 

easy as 1, 2,.. torrent!

 

LOL. +Rep

/10char

 

Of course it's a huge issue. Forget even the "piracy" claims about it, but just the fact that they released - to pass off as their own - work that comes from an outside, untrusted source. It would be like the government seizing weed off South American druglords only to later use it in hospitals as "medicinal" marijuana.

 

I think if anything, people are just chuckling at the irony of the situation, nothing more.

 

See, if it was quality enough for medicinal marijuana, I don't see a problem with it. They seized illegal goods and turned around using it themselves for good. I dunno..

 

While this employee was "legally" torrenting the company's own software, he was no doubt distributing hundreds of unauthorized copies via upload as well. Either that, and he is a pirate under the legal definition who deserves to be punished, or else Rockstar implicitly gave him permission to distribute the content, in which case it is also implicitly authorizing the piracy of its intellectual property.

And seeing how Rockstar doubtlessly has no intention of punishing him, it seems more in favor of the latter conclusion. Someone needs to argue that in court.

 

But you don't know of what "quality" it is. The government just grabbed it off some drug lords, like Rockstar just grabbed it off some crackers. It's a huge security liability and users are rightfully stunned/outraged.

 

They have just applied a patch/crack to their own game. The crack is not a whole lot of code, it is easily inspected.

You make the mistake of assuming that they have sourced the entire game online, as opposed to just grabbing a patch/crack and applying it to their own code. You also make the mistake of assuming the only way to obtain this kind of stuff is via torrent. It's not.

 

EPIC FAIL! This really made me laugh!

 

I am neither stunned or outraged lol. I have zero issue with them using a crack on their own game. I passed on the sale when it was available, but if I bought it, no problem. I bought the Episodes of LC and if they used a crack on that, good for them whatever, it worked.

 

all I know is that I MUST buy Max Payne 3 as soon as it get out... subliminal message got me!

 

Dude was probably looking for another Hot Coffee.

I'm not fooled.

 

Enjoy your trojan keylogger timebomb.

Do you honestly think a coder too lazy to rebuild his own binaries is going to bother inspecting someone else's?

 

LOL seriously? haha I've used plenty of cracks, you can get a trojan keylogger from about anywhere, just be smart about where and what you d/l and sites you visit

 

You obtaining a crack *knowingly* is at your own consent. However, a company secretly injecting a crack represents a serious liability concern and security issue for everyone involved.

 

you don't actually think there's a key logger in there though

 

that's besides the point.
they put something in there without acknowledging the buyers. they are so incredibly irresponsible it's scary.

 

I think its awesome. They should freely distribute any/all of the software created by pirates. Sadly, its all worthless rasterizer art.

BTW there is no such thing as security on the Internet. Anything you type into your browser should be stuff you would be OK sharing with the world. If you get ripped off vis a vis keylogger than its your fault for buying into the false sense of security businesses are trying to sell you.

 

They didn't put anything in. They took something out - ie the CD-check. Of course technically an ASCII image was 'put in' but it is not like this is some custom version of Max Payne with millions of lines of unknown code.

Some guys seem to think that this crack is something terribly malicious that is full of the nastiest, most undetectable viruses and trojans on the planet. I mean come on, 'incredibly irresponsible'? Overract much?

Its just a no-CD hack. Its a very small piece of code, very easy to examine, not a big deal.

 

so.. if rockstar decided to make their own nocd crack, and put up an ascii image of something but didn't acknowledge us that they put in a nocd for steam that's scary?? who's to say they rewrote the crack coding themselves but left the myst logo? Does that change anything? no, b/c there's nothing malicious here. I mean any company could just input keyloggs or random crap into their coding, but I'm sure steam has things against this, hence why this is a non-issue.

 

well, you don't have to be scared my friend.

 

If they could not be bothered to recompile their game to run without DRM rather than applying someone else's hack, I very much doubt that they would take the time to examine the hack's code. It probably did not do anything (otherwise we would have heard of its effects by now), but it's still pretty funny that they did this and if this happens again, there's no guarantee that next time the hack will be harmless.

 

Cracks rarely have that kind of thing in them. The game torrents may, but the individual cracks don't. They'll be discovered, and the whole point of cracking a game is for your group to get credit. If people realize your cracking group is slipping in malware, you'll lose street cred. I wouldn't worry about this a bit.

 

It's nothing to do with this one. specific. crack. It's everything to do with the attitude of placing unverified insecure code into code you pass off as verified. "Street cred" means nothing when you are a rogue group who does not have to respond to millions of customers with potential legality claims. As a customer of Rockstar your computer security should not hinge on some lazy coder's intimacy with the "warez" scene, but rather his ability to do his job and recompile code which has been verified and expected by users.

 

see this->

 

but who said it's unverified, insecure code? What if Rockstar reviewed the code, verified it and was like okay this is good, let's roll. Just didn't care to remove the Myst image.

 

that made sense.

 

^ what makes you think they didn't review/verified the code?

 

so they took their sweet time verifying the code, but completely forgot to remove the waste bits? if they're going to verify it, they might as well modify it themselves. unless you're suggesting that rockstar knew less about their own code than crackers.
would you be okay if microsoft did used cracks as updates, and auto installs it with no option to turn it off, and not tell you? it's the same concept.

 

I don't know how people crack games, but I don't think many companies would jump through their final binary with a hex editor and check for hex code inconsistencies. Why would they? The source code was already compiled into a supposedly final binary. They didn't want to go into the code and remove the CD check (and then spend hours recompiling). So they looked around and saw that crackers had already disable the CD check some other way (since they don't have access to the source code) and just used their binary... Is there anything wrong with that other than laziness? It saved Rockstar's computers time and money. The people responsible for this should get a promotion, not fired.

Hey, I'm optimistic about something for once! This feels good.

 

used cracks as updates? Rockstar didn't use this crack as an update. They used it as a nocd. So, like your analogy may be better used if Microsoft say used someone's activator to activate windows rather than use their own. No problem, as long as it works.

I guess for me, I really have no problem of a company using a third party. And some reason I really would believe that someone at rockstar did just either forgot or didn't care to remove the 'waste bits' of the code. I would bet this happens a lot more often than you or I know. You're being naive to think this is the first time, or only company to do such a thing, not even in games. So what if R* ended up removing the Myst ascii? No one would know, and no one would have something to complain about.

I mean a lot of the older games now found on Steam or D2D, GoG, originally have NOCD cracks made for them - many I'm sure probably have gone that route of having a crack or rewriting ones themselves. No big deal.

Maybe it's because cracks have a bad connotation for viruses/key loggers/malware. Yeah I would have a problem if a company injected any of that stuff into a game I bought and downloaded, but really, that's not the case here. A crack was implemented, that's it. Those of you saying unknowingly, what did you expect the game to require a cd when you downloaded from Steam?

 

Because the most probable explanation upon finding a cracking group logo embedded in a binary from an official company is that it was their intention...

Let's review the most likely-probable-99.99%-the-earth-is-not-flat-the-moon-landing-was-not-staged-no-illuminaty scenario of what happened here shall we?

Jimmy, the low-level coder is assigned the task of removing a simple CD check from the codebase and recompiling it; but alas it is 5:30 on a friday and Jimmy wants to get home from a hard week of slacking off, so instead he pops open his browser, searches "no CD crack" in google, and downloads the most popular crack he can find, using that binary instead of recompiling an official binary.

Here's the problem folks: Jimmy used 3rd-party code of questionable origin and integrity without verification. How do we know it was not verified? Because a) Jimmy was so lazy he didn't even bother to remove the crack group symbol and b) modifying and building from your own codebase is sanctioned over verifying a 3rd-party binary.

because verification of 3rd-party software takes longer than simply editing your own known codebase, which Jimmy would have done was he not lazy (and no doubt instructed to do so).

Further still, unlike open-source libraries or binaries backed by open and reputable communities, cracks are notorious for their high incidence of - and conflation with - malware, murky origins, and shady speakeasy communities with little accountability (or traceability). This means that Rockstar customers and their computer security rested on Jimmy's choice of crack. Unlike usual programmer error which may only result in minor software error, a bad choice in crack could unleash a torrent of viruses and security holes onto unsuspecting users. Not only did Jimmy display incompetency and negligence in his job, he played Russian roulette with the computer security of Rockstar's clientbase.

 

^ and Jimmy here could be working at Infinity Ward, at Codemasters, at Runic, at Crytek, Bioware, etc etc. This poor Jimmy just didn't remove the Myst logo. Big deal.

 

Totally agree. When someone buys a legit software they expect the whole code is safe.

 

Yep, for sure. I mean, these are often old games. Some of you guys don't seem to understand the difficulty of working with old software.

Where the licence has maybe changed hands (sometimes even a few times), the original coders arent around...dev tools or documentation can be lost or tucked away somewhere, compatibility problems with newer OSs etc.

Sometimes it is just easier to grab a no-CD crack and use it. You might call that laziness, but others would call it efficiency. And all the people saying 'OMG its a crack so it must be full of viruses!' really need to get a grip on reality.