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Ubisoft Steals 'No-CD Crack' To Fix Rainbow 6: Vegas 2
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sat Jul 19, 2008 04:10 AM
from the fighting-fire-with-fire dept.
from the fighting-fire-with-fire dept.
Ariastis writes "UbiSoft has long been against No-CD patches. Referring to them on their forums would get you warned or banned. But now, they have just officially released a patch for Rainbow 6: Vegas 2, which, when opened in a hex editor, can easily be identified as coming from the RELOADED scene group, not from UbiSoft programmers. A picture of hex analysis is shown in the story. See? Piracy isn't that bad! It saves you from having to code fixes for your own games! (Watch the drama on the Ubi Forums before it gets scrubbed clean.)"
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So... (Score:5, Funny)
Presumably the patch has been nuked for Stolen.Crack?
Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
The monsters!
Parent
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Two wrongs don't make a right, dude.
What cracks me up (pun intended) is the fact that Ubisoft have been UTTER BASTARDS in the past. If you posted complaining about Starforce on their forums, their employees would accuse you of being a hacker, a pirate etc... People get banned for posting links to cracks. HAVE been banned for posting links to THIS VERY CRACK.
This priceless, and utterly UTTERLY hilarious. A major software company relying on a cracking group to fix their stupid issues that their choice of DRM caused.
The only way this could be ANY funnier is if it was Electronic Arts instead, and even that would be pushing it as Ubi's attitude toward their consumers in regards to DRM is a hundred times more offensive than I've ever seen EA be.
Parent
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless of what support the company has given its costumers, remember that the crack was made to circumvent anti-piracy schemes.
There wouldn't be any need for anti-piracy schemes if people were trustworthy and didn't steal software.
People use pirated software -> companies lose money -> companies invest in trying to avoid illegitimate usage of their software -> copy-protection schemes are put in place -> problems with copy-protection schemes arise -> people who don't give a shit about the fact that the software was a result of an investment in both equipment, marketing and man hours still keep finding ways to pirate the software.
So everyone uses cracks to go around copy protection schemes when they're not supposed to, and then when that company uses that crack to fix a problem, everyone is outraged. So it's OK if you steal from a company, but it's NOT OK if a company uses, to fix their own product and provide the support everyone cries for, something that was made specifically to target that company's product making it easier to pirate.
You know, people have worked to develop the product. Money has been invested. It's a company, it's supposed to make a profit, not to create software out of pure charity.
And no, two wrongs don't make it a right, you're right when you said it. And everyone should have thought that even if the company sucks at supporting its users (first wrong) that doesn't forgive anyone for pirating software (second wrong). I'm not saying that you shouldn't be able to fully use the product you bought. But does anyone here honestly believe that only the guys that bought the product are the ones using the crack? I don't think so.
This sounds like hypocrisy to me.
Just be glad that now that there is an "official" fix for your problems.
Parent
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, and people wouldn't need locks and car alarms if there were no car thieves. I'd still find it more than a little funny if every time you locked your keys in the car, you had to call up a car thief to open it for you. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'd be laughing my ass off, just like I am at Ubi.
How's that for a car analogy? :)
Parent
Actually... (Score:5, Interesting)
...had to call up a car thief to open it for you.
That happened to my uncle.
A cop showed up seeing him trying to break into his own car, hollered at some kids sitting in the grass by an overpass, and told them they wouldn't get in trouble if they unlocked the door. It was open in about 30 seconds.
Parent
Re:Actually... (Score:5, Funny)
Couple of years ago, we had a party at our house, and some girls locked themselves out of their car. Roommate got a long piece of metal, and was in the process of opening the door of the car, which was parked on the side of the street, when the cops drove by. They stopped and asked if everything was okay, (they looked fresh out of the academy) and my roommate told them, "Its okay, I've been doing this since you were in grade school!"
Parent
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
A copy-protection must never stop a legitimate customer from using the product they've bought, though.
If that sometimes happen and the company responsible doesn't come up with a fix, that legitimize the creation of 3'rd party fixes, or cracks.
So even though the copy-prevention schemes arose from piracy, today, piracy is sometimes necessary due to copy-prevention schemes.
Parent
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
Look at the music industry... Pay a lot of a drm'd music file that won't play in your car's mp3 player, or get a high quality mp3 for free? And what would you choose if both were free? What if the DRMd junk was free, and the mp3 was not? Amazing how the better product usually wins regardless of price.
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Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
I use no CD cracks on all of my legally bought games. Having to put discs in and take them out is kind of cumbersome when I have them all safely stored in a metal CD binder. If I wanted to switch through game discs all day I'd play my console instead.
Parent
Re:Where do I find these? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Where do I find these? (Score:5, Informative)
The key is not to download cracks if you can help it. Instead, download mini images (on gamecopyworld.com as "fixed images"). These are disc images for the games, with copy protection intact, that are only a few megabytes large as they only have the crucial bits. Then, use a program like Daemon-Tools to mount the image, and you're set. This works for online games like Battlefield 2 as well, where cracks usually fail.
And as an aside, I actually had to do this to run Battlefield 2, as the copy protection apparently doesn't agree with my DVD drive (even though other EA games work). I emailed EA support and never received a response.
Parent
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
There wouldn't be any need for anti-piracy schemes if people were trustworthy and didn't steal software.
You crack me up. No, really, you do.
Do you know who gets hit by those anti-piracy "measures" ? Not the pirates, that much I can promise you. It's the regular customers who have to deal with this, I'm sorry to say, shit. Pirates get a pre-cracked bug-fixed ISO downloads that just work. They also get game updates working sooner than those sorry fools who bought the game at an online download store (the legitimate kind, that is).
This anti-piracy bullshit does absolutely nothing to prevent, you know, piracy. It is not necessary.
People use pirated software -> companies lose money
BS argument #1. Let me bring a BS argument of my own ! People share software -> other people like it and buy that software, having had the opportunity to test it -> company makes more money than it is allegedly "losing". This argument is just about as full of holes as yours is.
-> companies invest in trying to avoid illegitimate usage of their software
By being good corporate citizens, offering excellent support for their legitimate customers, offering a better experience than "pirates" ever could and focusing on their legitimate customers instead of wasting countless development and testing hours on stuff that provably does not work and only annoys regular customers ?
-> copy-protection schemes are put in place
And usually cracked a few days BEFORE the game hits store shelves. Excellent.
-> problems with copy-protection schemes arise
PREDICTABLE problems. KNOWN problems. You don't think the QA department knows about these problems ? CARES ?
-> people who don't give a shit about the fact that the software was a result of an investment in both equipment, marketing and man hours still keep finding ways to pirate the software.
Why do you care about these people ? They are not gonna buy your software anyway. They might if they get a better experience for a reasonable price, they might not. In the meantime you are losing gazillions of customers to DRM issues, fixes for direct2drive issues that only exist because nobody bothered to check that the protection doesn't blow up on those releases, etc. -- good going.
People are gonna copy your stuff. You cannot make them not do it. This is a known fact, a fact that has been known for over 20 years. There is no copy protection scheme that has not been utterly broken.
So everyone uses cracks to go around copy protection schemes when they're not supposed to,
And scratching their heads asking "why did I pay for this shit, again ?" And making a mental note not to buy it the next time. Or, if they really want to play it and really don't want to deal with this ... shit ... Pirate it straight away. At least you know the scene guys have quality control -- when their releases don't work, they get nuked.
That is a very sad state of affairs. Pragmatically, you are better off using a pirated version.
and then when that company uses that crack to fix a problem, everyone is outraged.
Not so much that they are using the crack, moreso that they are banning people who previously talked about that same crack, should not actually be NEEDING that crack if they had ANY developers left (you see, disabling this "copy protection" is as easy as, you know, not applying the copy protection installer to the executable you get out of the compiler), etc.
So it's OK if you steal from a company,
Who said that ?
but it's NOT OK if a company uses, to fix their own product and provide the support everyone cries for,
Credit where credit is due, huh ?
Parent
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no copy protection scheme that has not been utterly broken.
I don't think this is true.
I do :)
Some high-priced software (e.g. CAD toolkits) ship with a USB dongle containing a CPU and part of the executable in encrypted form. In the course of the program's normal execution, some data is sent to the dongle, processed, and sent back. The dongle is designed to self-destruct when cracked open. This scheme is highly resistant to cracks, provided the part of the executable is well-chosen to not be recreatable, and typical attackers cannot obtain a large supply of dongles.
It is resistant and resilient, yes. I would not call it impossible, having seen what has been cracked in the past and what a decent financial incentive will do for the motivation to crack.
I have seen some of these systems first-hand over the years, always getting more and more intricate. Without fail, they have also gotten more and more burdensome on the regular users of the software. Want that "old" (2 years) dongle supported ? Forget it. Want that parallel port dongle working on your shiny new laptop ? Forget it. Want to exchange a broken one for a new one a month after the "service contract" that was tacked onto the "purchase price" expires ? Tough noogies.
Architects and engineers put up with it in large part because there are few or no alternatives that do not do the exact same thing.
Yet, you usually find a cracked version of AutoCAD in certain circles, anyway. In the above scenario, it really just takes ONE cracked dongle to get at the executable code. As for crackers not obtaining a ready supply thereof ... Why would that be ? These companies usually outsource to companies dedicated to making those dongles. Those companies, in turn, want to sell their dongles to other companies to secure their products. Naturally, those companies would like some samples, and possibly some development samples. If the stakes are high enough (a $20k software component that you can sell on the black market for $1k-$2k a piece if you crack it properly), why not set up a front company, get some of those samples, and work on those. You don't need to work on a "real" dongle until you have perfected your method, and you can get more than one "real" dongle by getting another one from the originating software company for the legitimately-purchased license (I assume these crackers will have access to a company with a service contract like that). They won't just say "no" when you say you lost your dongle on a trainride.
Not that I'm saying it's necessarily reasonable for consumer videogames to use such an elaborate scheme
It'll come. Right now Blizzard is marketing electronic devices designed to improve the security of their World of Warcraft logins by augmenting the regular username/password tuple with one-time-passwords generated by an electronic device. People are eating it up because they want to protect their accounts. I don't think it'll stay confined to securing online accounts ... 3-4 years down the road, you'll see some high-priced games sporting activation smartcards (or something equivalent). I think. It's madness.
It is crackable. The more user-friendly something is, the easier it is to crack.
Parent
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd personally trust many of these "scene" hackers more than I'd trust Sony to not to try to pwn my machine.
That's not to say I'd trust them that much
Parent
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
When the price is zero the demand is infinite.
The price is never zero. My time has value. Figuring out that the tools I use for work are what is causing the game to ungracefully exit is a cost. Cleaning up the parts of the system that the game modified is a cost.
On the other side, finding a crack that works is a cost. Cleaning up the spyware from the websites that host cracks is a cost. Troubleshooting the buggy game with a boggy crack and no support because you have a no-cd crack is a big cost.
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Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, so all piracy is of stuff by big media corporations? Really? How about small game developers [spidweb.com] whose games are regularly pirated? I guess they suck too, 'cause they aren't giving it to you for free.
Piracy isn't a "mass advertising campaign." A few pirating gamers might say something about a game to a friend or two. But the idea that that's more beneficial than getting paid for their fucking work is astonishingly retarded. (Especially given that said pirating gamer would probably just say to his friend "here, I'll burn you a copy.")
Rationalize it all you want: you're still fucking people over.
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But! (Score:5, Funny)
"Two wrongs don't make a right, dude."
Two wrights made an airplane!
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Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
CD cracks aren't just for stealing games.
One of the first things I do when I buy a game is download the CD crack so I don't have to keep track of where the install disks are.
I bought the game, it's mine. I can do whatever the fuck I like with it, including disabling annoying shit like DRM.
Parent
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, when I took the game off the shelf and gave the checkout chick the cash, the game became mine.
In Australia a contract for sale is complete when both the contractor and the contractee agree to the same terms. Both parties must be fully aware of all relevant terms before acceptance. Additional terms cannot be imposed after acceptance.
Parent
Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
In Australia...
What do you expect from a nation founded by thieves and other criminals?
Hell, you guys made region-locked DVD players against the law, clearly your entire justice system is in league with teh pirates.
Parent
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I bought the game. If you had me sign a contract before I paid money for the game, then I signed the EULA. I can't sell you a hamster and, as soon as you get it home and put it in its cage, demand that you do *anything* else.
Copyright law states that you can't copy the disc or distribute it, but it does not tell you that you can't modify it. I realize the 9th circuit just bought into that, but I wouldn't be surprised of an appeal. And even if there is no appeal, I'd happily argue the case again in court.
You can't make me agree to a contract after the fact, and forcing me to spend money on gas (and that's no trivial matter anymore), and waste my time (which also costs me money) because I disagree with the contract you've given me after the sale occurred. The onus is on you to have me agree before the purchase is completed; once you do that, you're absolutely correct.
Maybe that's what game vendors need to do; provide an industry standard kiosk with the EULA present before the purchase transaction can be completed; that way if I find the terms too cumbersome, I just don't purchase it and don't waste the money or gas on the event.
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Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
That aspect of EULA's has never been tested in court. It's quite possible that it would be deemed null and void.
Really? Because I seem to recall having this discussion with someone else on Thursday [slashdot.org], and pointing to a number of court cases where it has been decided.
You should also read the informative response to my post [slashdot.org] (since I was only directly answering a specific point and not attempting to cover the entire issue).
In other words, it HAS been tested in court, but courts are disagreeing on how to interpret the issue.
Parent
The patch been pulled, over a week ago! (Score:5, Informative)
Someone was either being very lazy or thought it was funny. I'm glad they didn't censor the forums to hell and back ala Apple...
Last post from the now locked thread:
Re:The patch been pulled, over a week ago! (Score:5, Interesting)
Since I work in 3rd tier support now, let me translate that into human language:
The working fix was removed as soon as management of department responsible for actually releasing fixes complained very loud. The matter is being thoroughly investigated, but as of now no easy scapegoat can be found, since "fix" actually worked. Also, manager of sales asked me to retype here the stuff from our business booklet: "we do no support or condone copy protection circumvention methods." Nice. Gamers have to thank some poor chap from support department who put the fix up so that gamers can play the game they have paid money for, but please remember, since you already paid to Ubi, we can care less whether you can play the game or not. Ha-ha.
My theory would be that Ubi support manager had authorized that one of his subordinates would put fix on their site. Because they had a flood of complaints and they had to respond to customers. Luckily, support departments are least responsible for anything. Since it takes that long, the dispute between support, development and D2D folks really heated up. From my experience, I'd say, some manager had intentionally authorized that - just to have a chance to say something (probably about game quality) aloud.
Parent
This is awesome. (Score:5, Funny)
It's entirely in the spirit of online freedom that all who use cracks live by. It's also a quiet nod to the expertise of those who wrote the crack.
I think we should all take this as a good sign of further co-operation in times to come.
Furthermore (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not stealing if the original programmers were not deprived of anything. Whether the good guys ("pirates") do it or the bad guys (the "content industry") do it, unauthorized copying is not stealing and never has been.
Parent
Is anyone really that surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps I'm a bit silly thinking this, but I have a lot of respect for the majority of the cracking scene.
Time and time again they've always proved just how talented and resourceful they can be.
I say props to them! At the very least, Ubi should sack whatever middle-manager that decided to release this as an "official" patch or lazy programmer that decided to submit this rather than build a proper executable and give THEM a job instead. I've had more "official" patches from both Ubi and EA (And a few others) break stuff than dodgy, pirate hacks.
Re:Pot vs. Kettle (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that they stole it, it's more that they couldn't be bothered to make an official one. .exe and checked it for irregularities or they'd have noticed the cracking group's moniker and removed it. That, plus it would have been easier to recompile a new one from the source they have.
I mean, when you think about it - what if that crack WAS dodgy? What if it had a time bomb in it that wiped out your hard drive after a certain date? I don't think for a second that Ubi disassembled the cracked
Of course, I trust the group but I know full well that if it DID have something dodgy in it, I'd be fully responsible for it and have to accept that it was my fault.
But in this case, Ubi could have been under some serious shit if such a thing had happened.
There's really no excuse, it's sheer laziness on their part.
Parent
Re:Pot vs. Kettle (Score:5, Insightful)
Reloaded has existed for quite a while and as far as I know they've never put malware in their cracks. While it's obvious there is always a risk involved when you run an executable (no matter where it came from), I'd say you are reasonably save using their cracks. Probably more safe than running DRM'ed software, since that software tries to hook itself into all kinds of important parts of you operating system.
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Re:Pot vs. Kettle (Score:5, Informative)
Reloaded has existed for quite a while and as far as I know they've never put malware in their cracks.
No cracker groups of any consequence has ever put malware in anything as far as I know, it's 99% others using a virus-adding tool and distributing their own trojaned version of their cracks. Still, it's not easy to tell one from the other.
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Re:Is anyone really that surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
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License (Score:5, Funny)
Stealing? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can already see the torrent of people coming in to call all slashdot users hypocrites for calling this stealing but defending "piracy" as not stealing and all that, so I figure I might as well clear this up as soon as possible:
Thing the first: Slashdot is not one person, it is many people, so it's not inconsistent for vocal members of the community to call this stealing but piracy not stealing.
Thing the second: "steals" is still a bad word here. "Steals credit" would be better, if anything, but I still think the wording is bad anyway.
Thing the third: most pirates at least hold to the moral ground of giving credit where credit is due, which is clearly not the case here.
Hopefully this will head off those silly comments. Eh, who am I kidding, it's Slashdot. I'll probably wake up to 50 of them. Oh well, I tried.
Re:Stealing? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that in the books of many /. readers, stealing credit is actually worse than stealing a product. Many people here have an academic background, so they are very familiar with the problems of credit stealing, few, OTOH, are in sales, so the problem of stealing a product isn't so much of a topic.
I have to admit, I'm in the same boat. Personally, I'd give it a shrug and a "turnaround is fair" comment when UBI simply said that they didn't want to reinvent the wheel so they just took an existing crack and used it for their own purposes. Not saying anything and claiming it as their own development is what irks me.
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Re:Stealing? (Score:5, Interesting)
The label of 'stealing' is in the story headline itself. If Slashdot ran a story on music/software piracy with a headline labelling those people in the same way, I am sure there would be far more critical posts.
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NO-CD cracks are what saves the gaming world (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously. If there were no NO-CD cracks, I suspect companies like Ubisoft would make lots LESS money than they do now. I usually buy the game, download the NO-CD crack, and play. I'll never forget how the CD in my previous ThinkPad almost died from overwork before I saved it (and myself from going insane) with the NO-CD for HOMM IV.
It has come to the point that I do NOT buy a game until a NO-CD crack exists for it.
DRM for games (Score:5, Interesting)
mp3's have, despite the music companies best efforts, proven to be what buyers want - not "you can only listen to this track on 2 machines" DRM files. That has been enforced by media coverage and scrutiny - pointing out and badgering the music labels that people don't want DRM junk.
This unfortunately hasn't happened with PC games - I guess they are less "mainstream" as far as media coverage is concerned.
I used to buy a lot of games, and enjoy playing them - but the situation has deteriorated very badly in the last 4-5 years. Games not only have the usual "key & cd/dvd in the drive" requirements, but I have encountered a number, which I paid hard money for, that refuse to install if I have CloneCD installed - others that refuse to install if I have Daemon Tools installed - both programs that I legitimately use (and not for games, just to avoid having to take tens of cd's around with me).
I bought HL2 - but haven't been able to play it for a couple years as I am behind a tight firewall and so can't register it. Consequently I haven't bought Ep2 or 3.
The games companies have to wisen up - I used to by 3-6 games per year - I now haven't bought a single one in the last 2 years - I can't be bothered with games I paid hard cash for treating me like I am a criminal. I am not interested (nor should ever need to) apply the various circumvention cracks to get around the DRM just so I can play a game I have bought.
The farce from Ubi-Soft only reinforces the situation - the same crackers who they decry as "destroying the games industry" are the ones they rip-off when they can't be bothered to write a patch (for a bug caused by all their neurotic DRM crap). Ubi-soft better hope there were no trojans in the crack - or they could find themselves on the end of a hefty lawsuit.
Who pirates the pirates? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Nope, (Score:5, Insightful)
No, but if you then show off said artwork claiming it to be your own then it does make you a bit of a dick.
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Re:Nope, (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Unethical? Yes. Illegal? Hmmm... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Unethical? Yes. Illegal? Hmmm... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. They've unintentionally violated copyright.
When an author uploads a torrent, is that file considered to have entered the public domain?
No, not anymore than if an author gives a free copy of a book away, that book enters the public domain. Authors (assuming they haven't sold their rights away) are allowed to distribute their own work as much as they want, and in whatever form they want. When someone else does it, they're in violation of copyright (unless they are licensed or copyright has been explicitly waived).
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Re:Unethical? Yes. Illegal? Hmmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hold it right there!
UBIsoft not only distributed someone else's work without their permission. They didn't just go and do what the usual release group does, taking someone else's work and publish it. At least crackers usually have the decency to keep the producer's name on the product. I can't remember any cracker group claiming they actually made some game.
Looking at it this way, what UBIsoft did was even worse. They didn't only violate copyright and distribute someone else's work without compensating the original author (granted, it would first of all be hard to find him and second, it is distributed for free anyway, so there is no immediate loss for the author), but they didn't even give him credit! This is the problem here, not that they distribute someone else's work. As stated above, this work would have been distributed freely and without any benefit for the creator anyway. They refused him the acknowledgement!
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Re:French? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:French? (Score:5, Funny)
All ze Americans are morons and deserve Bush.
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Re:French? (Score:5, Insightful)
What you want to do is refuse to help for several years even though your supposed friends are getting killed in the millions
Damned if they don't
Ensure that you become a superpower in the process and enjoy sixty years of fucking over the rest of the world!
Damned if they do
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Re:French? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:How could they? (Score:5, Insightful)
I found the article both amusing, intriguing, and irritating in that they're playing the games of the *IAA on the "theft" side.
What they have done is infringe copyright, which is just not playing fair. And for one of the "big boys" in the industry, who definitely do make money from releases, and continued patching (patches are, or should be, costed into the maintenance cycle of any computer product).
Legally, I'd say UBI are in the wring distributing the patch, as it is comprised of code they have not written. However, the cracker group would have to go and press charges to have this settled. And I'm not so sure they would be so happy to drop their facade of anonymity for this (all the companies that would love to know who they are, for the sake of taking a shot at copyright protection circumvention charges etc.).
As things stand, I don't think UBI will get the full legal hot water, however, they've just taken a massive PR hit, and the whole "holier than thou" stance taken by the games industry on copy protection has also been tainted.
As to why a patch has been released that's copied.. The no-cd cracks are widely distributed, so when they're 'mature', you have a very heavily tested patch, that may just fix an issue you need fixed. You can either spend ages getting the dev to identify the bug, work out how to fix it without breaking other things in the product, get a testing department to exhaustively test it to make sure it doesn't break, pass it through QA to make sure it's not affected any other things adversely, and have it passed backwards and forwards if things don't seem quite right.. Or you can grab some existing highly tested in volume code that does the job nicely.
Efficiency says that the second is the best option. However, to do that, they'd need the ok from the crack group, which the organisation probably wouldn't want to attribute on a release document. The joys of politics getting in the way of progress.
Given that they're not willing to attribute or deal with the 'pirates', then alas, their only option should have been to go their own way.
Methinks someone was a tad lazy and thought "it's all closed, who'll know?" without thinking it through.. After all, how does anyone work out how things have altered without going through patches with the proverbial microscope? You can pretty much guarantee that someone would find out the similarities...
Of course, there's also the option that one of the UBI devs is also in the crack group and simply reused the code s/he wrote in the first place, which would be even more interesting (and from an 'unofficial' aspect, probably more useful for UBI, as they can comply with uninformed investors clamoring for DRM, and at the same time slake the appetites of the masses who don't want the damned DVD in the drive as it's a pain in the arse! Best of both worlds).
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