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Ubisoft Steals 'No-CD Crack' To Fix Rainbow 6: Vegas 2
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sat Jul 19, 2008 05:10 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.
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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.
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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.
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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: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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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.
Parent
Re:Nope, (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
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).
Parent
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!
Parent
Re:French? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:French? (Score:5, Funny)
All ze Americans are morons and deserve Bush.
Parent
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).
Parent