GTA: San Andreas Leaked 705
Anonymous Coward cuts-and-pastes: "Less than a week after a pirated version of Halo 2 began appearing on the Web, another of the year's most sought after games has been stolen. Ironically, it also happens to be a game titled after a larcenous act itself. That's right. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has become the latest victim of piracy, with illegal copies of the game, its manual, and its cover appearing on various Web sites." Update: 10/21 13:54 GMT by Z : Rockstar adds some details to what we know about the crime in a press release covered by CVG.
Ms. Pacman (Score:3, Interesting)
Garcia Marquez's last book (Score:5, Interesting)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3745484.stm
But what Garcia Maruez did finally is he modified the final chapter of the book so the book in the street does not have the same ending than the published book. Quick reaction and probably a very good publicity campaign for boths, the pirate version and the published version
Re:Ms. Pacman (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ms. Pacman (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to love cracking BBC Micro games. I remember when FRAK! was released, it had some rather good (for the time) copy protection. It took me hours to crack, but eventually lady luck smiled on me and it was cracked.
I gave a copy to a friend of mine on the Monday.
On the Friday I went to see some old chums from Uni. about 150 miles away. Guess what? They had my cracked version!
And during the course of the year, every single copy of this game I cam across was my cracked version.
I later went on to develop and sell some of my own copy protection and had great fun hearing people bitch and moan about how they couldn;t crack it. Blew their mind when I told them I was the author.
Fun days.
Re:It's like a free ride when you've already paid. (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone wanna let Microsoft know that someone has substantively ripped off the text of their Halo 2-leak threat? "Microsoft takes the integrity of its intellectual property extremely seriously, and we are aggressively pursuing the source of this illegal act." http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/10/14/news_6110
Re:What Next? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not a good idea. USB devices can be easily emulated in software ( c.f. various "virtual cdrom" drives that appear as being on the USB bus ), and there is a well developed and sophisticated toolchain on nearly all platforms of note for debugging and analysing USB information flow.
Unfortunately, there is precious little other in the way of standardised ports to plug into. Some machines are even shipping without Parallel ports now, if the word I'm hearing is correct, which is a bit troublesome if you're trying, for example, to run Compumedics Profusion 2 which uses a parallel dongle.
YLFIThis Begs A Half-Life 2 Question (Score:5, Interesting)
So, hypothetically, if Half-Life 2 were to be pirated, I download the game, and I already have it paid for via Steam, is it illegal?
Piracy , but who benefit the most (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Has been happening for years (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably because marketing people have figured out that only big games are news when they're pirated, so now they try and make sure everyone knows when their game is pirated, because then people will think "oh, it must be big if it was pirated before it's even on the shelves! There must be a lot of demand, it must be an awesome game!"
Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if the software companies made it quite easy for a pristine copy to make its way into the hands of someone who will post it all over the place, simply for the press and to get word of mouth going by having people play it and ramp up the hype about it.
Re:Please don't copy it. (Score:1, Interesting)
Dupechecks beware (Score:1, Interesting)
When do we get nfo listings around here?
Re:What Next? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This Begs A Half-Life 2 Question (Score:1, Interesting)
Steam, and other such delivery systems should help this sort of pircay. The weak point in the system currently is that the finished game is in the hands of so many people, other than those that worked directly on the game. And hence, is more likely to leak.
When everyone is buying their games through steam, i can see stealing the game before its release being much much harder. It will be easier to secure the game when there is only one point of access. (unless you get hacked like valve
Re:What Next? (Score:3, Interesting)
So tactics like these are supposed to promote honesty and goodwill between the game makers and their patrons?
I've said it numerous times here before... I do not promote copyright infringement, but the industry really needs to just look the other way to a certain extent... there's going to be a break even point between how much they spend trying to prevent copyright infringement and how many more people will actually buy the game.
In other words, if you look at all the people who, if they couldn't "steal" the game, would actually buy it , I think you'll find that game companies/RIAA/MPAA are wasting their time and money and promoting illwill.
I know a lot of people claim to download games to try them out before they buy... I don't think it's justifiable for a couple of reasons, but did exactly the opposite; I used to download cracked versions of games (or instructions on how to crack them) I previously bought just to remove the shackles that prevented me from enjoying the game. If you're the game industry, you're claiming that as another lost sale...
Re:It's like a free ride when you've already paid. (Score:5, Interesting)
Copying this game isn't stealing in the usual sense of the word, like taking a physical asset from the owner. But you are potentially still causing them damage. Perhaps you would not have bought the game... but you're happy to share the copy of this game with your friends, and your friends' friends, some of which might be potential customers. Suppose everyone obtained their copy from a friend instead of buying it... even though no-one actually stole anything from Rockstar, they'd get no revenue from a product they probably spent several million on to develop. Many people counter this argument with a rationalisation "Oh, I would not have bought this game anyway, it's all the others causing the damage". Well, I can certainly believe that you wouldn't buy the game for $50 when you can get it for free... which is why you are still causing damage to the company by passing the copy onwards to others, thereby convincing them not to pay money for a legit copy.
Copyright is a rather artificial construct. Why would we allow publishers control over their work, if that work could be made to benefit the whole world without any additional cost to the publisher? Answer: because it still takes money to create the work, and publishers should be able to make a profit on it. Only a communist would demand that publishers and artists work for nothing... and that is what you are demanding when you state that it is OK to copy software. That, or you think that others should pay for the content you enjoy for free...
Of course there are reasons why copying actually helps rather than hurts: people can have a free preview, it's like free advertising for the publisher, etc. etc. But if you copy something and continue to use it, I have no problems calling you a thief of the artist and of those who paid for their legitimate copy.
And that should stop them? (Score:4, Interesting)
*snort* Yeah, and various software algorithms are standardised and the most obvious and simple answer to a question. It doesn't keep corporations from copywriting those. Free speech is becoming less free-like-beer these days.
Good (Score:3, Interesting)
That all being said, I am glad in a way that games are getting pirated, though it's not having the effect I'd like. My roommate downloaded Doom 3 before it was released, as (according to suprnova) did several hundred thousand other people. As a direct result, we wasted at least 20 minutes playing the game (waste is right) before we decided that it was hopeless - the graphics were phenominal - not realistic, but phenominal anyway. The physics was well-done as well, and the environment felt real.
The game, however, was terrible.
If I had bought the game for anything more than $5, I would have kicked myself, and even if I had paid $5, I could have gotten a pork roast for that and had a good dinner instead. It was a complete waste of time, and as much as we tried to justify playing it, eventually we got sick and gave up.
Doom 3 lost a lot of sales to piracy, not because people weren't forced to buy it, but because people realized they didn't WANT to buy it. If I download GTA:SA and I like it, I'll get it. If I don't, I'll delete it (well, I'll burn it off then lose the DVD, which is the same thing).
Thanks to the proliferation of broadband and bittorrent, piracy has become the way we test our content first. ISOs are the new game demos, Telesyncs are the new trailers, and media, for a good portion of those so-inclined in North America, purchases have moved into the honor system - every 'ware is shareware now, and people are starting to realize that it's easier to download and try it out than to haggle with the clerk at EB when they find out the much-hyped 'game of the century' is both uninspired and pointless.
So yes, I'm glad this is released - not necessarily before the game is out, but I don't honestly think that matters, except for the 'first-day sales' figures, and those are largely unaffected anyway.
--Dan
Re:It's like a free ride when you've already paid. (Score:2, Interesting)
EA threatened by piracy? Sony? Rockstar? Microsoft? No. Doom 3, Halo 2, GTA, and Half Life will all be huge sellers regardless of a few thousand kids with mod chips d/ling them.
The amount of piracy in proportion to the total installed base of consoles is so microscopic as to be negligible.(sp)
PC devs might have a better argument, but again, this is what happens when you gouge the consumer - 80 bucks for HL 2 with CS source? No thanks, assholes.
Information wants to be free (Score:2, Interesting)
The reality of the situation is simple - if the practice of creating and providing new art (software, music, whatever) is not profitable, there will be a great deal less content being made available to the masses.
Lots of people here are calling each other thieves and whining about infringement vs. theft and generally bickering, but I haven't seen anyone trying to fix the situation. How can we provide content that is freely shareable to the public, and yet ensure that content creators are appropriately (perhaps itself a matter for debate) remunerated?
I propose this - government sponsored artists who get paid based on the number of unique users of their product. Everytime I fire up my "free" version of Photoshop (or GTA, or Celine Dion's whatever) it shoots an informational 'bullet' at a government server where my IP, my unique machine ID and the content ID is recorded. The government tracks the number of unique users (but NOT! the identity of those users!!) of a given product and directly pays the content provider an agreed upon sum per use. The source of the funds could be an entertainment tax that is levied specifically for this purpose, and which you pay voluntarily. Those who pay get their unique ID issued, those who do not, don't. There may (and almost certainly would be) continued piracy, but I think the vast majority of people would willingly participate in such a scheme, because it simplifies the situation for them and it ensures that people who create content continue to get paid.
There would of course be losers in this scheme, and they would be those who currently occupy the position of 'middle man'. They would still be able to represent and promote artists, but artists would also be able to choose to forego that representation and promotion in favor of payments made directly to them.
Whaddya think?
Re:What Next? (Score:3, Interesting)
Bottom line: software has to be decrypted on your own system in order to run or play. Your system cannot be trusted. There is the fundamental vulnerability. There is no way to fix this, you can simply rely on time/reward investment to discourage people from doing it. However for mass market commercial products, once a single person cracks it, it's open for everyone. All that money you blew on the dongles, sw licenses etc. is out the window.
In actuality, there are enough people cracking CAD tool licenses such that as a student I never had problems learning how to use the ultra expensive chip synthesis tools etc. My school couldn't afford them, but some school in China funded their kids to go break the license, and shared the results. Fortunately we had a few chinese ex-patriots willing to share the wealth. Not trying to justify this, just showing how even a small niche market can bypass even more complicated dongle systems profitably. (No American corporation could get away with this, there are too many hostile eyes involved even in a "secret" design).
The bottom line is if you make excellent software, you will make money on it, even with piracy. How do I know this? The software industry went from almost non-existant, around the time of my birth, to the huge, hopeless gargantuan that we know today. Piracy has been there all along, for all the same reasons. Before the internet there were pirate BBSs, before that there was the corner SW shop with the cash only business in the back room.
Re:Clarification (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Clarification (Score:5, Interesting)
Great - another corporations-have-a-right-to-profit thinker. Corporations don't have a right to profit; they have a right to do business but whether they make profit depends on how they do it - it's not their guaranteed right that they will! They don't have a right to any sales revenue either if people decide not to buy their products.
So are the corporations. Who makes non-compete agreements? Enforces illegal trade restrictions? Lies with creative accounting practices to avoid paying equal share of taxes? Is a member of a cartel, and engages in price-fixing taking customers' money by illegal means?
How many times have those corporations' actions been discussed in the news recently compared to the mp3 music "thieves" and "pirates?" How many times has Congress proposed any legislation recently to combat the situation compared to what they have proposed and enacted to combat the "pirates?"
Gimme a break - next thing you'll tell me is that corporations have a right to break the law. Because we already know they have a right to bribe the Congress to enact new ones, making common sense illegal.
OK, maybe "theft" is the right word to use. After all, corporations in the entertainment industry alone have stolen 100s of millions if not billions in U.S. dollars over time from consumers using illegal means.
Look, I am no "piracy shop" supporter, and I don't know much about the Rockstar and its products or how all this applies in this case, but, for a general statement that you are making, having a one-sided view as if corporations' "rights" to profit are being violated is very ignorant of the whole situation.
Re:It's like a free ride when you've already paid. (Score:3, Interesting)
And as for the reasons, the best that the copyright advocates can come up with is that "companies have the right to profit", which is obviously baloney (even though in present-day USA some agree with that shit). Most other arguments are fallacies - "copying = theft", "what if nobody paid for software", etc.
Re:Clarification (Score:3, Interesting)
You are denying them the profit they have a right to.
Ah, another socialist? Since when do corporations (or anybody, for that matter) have a right to profit? By copying their game, you're not denying them their right to profit. They don't have that right to begin with. OTOH, if you copy the game, and then sell your copy, and don't pay any royalties, you will be committing copyright infringement.
Once upon a time, if money didn't change hands, no infringement had occurred. That's called "Fair Use". Copyright is supposed to temporarily secure (by creating) a person's right to commercially exploit their Creative Work on the free market. It is not supposed to prevent non-commercial uses of the word, and it protects some commercial uses (which is why we can include scene snippets from a feature film in a review if we wanted).
because the end result is that people are breaking the law.
If the law no longer represents the good of society and/or is no longer consistent with the intent of the law, and numerous attempts have been made to address the problems with the law and most/all have failed, what recourse would you suggest?
Re:Has been happening for years (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not saying this is the case with GTA:SA, but this is something that's been discussed for years:
Alternately, prepare a version that almost works, but shows defects that cause unplayability, oh, about a third of the way through the game (assuming 40 hours of playability). Make the defects such that they could be attributed to either a bad copy or slightly-working DRM, rather than actual code errors.
Leak _that_, get people playing it (and liking it), and then they'll be more likely to buy it once the "failure" happens, if the "real" DRM is good enough to create a disincentive to actual copying.
It's really just a sneakier way to market a demo, because its "forbidden" nature makes it more irresistable, it allows the company to generate more press then "yet another demo" would, and also continues the story arc of "woe is us due to piracy".
[Incidentally, some homegrown DRM schemes in published games have done exactly this for actual illegal copies. When a copy is detected, it doesn't stop play immediately; it only makes it impossible to play the game through to completion, either by subtly "breaking" the gameplay or else by waiting until a specific point in the game and then letting the player know explicitly that the copy has been detected, and the game won't be finishable. Deferring notification of detection turns the game into a very effective crippled demo. If I recall correctly, Spyro or Spyro 2 did this, from reading a development team post-mortem, and I remember there was a game back in the black-and-white Mac days that would play normally for a time, then display the message "Piracy is a very serious offense." and exit.)