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Australia The Courts Games Technology

Australian Federal Court Grants Publisher of GTA V Game Right To Search Homes of Five People Accused of Making Cheat Software (bbc.com) 131

The publisher of video game Grand Theft Auto V has been granted the right to search the homes of five people accused of making cheat software. From a report: The court order allowed Rockstar Games and its parent company, Take-Two Interactive, to search two properties in Melbourne, Australia, for evidence related to a cheat known as Infamous. The Australian federal court has also frozen the assets of the five, who have not yet filed a defence. The cheat went offline six months ago. It allowed players who paid about $40 to manipulate the gaming environment, generate virtual currency and use a "god mode" feature that makes players invincible.
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Australian Federal Court Grants Publisher of GTA V Game Right To Search Homes of Five People Accused of Making Cheat Software

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  • by Hentes ( 2461350 ) on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @09:12AM (#57491858)

    Was patching the game not an option?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      And why doesn't the police do the raiding? Australia, the former land of convicts of the Crown, the current land of convicts of the Corporations.

      • And why doesn't the police do the raiding?

        Because it is a civil lawsuit, not a criminal prosecution.
        The police are not involved.

        • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          I was stumbling over the irony of a game manufacturer who promotes criminality through their game decrying criminality of people while playing their game. It seems to me that they are only emulating the skills that the learned playing the game in the first place

      • And why doesn't the police do the raiding? Australia, the former land of convicts of the Crown, the current land of convicts of the Corporations.

        Do you seriously think company employees just turned up at someone's front door, flashed their Rockstar Games employee badges, and said they were there to search the place? No way they didn't have cops with them and said cops would have had the warrant. It's a badly worded headline.

      • And why doesn't the police do the raiding?

        They doesn't because they isn't* supposed to.

        *What the fuck is wrong with you mouthbreathers... is it all the aluminum??

        • by Anonymous Coward

          And why doesn't the police do the raiding?

          They doesn't because they isn't* supposed to.

          *What the fuck is wrong with you mouthbreathers... is it all the aluminum??

          Grammar nazi fail.

          The post you intended to make fun of is grammatically correct. While "police" can be used to refer to multiple individuals, it can also be used to refer to the police department as a single entity. Saying "Why doesn't the police do the raiding?" is just as correct as saying "Why doesn't the police department do the raiding?" as well as "Why doesn't he do the raiding?"

          Better luck next time, mouthbreather.

    • by Revek ( 133289 )

      Rockstar could also hire more personal to monitor games and drop the ban hammer. Its easier to go after the people that create the exploits than it is to fix the code or administrate the games.

      • or administrate the games.

        Adminstrate? Are you sure you didn't want "administrationize"?

        Or maybe, this is a wild thought, "administer"?

    • by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @09:28AM (#57491976)

      Ah yes, Civil litigation and disclosure is a pain in the A...

      Depending on what the lawsuit is about, this search may be well within bounds, legally anyway. I suspect that the making of money off of another's copyrighted software and selling customers "features" that where not generally available may have depressed the revenue of the game developer.

      I figure that there are two questions that justify this discovery... 1. We need to know if they developed their "hack" using any copyrighted information or did they just reverse engineer it? 2. How many customers did they actually have and how much money did they collect from them?

      Do note, that this is just discovery and both litigants are afforded large latitude in deciding what they want to obtain. As long as there is a plausible legal reason the search may turn up relevant information it will be allowed. Yes, this is a fishing expedition and yes it seems a bit draconian at times, but in the Civil Litigation world, it's how the rules are written.

      So this ruling doesn't mean the "hackers" are somehow being unfairly treated by the courts. It's just civil law doing it's thing.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Depending on what the lawsuit is about, this search may be well within bounds, legally anyway. I suspect that the making of money off of another's copyrighted software and selling customers "features" that where not generally available may have depressed the revenue of the game developer.

        Rockstar's lawsuit in the USA based on copyright grounds was quickly kicked out of court (this type of thing isn't a copyright violation or crime here) and so they switched to charges of fraud and unauthorized access under the CFAA for violating their EULA.

        Obviously Australia has different copyright laws than the US, so it's hard saying what grounds they are going with there, but it's quite possible there are also fraud charges involved along with copyright charges.
        That might explain the extreme nature of t

        • but when that EULA in front of a judge what will happen??
          When your defense wants it read page by page in court?
          When the jury needs to read over each page with lot's of questions for the court when they get confused?
          At the very least in case with an 100 page EULA they may just deadlock.

          • but when that EULA in front of a judge what will happen??

            EULAs have a tendency not to carry much weight in Australia. It becomes more of a legal / law based issue than an EULA based one.

    • Was patching the game not an option?

      Patching the program running on the user's computer is not a good option, because the user is in full control, and can overwrite or bypass any cheat prevention.

      In online mode, they should be able to patch the server to block cheating. But that may be difficult, or even impossible, to do without breaking the installed base.

      • Was patching the game not an option?

        Patching the program running on the user's computer is not a good option, because the user is in full control, and can overwrite or bypass any cheat prevention.

        In online mode, they should be able to patch the server to block cheating. But that may be difficult, or even impossible, to do without breaking the installed base.

        Online mode is the only one that matters when it comes to cheating and pretty much all games now come with automatic update features.
        For the virtual currency portion, it seems like it would be pretty straightforward to move the ledger to the server where it belongs and send
        an update to the clients to start using the server ledger. If the clients don't get the update then they would basically have zero currency as
        the server would stop recognizing the client side ledger.

    • GTA V seems to have much less server-side control than most multiplayer games. There's such a huge disconnect there that they can't even tell when somebody gave themselves a billion dollars overnight. I'm guessing it was an architecture choice to save them hosting costs, or some other form of "being cheap", but whatever the reason, client-side hax have been rife since the beginning. Rockstar seems to have done all they can on the client, short of verifying code in-memory, and pretty much still just relies

    • by DrXym ( 126579 )
      Who says they didn't patch the game? Even if they did it doesn't make up for lost earnings or economic harm that the company may believe itself to have suffered.
    • by mjwx ( 966435 )

      Was patching the game not an option?

      The problem is that is always a losing race. Patch one exploit, they'll find another (they probably have a few dozen on standby).

      The "cheaters" aren't players, there people selling access to the cheat. Ergo, these people have a vested interest in ensuring they're one step ahead of the manufacturer in the exploit race. We're not talking about them raiding the homes of a few people who accidentally ran ScriptHook in online mode (Scripthook tries to stop you doing this though), we're talking about people ma

  • ... all of this because the stupid half of mankind couldn't see buying drm enabled games and feeding microtransactions to companies would allow them undermine game ownership. Thereby taking away what every normal person who used to own their games do what they will with them, because they paid for it. This sick authoritarian feudal model is disgusting.

    • This is just civil litigation running though it's age old process of discovery and how one protects intellectual property. I'm not sure how one would do this differently and still be fair.

      How this has anything to do with some authoritarian feudal model is not obvious to me. I just looks like every other civil legal proceeding to me, which is anything but feudal or authoritarian, even in Australia.

      • This is just civil litigation running though it's age old process of discovery and how one protects intellectual property. I'm not sure how one would do this differently and still be fair.

        How this has anything to do with some authoritarian feudal model is not obvious to me. I just looks like every other civil legal proceeding to me, which is anything but feudal or authoritarian, even in Australia.

        They don't have to give you the complet software, GTA "online" was coded to be "online" in a specific way, in the 90's before high speed internet penetration was eveywhere, we got the multiplayer+server code (complete software) when we bought the game, aka we could play and use the game without permission from a server in their office 100's of miles away. They take part of the game hostage on computers in their office because they know the average person in capitalist society is an ignorant dipshit.

        So they

  • by Moblaster ( 521614 ) on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @09:16AM (#57491912)

    Hold on -- a private company can be given the right to search somebody's home in Australia? They have literally been given the legal right bust into multiple private citizens' homes? WTF? Is this life imitating art or some kind of crazy distopian future?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      That's exactly what I thought...

      And worse than that - They were granted this power based upon errors the company themselves made.

      Rockstar games is completely responsible for what's in the code of GTA, so bugs they left in allowed users to hack, and it's the users fault. There are online game rules that developers need to follow, that they are not:

      1) The client application cannot be trusted
      2) Verify incoming data, don't assume its accurate
      3) If data is sent to the client, the user likely knows what it is.

      • It used to be only way to not have any security bugs was to not have a computer networked, not have it plugged in, or with any batteries attached, have it sealed in concrete and buried in the ground.
        Unfortunately that isn't even true now with directed energy chip activation.
        Could Rockstar do a better job on anti-cheats, probably, but here we are talking about an organization purposely creating and selling a tool designed to interfere with other people's use of the same product, and company profits.
        Game
    • by Windowser ( 191974 ) on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @09:28AM (#57491988)
      In Canada, it's called a civil search warrant.
      It was used last year against a Kodi addon dev
      https://www.cbc.ca/news/busine... [www.cbc.ca]
      • by Anonymous Coward

        seems like fascism can take many names

        • by Anonymous Coward

          In this case, I suspect it's a holdover from the origins of Australia as a British prison colony. Stand aside while the warden tosses your cell.

    • Hold on -- a private company can be given the right to search somebody's home in Australia? They have literally been given the legal right bust into multiple private citizens' homes? WTF? Is this life imitating art or some kind of crazy distopian future?

      Yes, I'm curious if this is just a case of something being phrased poorly... Are they authorizing the police to search on their behalf- or literally giving them the right to search their property?

      The first is probably acceptable. The second most certainly is not.

      • Are they authorizing the police to search on their behalf- or literally giving them the right to search their property?

        They are requiring the accused to let the legal team in the presence of court staff in to look for and take only the specific piece of listed evidence that the plaintiff must first prove you already have and prove that you're likely to destroy.

        You can turn them down if contempt of court is a better option for you.

        The bar for these requests are insanely high so these orders are rarely given. They are called "Anton Piller Orders".

    • Hold on -- a private company can be given the right to search somebody's home in Australia? They have literally been given the legal right bust into multiple private citizens' homes? WTF? Is this life imitating art or some kind of crazy distopian future?

      Per accralaw.com: Intellectual property rights cases present a unique situation. In such cases, a search warrant may also be obtained and implemented even if the evidence sought is to be used in a civil or administrative case. This is a special rule applicable to intellectual property rights cases and is similarly applied in other countries where it is also called an Anton Piller Order, being based on the remedy provided to the complainant in the English case entitled Anton Piller KG vs. Manufacturing Pro

    • by ( 4475953 )

      I was astonished to hear that, too. Looks like an immoral deficiency of the Australian system to me, one that could be abused in many ways.

      • I was astonished to hear that, too. Looks like an immoral deficiency of the Australian system to me, one that could be abused in many ways.

        It would look like that if you don't research.

        a) you don't need to let these people in (though you would be in contempt of court if you do).
        b) this isn't some random person going through your shit, it is the plaintiffs legal team in the presence of court staff taking only specific listed evidence that they first must prove that you have and provide reasonable suspicion that you will destroy.

        There's been very few cases in the past century where "Anton Piller Orders" have been issued in Australia beacuse the

    • In TX if some private company just busted in to your home you can shoot them on the spot.

    • Hold on -- a private company can be given the right to search somebody's home in Australia?

      Because when everyone bought "internet enabled games", like mmos, companies got to reclassify them as services they own, aka part of the company, in the 90's games were completely disconnected from the internet so companies couldn't take control of the software, now when you buy a game they control the software from a server hundreds of miles away from the customer and the average consumer is clueless.

      When you buy any modern "game" it is coded in a way 100% hostile to you in that you no longer control or ow

    • No. A private company can never be given the right to search somebody's home in Australia.

      What this is is a court based requirement for you to let the discovery legal team of a private company in, under the supervision and presence of court staff. You have the right to refuse the search which will result in automatically being in contempt of court.

      The bar for such "Anton Piller Orders" is incredibly high, and only a couple of hundred have ever been issued. In civil matters the plaintiff basically needs to p

  • All of this can be described as Ass Access [youtube.com]

  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @09:31AM (#57492016)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I expect that if a private research lab discovered someone had taken samples of something they were working on then they might need to be involved in identifying who they thought had taken it, and law enforcement would likely need their assistance in identifying it when a search for it was conducted. Cops aren't experts on plasma physics, advanced chemistry, gene engineering, or even software, for that matter. The government still had to be convinced to furnish a court order, so the decision was still where
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Get off your high-horse about "intended experiences" and other such crap; and just put the cheat codes back into your games. Then people won't bother to waste time hacking at your code so they can race up & down Vice City Beach in the tank, with recoil of the back-facing gun making you zoom along faster than the Vice cops' Infernus, before they actually unlock all of the other islands.

    Not everyone enjoys games in the same way. The way some people enjoy the game you develop will not be the way you envi

  • Will apple do this to shutdown 3rd party repair?

  • Love the game, hate the cheating... it's going to kill the whole thing.

  • ...in a civil search like this what happens if everything is encrypted (as they should be), and/or in a cloud provider's storage?
    Do they have the "right" (using the term loosely) to seize devices they can't access like the US Border Patrol can?
    After 6 months, doubtless the victims (eg, those being searched) would have had time to prepare.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    To be judged by a kangaroo court.

  • Put all this time and effort into validity checking all events that happen in multiplayer and banning accordingly. Someone can't gain more than X money in 5 minutes, can't take X amount of shots from a gun without dying, can't be off the ground outside a vehicle for more than X seconds etc. Put in these basic cheat checks for a little CPU overhead or even review the data server-side and data, no more cheaters.
  • GTA V is a cash cow for Take Two. It is obviously in their interests to come down hard on people selling tools that deprive the company of revenue either directly or indirectly by griefing / cheating other players. It's too bad for the perps if they live in a country where they can be pursued through the courts.

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