When a publisher needs a binary crack to get the own games running, we can assume they themself have no access to source code or the required build chain anymore. To me that is the really embarrassing part of the story.
Eh, I wouldn't be that bothered about that part as the game is over 20 years old. Rereleases weren't much of a thing back then. I'd say companies that kept the source code back then, after the product was not going to get any more commercial releases, were the exception, rather than the norm.
@@Joseph-ke3xc Well, if you want to re-release the product you better have the effort to get the chain running on modern systems, because otherwise your release wont be very stable or even able to utilize the hardware at all. After all, they want to earn money from it.
Ah, DRM. Costs money to implement, costs money in PR, costs money in support, then costs money to remove (which rarely happens because hey it cost money and we fired the devs ages ago). Truly a necessity in modern gaming.
Right?! I spent HOURS with Rockstar Games Support because even themselves didn't know that you CANNOT launch Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC when your computer is disconnected from the Internet.
Back in the day when games were 3-4 GB in install size, getting a 320 GB hard drive and filling half the desktop with shortcuts was truly an experience. No CD cracks were a must.
truly an experience. now 3 generations of windows later, and you cant even restart it without all the icons getting birdshot blasted all over the desktop
@@axethepenguin i mean, it still runs on pretty much the same kernal as the very first windows.... hence backwards compatibility and being able to chose windows 95. but imo windows vista even more useful than windows 10/11. ive been using windows 10 for the past 5yrs, and still completely avoid the taskbar LOL... honestly was really hard going from freedom of file access, to having to right click the file explorer just to open up my drives, and many computers i diagnosed is where explorer.exe causes issues LOL
I pirate now a day because I use to be a a nice paying customer. I have over 1000 games multiple platforms today but when even the game that I bought doesn’t run I have to get a crack to make it run correctly. Not condoning piracy but I definitely don’t support the current trend of release broken games and day one patch them later if it cant run on my system I dont want it
Par for the course anymore. Pirated gamers get everything unlocked (example: Hogwarts legacy) and don't have to deal with those annoying launchers. They make me want to pirate more and more every single game
This happened to me. Bought a game (one of the LEGO Star Wars games) and even though I paid for it, it couldn't run because of the piracy methods! So I went to the Net, downloaded a CD crack and played the game with that.
If I was razor I would employ a check that makes the crack not work if this signature is erased. I don't know if they actually did that. Someone can check. I don't think they expected companies to steal cracks, but other hacking groups, yes, and it already happened in the past.
@@AleksPizanaoh you sweet misguided kids. They don't want to do it right because they don't care, they know anything they list will sell enough to cover the cost of labor to put it up for sale.
I think you would have to prove that the gains from reselling the cracked product outweigh the losses of the pirated product. Even still, do you think Rockstar would leave money on the table if an existing crack didn’t exist? I’m sure they could hire someone like MVG to crack the title. Lone wolves are out there cracking the games for clout. They can afford to pay someone.
@@GamesFromSpaceYou assume that the people that pirated the game would buy the game. Also, since there are no demo versions of this game, many people use the seven seas version in order to know is a game they would like and not. Finally, some DRM are just developer sanctioned MALWARE.
I think the words you're looking for to describe NoCD cracks in their day is "quality of life". As we can probably all remember, DRM really only ever punished legitimate users.
I still can't believe that certain games get a horrid reputation among circles because Denuvo makes it run poorly on PC...and then they bring Denuvo to switch! Screw DRM, lmao.
Yep, I really miss those days, I was too broke to afford games back then so I had to wait until a group would release a crack to be able to play. Nowadays I'm so broke that I can't afford any gaming platform, I haven't played a game since 2011.
30s 😂😂😂😂 Try 53 Lil homie. I was in this very scene. Seen alot of Razors stuff. There was actually several groups. Another couple old groups. Extalia, & Hackers Alliance. So by trying to be first to make releases. Hackers Alliance released the first Wall hack for the do called unhackable Call of Duty 2. Whats funny about that is. The hack was released 2 days after the full version of Call of Duty 2 released. They had released a demo version of the game. In which the EXE, which was the same as the full release. Which is the real reason the hack release was only 2 days out. Just long enough to test it on the full release. It was a slap in the face to the boasting of it being unhackable. Even BlackBart took the L on his scanner. Simple bit hacking to make it look at a clean directory vs hacked one lol.
as anal retentive as they are. they should be FORCED to sue themselves. and also be required to not only give monetary compensation to the og crackers for their own brazen theft.
That would make sense taxes wise. As money you get from a court case is not subject to taxation. Meanwhile money you lost due a court case can be put as an expense. So is a win win if you sue yourself. If you win, you get to pay yourself tax free money while placing the amount you spend a business related cost. If you loose you counter sue yourself and do the same. The only reason is not common is lawyer fees.
@@RicardoSantos-oz3ujyou're still paying yourself with money you acquired before your own lawsuit. All you are doing is spending money on lawyers, and advertising that you aren't double taxed as opposed to single taxed... not sure what your point is even remotely here
It’s not about old source code , it’s to do with new employees with modern systems who might not know how to work with old compilers. I have some game dev experience. My software going from version 5.0 to 5.0.1 destroyed my work. I tried fixing every line of code but its was endless error loop . I just had to redo the whole thing and make sure never to update programs during ongoing projects.
It comes full circle. Pirates crack the executable for a game in turn making it "free". Game developers "steal" the crack and sell it back to gamers. 😂
...and unfortunately, too many "gamers" are too stupid to realize it... they just keep dumping money into these huge companies' pockets like mindless drones waiting to be screwed out of more money with the release, the re-release, the re-re-release, the 'special edition re-re-re-release.... all (of course) overhyped and overpriced. It's like prostitution - sell the same thing over and over, each time claiming it's "new". 🤣
I'm surprised you didn't mention that Rockstar used the improper crack version and the game throws every anti-piracy measure it has at you making the game unplayable. It starts up, but you can't really progress unless you do some hexediting of the executable to fix things. This has been a complaint for a long time, but Rockstar seems not to care to fix it themselves anymore. The broken game is still being sold on Steam.
Oh the irony. Same can be seen with EA's Spore on Steam. The game is absolutely broken and the only known ways to functionally play it is either the EA launcher (ew.) or a crack (which is what I'd use if it weren't for the fact that I need to access servers to enjoy 99% of the game!)
No not really. The CD (and DVD) players first picked up the disc and spun it, stopped it completely and returned it down to the tray. Only reason for scratches was bad user handling
@@michaelbuckers Wasn't that written in an understandable way? Everyone expects their mechanic to do a good job on a huge variety of brands, models and engines. Is it really so far out that the CD/DVD drive manufacturers expect users to be capable of 1 single repeatable task, that's completely the same for almost every single disk drive in the world, at a level where the disk doesn't get damaged?
@@jr2904Oh we do, believe me we do. But most companies are often a POS who exploits their developers and customers as much as possible. Most games nowadays are often designed to rip you off. I'm not going to give money to companies that don't deserve it.
@@jr2904 I'm sure you DO care about draconian DRM software being installed on your system for a game your legally purchased, right? Well that was the response to zero-day cracking because those companies wanted to protect their bottom line. It was a direct response to the over-zealous cracking scene. Game companies would much rather be investing in development, not copy protection, but if they're losing more money to piracy than to the cost of developing and implementing DRM, they're going to invest in DRM.
The main thing that comes to mind for me in these cases is - the next step. The equivalent thing happening nowadays. All those stupid "games as a service" that end up shutting down, rendering them unplayable, but were genuinely good games. For the more popular games, there's people attempting to bring private servers and such online, so they can be played again -- Will those be the next in line for the publishers to bring back up again, and grab the hard work of those people that actually cared about the games?
Private servers won't happen for most games, look at test drive unlimited or combat arms or other games where the IP owners even tho they don't care about the games, they shut down private servers or force them into something dumb, test drive unlimited 2 private server requires a legit copy of the game which just requires you to buy it again since old copies didn't depend on launchers like these days Combat arms private servers straight up got shut down even tho the still running servers are borderline unplayable League of legends also had incidents with private servers, they all got threatened with DMCA even though they were of versions 7 years ago that can't be played otherwise
The only reason I used No-CD cracks back in 2005 was because my 48x CD-ROM drive made a terrible loud noise. Luckily I can now still hear with my right ear.
True Crime devs: Hey we will just copy Rockstar and will make an open world game! Damn it if they call it a GTA-clone Rockstar: We will just copy them and will do things that can be considered True Crimes.
The problem with CD-ROMs was that they became more worn out the more often you inserted them into your drive. I had many cases where my CD-ROMs became so scratched, the computer couldn't read data from them anymore, and consequently, my games refused to boot up anymore, asking for the games disk to be inserted. When that happened, you had two choices: pay for another CD or download the NO-CD crack
Still, CDs were a massive improvement over floppies... How many times back in the day did I end up with a bad sector on floppy #24 halfway through a Windows install... CD's were pure magic!
I just tended to put them in the cases when I took them out and handled them correctly at all times. The only reasons they became scratched was because careless children would scratch them.
Getting caught using a nocd patch is embarrassing for R*, but my real problem with the whole thing is that they’re selling a copy of Manhunt on steam that literally doesn’t work for paying customers because it’s been patched poorly
How do you know it's embarrassing for them? If you owned your car free and clear and you wanted to kick in the sides of your sheet metal, that's your own business. I promise you, the only people that care are people who not full filled in their lives and instead worry about other peoples business instead of their own.
@@all.day.day-dreamer Get f****d. It's the business of all gamers, as it impacts anyone unfortunate enough to purchase a copy of this broken, and embarrassingly poorly patched game.
It's ironic that these companies don't like piracy and try to crack down on them. But when it's suits them they use it lol. Surely this practice could be use against these companies should they try to sue these groups.
If rockstar didnt own the ips then sure. But at the end of the day they can use these cracks to run their games all they want because they down own the games
That doesn't change the hypocrisy, simply embarrassing for rockstar no matter if they're legally allowed to do so, that's why they pulled it off steam. .@@isaac-ga @LolWutMikehSM
Lately people have been praising BG3 for no MTX in their game, but everyone fails to mention how Larian alongside CDPR are one of the very few AAA devs who publish their games day1 without DRM both on Steam and GOG. It shows as long as you make a good game and price it reasonably people will buy it
It's just as Gabe Newell said. The best anti-piracy method is to convince people, not that pirating your software is bad, but that getting it legitimately is a good idea.
Or a full VM of your build host. I would imagine that's the biggest issue. Backward compatibility with software is atrocious, and it's highly likely that 1) the source tree wouldn't build correctly on modern tools; and 2) the original tools would probably not run well, or at all, on modern OSes. So the only way to rebuild from source would be to have a full Windows XP (or whatever) host in fully working order, with contemporary Visual Studio, etc. etc.
I agree it's hilarious, but I don't think it's any lesson for publishers. It's a brilliant move. Regardless of personal feelings, the warez groups did illegal things the companies didn't want them doing. Now it's come full circle where the companies need to do the same thing, and they can save money by simply taking the work from the warez groups. It's not like they can complain. They can't copyright their cracks, and even if they could it would be against the principles they made them under. If anything, they should be happy their work is being taken and shared without compensation. It's hilarious. I love it.
@@AlbatrossRevenue 2 minutes. It took 2 minutes of Googling to find out that game cracking groups are FAMOUS for not charging for the games they crack. They do it for ego and competition with each other. See who can crack faster and neater. Some take donations, just like some hacking groups take donations even when they aren't hacking for any monetary gain. Some don't even release the games they crack. And some of the more famous game cracking groups have no problem with DRM. If anything, it's just a bigger challenge, and more bragging rights to crack. But yeah. This doesn't take work from them, because it's not work. It's a hobby.
@@AlbatrossRevenueNo. On a broad scale, this all literally screams, "Rockstar say using cracks is fine." It's a PR disaster - from their point of view, mind you.
I saw similar move in music industry. One of my favorite groups just uploaded low quality "cracked" version of their song to their official youtube channel. The song has voice of someone telling the name of the website they took the song from.
@@Coregame3because paying customers are the ones that have to deal with not being able to play the game due to bugs or server checks that the DRM implements. Person with the cracked exe doesn't have any of those problems. I'm against software piracy, but I'll still use cracks to remove DRM from games I've legally purchased.
@@saadhero9107 Riot Vanguard anti-cheat does it when installing games by Riot, then requires the PC to be restarted in order to install itself at kernel level. Not sure about any DRMs though.
@@Coregame3 Denuvo is infamously hard to crack and costs a notable chunk of performance - this is due to the way it checks the legitimacy of the game. Cracked Denuvo games have been shown to run at higher framerates than legitimately bought and installed versions of the game because the DRM was removed.
@@Honeypot-x9sThey wouldn't win. This is law 101. The moment they touched Rockstar's game, Rockstar owns all their work. It's why they can shut down any mod they choose no matter what work you put into it or how original the work is.
it surprises me that the studio publisher didn't keep a DRM-free copy of their games for situations like this. But also I guess it makes sense because everyone thought CDs were gonna be the future forever during the dial-up era.
the witcher 3 did that.. someone from inside, leaked the denuvo-free exe online, i have been very thankfull and because it was a good game i've bought it.
Back in the day, installing the no-cd crack was basically a mandatory part of the installation process, even when you bought the game. You see, we didn't have computers with tons of cores like we do nowadays, and the computer spinning up the CD drive brought the entire system to a halt. And it was, like, really loud, too.
I remember my parents e-machine disc drive would get so loud playing games I legitimately thought the rumors about exploding CDs might just happen to me lmao
It's embarrassing, but what can anyone do about it? Like if someone from Razer tries to knock on their door and try to sue for plagiarism, Rockstar is gonna turn right around and ask if they had anything to do with these million illegal downloads. Reminds me of the 'Breakfast can wait' cover art.
how exactly is it embarassing? if they dont want the drm anymore or have access to the source code, why not? theyre pirated versions,rockstar owes them nothing.
Literally this. While I don't distrust these crackers in particular, in theory these games could contain malicious code because Rockstar did the lazy thing and grabbed a crack instead of doing it themselves. There are in fact several groups that HAVE inserted malicious code into their cracks in the past, so it's baffling when people like the one you're responding act as if it's really nothing to be concerned with. @@mikeywhelan2362
These scene groups allowed me to play games at a young age when my parents couldn't afford video games. Growing up I began to hack and network and now I'm a Net Admin. All self taught and inspired by these guys.
@@francesfuego6950 not too bad as long as you are technical and good at problem solving. Getting games for free evolved into setting up custom wow server and learning networking to make it open to public. Then that got me into media servers then setting up a website for wow server. You learn about what dns is and port forwarding. Then before you know it your configing firewalls
Too bad its their game. If they don't give the ability to modify the game by default, you violated their terms to gain access to their content. Which if you took said content that was protected and released it publicly, it would violate copyright. The crack isn't a change of the game in anyway, no mechanics are changed, no gameplay changes, nothing but the launcher.
There is a glaring security issue here. How do they know the cracked version doesn't contain hidden back-doors, etc? They are using un-vetted code for production release.
Well, just for conversation, they probably harmed sales at the time by cracking those games, so in a way it is only fair for rockstar to compensate their loss. In the end, i think that what matters is that we can play those games today, at the time i used NO CD cracks for their convenience, i don't see a problem using them today to the same end :)
@@OlivierGrasakaoloWell, just for conversation, studies have shown that pirated games and movies cause no significant, measurable damage to the rights holders. In very short, it became evident that most of the people using them simply would not have bought the media either way and instead just not consumed it. The amount of people who actually would have bought something but then didn't only because it could also be pirated is marginal. Almost (?) all studies suggesting the opposite are financed and commissioned by the large anti-piracy lobbyist groups.
@@Nitidus i don't say novd cracks where bad, far from it, having used them myself. Just saying i don't see harm to these groups, al those years later, if their work still allows us to play these games :)
the fact that he makes sure to get english voices too, since he's russian, is great as well. he could just make vids towards russians like many others, but he intentionally tries to make his findings as accessible as possible.
I doubt they lost the source code. Anyone who's been in software development for a long time would know that building an old game / app from source code isn't always easy. There's always external dependencies including the operating system, tooling, compilers and libraries, etc that can be extraordinarily difficult to recreate.
A more confusing caveat: on the "updated" GTA titles they re-released had notes commenting out code with workarounds. The new engineers didn't know how the source code functioned and noted that. It suggests ineptitude, certainly, but access to source.
@TheFifthHorseman_ After 15 years in the field as a dev and a PM, it's ineptitude. The code/maths don't change much, just individuals' knowledge and understanding of it. When I hired the best engineer that we ever had, he looked through the code and understood it all without being given any context. He came into a stack 12 years in development and read it line by line. Good engineers spot the weaknesses and bolster. We are also talking about the remastered GTA Trilogy release. They were so broken that they were virtually unplayable at certain points. Ineptitude... unquestionably.
@TheFifthHorseman_ also, the inverse square is decades old at this point. Not a great example because you seem to focus on the reduction to tribal knowledge, but it's on other engineers to innovate and continue learning. They could have 100th monkeyed. They could have simply learned more math. Doctors, lawyers, etc have to constantly educate themselves at the same time they are practicing their craft. It still comes down to the next engineers simply being less capable than the previous ones.
CD DRM was always a massive joke. I was never going to dig through piles of games to find the one CD i needed, so i obviously used no-cd cracks for all of my games
What probably happens is they hire someone to officially crack it so they can get it on steam. The person then just grabs the hacked version from the internet but holds off for a couple of days, filling out timecards, pretending that they're working on it. Finally, it submits it to the company, grabs a paycheck (probably with a bonus for getting it done so fast), and then moves on to the next project. The company probably doesn't know because not knowing how to crack is why they hired out in the first place.
if they do this, and there isnt a clause in the hiring contract that says you cannot do this, theyre somehow even more incompetent than letting this happen knowingly
It doesn't really matter how it happens. If they hire someone or not. They're responsible for the final product. It's like a studio making a game, the game flops, and they blame the programmer. No, that's not how it works, it's the studio that must bear the blame, or the CEO of that company.
Looking forward to seeing the Razor 1911 longform video! Also a video on the "keygen" apps from back in the day would be awesome, the ones with those awesome chiptunes!!
the razor demos were my favourite part of cracks. i have watched every one back then and they were like 8kb in size, it was pretty impressive to me and i loved the animations
Looking forward to your Razor 1911 video. This is not surprising, it's smart, there is most likely no way they can crack their own DRM, and it's just really embarrasing.
I'm much more interested in the Razor1911 story you mentioned! I'm 43 now, I was 5 when Razor1911 started it would seem, I remeber years worth of using NOCD cracks and would always seek out Razor1911 NO-CD cracks first. Look forward to the video when it's ready for sharing :)
Super excited about the teased Razer 1911 video. Cracking groups are something that have always been so mysterious to me since I was a kid. I remember the first time I downloaded some cracked software that had a really fancy installer with music and flashy graphics with the group group name (don't remember what it was) when I was about 13, it was really exciting but in a weird way scary and made feel like I was part of a secret society. Can't wait, keep the amazing work as always MVG!
A LOT of the scene people also go on to create some of the greatest games ever made. Many of the most talented people developed their skills in groups like Razer 1911. DICE (makers of Battlefield) is a typical example. Just go and take a look at intros like 'We Have Accidently Borrowed Your Votedisk' here on RUclips and keep in mind that it's made with 64k of data. That's as much memory as it takes to store a single Windows icon. The people who claim that piracy hurts gaming more than it helps have no clue what they're talking about. Without the scene and inseparably; piracy, gaming would be in a far worse shape today.
Haha, I just have to reply here, because I felt EXACTLY the same as a teen. I'm still fascinated about the whole subculture, the history, the legends and rumors, the connections to art, to the computer industry, the gaming industry, foreign commercial pirates etc. Watching a cracktro, a game rip installer, ascii art in an nfo, and listening to chiptunes in keygens still gives me those vibes.
Wow, Razor 1911 is a name I've not heard in a long time. Even used NoCD cracks on games I legitimately purchased because it was so damn annoying not to.
It's genuinely concerning that publishers are shipping third party executables that can't be verified (that I know of). For all we know they may have sourced a compromised executable from a sketchy website and be distributing it to thousands of people. All because they included borderline malware with their game and now they can't be bothered to remove it.
manhunt on steam had issues launching due to using a crack for an old operating system. its lucky that not checking the code only lead to the exe not launching.
@@randomprotag9329not quite. They originally shipped the razor 1911 crack, which would've worked perfectly but wasn't compatible with windows Vista or newer iirc, so they replaced it with their own crack. But that one didn't remove the antipiracy measures properly, so the game is unplayable without patches
If i remember well, their main argument to try to scare us away from downloading cracks was that it probably contained viruses. It’s so funny to see them now installing those cracks in people’s PC without people even knowing it.
Every game I had for my secondhand Amiga back in the day was cracked, I wouldn't have had any games otherwise. I used to go with my brother to his Commodore Club meetings and that's all everyone did was pass around cracked floppy games and make copies. Pretty much everything I had started with a cracktro/trainer from groups like Razor 1911, SKIDROW, Fairlight, TRSI, etc.
It'd be interesting to see if one day these instances of this happening will be used as a defense for piracy / software preservation in legal battles. I doubt that lines up with our current "reality", but would be interesting nonetheless.
@@SelfieCasteither way, this (and back when nintendo did the same thing w/ virtual console) is a slam-dunk argument in favor of piracy for anyone who may have been on the fence. it's gone from a good idea that publishers hate to a necessity that publishers directly profit from.
If you even took a cursory glance at the Crack scene, you recognize these names. I remember being a broke kid back in the day just wanting to play games I couldn't afford.
@d33pblu3 As long as you aren't selling it then who cares. Game company wasn't going to get money for it from the individual pirate anyways. Sometimes if the game is good, they actually even make a sale! Piracy is a net positive!
It's anything but embarassing, it's just exactly the opposite what the scene did with their products, And now they just do it the other way around, it's perfectly smart!
I love Razor1911, Myth, Fairlight, Skidrow. Because of these groups I was able to test and play so many games. I didn't stop purchasing, but I used it to pick out what to purchase.
For real man. Can't tell you how many times I was ready to drop 60 dollars on a game only to try it out off skidrow and find out it sucked. When modern gaming is just early access garbage, and low effort cash grabs, we are forced to make better investigations into the quality and real worth of a product before spending our hard earned money. Then we are labeled as cyber terrorists and all the rest of that junk. Every game that I've ever tested and liked, I now own a paid copy of. I support quality dev studios. I do not support bad ones. They are simply angry they cannot scam you.
Same. I won't pretend that I didn't pirate purely so I could play games for free. As a teenager with no income/allowence, parents that weren't going to buy me a game simply because I wanted it, and a pretty low end PC, piracy was the ONLY WAY I got to experience PC games. Half the time they couldn't even run on my hardware. Almost every PC game I actually paid for, or received as the rare gift as a kid/teen, couldn't actually run at a playable performance. Piracy was not only a way to get free games, it was a way to not waste money on games that I couldn't run. Haven't pirated anything in well over a decade, but, I'm grateful for it, especially the Razor 1911 releases. They released those cracks FAST too!
Back in the day most cracked games were originally sourced through magazine review teams, quickly followed up by the duplication companies then the distributors which is how they got them early enough to get them cracked before official release. But there were occasions when someone on the inside of the publisher would also be involved most of the time for money. Fun times.
No-CD cracks are not only for piracy per se, we had 3 PCs and wanted to play network. I know the EULA says "1 license per PC", but seriously, who walks out and pay 3x full price for the same game just to play over network?! The other thing was simply that our 40x CD drive was so loud and it would spin up for small things. Having it on HDD eliminated that too.
That's why in more recent times we supply publishers with unencumbered clean executables (actually an EXE or a DLL) along with the "final retail" executable with the DRM / "anti-tamper" of their choice built from the same exact revision (sometimes the DRM is added to the clean executable in a post-build step, so that makes it even easier). Because best practices were not established yet and / or not followed back then, so much original final source code and project revisions are now lost forever for some of the most beloved classic games (until someone maybe reverse engineers it). Even if these were such cases with Rockstar, this is still shameful. They should be able to remove the DRM without stealing someone else's work, even if that work was originally meant for piracy (and is probably seen as unlicensed derivative work breaking a law or ten). It's just such a bad attitude, even when seen from the publisher's point of view. You know, "Two bads don't make a good." or however that saying goes in your part of the world.
Honestly I think the more embarrassing part is how they half assed their own crack of Manhunt when they got caught using the Razor 1911 crack (which is still there as testapp), rendering the game basically unplayable because the game's anti-piracy measures trigger due to the DRM no longer being present.
oh man, you explaining what a no-cd crack was made me feel like im old. I remember using those to play tons of games way back in the early '00s. Razer 1911 and Reloaded were my go-to for years and years. haha
Having the source code on hand is merely half the battle, the bigger issue is getting ahold of the build environment that was around at that time - Especially the pre-2010 era is notorious for a lot of custom stuff built around junk compilers and tools from companies that aren't around nowadays or don't want to give you a license (Because you lost your Microsoft Visual C++ 6 copy).
Exactly. Plus you need to have graybeards around that know how to use the toolchain. All to make a few bucks off Steam. Would have been easier to just have an intern hex edit the EXE and remove those warez signatures.
yeah, as funny as I think this is, I too understand how hard it is to simply update a game. Kayne and Lynch has been removed from sale on Steam pending an update for about 4 years now. I'm sure Square wants to sell the game, it's picked up a following within the past 4 years, but I think they lost everything to make that happen. Rockstar closed down the studio that was responsible for Manhunt 2 and I think they closed down the team for Manhunt 1 as well. (Manhunt 2 was made by R* Vienna which lasted until 19 months before the game came out). While Manhunt was made by R* North they had a couple of smaller studios/teams under that label and they were all shutdown shortly after The Warriors came out. So I highly doubt they still have anyone who worked on Manhunt, outside of a lead position, at Rockstar. I know almost everyone who worked on Manhunt 2 was let go, except for the London team that finished it off.
Thank you! That’s the part I don’t get about this, and I didn’t know if it was because I don’t fully follow the gaming space - but if they were going to use the cracked versions removing the group’s signatures should have been like a one minute job, right? And I’m doubtful anyone would have caught them if they had taken that simple step. I mean, I get the reasons why they used the cracked version, but not removing Some characters is just lazy incompetence.
I believe get to work these compilers are a pain to work with, but maybe they are able to find someone that takes the challenge. even so there is still the problem to read and understand the mess of source code and hacks from that era to make the game work, and finally find understand and remove all checks related to drm, that normally are obscured by default
Yup. It keeps my interest up, keeps me distracted and eventually once or twice a year I'll buy something discounted that I would NOT buy otherwise. So yeah, they get my money thanks to me being able to play pirated the rest of the year when I'm broke.
@@socio637Entire countries' gaming industries are based on piracy. Particularly in the east, where "legitimate" software is too expensive. Not so ridiculous.
I live in Europe and I remember when back in 2002 I bought GTA3 at the big store. The game had a DVD box that contained couple of CD-roms and one of them were literally installation disc that had crack on it. It was official distribution of that game in that part of Europe. it's nothing new, but I guess a lot of people don't know about it because back in a day it was very easy to buy pirated copies for the fraction of the price and almost everyone did it.
I remember in 2005-2006 in Turkey they would sell you white dvd's with whatever game you wanted burned on it for the equivalent of 2 or 3 euros, it was the good times
My dad used to buy cracked games from people who brought it in via Mexico. I just wish most of the discs survived so I didn't have to dig for games online. I do have plans in the future to try and dump a bunch of my library to heavy duty CDs for preservation sake
GTA V is so dumbed down for casuals over IV , its not even fun to drive vehicles they have no weight to them or take any skill to drive. i have such low hopes for VI , R* are not what they used to be
Would love to see your work on Razor 1911! Not only them, but other scene groups from the 80's and 90's. I wasn't around PC Gaming at the game (for a lot of those years, I wasn't even born lol), so more information on those that came before the scenes we know now is very much appreciated
This is exactly why I reject virtue signaling. We've heard this before where companies use emulators, rom dumps, now CD cracks. Someone phrased it the best when they said "Companies are going to do what is in their best interest and I will do what is in my best interest."
My biggest worry about this is malware. If they didn't remove the watermarks, they've probably never checked the executables for malicious behavior. I guess it's time to run all games in VMs
these are NoCD cracks released by reputable groups with no vested interest in infecting the end user, even back then. it's just R* and other devs taking a shortcut.
Quartex. Oh man. The Amiga cracking/demo scene was a great time to be alive. I still remember the Amiga version of Final Fight having a legit demo tune for the intro song of the game, instead of the original theme song!
@@RogueBoyScout I was a bit too young for that, but my father was part of HORiZON, SSS and some other groups for Amiga and C64 and knows a lot of the old sceners mainly in the Swedish scene (FLT etc)
This is sadly not uncommon for game companies. Do you remember the popular RTS game Total Annihilation? This was one of many games that required you to have the disk in order to play at all. When Wargaming acquired the rights to Cavedog, they released TA on Steam. What they did is download the cracked files for the game to no longer need the disk, install them, and then sell the hacked version of the game.
This also reminds me how much i hate always online games that are mostly a single player experience. For example Steep, The Crew1, NFS 2015, etc. These are some of many games you'll spend an overwhelming majority of your time playong alone and rarely have proper multiplayer interactions, but due to them being always online and publishers not making offline patches or giving away methods to produce servers for those games, will always be stuck with an undetermined expiration date.
How rockstar handled manhunt must embarrass them not only did they rely on a crack for a game that they should have a clean version easily available or easily cleaned, they also messed it leading to DRM that few people experienced being commonly experienced on brought copies.
@@noisebeats The thing is that you cannot tell if the crack they used was malware free (unless you manually check that), even if the original crack was, the one they've got may have been modified by someone else. Also, just because "it works", it doesn't mean it must be malware free. Some malware may run in background, without your knowledge.
@@Bartek533A lot of warez compete on each other. They can "nuke" (basically made a superior version) other cracks if the crack doesn't work properly, or has malicious code. Windows Defender is smart enough to tell you that the .exe contains malicious code instantly
It would probably be best if someone who cares at the studio plans ahead to have "remove DRM" in the budget when the game is still getting active support. Similarly for dependency on servers, would be great if "release server code" be on that list. Once that ship has sailed things get tougher. I actually had a great experience once involving Raven Software and id Software. Not too long after the Doom-1993 source code was released, I e-mailed Raven around Easter in 1998 if they would be willing to release the source code to Heretic and Hexen. They responded that they would need to remove some proprietary/licensed elements and perform some general cleanup. They did so and released the source code not too long after. A good example of things getting tougher down the road though is that later it appeared more effort was needed to officially provide a workable open-source licence with it, but probably due to limited available resources/low prioritisation this last bit took many years.
Personally, I think they should have their content removed from Steam until they can release their own games with their own code. They made us pay the price for their DRM and now is a great time for them to pay their dues as well.
I'm looking forward to your Razer Docu. I remember working at Volition and we were trying to show off an early alpha build of Saints Row the Third, and we needed to re-build it from source code. Even though we were able to get the full code from the Perforce Repo, We still couldn't build it because even getting a dev environment that's 7 or 8 years old is very difficult to do in a day or two. We never used cracks though because it was for alpha versions of the game that were never meant to be sold ;)
On mobile it's even worse. Android/iOS projects pull libs from external repository. Here are some problems with that. A repo could get shutdown or moved to another domain. A lib could get deprecated. An outdated lib could get rejected by a store owner. If you have to update the lib it could pull some dependencies that may break the build. Sometimes you have to update the source code to incorporate changes from the updated lib. Bottom line is if you haven't touched a mobile project in a year it would take time to figure out how to build it. Imagine what issues might come up with a 20 years old project.
Volition was a great dev studio man. Like Westwood, Novalogic, Origin Systems, Bullfrog etc. - FS2 and RF were the shit! And ofc the fact you released the FS2 source code! ...looking at you Lucasarts.
Not gonna lie mate, this is an excuse that people use to justify pirating. If you look after the discs, it's highly unlikely they will break (providing you dont have an issue with a console for example) also the vast majority of games are still available on ebay, game stores etc. You can also get discs restored for a few quid. I'm not going to act like I haven't done it but I dont blag that it's 'presevation'
The Vadim M video you referenced made a point in stating that the Manhunt anti-piracy measures only activate for those who LEGALLY BOUGHT the game as opposed to those who play a cracked version. I'm convinced Rockstar has no shame left in them anymore (and they haven't for a while if we're being totally honest here)...
There are many ways a company can go about spending money to get a non-DRM or self-cracked version, but ripping off someone else’s work is far cheaper. **NOTE:** software having been cracked by piracy groups does not guarantee a bug-free result. QA testing is still needed.
HOLY SHEIZE!! THANK YOU FOR BRINGING MY CHILDHOOD BACK WITH HEART OF DARKNESS! I played that game when I was 4 and back then I didn't know how to read and disc got lost and after 22 years the search is finished.
I understand this isn't pretty, but I am happy to see old games keep getting released. Ideally, I would like to see some small improvements or something from time to time. Developers could give it to GOG and they will spend the time for such things.
If only those publishers bothered to keep a clean executable without anti-piracy bullshit or source code they could recompile, but no, for them it is just temporary profit, to be discarded next year - only gamers actually care enough to preserve those games. But now, they learned they can monetize nostalgia and trying to re-sell those games they didn't bother to preserve themselves.
Yeah but have you played manhunt 1 on pc? It doesn't even work because of the razor1911 crack If i pay rockstar $20 for a game, i want an exe with no drm made by rockstar
Having it available for convenient download (with a simple installer or galaxy frontend) has value of itself. I'm perfectly happy purchasing a (safe) warez copy on gog or other drm free storefronts like humble.@@Thesavagesouls
Why would they pay to rebuild the game and QA testing when scene groups already did the work for them? If I were the CEO I would give the folks who made this call a bonus for saving me money.
The golden trio of PC-game cracking, Fairlight, Razor 1911 and Deviance. With Deviance having the punchline "sharper than razor, faster than light", if I dont remember wrong. Good times in the warez scene, but left 10 years ago. Xvid and mp3 for my part. =)
When a publisher needs a binary crack to get the own games running, we can assume they themself have no access to source code or the required build chain anymore. To me that is the really embarrassing part of the story.
even if they have the source at hand, why? just get a cracked exe
OR the original games uses software or libraries that the company can no longer legaly use... licenses are a pain in the ass
Eh, I wouldn't be that bothered about that part as the game is over 20 years old. Rereleases weren't much of a thing back then. I'd say companies that kept the source code back then, after the product was not going to get any more commercial releases, were the exception, rather than the norm.
Or just they don't want to pay programers to do the job
@@Joseph-ke3xc Well, if you want to re-release the product you better have the effort to get the chain running on modern systems, because otherwise your release wont be very stable or even able to utilize the hardware at all. After all, they want to earn money from it.
Ah, DRM. Costs money to implement, costs money in PR, costs money in support, then costs money to remove (which rarely happens because hey it cost money and we fired the devs ages ago). Truly a necessity in modern gaming.
Right?! I spent HOURS with Rockstar Games Support because even themselves didn't know that you CANNOT launch Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC when your computer is disconnected from the Internet.
@@bowi1332 How did you even reach them without internet?
@@thechugg4372using data on their phone, perhaps ?
@@bowi1332Should have used a crack instead ;)
Well, it slows down the distribution of pirated software by about 1-3 days. So that's totally worth it
Back in the day when games were 3-4 GB in install size, getting a 320 GB hard drive and filling half the desktop with shortcuts was truly an experience. No CD cracks were a must.
truly an experience. now 3 generations of windows later, and you cant even restart it without all the icons getting birdshot blasted all over the desktop
You mean
@@JT-xu1qd lol... not when the drives were 320gb. it took a while before a hard drive was bigger than a single cd/dvd 😂
@@MrPaxioand windows probably still has files from 3 versions ago, Microsoft for ya
@@axethepenguin i mean, it still runs on pretty much the same kernal as the very first windows.... hence backwards compatibility and being able to chose windows 95. but imo windows vista even more useful than windows 10/11. ive been using windows 10 for the past 5yrs, and still completely avoid the taskbar LOL... honestly was really hard going from freedom of file access, to having to right click the file explorer just to open up my drives, and many computers i diagnosed is where explorer.exe causes issues LOL
Rockstar finally acknowledging the Razor 1911 warez release is straight up better than their own version.
Always has been :D
So what. There is countless stolen (cracked ) versions of gta, why rockstar cant use same tactics?
@@faenethlorhalien THATS WHAT I WAS GONNA SAY 😭
"always has been, kid"
@@ivan4087 Because they take modders to a court of law and ruin their lives over things exacly like this
@@ivan4087bruh you got hit in the head or what, talking jiberish 😂
When actual paying customers are screwed more than the people who pirate
I thought actual paying customers are supposed to be dogmatically loyal and not question the lack of ethics.
I pirate now a day because I use to be a a nice paying customer. I have over 1000 games multiple platforms today but when even the game that I bought doesn’t run I have to get a crack to make it run correctly.
Not condoning piracy but I definitely don’t support the current trend of release broken games and day one patch them later if it cant run on my system I dont want it
Par for the course anymore. Pirated gamers get everything unlocked (example: Hogwarts legacy) and don't have to deal with those annoying launchers. They make me want to pirate more and more every single game
This happened to me. Bought a game (one of the LEGO Star Wars games) and even though I paid for it, it couldn't run because of the piracy methods! So I went to the Net, downloaded a CD crack and played the game with that.
DRM sucks
The funniest part is that they could've easily erased the group's signature off the binaries by simply writing over them on a hex editor.
That's truly the most embarrassing part.
Nope. Gotta make another GTA online update first..
@@maniac4658what's wrong with that?
too much works to validate the program probably, potential bug by changing bit length of the exe
If I was razor I would employ a check that makes the crack not work if this signature is erased. I don't know if they actually did that. Someone can check. I don't think they expected companies to steal cracks, but other hacking groups, yes, and it already happened in the past.
DRM is getting out of hand when companies can't crack their own game.
It's not that they can't, it's that they won't dedicate the resources to do it.
They would have to pay people and/or companies to do it and that's what they don't want to do.
@@AleksPizanaoh you sweet misguided kids. They don't want to do it right because they don't care, they know anything they list will sell enough to cover the cost of labor to put it up for sale.
It's not that they can't but there's a crack right there so why bother
@@KaitouKaiju Would you stake your reputation on selling code you got from the shady corners of the internet? smh
AAA developers proving empirically that piracy is good for the industry...
You'll love to see it 🎉
I think you would have to prove that the gains from reselling the cracked product outweigh the losses of the pirated product. Even still, do you think Rockstar would leave money on the table if an existing crack didn’t exist? I’m sure they could hire someone like MVG to crack the title. Lone wolves are out there cracking the games for clout. They can afford to pay someone.
Sure, saving 10 to 20 grand worth of wages is totally worth losing millions in sales.
@@GamesFromSpaceYou assume that the people that pirated the game would buy the game.
Also, since there are no demo versions of this game, many people use the seven seas version in order to know is a game they would like and not.
Finally, some DRM are just developer sanctioned MALWARE.
@@RicardoSantos-oz3uj I never said every download was a lost sale. But pretending none of them were lost sales is completely dishonest.
I think the words you're looking for to describe NoCD cracks in their day is "quality of life". As we can probably all remember, DRM really only ever punished legitimate users.
as a GTA4 copy owner, very true
I still can't believe that certain games get a horrid reputation among circles because Denuvo makes it run poorly on PC...and then they bring Denuvo to switch! Screw DRM, lmao.
@@lpfan4491why bring it to switch
Throwback to 2005 when Sony's DRM came with a rootkit and several vulnerabilities, as well as being impossible to uninstall... yeah...
switch runs good on pc ;p, Mario Wonder is fun.. @@lpfan4491
Razor 1911 saved me so much BS as a kid. They kick ass. Even in my 30s, seeing that name come across my screen puts a smile on my face.
Those Chiptunes were the best!
@@MediumHalf Leaving keygens open for hours 😂
Yep, I really miss those days, I was too broke to afford games back then so I had to wait until a group would release a crack to be able to play. Nowadays I'm so broke that I can't afford any gaming platform, I haven't played a game since 2011.
Im with you❤
30s 😂😂😂😂 Try 53 Lil homie. I was in this very scene.
Seen alot of Razors stuff.
There was actually several groups. Another couple old groups.
Extalia, & Hackers Alliance.
So by trying to be first to make releases.
Hackers Alliance released the first Wall hack for the do called unhackable Call of Duty 2.
Whats funny about that is. The hack was released 2 days after the full version of Call of Duty 2 released.
They had released a demo version of the game. In which the EXE, which was the same as the full release. Which is the real reason the hack release was only 2 days out. Just long enough to test it on the full release. It was a slap in the face to the boasting of it being unhackable. Even BlackBart took the L on his scanner. Simple bit hacking to make it look at a clean directory vs hacked one lol.
Piracy destroys videogames.
I hope Rockstar sues Rockstar to the ground!
as anal retentive as they are. they should be FORCED to sue themselves. and also be required to not only give monetary compensation to the og crackers for their own brazen theft.
That would make sense taxes wise. As money you get from a court case is not subject to taxation. Meanwhile money you lost due a court case can be put as an expense.
So is a win win if you sue yourself. If you win, you get to pay yourself tax free money while placing the amount you spend a business related cost. If you loose you counter sue yourself and do the same. The only reason is not common is lawyer fees.
@@RicardoSantos-oz3ujand that no judge would actually hear a trial for only one party?
@@RicardoSantos-oz3ujyou're still paying yourself with money you acquired before your own lawsuit. All you are doing is spending money on lawyers, and advertising that you aren't double taxed as opposed to single taxed... not sure what your point is even remotely here
IP is not real property!
It’s not about old source code , it’s to do with new employees with modern systems who might not know how to work with old compilers.
I have some game dev experience. My software going from version 5.0 to 5.0.1 destroyed my work. I tried fixing every line of code but its was endless error loop . I just had to redo the whole thing and make sure never to update programs during ongoing projects.
Just downgrade your program
It comes full circle. Pirates crack the executable for a game in turn making it "free". Game developers "steal" the crack and sell it back to gamers. 😂
piracy vs privateering.
its all in the paperwork and whos in charge
...and unfortunately, too many "gamers" are too stupid to realize it... they just keep dumping money into these huge companies' pockets like mindless drones waiting to be screwed out of more money with the release, the re-release, the re-re-release, the 'special edition re-re-re-release.... all (of course) overhyped and overpriced. It's like prostitution - sell the same thing over and over, each time claiming it's "new". 🤣
Reminds me of Nintendo's mini consoles. Some of those ROMs are old pirated releases. They even left the header from the ROM dumping tool in.
can't steal what's given away freely
IP is not real property!
I'm surprised you didn't mention that Rockstar used the improper crack version and the game throws every anti-piracy measure it has at you making the game unplayable. It starts up, but you can't really progress unless you do some hexediting of the executable to fix things. This has been a complaint for a long time, but Rockstar seems not to care to fix it themselves anymore. The broken game is still being sold on Steam.
Which game, MP2?
@@XPimKossibleXManhunt
Oh the irony. Same can be seen with EA's Spore on Steam. The game is absolutely broken and the only known ways to functionally play it is either the EA launcher (ew.) or a crack (which is what I'd use if it weren't for the fact that I need to access servers to enjoy 99% of the game!)
Wow. I know I'm not buying anything Rockstar in the near future! What an embarrassment!
@@XPimKossibleX The very first link in the video description takes you to the long explanation of what's going on and how exactly the game is broken.
One of the real reasons for NO CD cracks was to preserve the CD. The CDs would get scratched up after a while become unplayable after about two years.
No not really. The CD (and DVD) players first picked up the disc and spun it, stopped it completely and returned it down to the tray. Only reason for scratches was bad user handling
I still have my SOF2 discs I got in 2003 that I still also have the NOCD crack for
@@VikingRul3s "Just completely avoid damaging the disk ever under any circumstances whatsoever, it's that easy bro"
@@michaelbuckers Exactly, just like you expect your mechanic to do on each and every job. Welcome to the human race
@@michaelbuckers Wasn't that written in an understandable way? Everyone expects their mechanic to do a good job on a huge variety of brands, models and engines. Is it really so far out that the CD/DVD drive manufacturers expect users to be capable of 1 single repeatable task, that's completely the same for almost every single disk drive in the world, at a level where the disk doesn't get damaged?
Just goes to show how unjustified DRM is in the long-term, vindicating pirates as being the harbingers of preservation whether they like it or not.
In the long term, yes. In the short term, no. DRM/copy protection in the first few weeks of a release is essential for sales of a game.
@@soviut303 most of the people here don't care about a company making money from their work.
@@jr2904Oh we do, believe me we do. But most companies are often a POS who exploits their developers and customers as much as possible. Most games nowadays are often designed to rip you off. I'm not going to give money to companies that don't deserve it.
@@soviut303 No I don't think so
@@jr2904 I'm sure you DO care about draconian DRM software being installed on your system for a game your legally purchased, right? Well that was the response to zero-day cracking because those companies wanted to protect their bottom line. It was a direct response to the over-zealous cracking scene. Game companies would much rather be investing in development, not copy protection, but if they're losing more money to piracy than to the cost of developing and implementing DRM, they're going to invest in DRM.
Rockstar knowing it's incapable of providing a better experience than a pirated copy is perfect. They have been incredibly inept for years.
The main thing that comes to mind for me in these cases is - the next step. The equivalent thing happening nowadays. All those stupid "games as a service" that end up shutting down, rendering them unplayable, but were genuinely good games. For the more popular games, there's people attempting to bring private servers and such online, so they can be played again -- Will those be the next in line for the publishers to bring back up again, and grab the hard work of those people that actually cared about the games?
Private servers won't happen for most games, look at test drive unlimited or combat arms or other games where the IP owners even tho they don't care about the games, they shut down private servers or force them into something dumb, test drive unlimited 2 private server requires a legit copy of the game which just requires you to buy it again since old copies didn't depend on launchers like these days
Combat arms private servers straight up got shut down even tho the still running servers are borderline unplayable
League of legends also had incidents with private servers, they all got threatened with DMCA even though they were of versions 7 years ago that can't be played otherwise
The only reason I used No-CD cracks back in 2005 was because my 48x CD-ROM drive made a terrible loud noise. Luckily I can now still hear with my right ear.
Your CD-ROM drive goes broken or the CD goes transparent.
48x? meh, try liteon cd-rw 52x. loud as f... i had ltr-52327s... even my neighbours can hear this recorder
@@tennickjestzajety69 there also was 72x by kenwood (not that loud surprisingly) and 56x by mad dog (probably loudest from all)
It was annoying AF. I found out after many years that there are small programs for windows that helped you to limit the cd-rom speed. 🤦
@@Misack8 Or the CD shatters into a million shards because there was a small crack....RiP Battlefield Vietnam :(
The awful state these older games are left in due to Rockstar/ take 2's actions is the true crime here. Absolutely shameful.
True Crime devs: Hey we will just copy Rockstar and will make an open world game! Damn it if they call it a GTA-clone
Rockstar: We will just copy them and will do things that can be considered True Crimes.
not that big of a deal go cry
They still have games that they aren't doing shit with.
Oni, anyone?
Max Payne 2 and Manhunt need community patches to run. What a shame.
The problem with CD-ROMs was that they became more worn out the more often you inserted them into your drive. I had many cases where my CD-ROMs became so scratched, the computer couldn't read data from them anymore, and consequently, my games refused to boot up anymore, asking for the games disk to be inserted. When that happened, you had two choices: pay for another CD or download the NO-CD crack
same. And the drive itself had a short life.
Still, CDs were a massive improvement over floppies... How many times back in the day did I end up with a bad sector on floppy #24 halfway through a Windows install... CD's were pure magic!
I just tended to put them in the cases when I took them out and handled them correctly at all times. The only reasons they became scratched was because careless children would scratch them.
Is this a joke?
Getting caught using a nocd patch is embarrassing for R*, but my real problem with the whole thing is that they’re selling a copy of Manhunt on steam that literally doesn’t work for paying customers because it’s been patched poorly
Their stories games didn't work on android for a long time, they may still not, but they still sold them.
How do you know it's embarrassing for them? If you owned your car free and clear and you wanted to kick in the sides of your sheet metal, that's your own business. I promise you, the only people that care are people who not full filled in their lives and instead worry about other peoples business instead of their own.
@@all.day.day-dreamer Get f****d. It's the business of all gamers, as it impacts anyone unfortunate enough to purchase a copy of this broken, and embarrassingly poorly patched game.
@@Gecko....not much works well on android
@@all.day.day-dreameryeah imagine a consumer caring about the thing he paid for being shitty
The saddest part about the story is that this is the only acknowledgment Rockstar will give their Midnight Club franchise in a long time.
A modern Midnight Club reboot with the full backing of Rockstar would wipe the floor with Forza and NFS, it's just a massive missed opportunity IMO
No one will understand this but... Midnight Club still cancelled soz?
@@or-whatI understand unfortunately
MC2 was my life back then! Also the music choices were bangers! My favorite car was the Torque JX😆🤩
That car is SICK and wicked when drifting.@@yodoleheehoo90
It's ironic that these companies don't like piracy and try to crack down on them. But when it's suits them they use it lol. Surely this practice could be use against these companies should they try to sue these groups.
If rockstar didnt own the ips then sure. But at the end of the day they can use these cracks to run their games all they want because they down own the games
Rockstar owns these games they can do whatever they want
That doesn't change the hypocrisy, simply embarrassing for rockstar no matter if they're legally allowed to do so, that's why they pulled it off steam. .@@isaac-ga @LolWutMikehSM
they showed that it okay to used cracked, i noticed..@@isaac-ga
Lately people have been praising BG3 for no MTX in their game, but everyone fails to mention how Larian alongside CDPR are one of the very few AAA devs who publish their games day1 without DRM both on Steam and GOG.
It shows as long as you make a good game and price it reasonably people will buy it
Also a good way to stop me pirating atleast is to have a good multiplayer mode or for it to be available on geforce now.
It's just as Gabe Newell said.
The best anti-piracy method is to convince people, not that pirating your software is bad, but that getting it legitimately is a good idea.
Now if only BG3 was a good game.
@@yurisei6732 It had potential to be on par with Divinity: Original Sin II, but they botched it by making the progression way too open.
Yes, in 2023 that's true, but if games back in the days of the internet wild west had no protection, they would sell zero copies.
I think this is 100% hilarious, and also a lesson to the publishers for the future. Keep a DRM free version in the vaults for future use.
Or a full VM of your build host. I would imagine that's the biggest issue. Backward compatibility with software is atrocious, and it's highly likely that 1) the source tree wouldn't build correctly on modern tools; and 2) the original tools would probably not run well, or at all, on modern OSes. So the only way to rebuild from source would be to have a full Windows XP (or whatever) host in fully working order, with contemporary Visual Studio, etc. etc.
I agree it's hilarious, but I don't think it's any lesson for publishers. It's a brilliant move. Regardless of personal feelings, the warez groups did illegal things the companies didn't want them doing. Now it's come full circle where the companies need to do the same thing, and they can save money by simply taking the work from the warez groups.
It's not like they can complain. They can't copyright their cracks, and even if they could it would be against the principles they made them under. If anything, they should be happy their work is being taken and shared without compensation. It's hilarious. I love it.
@@AlbatrossRevenue 2 minutes. It took 2 minutes of Googling to find out that game cracking groups are FAMOUS for not charging for the games they crack. They do it for ego and competition with each other. See who can crack faster and neater.
Some take donations, just like some hacking groups take donations even when they aren't hacking for any monetary gain. Some don't even release the games they crack. And some of the more famous game cracking groups have no problem with DRM. If anything, it's just a bigger challenge, and more bragging rights to crack.
But yeah. This doesn't take work from them, because it's not work. It's a hobby.
@@AlbatrossRevenue This. Nobody can sue them for copyright of a crack so they might as well.
@@AlbatrossRevenueNo. On a broad scale, this all literally screams, "Rockstar say using cracks is fine." It's a PR disaster - from their point of view, mind you.
I saw similar move in music industry. One of my favorite groups just uploaded low quality "cracked" version of their song to their official youtube channel. The song has voice of someone telling the name of the website they took the song from.
It's proven time and time again that DRM harms the paying gamers more than anybody else
How
@@Coregame3because paying customers are the ones that have to deal with not being able to play the game due to bugs or server checks that the DRM implements.
Person with the cracked exe doesn't have any of those problems.
I'm against software piracy, but I'll still use cracks to remove DRM from games I've legally purchased.
@@Coregame3 I think it was ubisoft but one DRM requests you turning off your PC protection so it can install itself at the kernel level
@@saadhero9107 Riot Vanguard anti-cheat does it when installing games by Riot, then requires the PC to be restarted in order to install itself at kernel level. Not sure about any DRMs though.
@@Coregame3 Denuvo is infamously hard to crack and costs a notable chunk of performance - this is due to the way it checks the legitimacy of the game. Cracked Denuvo games have been shown to run at higher framerates than legitimately bought and installed versions of the game because the DRM was removed.
Imagine the irony of taking Rockstar to court over copyright theft of their cracks lol
Would fucking love that! specially if they won and shook up the gaming world !
It's like a burglar whining that the homeowner "stole" a tool they left behind when trying to break in.
Thats like calling the cops when your drug dealer scams you lmaooo
@@Honeypot-x9sThey wouldn't win. This is law 101. The moment they touched Rockstar's game, Rockstar owns all their work. It's why they can shut down any mod they choose no matter what work you put into it or how original the work is.
That is not even remotely a valid case, sorry to break your bubble.
it surprises me that the studio publisher didn't keep a DRM-free copy of their games for situations like this. But also I guess it makes sense because everyone thought CDs were gonna be the future forever during the dial-up era.
the witcher 3 did that.. someone from inside, leaked the denuvo-free exe online, i have been very thankfull and because it was a good game i've bought it.
Back in the day, installing the no-cd crack was basically a mandatory part of the installation process, even when you bought the game. You see, we didn't have computers with tons of cores like we do nowadays, and the computer spinning up the CD drive brought the entire system to a halt. And it was, like, really loud, too.
You're not wrong!
Oh don't worry because of Denuvo and Always-Online, it's still a necessity to play a cracked version to have proper stability.
I remember my parents e-machine disc drive would get so loud playing games I legitimately thought the rumors about exploding CDs might just happen to me lmao
cs1.6 and gta vice city back days :D
@@thechugg4372 but what if you want to access the online feature of the game? 💀💀
"Preservation is just another word for theft" - every publisher
I'm looking at you Nintendo
Videogame devs throwing the source code of the game into a pit of fire
@@unoriginalperson72 ***publishers
the devs are “”illegally”” saving their code anyway lmao
yeah, if only those cracks came out years after th game release. but no, they come day 0 or even pre-launch.
@@ElvenSonic corrupt publisher: your game lol it's our game now
It's embarrassing, but what can anyone do about it? Like if someone from Razer tries to knock on their door and try to sue for plagiarism, Rockstar is gonna turn right around and ask if they had anything to do with these million illegal downloads. Reminds me of the 'Breakfast can wait' cover art.
how exactly is it embarassing? if they dont want the drm anymore or have access to the source code, why not? theyre pirated versions,rockstar owes them nothing.
@@Glace-gone the reason why not is because they are letting their customers run code that they did not write. It could contain literally anything.
Literally this. While I don't distrust these crackers in particular, in theory these games could contain malicious code because Rockstar did the lazy thing and grabbed a crack instead of doing it themselves. There are in fact several groups that HAVE inserted malicious code into their cracks in the past, so it's baffling when people like the one you're responding act as if it's really nothing to be concerned with. @@mikeywhelan2362
It also shows a bunch of amateurs can outsmart them decades in the future
@@Glace-gone It's embarassing because Rockstar is basically outsourcing all their work to an entity they consider the scum of the earth.
These scene groups allowed me to play games at a young age when my parents couldn't afford video games. Growing up I began to hack and network and now I'm a Net Admin. All self taught and inspired by these guys.
How was the learning curve, I want to start making the leap and being professional whats first??
@@francesfuego6950start with internships and move up from there.
@@francesfuego6950 not too bad as long as you are technical and good at problem solving. Getting games for free evolved into setting up custom wow server and learning networking to make it open to public. Then that got me into media servers then setting up a website for wow server. You learn about what dns is and port forwarding. Then before you know it your configing firewalls
A DMCA takedown notice should be issued on Rockstar for selling pirated games.
Who going to file the take down notice?
@@lukasperuzovic1429 Exactly, it's not like Razor911 is a registered corporation.
Too bad its their game.
If they don't give the ability to modify the game by default, you violated their terms to gain access to their content.
Which if you took said content that was protected and released it publicly, it would violate copyright.
The crack isn't a change of the game in anyway, no mechanics are changed, no gameplay changes, nothing but the launcher.
They hold the rights to the game so they are immune. You can't pirate something you own the rights to.
As a joke, this was funny. But if you're being serious I feel sad for you.
There is a glaring security issue here. How do they know the cracked version doesn't contain hidden back-doors, etc? They are using un-vetted code for production release.
This is the biggest issue but the video creator didn’t talk about that.
It would be terribly amusing if one of the scene groups managed to successfully sue Rockstar or whoever for distributing their copyrighted logo.
Agreed. I'd be pulling out the popcorn and watching it live
Well, just for conversation, they probably harmed sales at the time by cracking those games, so in a way it is only fair for rockstar to compensate their loss. In the end, i think that what matters is that we can play those games today, at the time i used NO CD cracks for their convenience, i don't see a problem using them today to the same end :)
Aren't they hiding identities?
@@OlivierGrasakaoloWell, just for conversation, studies have shown that pirated games and movies cause no significant, measurable damage to the rights holders. In very short, it became evident that most of the people using them simply would not have bought the media either way and instead just not consumed it. The amount of people who actually would have bought something but then didn't only because it could also be pirated is marginal. Almost (?) all studies suggesting the opposite are financed and commissioned by the large anti-piracy lobbyist groups.
@@Nitidus i don't say novd cracks where bad, far from it, having used them myself. Just saying i don't see harm to these groups, al those years later, if their work still allows us to play these games :)
I'm glad that Vadim M is getting more attention, his content is amazing and has so much effort put into it
the fact that he makes sure to get english voices too, since he's russian, is great as well. he could just make vids towards russians like many others, but he intentionally tries to make his findings as accessible as possible.
@@albummutation2278 Vadim M is Latvian iirc but regardless, that person has a large chunk of Russian viewer base.
Does he has a youtube? Any links to his medias?
@@attractivegd9531 just look up Vadim M, lol
he looks like a natzii
I doubt they lost the source code. Anyone who's been in software development for a long time would know that building an old game / app from source code isn't always easy.
There's always external dependencies including the operating system, tooling, compilers and libraries, etc that can be extraordinarily difficult to recreate.
A more confusing caveat: on the "updated" GTA titles they re-released had notes commenting out code with workarounds. The new engineers didn't know how the source code functioned and noted that. It suggests ineptitude, certainly, but access to source.
they would have to do it in the same way fitgirl does switch games on pc
@@goofballbiscuits3647 Ineptitude or lack of documentation? Fast Inverse Square Root comes to mind.
@TheFifthHorseman_ After 15 years in the field as a dev and a PM, it's ineptitude. The code/maths don't change much, just individuals' knowledge and understanding of it. When I hired the best engineer that we ever had, he looked through the code and understood it all without being given any context. He came into a stack 12 years in development and read it line by line. Good engineers spot the weaknesses and bolster.
We are also talking about the remastered GTA Trilogy release. They were so broken that they were virtually unplayable at certain points.
Ineptitude... unquestionably.
@TheFifthHorseman_ also, the inverse square is decades old at this point. Not a great example because you seem to focus on the reduction to tribal knowledge, but it's on other engineers to innovate and continue learning. They could have 100th monkeyed. They could have simply learned more math. Doctors, lawyers, etc have to constantly educate themselves at the same time they are practicing their craft. It still comes down to the next engineers simply being less capable than the previous ones.
CD DRM was always a massive joke. I was never going to dig through piles of games to find the one CD i needed, so i obviously used no-cd cracks for all of my games
Or when blizzard entertainment uses cheap cds where a light surface scratch made them skip and often unusable.
i literally dont know ONE person who didnt use noCD cracks me included.
What probably happens is they hire someone to officially crack it so they can get it on steam. The person then just grabs the hacked version from the internet but holds off for a couple of days, filling out timecards, pretending that they're working on it. Finally, it submits it to the company, grabs a paycheck (probably with a bonus for getting it done so fast), and then moves on to the next project. The company probably doesn't know because not knowing how to crack is why they hired out in the first place.
that actually makes sense!
if they do this, and there isnt a clause in the hiring contract that says you cannot do this, theyre somehow even more incompetent than letting this happen knowingly
It doesn't really matter how it happens. If they hire someone or not. They're responsible for the final product.
It's like a studio making a game, the game flops, and they blame the programmer. No, that's not how it works, it's the studio that must bear the blame, or the CEO of that company.
The more aggressive a company is "protecting their IP" the more actual stolen source code you know they have -and they're just trying to cover it up.
That's not actually true.
@@ollicron7397 This video showed you evidence of it. There're other reports in addition to this one.
Looking forward to seeing the Razor 1911 longform video!
Also a video on the "keygen" apps from back in the day would be awesome, the ones with those awesome chiptunes!!
i miss keygens 😢
the razor demos were my favourite part of cracks. i have watched every one back then and they were like 8kb in size, it was pretty impressive to me and i loved the animations
Looking forward to your Razor 1911 video. This is not surprising, it's smart, there is most likely no way they can crack their own DRM, and it's just really embarrasing.
I'm much more interested in the Razor1911 story you mentioned! I'm 43 now, I was 5 when Razor1911 started it would seem, I remeber years worth of using NOCD cracks and would always seek out Razor1911 NO-CD cracks first. Look forward to the video when it's ready for sharing :)
Super excited about the teased Razer 1911 video. Cracking groups are something that have always been so mysterious to me since I was a kid. I remember the first time I downloaded some cracked software that had a really fancy installer with music and flashy graphics with the group group name (don't remember what it was) when I was about 13, it was really exciting but in a weird way scary and made feel like I was part of a secret society.
Can't wait, keep the amazing work as always MVG!
I really can't wait for this
same! their mystique is mesmerizing. i miss the magic of piracy. now that im 30 i havent pirated a game in over a decade lol.
The heart attack when the music starts blasting!
A LOT of the scene people also go on to create some of the greatest games ever made. Many of the most talented people developed their skills in groups like Razer 1911. DICE (makers of Battlefield) is a typical example.
Just go and take a look at intros like 'We Have Accidently Borrowed Your Votedisk' here on RUclips and keep in mind that it's made with 64k of data. That's as much memory as it takes to store a single Windows icon.
The people who claim that piracy hurts gaming more than it helps have no clue what they're talking about. Without the scene and inseparably; piracy, gaming would be in a far worse shape today.
Haha, I just have to reply here, because I felt EXACTLY the same as a teen. I'm still fascinated about the whole subculture, the history, the legends and rumors, the connections to art, to the computer industry, the gaming industry, foreign commercial pirates etc.
Watching a cracktro, a game rip installer, ascii art in an nfo, and listening to chiptunes in keygens still gives me those vibes.
Wow, Razor 1911 is a name I've not heard in a long time. Even used NoCD cracks on games I legitimately purchased because it was so damn annoying not to.
It's genuinely concerning that publishers are shipping third party executables that can't be verified (that I know of). For all we know they may have sourced a compromised executable from a sketchy website and be distributing it to thousands of people. All because they included borderline malware with their game and now they can't be bothered to remove it.
Well, like you said it all depends on where they're taking it from. But I'd trust scene groups more than the p2p Or publishers executables
manhunt on steam had issues launching due to using a crack for an old operating system. its lucky that not checking the code only lead to the exe not launching.
@@tritnaha1345 I'm with you on that one..
@@randomprotag9329not quite. They originally shipped the razor 1911 crack, which would've worked perfectly but wasn't compatible with windows Vista or newer iirc, so they replaced it with their own crack. But that one didn't remove the antipiracy measures properly, so the game is unplayable without patches
???????????? its called HASH. every file has a unique hash that you can use to track if its the identical exe 🙄
This really brings me back to mounting drives and no cd cracks. I had completely forgotten about this
Good times... good times.
If i remember well, their main argument to try to scare us away from downloading cracks was that it probably contained viruses. It’s so funny to see them now installing those cracks in people’s PC without people even knowing it.
Razor 1911 was the stamp of quality. Legends
Was? Still are.
Every game I had for my secondhand Amiga back in the day was cracked, I wouldn't have had any games otherwise. I used to go with my brother to his Commodore Club meetings and that's all everyone did was pass around cracked floppy games and make copies. Pretty much everything I had started with a cracktro/trainer from groups like Razor 1911, SKIDROW, Fairlight, TRSI, etc.
It'd be interesting to see if one day these instances of this happening will be used as a defense for piracy / software preservation in legal battles.
I doubt that lines up with our current "reality", but would be interesting nonetheless.
If Rockstar sells cracks, I see no moral obligation to pay them!
@@SelfieCasteither way, this (and back when nintendo did the same thing w/ virtual console) is a slam-dunk argument in favor of piracy for anyone who may have been on the fence.
it's gone from a good idea that publishers hate to a necessity that publishers directly profit from.
well R* now cut half the game out and sell it as online dlc overpriced at that.
So piracy of R* seems to be fairer than ever these days.
I've never paid for a pc game in my puff 😂😂😂. Arrghhh laddie!
@@xXx_Regulus_xXx you guys were going to steal and pirate anyway, don't pretend
@@williampotato1221 I've only paid when I feel it's worth playing online against others.
Kinda grew up on pirated games.
If you even took a cursory glance at the Crack scene, you recognize these names. I remember being a broke kid back in the day just wanting to play games I couldn't afford.
yes and now I'm an adult they cost even more and I'm even more broke 😅.. I'm a pirate sue me 😆✌
ruclips.net/video/lE9KGnHbq_k/видео.htmlsi=nhAglEAL9R3gRhkF
If you can’t afford it then don’t play it. Lots of good cheap/free games out there these days.
How bout no. I'm going to play what I want friend.@@d33pblu3
@d33pblu3 As long as you aren't selling it then who cares. Game company wasn't going to get money for it from the individual pirate anyways. Sometimes if the game is good, they actually even make a sale! Piracy is a net positive!
It's anything but embarassing, it's just exactly the opposite what the scene did with their products, And now they just do it the other way around, it's perfectly smart!
I love Razor1911, Myth, Fairlight, Skidrow. Because of these groups I was able to test and play so many games. I didn't stop purchasing, but I used it to pick out what to purchase.
@jjcatsura😅 me too🎉
lol as if that wouldnt make the entire marketing team seethe
For real man. Can't tell you how many times I was ready to drop 60 dollars on a game only to try it out off skidrow and find out it sucked. When modern gaming is just early access garbage, and low effort cash grabs, we are forced to make better investigations into the quality and real worth of a product before spending our hard earned money. Then we are labeled as cyber terrorists and all the rest of that junk. Every game that I've ever tested and liked, I now own a paid copy of. I support quality dev studios. I do not support bad ones. They are simply angry they cannot scam you.
Same. I won't pretend that I didn't pirate purely so I could play games for free. As a teenager with no income/allowence, parents that weren't going to buy me a game simply because I wanted it, and a pretty low end PC, piracy was the ONLY WAY I got to experience PC games. Half the time they couldn't even run on my hardware. Almost every PC game I actually paid for, or received as the rare gift as a kid/teen, couldn't actually run at a playable performance. Piracy was not only a way to get free games, it was a way to not waste money on games that I couldn't run. Haven't pirated anything in well over a decade, but, I'm grateful for it, especially the Razor 1911 releases. They released those cracks FAST too!
Exactly, i'll test a year to know what is good or bad content.. and if its bad its bad i don't buy
Back in the day most cracked games were originally sourced through magazine review teams, quickly followed up by the duplication companies then the distributors which is how they got them early enough to get them cracked before official release. But there were occasions when someone on the inside of the publisher would also be involved most of the time for money. Fun times.
No-CD cracks are not only for piracy per se, we had 3 PCs and wanted to play network. I know the EULA says "1 license per PC", but seriously, who walks out and pay 3x full price for the same game just to play over network?! The other thing was simply that our 40x CD drive was so loud and it would spin up for small things. Having it on HDD eliminated that too.
That's why in more recent times we supply publishers with unencumbered clean executables (actually an EXE or a DLL) along with the "final retail" executable with the DRM / "anti-tamper" of their choice built from the same exact revision (sometimes the DRM is added to the clean executable in a post-build step, so that makes it even easier). Because best practices were not established yet and / or not followed back then, so much original final source code and project revisions are now lost forever for some of the most beloved classic games (until someone maybe reverse engineers it). Even if these were such cases with Rockstar, this is still shameful. They should be able to remove the DRM without stealing someone else's work, even if that work was originally meant for piracy (and is probably seen as unlicensed derivative work breaking a law or ten). It's just such a bad attitude, even when seen from the publisher's point of view. You know, "Two bads don't make a good." or however that saying goes in your part of the world.
Two wrongs don't make a right, But three rights make a Left
Honestly I think the more embarrassing part is how they half assed their own crack of Manhunt when they got caught using the Razor 1911 crack (which is still there as testapp), rendering the game basically unplayable because the game's anti-piracy measures trigger due to the DRM no longer being present.
Saw what you did with the video title. Genius!
oh man, you explaining what a no-cd crack was made me feel like im old.
I remember using those to play tons of games way back in the early '00s.
Razer 1911 and Reloaded were my go-to for years and years. haha
No love for Fairlight 😢
Having the source code on hand is merely half the battle, the bigger issue is getting ahold of the build environment that was around at that time - Especially the pre-2010 era is notorious for a lot of custom stuff built around junk compilers and tools from companies that aren't around nowadays or don't want to give you a license (Because you lost your Microsoft Visual C++ 6 copy).
Exactly. Plus you need to have graybeards around that know how to use the toolchain. All to make a few bucks off Steam. Would have been easier to just have an intern hex edit the EXE and remove those warez signatures.
yeah, as funny as I think this is, I too understand how hard it is to simply update a game. Kayne and Lynch has been removed from sale on Steam pending an update for about 4 years now. I'm sure Square wants to sell the game, it's picked up a following within the past 4 years, but I think they lost everything to make that happen.
Rockstar closed down the studio that was responsible for Manhunt 2 and I think they closed down the team for Manhunt 1 as well. (Manhunt 2 was made by R* Vienna which lasted until 19 months before the game came out). While Manhunt was made by R* North they had a couple of smaller studios/teams under that label and they were all shutdown shortly after The Warriors came out. So I highly doubt they still have anyone who worked on Manhunt, outside of a lead position, at Rockstar. I know almost everyone who worked on Manhunt 2 was let go, except for the London team that finished it off.
Thank you! That’s the part I don’t get about this, and I didn’t know if it was because I don’t fully follow the gaming space - but if they were going to use the cracked versions removing the group’s signatures should have been like a one minute job, right? And I’m doubtful anyone would have caught them if they had taken that simple step. I mean, I get the reasons why they used the cracked version, but not removing Some characters is just lazy incompetence.
I believe get to work these compilers are a pain to work with, but maybe they are able to find someone that takes the challenge. even so there is still the problem to read and understand the mess of source code and hacks from that era to make the game work, and finally find understand and remove all checks related to drm, that normally are obscured by default
I was just thinking about Renderware, which EA purchased and killed to hurt other developers/publishers in the industry.
Razor 1911, Skidrow, Fairlight, xXRiddickXx, Hoodlum, 3DM, Codex, Deviance, CPY, Reloaded, Revolt, Vitality...
those were the days.
9:00 Yes a history of a game cracking group is what keeps me coming back. You've covered a lot with piracy, xbox modding and so on, good stuff!
Piracy/Emulation/Offline play is the only thing keeping gaming alive.
Yup. It keeps my interest up, keeps me distracted and eventually once or twice a year I'll buy something discounted that I would NOT buy otherwise. So yeah, they get my money thanks to me being able to play pirated the rest of the year when I'm broke.
This is a pretty ridiculous claim
@@8088mph"You are nitpicking and biased, I'm right, you're wrong, bye bye"
@@socio637Entire countries' gaming industries are based on piracy. Particularly in the east, where "legitimate" software is too expensive. Not so ridiculous.
@@hypnotised-clover yeah my mate lives in east in Skegness its impossible to buy games for less than £90 on release so he has to pirate them.
it's really wild that they never responded or did anything about this as far as i know. they literally don't care
I live in Europe and I remember when back in 2002 I bought GTA3 at the big store. The game had a DVD box that contained couple of CD-roms and one of them were literally installation disc that had crack on it. It was official distribution of that game in that part of Europe. it's nothing new, but I guess a lot of people don't know about it because back in a day it was very easy to buy pirated copies for the fraction of the price and almost everyone did it.
I remember in 2005-2006 in Turkey they would sell you white dvd's with whatever game you wanted burned on it for the equivalent of 2 or 3 euros, it was the good times
My dad used to buy cracked games from people who brought it in via Mexico. I just wish most of the discs survived so I didn't have to dig for games online. I do have plans in the future to try and dump a bunch of my library to heavy duty CDs for preservation sake
After saying we are not interested in ports and then porting RDR1 I have no trust left in them. Thanks for the video MVG.
GTA V is so dumbed down for casuals over IV , its not even fun to drive vehicles they have no weight to them or take any skill to drive. i have such low hopes for VI , R* are not what they used to be
Ported gta vice city lol
@@DrGreenThumbNZLHow the hell can a GTA game be "dumbed down for casuals"? Its not like its an RTS game requiring 100apm to control hundreds of units
@@ThunderingRoar I mean, people complained about the more realistic physics for driving in IV and they made it significantly more arcadey in V.
@@ThunderingRoarV was definitely 'streamlined' to make it more appealing to the ultra casual audience. That's just clearly demonstrably true.
Video dedicated to 1911 would be amazing. Thanks MVG!
Would love to see your work on Razor 1911! Not only them, but other scene groups from the 80's and 90's. I wasn't around PC Gaming at the game (for a lot of those years, I wasn't even born lol), so more information on those that came before the scenes we know now is very much appreciated
This is exactly why I reject virtue signaling. We've heard this before where companies use emulators, rom dumps, now CD cracks. Someone phrased it the best when they said "Companies are going to do what is in their best interest and I will do what is in my best interest."
My biggest worry about this is malware. If they didn't remove the watermarks, they've probably never checked the executables for malicious behavior. I guess it's time to run all games in VMs
these are NoCD cracks released by reputable groups with no vested interest in infecting the end user, even back then.
it's just R* and other devs taking a shortcut.
The scene has higher standards than corporations.
I've never gotten a virus from a game crack and I've been using them for over 10 years.
Would be really great to have videos about Razor, Skidrow, Reloaded, Fairlight and other great groups history and where they're at today :)
Quartex.
Oh man. The Amiga cracking/demo scene was a great time to be alive.
I still remember the Amiga version of Final Fight having a legit demo tune for the intro song of the game, instead of the original theme song!
@@RogueBoyScout I was a bit too young for that, but my father was part of HORiZON, SSS and some other groups for Amiga and C64 and knows a lot of the old sceners mainly in the Swedish scene (FLT etc)
This is sadly not uncommon for game companies. Do you remember the popular RTS game Total Annihilation? This was one of many games that required you to have the disk in order to play at all. When Wargaming acquired the rights to Cavedog, they released TA on Steam. What they did is download the cracked files for the game to no longer need the disk, install them, and then sell the hacked version of the game.
Great game. They were like "Cool, someone already did all the work for us!"
@@youuuuuuuuuuutubeyeah i think you're right, and they just stealing their own game
This also reminds me how much i hate always online games that are mostly a single player experience. For example Steep, The Crew1, NFS 2015, etc. These are some of many games you'll spend an overwhelming majority of your time playong alone and rarely have proper multiplayer interactions, but due to them being always online and publishers not making offline patches or giving away methods to produce servers for those games, will always be stuck with an undetermined expiration date.
Another factor might be their RenderWare license ran out a long time ago and they can't even rebuild the games if they wanted.
Sonic hero’s was made with render wave and that won’t get a re release anytime soon
They are so used to selling crack (shark cards) to their customer bases that they just continued with cracked versions of their own games.
Not quite. They started doing this over a decade ago, long before GTA V ever released.
@@Thicc_Boyo It was just my guess that it was more recent before I watched.
Razor1911, FairLight, Myth, TriStar/RedSector and the OG CodeX - Heroes of my Childhood !!
How rockstar handled manhunt must embarrass them not only did they rely on a crack for a game that they should have a clean version easily available or easily cleaned, they also messed it leading to DRM that few people experienced being commonly experienced on brought copies.
Isn't it also a big risk? They only have the binary file and cannot check if the crack contains malware.
I was thinking the exact same thing. Either malware or modifications to the game that weren´t supposed to happen.
They literally don't care
the pirated version has already been tested and approved by millions of people around the world
@@noisebeats The thing is that you cannot tell if the crack they used was malware free (unless you manually check that), even if the original crack was, the one they've got may have been modified by someone else. Also, just because "it works", it doesn't mean it must be malware free. Some malware may run in background, without your knowledge.
@@Bartek533A lot of warez compete on each other. They can "nuke" (basically made a superior version) other cracks if the crack doesn't work properly, or has malicious code.
Windows Defender is smart enough to tell you that the .exe contains malicious code instantly
What if games that have gold seller in them. Say they will ban people buying gold. Then the game company themselves are selling the gold.
It would probably be best if someone who cares at the studio plans ahead to have "remove DRM" in the budget when the game is still getting active support. Similarly for dependency on servers, would be great if "release server code" be on that list. Once that ship has sailed things get tougher.
I actually had a great experience once involving Raven Software and id Software. Not too long after the Doom-1993 source code was released, I e-mailed Raven around Easter in 1998 if they would be willing to release the source code to Heretic and Hexen. They responded that they would need to remove some proprietary/licensed elements and perform some general cleanup. They did so and released the source code not too long after. A good example of things getting tougher down the road though is that later it appeared more effort was needed to officially provide a workable open-source licence with it, but probably due to limited available resources/low prioritisation this last bit took many years.
Personally, I think they should have their content removed from Steam until they can release their own games with their own code. They made us pay the price for their DRM and now is a great time for them to pay their dues as well.
Honestly it’s a good business move.
Patch works, been tested by thousands of people. It makes finical sense.
For these games probably more like millions of full play tests by now
I'm looking forward to your Razer Docu. I remember working at Volition and we were trying to show off an early alpha build of Saints Row the Third, and we needed to re-build it from source code. Even though we were able to get the full code from the Perforce Repo, We still couldn't build it because even getting a dev environment that's 7 or 8 years old is very difficult to do in a day or two. We never used cracks though because it was for alpha versions of the game that were never meant to be sold ;)
On mobile it's even worse. Android/iOS projects pull libs from external repository. Here are some problems with that. A repo could get shutdown or moved to another domain. A lib could get deprecated. An outdated lib could get rejected by a store owner. If you have to update the lib it could pull some dependencies that may break the build. Sometimes you have to update the source code to incorporate changes from the updated lib. Bottom line is if you haven't touched a mobile project in a year it would take time to figure out how to build it. Imagine what issues might come up with a 20 years old project.
Volition was a great dev studio man. Like Westwood, Novalogic, Origin Systems, Bullfrog etc. - FS2 and RF were the shit! And ofc the fact you released the FS2 source code! ...looking at you Lucasarts.
I had dozens of no-CD cracks for my games. I wanted to PROTECT the discs and not have to swap them when playing a diff game all the time.
Same.
Not gonna lie mate, this is an excuse that people use to justify pirating. If you look after the discs, it's highly unlikely they will break (providing you dont have an issue with a console for example) also the vast majority of games are still available on ebay, game stores etc. You can also get discs restored for a few quid. I'm not going to act like I haven't done it but I dont blag that it's 'presevation'
@@neiladamson5749 How is it "piracy" if you own the game?!
more annoying to have to have the cd in the drive to play a game you bought.@@neiladamson5749
@@neiladamson5749 It's also the actions of people not justifying pirating, stop projecting.
The Vadim M video you referenced made a point in stating that the Manhunt anti-piracy measures only activate for those who LEGALLY BOUGHT the game as opposed to those who play a cracked version.
I'm convinced Rockstar has no shame left in them anymore (and they haven't for a while if we're being totally honest here)...
anybody who did would have quit at this point. even the manhunt situation would embarress any higher up thats not just there for the paycheck.
There are many ways a company can go about spending money to get a non-DRM or self-cracked version, but ripping off someone else’s work is far cheaper.
**NOTE:** software having been cracked by piracy groups does not guarantee a bug-free result. QA testing is still needed.
Good morning MVG and everyone
Good morning Sean
HOLY SHEIZE!! THANK YOU FOR BRINGING MY CHILDHOOD BACK WITH HEART OF DARKNESS!
I played that game when I was 4 and back then I didn't know how to read and disc got lost and after 22 years the search is finished.
So they are ripping off the pirates now?
Makes a change from ripping off their customers I suppose...
I understand this isn't pretty, but I am happy to see old games keep getting released.
Ideally, I would like to see some small improvements or something from time to time.
Developers could give it to GOG and they will spend the time for such things.
They were still available on the internet before that. You're basically paying for a warez version to be accessible in your gog or steam library.
If only those publishers bothered to keep a clean executable without anti-piracy bullshit or source code they could recompile, but no, for them it is just temporary profit, to be discarded next year - only gamers actually care enough to preserve those games. But now, they learned they can monetize nostalgia and trying to re-sell those games they didn't bother to preserve themselves.
Yeah but have you played manhunt 1 on pc? It doesn't even work because of the razor1911 crack
If i pay rockstar $20 for a game, i want an exe with no drm made by rockstar
Having it available for convenient download (with a simple installer or galaxy frontend) has value of itself. I'm perfectly happy purchasing a (safe) warez copy on gog or other drm free storefronts like humble.@@Thesavagesouls
@@georgelopezat3am993exactly
Why would they pay to rebuild the game and QA testing when scene groups already did the work for them? If I were the CEO I would give the folks who made this call a bonus for saving me money.
damn. no CD crack takes me all the way back. who else remembers GameCopyWorld?
🙌
I recently downloaded a no cd patch from game copy world for the Sims 3 because I am too lazy to look for the DVD each time I want to play the game.
@@GTAbestplayer123 exactly
Imagine the customers taking Rockstar to court for selling them cracked games.
I think it would be funny if one of the crack authors claimed IP rights. haha... Funny, but probably not wise.
@@nickwallette6201Worth the risk.
Thanks for covering this, and looking forward the long ep about Razor1911! Cool stuff, keep it up 💪
The golden trio of PC-game cracking, Fairlight, Razor 1911 and Deviance. With Deviance having the punchline "sharper than razor, faster than light", if I dont remember wrong. Good times in the warez scene, but left 10 years ago. Xvid and mp3 for my part. =)
Ah, Good Times. Who doesn't remember the mp3 prespam