Rockstar and TakeTwo are doing many anti-consumer moves in background

[qwerty123321]

Summary

 

• in order to "increase" value of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy The Definitive Edition, old versions are no longer purchasable after 11th Oct.
• in order to make new versions look better TakeTwo sent multiple DMCA after modders and filled lawsuit against biggest overhaul project (which basically equals to death of gta modding scene)
• The Definitive Edition gonna be Rockstar launcher exclusive (at least at launch)
• Rockstar is shadow banning mentions of mods under trailer of The Definitive Edition

Quotes

 

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previous versions and bundles featuring these titles will be removed from console and PC digital retailers as of the week of October 11, 2021.

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Late last week, players and mod creators began reporting on Twitter and the GTA Forums that old Grand Theft Auto mods on PC were being pulled. On July 17 it became clear that something was going on. Numerous mods, including popular Vice City and San Andreas mods, were deleted and were now no longer available on ModDB.

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The lawsuit, filed in California yesterday, accuses the re3 creators of "unlawfully" copying, adapting a redistributing the source code for the two games. This is in spite of re3's developers stressing that the code has been entirely reverse engineered (ie, created by working backwards from the finished game, rather than using the Take-Two owned source code), and that any releases require players to provide their own copies of the game. (...)
Reverse-engineering is technically legal under US law. Nevertheless, Take-Two has pressed ahead with its legal challenge, seeking damages and claiming the existence of these ports has cause "irreparable harm" to the company.

 

Quotes (Reactions)

 

Sources
https://support.rockstargames.com/articles/4408282103571/Grand-Theft-Auto-III-Grand-Theft-Auto-Vice-City-and-Grand-Theft-Auto-San-Andreas-not-available-for-purchase
https://kotaku.com/take-two-is-removing-old-gta-mods-using-dmca-notices-1847315391
https://www.pcgamer.com/take-two-is-once-again-trying-to-kill-reverse-engineered-versions-of-gta-iii-and-vice-city/

https://gtaforums.com/topic/973749-take-two-changes-the-agreement-modding-take-downs/

(Sorry for using first post in this way (I've been watching LTT for fives years), I'm writing because in DNA of pc gaming the modding is crucial part.)
 

[flibberdipper]

Unsurprising, Cockstar and TakeTwo love to do the community dirty. The worst part is that I have a very strong feeling that the Definitive Edition is going to be a repeat of, say, San Andreas on the 360: halfass ported to another engine with a metric assload of things broken.

[CTR640]

Strauss Zelnich is cancer for sure. This stupid asshole is the cause of the fuckups and lawsuits and Sam Houser is his petbitch.

But I'll NOT buy any of their games if it doesn't have Yellow and Expanded licenseplates!

[WolframaticAlpha]

Is it just me or the second tweet is acting weird?

[TetraSky]

Not surprised in the least. Rockstar hasn't been known for being nice to fans in the past. Especially ever since GTA5 and GTA Online. What I am surprised is that they are not going after custom servers of GTA Online, like NoPixel. Yet, anyway.

[CTR640]

8 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

Not surprised in the least. Rockstar hasn't been known for being nice to fans in the past. Especially ever since GTA5 and GTA Online. What I am surprised is that they are not going after custom servers of GTA Online, like NoPixel. Yet, anyway.

Don't worry. If their cash cow is dried up, they'll go after the custom servers.

[HanZie82]

After having bought all the GTA's that ever existed. (Hell i have bought 4 copies of GTA 5 PS4 and couple copies for PC friends.)
This will not be one of them, they already showed with GTA5 they dont want anyone playing it, just the money.

They used to be great, but because of Take Two, Rockstar now also looks as if they would do anything for money.

So i hope they go bankrupt, they do not deserve any better.

[da na]

If the price of Definitive Edition is less than the other versions combined I can see how that would almost seem worth it. But to modders, of course the game files would be a bit different in Definitive Edition so most mods wouldn't work... 

[Totallycasual]

I kinda lost any faith i had left in Rockstar when they abandoned the single player DLC for V so they could focus on GTAO and their shark card nonsense, they sold their soul for microtransaction cheddar. 

[Quackers101]

(like always)

[jagdtigger]

As long as the DMCA does no contain any serious repercussions for fraudulent notices and copyright lawsuits wont backfire at the one who falsely accusing someone this BS will be more and more commonplace.......

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, jagdtigger said:

As long as the DMCA does no contain any serious repercussions for fraudulent notices and copyright lawsuits wont backfire at the one who falsely accusing someone this BS will be more and more commonplace.......

DMCA's can, and are, used against game mods.

 

The only game mods you can kinda get away with are localization mods, because by definition the mod contains no or little copyright owner's content, as the localization in that language doesn't exist in the first place. Things that add or change content in the game in a way that functionally "quality of life" excuses make, are usually the first to be taken down because they are effectively cheats beyond the developer's intent.

 

The problem is a lot of mods, are that they require substantial amounts of the copyrighted game to exist in the first place, which is why other games (eg Starview Valley, Minecraft, Euro Truck, etc) need dedicated support for mods that are blessed by the developer, and they need to be updated with every version. "The Sims" used to be a great game to mod, but after Sims 2, EA basically saw the cash-cow that it is, and wanted to make sure no market for mods can exist.

 

GTA itself, much like Warcraft/Starcraft, come from a time where the games multiplayer content was more fun than the single-player scenarios, but you can only play the multiplayer stuff the same way so many times before you want something else, so mods extend the life of the game, and one fairly well known mod is "DOTA" and it's spin off's DOTA2 and LOL (League of Legends.) Basically Blizzard's loss was Valve and Riot's gain for not supporting the popular mod for their game.

 

[jagdtigger]

6 minutes ago, Kisai said:

DMCA's can, and are, used against game mods.

In the wast majority of cases it cannot because the code does not contain any coprighted material.

 

6 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Minecraft

As far as i understand it mc mods do not contain copyrighted code, even the modded servers aint doing it (they just hook into the original game executable).


/EDIT
Dealing with cheats via dmca is dumb at best and pure incompetence at worst....

[That Franc]

I would be surprised if this came as a surprise to anyone.

Personally, I vowed to never give Rockstar money on the day that the Discord in-game overlay came out - as an unrecognised 3rd party overlay, it got my friends who had not disabled it banned in GTA Online, and they never got to talk to a living person when trying to file their appeals, being denied by an automated system. I felt terrible because I got them into the game, and the response from Rockstar was swift. It became crystal clear then how little regard Rockstar had for their community.

[Avocado Diaboli]

2 hours ago, Kisai said:

The only game mods you can kinda get away with are localization mods, because by definition the mod contains no or little copyright owner's content, as the localization in that language doesn't exist in the first place.

Translating something doesn't automatically remove the copyright on the original. If I take a copyrighted book and localize it to my own native language, I still broke the copyright.

 

2 hours ago, Kisai said:

Things that add or change content in the game in a way that functionally "quality of life" excuses make, are usually the first to be taken down because they are effectively cheats beyond the developer's intent.

[citation needed]. Developers usually only care about cheats for online games because that's where the quality of the experience for other users gets impacted. And just because Rockstar and Take-Two are very trigger happy doesn't automatically mean the larger games industry has a grudge against mods. They'd just rather keep people within their microtransaction-filled bubble instead of having them mod the game for free.

 

2 hours ago, Kisai said:

The problem is a lot of mods, are that they require substantial amounts of the copyrighted game to exist in the first place, which is why other games (eg Starview Valley, Minecraft, Euro Truck, etc) need dedicated support for mods that are blessed by the developer, and they need to be updated with every version.

Every mod needs a substantial amount of copyrighted game to exist. You know, the game that the mod intends to modify. But if you mean that mods in an of themselves are built with copyrighted content, this is false. You can write code that interacts with the game code and its assets without the code containing anything copyrighted by the original developer. Often, mods are just tweaked variables that live in fairly exposed, human readable text files (which is actually the case for Rockstar's games) or it's a simple replacement of existing texture, meshes and audio files with other textures, meshes and audio files, so in essence there's even less content in a modded game that's copyrighted by the developers. Changing all the dragons in Skyrim to Macho Man Randy Savage might violate his estates copyright on the character, but in that modded version of Skyrim there's now less content made by Bethesda. You also don't need dedicated support or a blessing of the developer to mod a game. 

[qwerty123321]

2 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

You can write code that interacts with the game code and its assets without the code containing anything copyrighted by the original developer.

Vice cry was example of such mod, but was also pulled off by DMCA...

 

[Zodiark1593]

I was looking into getting into some GTA the past few years, as my first and only GTA purchase was San Andreas for PS2, for $20 as a Greatest Hits, probably 15 years ago now. And a whole city to myself is no doubt the appeal of GTA. 
 

Being a (very) Behind the Times gamer has paid off here in that I gave Rockstar next to nothing.  

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Translating something doesn't automatically remove the copyright on the original. If I take a copyrighted book and localize it to my own native language, I still broke the copyright.

Localizations are nearly always done by distributing a patch against the original unmodified game. There are literately thousands of fan-translations out there that exist this way. Don't confuse it with anime fansubs.

 

 

3 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

[citation needed]. Developers usually only care about cheats for online games because that's where the quality of the experience for other users gets impacted. And just because Rockstar and Take-Two are very trigger happy doesn't automatically mean the larger games industry has a grudge against mods. They'd just rather keep people within their microtransaction-filled bubble instead of having them mod the game for free.

Developers care about anything they can monetize. Many games out there, you can outright nerf the GAAS microtransactions and lootboxes by having the mod not connect to the payment service to use it, but still give you what you want. and believe it or not, plenty of cheaters and modders see nothing wrong with this. Like many iphone/ipad/android games are exactly this way.

 

3 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

 

Every mod needs a substantial amount of copyrighted game to exist. You know, the game that the mod intends to modify. But if you mean that mods in an of themselves are built with copyrighted content, this is false.

I literately cited DOTA. That's one of several total-conversion type of mods that make an entirely new game from an existing one.

 

The point of this thread is DMCA. The DMCA prevents any use of copyrighted material, in any context, in nearly every situation that isn't strictly educational or news-worthy.  The DMCA can be used as a cudgel against people selling everything from tools to accounts for a game, because the game developer owns the game, not the people selling tools or accounts.

 

The interesting thing here, especially in light of "right to repair", is that if you apply right to repair to software, that means you should be able modify games to strip copy protection from them to run them on any hardware of your choosing. You still need to own the game, but "game consoles" would no longer be a viable thing.

 

[ouroesa]

[Forbidden Wafer]

TakeTwo is trash? Just like Activision and EA, these companies produced way better stuff when their margins were thinner. As soon as they started focusing on a few games a year and mtx, everything started getting worse and worse.

[Brooksie359]

9 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Translating something doesn't automatically remove the copyright on the original. If I take a copyrighted book and localize it to my own native language, I still broke the copyright.

 

[citation needed]. Developers usually only care about cheats for online games because that's where the quality of the experience for other users gets impacted. And just because Rockstar and Take-Two are very trigger happy doesn't automatically mean the larger games industry has a grudge against mods. They'd just rather keep people within their microtransaction-filled bubble instead of having them mod the game for free.

 

Every mod needs a substantial amount of copyrighted game to exist. You know, the game that the mod intends to modify. But if you mean that mods in an of themselves are built with copyrighted content, this is false. You can write code that interacts with the game code and its assets without the code containing anything copyrighted by the original developer. Often, mods are just tweaked variables that live in fairly exposed, human readable text files (which is actually the case for Rockstar's games) or it's a simple replacement of existing texture, meshes and audio files with other textures, meshes and audio files, so in essence there's even less content in a modded game that's copyrighted by the developers. Changing all the dragons in Skyrim to Macho Man Randy Savage might violate his estates copyright on the character, but in that modded version of Skyrim there's now less content made by Bethesda. You also don't need dedicated support or a blessing of the developer to mod a game. 

I mean translating a book is completely different from translating a game as you can't play the game without owning which is a key difference between mods and things that are straight up copyright infringement. Honestly I believe all mods should be protected from this type of stuff so long as it doesn't allow for cheats in multi-player settings or circumvent having to obtain a legal copy of the game. 

[Salv8 (sam)]

i got the classics for free like 3 years ago, at least i can access the old lads when i wish.

anti-consumer practices are NOTHING NEW, they've probably been around for as long as the word business.

my only hope is that rockstar won't sell the game with mods installed to improve graphics and the game.

i've heard though the grapevine that rockstar might do this for the releases, i wouldn't be surprised with that. (they are rumors so take it with a good sprinkling of salt and pepper, it may or may not be true, time will tell)

a lot of the original blood has left, the only one left is sam i think, i wouldn't be surprised to see him leave soon with how the company's have been acting as of recent.

i won't be buying the trilogy, and if i had to? i'd buy it from one of those 'legit' key sites. (don't do this, piracy isn't cool, they may be a soulless corp but that doesn't give you the right to commit a crime, wanna hurt them? don't buy the game and don't talk about it, any press is good press, no press is devastating)

[Vishera]

Boycott them.

They are getting lazy,and instead of GTA 6 we get to see them milk existing games.

 

Anyway i didn't buy a Rockstar game since Max Payne 3

[poochyena]

After all the changes they made to GTA V, I doubt i'll buy any of their future games. I just want to play single player. I hate the forced updates, online internet connection required, mods breaking, etc.

[Junaid Hameed]

17 hours ago, Mel0nMan said:

If the price of Definitive Edition is less than the other versions combined I can see how that would almost seem worth it. But to modders, of course the game files would be a bit different in Definitive Edition so most mods wouldn't work... 

I am Hearing 70-80 USD for PS5 versions.

I'm gonna wait for repacks from a particular girl that's very "fit"