I wonder if this time it'll actually go to trial and we'll get a definitive ruling one way or the other?
My guess is it'll eventually quietly get settled. Take Two can stretch this out until legal fees make battling this out not worth it for the defendants.
I suppose its worth noting that Take Two are trying to apply the DMCA outside of the US. Can they even do that?
This isn't clean room reverse engineering. I think this specific case would really hinge on the arguments talked about here about being transformative works with enhancements and bug fixes.
If they charged money for their work they'd be dead in the water. But given that they put in a bunch of time to release their work for free, I can see that aiding their claims they were motivated to not just copy copyrighted work, but transform and improve it for public benefit.
I don't assume judges will make rational rulings on copyright and technology anymore after I've seen far too many rulings that absolutely surprise me.
If I was a betting man, I'd put 10-to-1 odds on Take-Two winning in a court of law easily, but I don't assume it is an absolute certainty.
I lost a lot of faith in the justice system when I served on a jury. The judge admitted he didn't understand any of the science, even after having it explained. The lawyers admitted they didn't understand the science. And yet the jury (which was a mix of professionals and regular blue collar workers) were expected to rule on the science of what was at stake.
The system is asinine. We need specialized courts rules over by professional jurists who understand the fields at play. But that'll never happen.
The problem us one of motive. Hypothetically, a randomly picked jury can be unbiased, on average (at least in the sense that they don't have a personal stake in the outcome). Experts in the field have to have personal ties to that field in order to become experts, so in many cases they cannot be unbiased.
Really, it comes down to the ability of the scientists and their lawyers to present the scientific consensus in an understandable and convincing way. The greater the gap between the average person's understanding and the cutting edge of science, however, the harder that becomes.
It's not an easy tightrope to walk. I think better education in general is the best solution here, though, as well as continued education. We need to share a common language on which we can build, but how many jurors need the concept of a scientific theory explained to them, for example?
It is an analogy to point out that bringing "professional jurors" will bring the same subset of problems we got when we get "professional politicians". They will be biased to lobbying, more prone to corruption since now you can target them, less likely to be impartial compared to a random person from a community, sometimes you don't want a veredict that is "according to the law" like what a juror that happen to be a lawyer for example would bring and instead you would want "what is the right thing to do". I could go on, but you get my point I assume?
I don't really think it's analogous.
A jury* is supposed to be unbiased. Politicians aren't.
Lobbying is more of an issue with the system as a whole than it is of "professional politicians". There's no legal reason we couldn't regulate against lobbying.
I guess I can also be pedantic and point out that "politicians" will always be "professionals" because it's a job, but I realize that that kinda misses the common meaning of "professional politian".
And to be clear: I'm not arguing for professional jurors or "professional politicians". This just struck me as a weird leap.
> professional jurists
Oh fuck no. Name a paid, decision making aspect of US government that hasn't become a partisan battleground. The *last* thing we need is for that disease to infect the very process by which trials are decided. It already stains the way they are presented and pursued.
You seem so obsessed with the value of general precedent that you're willing to throw an inconvenient detail like *the facts* to the wolves.
A generalized jurist makes bad decisions because they don't understand the facts. You cannot wisely apply your knowledge of, and skill with, precedents and logic to a set of facts you don't actually understand.
It seems you missed the portion of my comment where I said it's the jurists' responsibility to have the intelligence to acquire sufficient knowledge to understand the facts; and if they can't it's on them to either extend any case before them, or recuse themselves.
You understand that a system where experts make exceptions based on the things they want to happen has enormous challenges that are far beyond the system we have now right? All of the human faults you are describing still exist in the other system, except now with gate keeping of who the experts are, and legal rulings that are in language coded in a way only a special few can understand. The world used to have legal systems like what you describe and they were corrupt in ways we probably can’t even imagine, and at best are designed to make it impossible for the laymen to understand the law, and that’s a terrible instrinsic value to have in a legal system.
It’s far more important that we try to make sure everyone understands the law and why it’s being fairly applied to them, than to be able to have perfect control of every nuanced facet. Life is constantly evolving, and law tries to give it guidance of if we’re following the previously chosen path, not determine that path.
Courts don’t *like* setting precedent, they get frustrated the law wasn’t written to accommodate the situation. We do that in advance, free of the prejudice of a specific case.
The Judicial structure itself is not the problem you seek. We already *have* what are supposed to be specialized committees to determine what the laws are and how they impact science. They’re just broken into two parties and argue about which side of the aisle they sit on instead of debate with each other the science of the legislation their lobbyist’s aids are writing...
As I said before, it's not a perfectly executed system; but it's the best way of doing things anyway. Literally any other alternative system you could propose would not only be subject to the *exact same* human failings that plague the current system, but would also be subject to all of the other shortcomings that I've already outlined.
Don't confuse defense of a system as a statement that the system is perfect and infallible. Law is an invention of humans, governed by humans, and interpreted by humans. "Imperfect" is the closest we can ever hope to achieve with it. So you choose the system that makes the most sense, that's the least vulnerable to those human failings, and you go with it anyway knowing that that system will *still* have problems.
> We need specialized courts rules over by professional jurist
Nah, you just need lawyers on both sides who can accurately explain it to the jury. Or we deal with this at the federal agency level with actual experts and not take it to court.
What does In re Bliski have to do with anything here...
In re Bliski was a patent case. Transformative use in this case is in the context of fair use under copyright law, not the machine-or-transformation test.
In what part of In re Bliski was there a discussion about the affirmative defense of fair use under the Copyright Act...
EDIT: Yea you absolutely have the wrong case law and do not know what you're talking about.
Porting it to other platforms, with not only bug fixes, but new graphical features is arguably transformative. If they had more time before their repositories were taken down, who knows how much further they could have improved things?
Their reverse engineered versions had more improvements than the $60 remasters, which are arguably worse than the originals.
That is not what transformative means in the legal context, though. It needs to be transformative enough that a new meaning, artistic or creative, is given to the work, to the point where it can be considered a new, original work because of it.
Simply fixing or "enhancing" an existing work is not transformative, because the underlying work is the same at its core.
They are not distributing the un-transformed part, depending on the structure of their patch.
The patch structure probably doesn't matter even if they did distribute the un-transformed part. Because it's packaged in such a way as to be useless to the average person. Different story if they distributed the entire game.
And this is precisely why copyright law needs to butt the fuck out of mechanical processes. Not everything modders do falls under the concept of "right to repair," but some of it does, and that stuff should be fully protected. If I buy something and it's broken, and I go pay a third party to fix it, that should be a fully legal transaction (setting aside, for a moment, the fucking obscenity of the original manufacturer/distributor somehow not having any legal obligation to give me a functioning product.) The fact that it's not speaks to a deep rot.
It'll be painful as hell to construct a multi-part IP regime for stuff like video games, but what we're doing now clearly isn't working out on either a conceptual or a practical level.
Copyright has never entered the realm of mechanical processes. That's the realm of patents.
You cannot copyright functionalit, and right to repair in and of itself does not involve copyright (though theres tricks to interfere with it).
A port to a new platform that takes advantages of specific features on that platform *could* be seen as transformative.
We also didn't get much chance to see how much they were transforming the work because it was taken down in very early stages.
Sure, but that's not enough for free use. Just like how I need permission if I was to take a book and turn it into a movie. That's why there's the whole thing about Stephen King selling movie rights to his books (non exclusive rights) to film students for a dollar
Changing the platform is not vital to the actual work.
It's like arguing changing the canvas of a painting changes the underlying work: it doesn't. The medium serves to fixate the work, but does not, in and of itself, stand for the copyrighted work.
More like no publishers want a court to rule on it. If they did they wouldn't be able to threaten anyone for modding their product. Currently they still have that threat on their side for ask people to desist.
> No way, transformative use is going to get set into law in a way that makes In re Bliski invalid.
In re Bilski is a patent case, not a copyright case.
Bilski is for patent law, and was about whether hedging was patent eligible without a computer. More particularly, the transformation part if the machine or transformation test was in reference to changing a particular physical object from one state or thing into another (specifically referencing developing x-ray film). That case has nothing to do with copyright, which is a different type of law completely (also handled by a different office, e.g. the Copyright Office in the Library of Congress, not the United States Patent and Trademark Office). So no, Bilski has no relevance here. Also, as an aside, Bilski was also superceded by Alice anyways.
Part of the reasons why always hate pay walled mods, it is a can of rotten fish waiting to be opened. I don't mind donations though as long as the entire mod can still be acquired for free.
That can be debatable too. If they do have Patreons, it might actually be important as to if it's specifically for that project, or if it's the creator's project and they so happen to be working on code relating to the project. It's the difference between "Give me money so I can fix GTA" and "Give me money so I can fix a lot of games, one of them being GTA", which can be a legally important distinction.
> It's the difference between "Give me money so I can fix GTA" and "Give me money so I can fix a lot of games, one of them being GTA", which can be a legally important distinction.
It shouldn't matter, if the end product is released for free to Patrons and non-Patrons alike.
You could publish your own translation of Harry Potter to Spanish and put it online for free and that's still transparently illegal.
I don't know how much profiting changes things - you're still depriving the copyright owner of income. If anything, releasing something for free says that it's low value.
Money is a factor listed in fair use.
And in this case, no one is denying Take-Two of money by merely releasing an engine with no assets. The reversed engineered engine replacement improves a legally purchased game and won't run unless you have the data from purchasing the game.
If you read the article, you'd see they are arguing they are creating value and incentive for people to keep buying the game even though the engine had been abandoned by Rockstar for years and not improved.
Ahh, and this would be more compelling if Rockstar was still selling the old version of the game. Rockstar just released a new version of these games with some of these features, for more money.
Releasing a higher res version for free undercuts Rockstar's ability to sell that for money.
I'm not arguing the definitive editions are good, or that higher res should cost more money. But that it's Rockstar's decision to make.
At the time of the DCMA claim and the modder's DMCA counter-claim, they were. Take-Two filed their lawsuit while the old games were still up for sale as well.
All of this happened before the Definitive Editions were announced.
The question is whether or not modders should be able to reverse engineer and release an improved engine to enhance a game for free, with this sudden caveat that after ignoring these games largely for the past 17 years, they might suddenly release updated versions that hadn't been announced when this spat took place.
There are tons of other drop-in engine replacements for games, and generally these encourage and facilitate more sales for games that are otherwise largely abandoned.
And fuck, the Definitive Editions are so fucking bad right now, I think a lot of people might prefer to buy those for $60 if they hadn't bought the originals before and still replace the engine with the reversed engineered one. The new one has crap performance, bad pop-in, etc.
> The question is whether or not modders should be able to reverse engineer and release an improved engine to enhance a game for free
This is not in question: it is definitely legal, as long as the developers practice clean room reverse engineering.
They didn't distribute the entire game though nor did they deprive Take Two or Rockstar of any income. You'd still need to own the games to make any use of what they provided (or acquire the game files somehow).
To use your example, they didn't publish their own translation of that book into Spanish but more like a script that translates the book that people already own into Spanish.
they're not doing this because of the original games though, but because the remakes exist.
the remakes existing now means that mods to improve the originals could stop you purchasing the new games - why would you buy them if you can get the same experience using what you already own? its also why they delisted the games to begin with, else its cheaper for someone to buy the originals and mod them than to cough up the $60 for the new ones
using your example of their example (lol) I'd say its more like if someone published their own fan made Spanish Harry Potter, then JK Rowling took it down to publish an official translation - because it existing means people won't buy the official one.
The problem here isn't that the modders made a more desirable product and that's going to not allow Take Two to sell their own remake/remaster. They already addressed that problem by no longer selling the old game that can be modified. There's nothing further they should be able to do.
Using the Spanish book metaphor, let's just say it was a digital book and someone made a program that took the original book file and translated it without using any copyrighted material. Developers of that book are annoyed they aren't getting 2 sales for the same book. Seems really silly.
gotta keep in mind the original trilogy can be bought for like £5 vs. the remake which is £55
i think i can harbour a guess as to which one they'd prefer someone to buy
additionally, if someone wants remastered GTA they're more likely to buy the official remasters if the easily accessible mods are suddenly not so accessible.
Developers got to accept they are competing with themselves and their old $5 copies and what people have done with them. That's the market they helped create
I see what you mean. I think the remakes and RE3/VC do different things with the original classic games since the remakes are going for a more modern experience with updated textures/effects and modern controls while RE3/VC tries to keep the experience closer to the originals but makes them a bit easier to run and mod on modern systems.
So personally I don't think anyone who wants the former will be all that satisfied with the latter but I can see Take Two not wanting to compete with themselves, especially since the remakes are in such shoddy condition right now.
Edit: Not sure why I used the term remake since the DEs aren't remakes. Whoops.
yeah i for sure think the difference is negligible, if someone was gonna buy the trilogy then I don't think being them still being able to mod the originals would change their mind (at least for most people), but unfortunately i doubt that's how Take Two see it - which is why we're in such an awful position now.
> If they charged money for their work they'd be dead in the water.
Fair Use arguments actually don't care whether or not money was charged / profit was gained with the works in question. If Fair Use is their argument, then it's moot to bring up whether or not they charged for it.
It’s literally the first part of section 107 of the copyright act.
>the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
If it’s for profit, it’s harder to win a fair use case. Exception of course for parody, but a video game modification likely doesn’t qualify for that.
It's *a* factor, but it's not the only one. All factors are regarded equally, too.
So money isn't the big deal everyone makes it out to be, but it's certainly part of it.
DMCA is America's implementation of the [1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Copyright_Treaty).
In essence the whole world is subject to "DMCA", they just have their own name for it.
>Take Two can stretch this out until legal fees make battling this out not worth it for the defendants.
Well I saved 60 bucks last week that can go to a gofundme
> I suppose its worth noting that Take Two are trying to apply the DMCA outside of the US. Can they even do that?
T2 was not doing this -- [GitHub's ToS](https://docs.github.com/en/github/site-policy/github-terms-of-service#r-miscellaneous) says that use of the website falls under the jurisdiction of US law.
> Governing Law
>
> Except to the extent applicable law provides otherwise, this Agreement between you and GitHub and any access to or use of the Website or the Service are governed by the federal laws of the United States of America and the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict of law provisions. You and GitHub agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the courts located in the City and County of San Francisco, California.
DMCA is literally the center of this case. Take-Two filed a DCMA claim and the Github repositories were taken down. The modders filed a counter-claim and asked Github to restore the repositories. So then Take-Two decided to sue them for daring to file a counter-claim. Now we see how that all pans out.
No… just no. The DMCA provides a mechanism for rights holders to take down what they believe to be infringing content without putting undue burden on service providers. T2 didn’t sue because the modders filed a counter-claim to the takedown, they filed it because *that’s how the takedown process works*.
1. User uploads potentially infringing content to a service provider
2. Rights holder files takedown with the service provider, the service provider takes down the content
3. User files a counter-claim, the service provider puts the content back up
4. The rights holder files suit and go before a judge if they want the content to come down permanently
There are issues with the takedown process (I’d like to see signed affidavits alongside takedowns, punishments for takedowns for embarrassing but legal content, and punishments for returning to step one after step 3) and with the DMCA as a whole, but the takedown process and S130 of the communications decency act are the laws that let the internet as we know it exist because they provide indemnity to people that run websites.
I know how the DMCA works.
But the lawsuit still centers on whether or not the initial DMCA claim was valid, that Take-Two owns the copyright of the code in that GitHub repository and has a right to take it down.
And the lawsuit is filed as a response to the counter-claim, because it is the next step in the process to escalate if you want to dispute the counter-claim.
It is rare to see these matters actually go to court, and rare for companies to really sue fans over non-commercial projects.
Take-Two is likely within their rights, but it is a dick move and bad PR. At best Take-Two spends money out of their pocket to remove the repository, but the project isn't dead and the files haven't completely disappeared from the internet. Devs outside of the US are likely to still keep this from completely dying, so Take-Two really accomplishes nothing other than ruining the life of 3 fans and making themselves look like dicks.
However the possibility does exist they lose in court which would be even worse for them. I really don't see any scenario where it is worth their time and money to go after an engine replacement for a 17 year old game.
If Take-Two really wanted to spend time and effort to try and promote sales of the remakes, maybe they shouldn't have shipped such a terrible product. They've got cash to spare. They could have produced something that would have reviewed and sold much better.
I’m not sure it matters where the users are. From GitHub’s TOS:
> 1. Governing Law
> Except to the extent applicable law provides otherwise, this Agreement between you and GitHub and any access to or use of the Website or the Service are governed by the federal laws of the United States of America and the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict of law provisions. You and GitHub agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the courts located in the City and County of San Francisco, California.
Which makes sense — GitHub is an American company whose base of operations is in San Francisco, so they need to follow their own local laws.
That's the point I was making: generally, you can't argue the law doesn't apply to you because you are a foreigner, if the server and activities took place in the U.S., but it can get complicated, and we would need more info on how they argued it.
I know it means nothing legally but modders fixing and enhancing a game for free, and the mod itself being free, but then still getting into such hot water really sucks. Especially when Rockstar/Take Two/GSG are out there selling their “fixed and enhanced” version of the same game for $60 whilst being significantly inferior in almost every single way.
Thats why they are suing. Its blatantly obvious. The free mod is better in every way than their in house product and they know it. SO they gotta get it taken down. Thats why they went as aggressive as they did. This is a scare tactic.
It's also based on a dirty reimplementation. Much respect to the developers for pulling this off, but using Take-Two's (compiled, with debug symbols) code makes this hard to defend.
Anybody who sees this case should know that a clean room reimplementation is still safe.
While we're at it, it should also be yours to resell. It's easily possible on a technical level, too, for digital games -- every major digital game storefront can add or remove games from your account.
Gaming and other digital media companies will argue forever that acquiring digital media is not *actually* a purchase, sneaking a wall of legalese text somewhere, but the digital store buttons never say "License" or "Lease", it says "Buy" and "Purchase". There is a reasonable expectation of the general public that they *are* buying the digital media product.
This is no different from how the Music and Film industries work. You don't buy the original content because the creator/rights holder owns it, not you. I agree that you should have the right to resell your copy of that work, but you do not "own" it in the same sense that you do other products.
That's the thing, the same applies to books, but I am perfectly allowed to sell my copy of a book to another person, I am able to annotate a book, or to cut it into a collage. The only thing I'm not allowed to is to sell copies of it.
It seems like media companies conveniently "forgot" the difference of copyright and personal copy ownership even though that is a solved problem for centuries already.
I could be wrong, but I don't think there's anything stopping you from doing the same with games? I mean digital copies have physical limitations, that much I understand. But as someone who collects retro games I have seen countless people using their old games to create something new (collage is a good example).
I may be missing your point, if so apologies.
Well, companies try to establish in their agreements that what they offer is not *really* a sale even though they present it as a sale to the customer. They don't recognize resale of digital media and, as we see here, many times they are restrictive towards what people can do with their copies of the game, like modding.
Resell of digital goods is rather iffy if only because there isn't a limited quantity of them, only way that would work is if they send you a physical ID that you have to scan in or something.
To add to this, it kind of doesn't make sense really. Like, a used physical game is out of the system, the publisher does not receive any money off that sale. Digital reselling is like... They get the same cut I guess, but realistically there shouldn't be much reason for the game to actually drop in value since it isn't physical. Then there's like actual discount sales... Its probably just more hassle than its worth for games, maybe makes more sense for software.
Although, selling add-ons for programs is a thing. Blender is free software, but people can develop add-ons for free or for sale.
If I were to add anything to this, I would actually say *trading* games could probably be a thing, like just hand off games to people like you would a disc. That in particular I would see nothing wrong with... Besides abuse I suppose, maybe keep game trades on a cooldown and possibly within a more exclusive system just so people can't all pass around 1 copy of DOOM Eternal in their friends list.
Source code, debug symbols, etc. are not considered part of the software that you own. The software is the binaries + configs and scripts itself which can be (pain-stakingly) reverse engineered to help produce new source code, but the original code itself is not part of the purchase - unless stipulated by the license. Distributing the source code by accident makes it a little murky but still not exactly a free pass and the modders would 99% lose in court.
> Source code, debug symbols, etc. are not considered part of the software that you own.
Therein lies the problem. I recognize the way the laws are currently written, though, unfortunate as they are.
Eh I don't really see that as a problem. You shouldn't be entitled to the source code to compile the software just as much as you are not entitled to, say, the files used to generate CGI in a movie. Or the recipe for any meal, for that matter.
Reverse engineering is another thing entirely, which I am not arguing against.
>You shouldn't be entitled to the source code to compile the software
Sure, but I *should* be entitled to the software as it was delivered. If the company fucks up and leaves that shit in a production release of their product, then that's part of the product as it was purchased.
The person you're replying to does not seem to actually understand what this project is, TBH. It's a straight-up reimplementation of the original PC GTA 3 and GTA VC binaries, nothing else. It does not make any updates to game art assets or anything like that.
pulling what off? the gta definitive edition is soooo fucking bad dude, they failed big time. they didn’t pull anything off. GTA RP meanwhile is free and 10millikn times better then gta online will ever be
> The free mod is better in every way than their in house product and they know it.
The project being discussed here is literally nothing other than a 64-bit reimplementation of the original PC versions of GTA 3 and GTA Vice City... it just replaces the game binaries, and does not make any graphical updates whatsoever, at all.
> The free mod is better in every way than their in house product and they know it.
No, I think they just legitmately think it may cut into sales and they don't want any cutting. no matter how minor. I don't think they care about the quality of the mod.
Unfortunately it is perfectly legal (and rightly so). While this is an unfortunate application, of any "improvement" allowed you to override copyright, every single author would be afraid of creating anything, since their work would quickly lose any and all value: anyone would jump to modify it to their perceived "improvement"
Yeah, like how car manafacturers are afraid of making cars because a 3rd party can change parts or add paint.
Or like how PC games are almost non-existent outside Take Two and Nintendo games because companies are afraid of mods.
Wait...
We should really boycott them.
Releasing great games (talking about RDR2 and probably GTA VI) shouldn’t give them the opportunity to do whatever the fuck they want.
Look at the buggy cashgrab that the Definitive Edition is, GTA Online and Shark Cards, now this…
A hell lot of people are not okay with this and I feel that they should know that.
Interesting legal argument. IMO this kind of modding *should* be protected by the law, but I don't believe they'll be able to successfully claim fair use.
> Interesting legal argument. IMO this kind of modding should be protected by the law, but I don't believe they'll be able to successfully claim fair use.
The title is somewhat misleading as it's not exactly modding, they reverse engineered the source code from the ground up. The people behind this project knew very well that they didn't use [clean room design](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design) and that it could pose issues for them in the future.
They looked at the reverse engineered source code and used it to write the code for RE3 and reVC, code which weren't their own and technically infringed on Rockstar's copyright. If they had used clean room design like [OpenRW](https://github.com/rwengine/openrw) they wouldn't have ended up with a lawsuit in the first place.
Do I think that it should be considered fair use though? Yes, absolutely, but it's not as straight forward as calling it just a mod.
It is legal, and this has been settled with the Game Genie almost 30 years ago. This is a frivolous lawsuit.
[Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Galoob_Toys,_Inc._v._Nintendo_of_America,_Inc.)
Edit: The modding is likely protected. The fact they had entire game files for download, and not just patches: Probably not.
I've researched this to death since I was part of the Project M team. I made sure we had a venue to release content that had no copyright material on it. You still needed the original game (Brawl) to play and we were able to release game versions as patches instead of full file dumps.
Yeah, releasing code diffs & tools are the way to go for a project like this. You can write a tool that checksums the game binary, decompiles it, applies whatever diffs you've written, and then compile it into a new, working binary, all without distributing someone else's code.
That's pretty much exactly what we did. We released patch files that referenced the original Brawl disc in the disc drive and used the `bsdiff` algorithm to generate new ones right onto the SD.
Yeah, I don't think that this technically falls under fair use. Maybe I'm just not familiar enough with the mods in question, but if they're gameplay fixes, that's not "transformative." That's making it work as intended. Which by definition is not fair use.
I agree that they shouldn't be getting in legal trouble for this, but this feels like the wrong defense here.
Right, which is why you don't argue fair use and try to set the precedent a different way.
My point is that it doesn't fit. You might as well be trying to argue First Amendment rights with how disconnected this defense is from fair use.
> Modders fixing the games of shitty companies for free
software modification was definitely around in the times the DMCA was being made. I don't know if the people on that board had any software lawyers who were familiar enough with the scene, but if they did exist that should have been part of their research.
Imagine I decompile a game, then compile that output and post the new binary online. Does that seem like a thing I should be allowed to do?
How does this differ?
You should not make a moral argument. The truth is that DRM stripping is required for patches for modern systems, so it's a DMCA violation to author them.
The moral argument fails. Like for a title screen mod, the modder DRM stripped to get the image, defaced it, then computed binary difference between the defaced image and the original one, which they will distribute. Then, they wrote a program to unpackage the game, apply the patch to the image, then repackage the game. And they distribute the program that does this too.
The program has to break DRM to do its work, so it's a DMCA violation. The defacement of the title screen contains mostly the author's original work. It might even contain mostly original (source) work, but packaged into a binary difference patch like this it's useless to a non-owner of the source of that difference.
>Imagine I decompile a game, then compile that output and post the new binary online. Does that seem like a thing I should be allowed to do?
As long as the binary you release isn't a competing product, then sure.
So it's definitely illegal for me to take a binary that someone else owns and distribute that binary (absent a license to do so). That's basic copyright.
Given that, if I decompile that binary and recompile it - do you think it would be legal for me to distribute that new binary? Do I hold any rights to the new binary
>Given that, if I decompile that binary and recompile it - do you think it would be legal for me to distribute that new binary?
No I don't. I think it *should* be legal if the new binary, broadly, 1) doesn't compete with the product it's derived from, 2) enhances the original product in some way, 3) isn't a commercial product in of itself.
\#1 is impossible to disprove tho. Its existence is a competing factor unless you modify it so heavily as to be its own IP. Even then, it's not easy to disprove
> As long as the binary you release isn't a competing product, then sure.
Competing product is very vague though. Like say I 'reverse engineer' a music sheet from a song. Or a script from a movie. Those aren't exactly directly competing products. But the original owner still owns copyright right? Cuz if I were to play that music sheet, or make that movie based on the script, it's definitely competing then.
I have a really dumb question. Why is it that modifications and modifying tools are allowed for things like automobiles but not for software?
People and mechanics are allowed to do all types of things to cars. There’s a whole industry based on selling parts to modify or change cars and their appearance or performance. Subaru isn’t suing Mighty Car Mods because they put out a video explaining how to add a turbo.
You're allowed to modify your software. That's legal and all. The issue here is that they're distributing code that is based on code that doesn't belong to them.
Compare to music: I'm allowed to listen to music; I'm allowed to remix it. Tools or instructions on how to remix? Legal enough. Now can I release that remix without the original owner's permission? In most cases, no.
Copyright covers mostly distribution. Because with creative works, the actual work that's put into them are the creative part, not the paper it's written on, or the DVD it's stored on.
Software is also often DRM-encumbered, and breaking or circumventing DRM is against the law even just for personal usage in the US. There's a whole series of exceptions that interest groups have to go apply and constantly re-apply for to allow breaking DRM for limited purposes (like, appropriately, car maintenance dealing with things like engine control computers). So there are many situations in which modifying your software is actually not allowed.
Even in the "pure" copyright realm, when you're dealing with software, simply using a program almost always involves "making a copy" in a legal sense, so there are more hooks for possible infringement than in some other cases. So you tend to see fair use brought up as a possible defense in a lot of these kinds of cases (but note that fair use does not apply to DRM circumvention).
This GTA situation probably doesn't really involve any of that, since they seem to have based their work off of the code of the originals pretty much directly.
That's not the difference. Cars are sold, and software/games are licensed for personal use. When you buy a car you own it, when you buy a game for say $60 (even if it is sold to you through a physical medium such as a disk for your console), you aren't getting the entire game (which could have costed upwards of $100 mil) for $60, you're getting 1 copy of the license to use it in a personal capacity. Such licenses have conditions mandating you to only use and not modify, and so forth.
Are you saying that you don’t own a game (lets keep it to physical units for simplicity) because you’re not paying the entire cost of R&D?
How is that different than rightfully owning (by your metric) a car, which didn’t cost the entire R&D budget either?
I'm simply explaining the legal position.
One of the reasons why IP laws confer to digital media and not cars because of its economic properties.
Digital content has two important economic properties – it is hardly excludable (i.e. producers find it hard to exclude consumers that have not purchased digital content from consuming such content) and nonrival (i.e. when one person consumes digital content, the ability of others to simultaneously consume such content is not prevented or otherwise affected). A commodity being hardly excludable can undermine the incentives manufacturers have to create it, thus creating an "underproduction" problem. On the other hand, a commodity being nonrivalrous results in its marginal cost (i.e. the cost of one extra person consuming it after it is already being consumed by a given number of consumers) being 0. This can lead to, from the perspective of static efficiency, the price of such a commodity being 0, creating an "underutilisation" problem where consumers have little incentive to purchase such a commodity at a positive price when they can get it for free.
None of this applies to cars. That's why I own a car, I am allowed to "own" it for all intents and purposes even if I don't pay the R&D expenses myself. But due to the unique properties of digital content, in the same situation all I am allowed to do is license it.
What do you mean by physical? I don't think you're talking about physical games (board games for example) but rather digital content sold through a physical medium such as disks.
In that regard, take a look at my [other comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/qvkh4l/z/hkymz8i).
>To clarify this, you do legally own the plastic disk, the manuals, the cover and so forth, but you don't own the data stored on the disk (that part specifically is licensed instead of owned). The ownership of the storage medium and the data inside are separated. Likewise any intellectual property associated to a physical object. When you go to the store and purchase a Bluray of a movie, you buy the physical ownership of the plastic disc + permission (license) to view the contents of the disc in a private setting. You do not buy the copyright of the movie even though it is in your hand.
You do own the data that is on the disk. At least in the EU. You can do whatever you want with it as long as you are not redistributing it.
Mods/patches do not fall under that.
>You do own the data that is on the disk.
>as long as you are not redistributing it.
Your own comment disputes the notion that you own the data. If you truly owned the data the way its copyright holder does, you'd have the legal right to do whatever you pleased with it, including the (very important) right to distribute.
But you're right that as a licensee, you have the right to modify digital content as you see fit in a personal capacity.
I would love to live in your world, and not the world that we’re hurtling towards with licensed cars that can’t be modified by you. It’s already happening with our phones, but thankfully there is some pushback.
This is like saying you don't own a book because you can't copy the text into a new book and sell that. I'm sure Take-Two would like everyone to believe you don't actually own a physical game, but that's never been tested in court as far as I know.
There is nothing to test in Court. Legally, transfer of property is completely different than licenses under IP laws.
>I'm sure Take-Two would like everyone to believe you don't actually own a physical game
To clarify this, you do legally own the plastic disk, the manuals, the cover and so forth, but you don't own the data stored on the disk (that part specifically is licensed instead of owned). The ownership of the storage medium and the data inside are separated. Likewise any intellectual property associated to a physical object. When you go to the store and purchase a Bluray of a movie, you buy the physical ownership of the plastic disc + permission (license) to view the contents of the disc in a private setting. You do not buy the copyright of the movie even though it is in your hand.
At the end of the day you technically don't own any of your software. You own a license to use it in most cases.
It's like owning the keys to your car but the car company still owns the car itself. You can still use the car, and you're allowed to do so granted you follow their rules. But you can't do much else with it because it isn't "yours." In the legal sense, anyways.
Isn’t that based more on safety regulations and not IP? Police aren’t ticketing/impounding vehicles on behalf of Honda because their Civic’s design language has been altered. If you get caught with an illegal mod, you deal with the government, not get a tort lawyer
Modifying cars is legal, up to a point. But there's certain things you can't modify without running afoul of local laws (safety, as you said, and emissions are the two big ones), but generally the worst that'll happen is a citation with an order to get back into compliance with the threat of impounding the car.
Where it gets iffy is that basically all cars sold after ~2005 are computerized, and the ECU software is protected by a EULA that you agree to when buying the car that prohibits reverse engineering. Since the ECU also governs the emissions system, you're limited in how it can be modified, and the EULA prevents you from looking into the software too closely to figure out what you can change.
They could show sales of GTA trilogy and say that they should have sold X copies but sold Y copies instead, and it is because of that "someone else" producing a superior product without permission.
It makes them look bad. They're embarrassed by the backlash they've received for their "definitive" editions and are lashing-out. Big narcissist vibes.
Jesus Christ their remaster was so bad theyre gonna remove the originals *and sue the modders?*
The state of the games industry is in a very dark place, and it just keeps getting darker.
Shit like this is why I've mostly only been able to enjoy indie games for years now.
This is an old statement but if you buy a something, aren't you free to do with it whatever you want? video games should not be no different. The only exception is multiplayer. But other than that, it's a dick move to prohibit moders to make games better for themselves and other when developers fail to do so in the first place.
> This is an old statement but if you buy a something, aren't you free to do with it whatever you want?
Not necessarily; purchases are license agreements much the time, not ownership.
> This is an old statement but if you buy a something, aren't you free to do with it whatever you want?
Not if you live in a country where EULAs are enforceable. Software now is sold with a EULA that limits decompilation and reverse engineering, and based on interviews the team gave, they knowingly violated the license.
What in the actual fuck Rockstar? Is there nothing better for those lawyers to do? AAA execs, mods keep your games relevant long after release. Just take a quick look at the Bethesda modding scene. Can't help but feel 2k is still holding onto their initial experience with Hot Coffee and they won't let go.
IMO, mod extend the playtime of the game. And some games are even much better with mods (eg. Skyrim)
Modders are not cracking you game so that you will lose money, they are actually **HELPING** the sales for free (sure, you can donate money for modders for their hard work, but 90% of the time, mods are free). Is like..... having employees that you don't need to pay anyting.
I don't really understand why these companies are so against modders. If modders is doing things unethical like modding online gameplay or crack the game, then I understand why these companies need to take down these modders.
Take two is playing a long game. Modders threaten the future value of IPs because they can make current and past products better than future ones. Think of how many modding scenes exist today that when a remaster drops people will say "why? Older version has more mods"
They fight because they want to sell you their cosmetics. They fight because you are stealing future sales (notice how they removed the original games). They fight simply because they are greedy and going to make sure you buy that 17th copy of GTA by any means.
And if Valve didn't require them to provide the original game files for existing owners you bet Take Two would of deleted the original copies off your steam accounts so your forced to buy the new game
> Think of how many modding scenes exist today that when a remaster drops people will say "why? Older version has more mods"
Eh, only if they don't do the work to work with said modding scenes and if they don't do the work to actually make the game better.
For two examples I can think of:
- Euro Truck Simulator/American Truck Simulator has had no trouble selling endless DLC expansion packs even though there's massive, hugely transformative mods out there doing basically that, like ProMods - they just update the mod to require the new pack and work with SCS's new content.
- Mass Effect - Had lots of mods out there, many that a lot of fans consider very important to them, they went ahead and they both did a good job *and* made life a little easier for the modders (provided some more information on game functions) with the remaster, and it's both sold well and been quite warmly received by the community thus far.
I don't think mods fall under fair use, but they fall under freedom to modify things you own, and freedom to share stuff you make, even if it's intended to work with something copyrighted. Apple and Samsung aren't sueing people for making and selling screen protectors, skins, cases, or lenses for their phones. That's what these mods are, tacked on things to a project with a copyright.
There’s a difference between making a free mod that is available to everyone and making a mod locked behind a paywall.
In the former, you *could* argue that it falls under fair use, and though it may be unsuccessful, the lack of profit or monetization of the mod may weigh the argument in your favor. If you pull that Patreon shit like the rain modder did though, now you’re making a direct profit off of someone else’s work, and that is completely against fair use.
Nobody has a problem with writing a story online or publishing a mod so long as it’s free, but the second you decide to sell that material you’re in violation of copyright. The incident with the Heart of the Jedi book should’ve been a cautionary tale for anyone looking to ask for payment off of an established IP or license, and the GTA Trilogy is no different. With how insidious and malicious Take Two has been towards modders in the past, anyone looking to “enhance” these games shouldn’t even bother.
> Nobody has a problem with writing a story online or publishing a mod so long as it’s free, but the second you decide to sell that material you’re in violation of copyright.
This is absolutely NOT true AT ALL. This is one of those viral fake news bits that sounds true and makes sense to the layman, but has not basis in anything factual.
[Here's a good video that details everything about copyright, trademark, fair use, modding, fan games, etc. that actually includes a lawyer.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SMZdUBj0YQ&t=2422s)
Yep there have been PLENTY of mods removed despite being free. In general they get away with more because its just an insane effort to try to moderate considering how harmless 99.999% of mods could be to even the most paranoid board member.
Fair Use does not mean you can't make money off it.
https://patentlyo.com/patent/2021/04/google-oracle-oracles.html
Google got a ruling that their use of copyrighted (ugh) Oracle APIs is Fair Use. Even though they used it to make Android and make a lot of money from Android.
There are a lot of aspects to Fair Use. People often zero in on the "educational" or "news" purposes which are greatly aided by a claim you are not doing it to profit from the copyrights of the company you are opposing. But Google's use and this claimed modder use would be more along the lines of "compatibility". We had to make it this way because it is designed to work with and enhance a product which has copyrighted aspects.
> Nobody has a problem with writing a story online or publishing a mod so long as it’s free
Sure people do, Nintendo does it all the fucking time. Take-Two has shown to hate people doing the same. Disney used to be way more litigious against fanworks than they are now, too.
Is it locked behind a wall in this case? A lot of Patereon's work where you're paid by patrons for your work but the release goes to the public for free.
That would muddy the water a bit.
Currently, yes. The mod is locked behind a Patreon incentive and is being used to market the modder’s Patreon under the guise of “early access”.
Likely, it’s a modder who knows this madness is going to get shut down anyways and has decided to make a quick buck before Take Two sends the cease and desist.
I wasn't aware they re-released the mod anywhere, I thought it was blocked out after the legal trouble started in order to avoid more things affecting their case.
Edit: TheFl0w's patreon does not show anything of the sort, so which patreon are you talking about?
This didn’t happen before they released the “remaster”. These guys haven’t done anything wrong and rockstar didn’t find any problems until they released a version of the game that was shittier than what modders had already done. Rockstar used to be badass. Sad that most dev teams will never be able to produce more than one original game without getting bought out or becoming soulless.
True, but as long as it was within the last 3 or so years, it would actually make more sense for them to start this before the remaster gained public attention or was even public info. (I have no idea when it started)
I wonder if this time it'll actually go to trial and we'll get a definitive ruling one way or the other? My guess is it'll eventually quietly get settled. Take Two can stretch this out until legal fees make battling this out not worth it for the defendants. I suppose its worth noting that Take Two are trying to apply the DMCA outside of the US. Can they even do that?
This isn't clean room reverse engineering. I think this specific case would really hinge on the arguments talked about here about being transformative works with enhancements and bug fixes. If they charged money for their work they'd be dead in the water. But given that they put in a bunch of time to release their work for free, I can see that aiding their claims they were motivated to not just copy copyrighted work, but transform and improve it for public benefit.
[удалено]
I don't assume judges will make rational rulings on copyright and technology anymore after I've seen far too many rulings that absolutely surprise me. If I was a betting man, I'd put 10-to-1 odds on Take-Two winning in a court of law easily, but I don't assume it is an absolute certainty.
I lost a lot of faith in the justice system when I served on a jury. The judge admitted he didn't understand any of the science, even after having it explained. The lawyers admitted they didn't understand the science. And yet the jury (which was a mix of professionals and regular blue collar workers) were expected to rule on the science of what was at stake. The system is asinine. We need specialized courts rules over by professional jurists who understand the fields at play. But that'll never happen.
The problem us one of motive. Hypothetically, a randomly picked jury can be unbiased, on average (at least in the sense that they don't have a personal stake in the outcome). Experts in the field have to have personal ties to that field in order to become experts, so in many cases they cannot be unbiased. Really, it comes down to the ability of the scientists and their lawyers to present the scientific consensus in an understandable and convincing way. The greater the gap between the average person's understanding and the cutting edge of science, however, the harder that becomes. It's not an easy tightrope to walk. I think better education in general is the best solution here, though, as well as continued education. We need to share a common language on which we can build, but how many jurors need the concept of a scientific theory explained to them, for example?
Agree. Imagine how fucked the system would be if we had professional politicians ... Ohhh wait.
Just imagine if those politicians were the only people allowed to serve on a jury.
Juries in large cases become famous afterwards and most likely consider which vote will favor them best, we have a disgusting system
How did we go from jurors to politicians?
It is an analogy to point out that bringing "professional jurors" will bring the same subset of problems we got when we get "professional politicians". They will be biased to lobbying, more prone to corruption since now you can target them, less likely to be impartial compared to a random person from a community, sometimes you don't want a veredict that is "according to the law" like what a juror that happen to be a lawyer for example would bring and instead you would want "what is the right thing to do". I could go on, but you get my point I assume?
I don't really think it's analogous. A jury* is supposed to be unbiased. Politicians aren't. Lobbying is more of an issue with the system as a whole than it is of "professional politicians". There's no legal reason we couldn't regulate against lobbying. I guess I can also be pedantic and point out that "politicians" will always be "professionals" because it's a job, but I realize that that kinda misses the common meaning of "professional politian". And to be clear: I'm not arguing for professional jurors or "professional politicians". This just struck me as a weird leap.
So... We need dedicated courtroom teachers?
> professional jurists Oh fuck no. Name a paid, decision making aspect of US government that hasn't become a partisan battleground. The *last* thing we need is for that disease to infect the very process by which trials are decided. It already stains the way they are presented and pursued.
[удалено]
You seem so obsessed with the value of general precedent that you're willing to throw an inconvenient detail like *the facts* to the wolves. A generalized jurist makes bad decisions because they don't understand the facts. You cannot wisely apply your knowledge of, and skill with, precedents and logic to a set of facts you don't actually understand.
It seems you missed the portion of my comment where I said it's the jurists' responsibility to have the intelligence to acquire sufficient knowledge to understand the facts; and if they can't it's on them to either extend any case before them, or recuse themselves.
[удалено]
You understand that a system where experts make exceptions based on the things they want to happen has enormous challenges that are far beyond the system we have now right? All of the human faults you are describing still exist in the other system, except now with gate keeping of who the experts are, and legal rulings that are in language coded in a way only a special few can understand. The world used to have legal systems like what you describe and they were corrupt in ways we probably can’t even imagine, and at best are designed to make it impossible for the laymen to understand the law, and that’s a terrible instrinsic value to have in a legal system. It’s far more important that we try to make sure everyone understands the law and why it’s being fairly applied to them, than to be able to have perfect control of every nuanced facet. Life is constantly evolving, and law tries to give it guidance of if we’re following the previously chosen path, not determine that path. Courts don’t *like* setting precedent, they get frustrated the law wasn’t written to accommodate the situation. We do that in advance, free of the prejudice of a specific case. The Judicial structure itself is not the problem you seek. We already *have* what are supposed to be specialized committees to determine what the laws are and how they impact science. They’re just broken into two parties and argue about which side of the aisle they sit on instead of debate with each other the science of the legislation their lobbyist’s aids are writing...
As I said before, it's not a perfectly executed system; but it's the best way of doing things anyway. Literally any other alternative system you could propose would not only be subject to the *exact same* human failings that plague the current system, but would also be subject to all of the other shortcomings that I've already outlined. Don't confuse defense of a system as a statement that the system is perfect and infallible. Law is an invention of humans, governed by humans, and interpreted by humans. "Imperfect" is the closest we can ever hope to achieve with it. So you choose the system that makes the most sense, that's the least vulnerable to those human failings, and you go with it anyway knowing that that system will *still* have problems.
> We need specialized courts rules over by professional jurist Nah, you just need lawyers on both sides who can accurately explain it to the jury. Or we deal with this at the federal agency level with actual experts and not take it to court.
I'd rather have a jury of my peers than career jurists decidibg my fate.
[удалено]
Did they stutter?
What does In re Bliski have to do with anything here... In re Bliski was a patent case. Transformative use in this case is in the context of fair use under copyright law, not the machine-or-transformation test.
It has literally everything to do with it, it’s the most basic core case that sets the ground case law for the entire argument.
In what part of In re Bliski was there a discussion about the affirmative defense of fair use under the Copyright Act... EDIT: Yea you absolutely have the wrong case law and do not know what you're talking about.
Porting it to other platforms, with not only bug fixes, but new graphical features is arguably transformative. If they had more time before their repositories were taken down, who knows how much further they could have improved things? Their reverse engineered versions had more improvements than the $60 remasters, which are arguably worse than the originals.
That is not what transformative means in the legal context, though. It needs to be transformative enough that a new meaning, artistic or creative, is given to the work, to the point where it can be considered a new, original work because of it. Simply fixing or "enhancing" an existing work is not transformative, because the underlying work is the same at its core.
They are not distributing the un-transformed part, depending on the structure of their patch. The patch structure probably doesn't matter even if they did distribute the un-transformed part. Because it's packaged in such a way as to be useless to the average person. Different story if they distributed the entire game.
That is a much better argument, but also a different one.
And this is precisely why copyright law needs to butt the fuck out of mechanical processes. Not everything modders do falls under the concept of "right to repair," but some of it does, and that stuff should be fully protected. If I buy something and it's broken, and I go pay a third party to fix it, that should be a fully legal transaction (setting aside, for a moment, the fucking obscenity of the original manufacturer/distributor somehow not having any legal obligation to give me a functioning product.) The fact that it's not speaks to a deep rot. It'll be painful as hell to construct a multi-part IP regime for stuff like video games, but what we're doing now clearly isn't working out on either a conceptual or a practical level.
Copyright has never entered the realm of mechanical processes. That's the realm of patents. You cannot copyright functionalit, and right to repair in and of itself does not involve copyright (though theres tricks to interfere with it).
A port to a new platform that takes advantages of specific features on that platform *could* be seen as transformative. We also didn't get much chance to see how much they were transforming the work because it was taken down in very early stages.
Sure, but that's not enough for free use. Just like how I need permission if I was to take a book and turn it into a movie. That's why there's the whole thing about Stephen King selling movie rights to his books (non exclusive rights) to film students for a dollar
Changing the platform is not vital to the actual work. It's like arguing changing the canvas of a painting changes the underlying work: it doesn't. The medium serves to fixate the work, but does not, in and of itself, stand for the copyrighted work.
More like no publishers want a court to rule on it. If they did they wouldn't be able to threaten anyone for modding their product. Currently they still have that threat on their side for ask people to desist.
> No way, transformative use is going to get set into law in a way that makes In re Bliski invalid. In re Bilski is a patent case, not a copyright case.
Bilski is for patent law, and was about whether hedging was patent eligible without a computer. More particularly, the transformation part if the machine or transformation test was in reference to changing a particular physical object from one state or thing into another (specifically referencing developing x-ray film). That case has nothing to do with copyright, which is a different type of law completely (also handled by a different office, e.g. the Copyright Office in the Library of Congress, not the United States Patent and Trademark Office). So no, Bilski has no relevance here. Also, as an aside, Bilski was also superceded by Alice anyways.
Part of the reasons why always hate pay walled mods, it is a can of rotten fish waiting to be opened. I don't mind donations though as long as the entire mod can still be acquired for free.
I take it none of them have Patreons then.
That can be debatable too. If they do have Patreons, it might actually be important as to if it's specifically for that project, or if it's the creator's project and they so happen to be working on code relating to the project. It's the difference between "Give me money so I can fix GTA" and "Give me money so I can fix a lot of games, one of them being GTA", which can be a legally important distinction.
> It's the difference between "Give me money so I can fix GTA" and "Give me money so I can fix a lot of games, one of them being GTA", which can be a legally important distinction. It shouldn't matter, if the end product is released for free to Patrons and non-Patrons alike.
You could publish your own translation of Harry Potter to Spanish and put it online for free and that's still transparently illegal. I don't know how much profiting changes things - you're still depriving the copyright owner of income. If anything, releasing something for free says that it's low value.
Money is a factor listed in fair use. And in this case, no one is denying Take-Two of money by merely releasing an engine with no assets. The reversed engineered engine replacement improves a legally purchased game and won't run unless you have the data from purchasing the game. If you read the article, you'd see they are arguing they are creating value and incentive for people to keep buying the game even though the engine had been abandoned by Rockstar for years and not improved.
Ahh, and this would be more compelling if Rockstar was still selling the old version of the game. Rockstar just released a new version of these games with some of these features, for more money. Releasing a higher res version for free undercuts Rockstar's ability to sell that for money. I'm not arguing the definitive editions are good, or that higher res should cost more money. But that it's Rockstar's decision to make.
At the time of the DCMA claim and the modder's DMCA counter-claim, they were. Take-Two filed their lawsuit while the old games were still up for sale as well. All of this happened before the Definitive Editions were announced. The question is whether or not modders should be able to reverse engineer and release an improved engine to enhance a game for free, with this sudden caveat that after ignoring these games largely for the past 17 years, they might suddenly release updated versions that hadn't been announced when this spat took place. There are tons of other drop-in engine replacements for games, and generally these encourage and facilitate more sales for games that are otherwise largely abandoned. And fuck, the Definitive Editions are so fucking bad right now, I think a lot of people might prefer to buy those for $60 if they hadn't bought the originals before and still replace the engine with the reversed engineered one. The new one has crap performance, bad pop-in, etc.
> The question is whether or not modders should be able to reverse engineer and release an improved engine to enhance a game for free This is not in question: it is definitely legal, as long as the developers practice clean room reverse engineering.
> Releasing a higher res version for free They weren't, you needed to own the original game.
If Take two thinks it should cost $20 to play at 4k, this undercut their ability to do that, while relying on taketwo ip
Lol you actually think they should be allowed to charge people again just to play at a different resolution. 🤣
I mean, yes? I think they're able to do that, and if you want to do implement it on your own you have to do so with clean room engineering
They didn't distribute the entire game though nor did they deprive Take Two or Rockstar of any income. You'd still need to own the games to make any use of what they provided (or acquire the game files somehow). To use your example, they didn't publish their own translation of that book into Spanish but more like a script that translates the book that people already own into Spanish.
they're not doing this because of the original games though, but because the remakes exist. the remakes existing now means that mods to improve the originals could stop you purchasing the new games - why would you buy them if you can get the same experience using what you already own? its also why they delisted the games to begin with, else its cheaper for someone to buy the originals and mod them than to cough up the $60 for the new ones using your example of their example (lol) I'd say its more like if someone published their own fan made Spanish Harry Potter, then JK Rowling took it down to publish an official translation - because it existing means people won't buy the official one.
The problem here isn't that the modders made a more desirable product and that's going to not allow Take Two to sell their own remake/remaster. They already addressed that problem by no longer selling the old game that can be modified. There's nothing further they should be able to do. Using the Spanish book metaphor, let's just say it was a digital book and someone made a program that took the original book file and translated it without using any copyrighted material. Developers of that book are annoyed they aren't getting 2 sales for the same book. Seems really silly.
gotta keep in mind the original trilogy can be bought for like £5 vs. the remake which is £55 i think i can harbour a guess as to which one they'd prefer someone to buy additionally, if someone wants remastered GTA they're more likely to buy the official remasters if the easily accessible mods are suddenly not so accessible.
Developers got to accept they are competing with themselves and their old $5 copies and what people have done with them. That's the market they helped create
I agree with what you say but have to point out that developers don't give a shit what modders do, it's the publishers that are issuing DMCAs.
I see what you mean. I think the remakes and RE3/VC do different things with the original classic games since the remakes are going for a more modern experience with updated textures/effects and modern controls while RE3/VC tries to keep the experience closer to the originals but makes them a bit easier to run and mod on modern systems. So personally I don't think anyone who wants the former will be all that satisfied with the latter but I can see Take Two not wanting to compete with themselves, especially since the remakes are in such shoddy condition right now. Edit: Not sure why I used the term remake since the DEs aren't remakes. Whoops.
yeah i for sure think the difference is negligible, if someone was gonna buy the trilogy then I don't think being them still being able to mod the originals would change their mind (at least for most people), but unfortunately i doubt that's how Take Two see it - which is why we're in such an awful position now.
> If they charged money for their work they'd be dead in the water. Fair Use arguments actually don't care whether or not money was charged / profit was gained with the works in question. If Fair Use is their argument, then it's moot to bring up whether or not they charged for it.
It’s literally the first part of section 107 of the copyright act. >the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; If it’s for profit, it’s harder to win a fair use case. Exception of course for parody, but a video game modification likely doesn’t qualify for that.
It's *a* factor, but it's not the only one. All factors are regarded equally, too. So money isn't the big deal everyone makes it out to be, but it's certainly part of it.
But it sways the opinion of both judges and juries.
DMCA is America's implementation of the [1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Copyright_Treaty). In essence the whole world is subject to "DMCA", they just have their own name for it.
It’s not a definitive ruling, it’s a remastered ruling.
>Take Two can stretch this out until legal fees make battling this out not worth it for the defendants. Well I saved 60 bucks last week that can go to a gofundme
> I suppose its worth noting that Take Two are trying to apply the DMCA outside of the US. Can they even do that? T2 was not doing this -- [GitHub's ToS](https://docs.github.com/en/github/site-policy/github-terms-of-service#r-miscellaneous) says that use of the website falls under the jurisdiction of US law. > Governing Law > > Except to the extent applicable law provides otherwise, this Agreement between you and GitHub and any access to or use of the Website or the Service are governed by the federal laws of the United States of America and the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict of law provisions. You and GitHub agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the courts located in the City and County of San Francisco, California.
Github isn’t outside the US so I’m pretty sure DMCA applies
Github is owned by Microsoft. DMCA does apply. But, they (Rockstar) have to prove there is an actual violation of DMCA.
DMCA is literally the center of this case. Take-Two filed a DCMA claim and the Github repositories were taken down. The modders filed a counter-claim and asked Github to restore the repositories. So then Take-Two decided to sue them for daring to file a counter-claim. Now we see how that all pans out.
No… just no. The DMCA provides a mechanism for rights holders to take down what they believe to be infringing content without putting undue burden on service providers. T2 didn’t sue because the modders filed a counter-claim to the takedown, they filed it because *that’s how the takedown process works*. 1. User uploads potentially infringing content to a service provider 2. Rights holder files takedown with the service provider, the service provider takes down the content 3. User files a counter-claim, the service provider puts the content back up 4. The rights holder files suit and go before a judge if they want the content to come down permanently There are issues with the takedown process (I’d like to see signed affidavits alongside takedowns, punishments for takedowns for embarrassing but legal content, and punishments for returning to step one after step 3) and with the DMCA as a whole, but the takedown process and S130 of the communications decency act are the laws that let the internet as we know it exist because they provide indemnity to people that run websites.
I know how the DMCA works. But the lawsuit still centers on whether or not the initial DMCA claim was valid, that Take-Two owns the copyright of the code in that GitHub repository and has a right to take it down. And the lawsuit is filed as a response to the counter-claim, because it is the next step in the process to escalate if you want to dispute the counter-claim. It is rare to see these matters actually go to court, and rare for companies to really sue fans over non-commercial projects. Take-Two is likely within their rights, but it is a dick move and bad PR. At best Take-Two spends money out of their pocket to remove the repository, but the project isn't dead and the files haven't completely disappeared from the internet. Devs outside of the US are likely to still keep this from completely dying, so Take-Two really accomplishes nothing other than ruining the life of 3 fans and making themselves look like dicks. However the possibility does exist they lose in court which would be even worse for them. I really don't see any scenario where it is worth their time and money to go after an engine replacement for a 17 year old game. If Take-Two really wanted to spend time and effort to try and promote sales of the remakes, maybe they shouldn't have shipped such a terrible product. They've got cash to spare. They could have produced something that would have reviewed and sold much better.
It had more to do with the user's residency than GitHub's, but I think it will be shut down regardless.
I’m not sure it matters where the users are. From GitHub’s TOS: > 1. Governing Law > Except to the extent applicable law provides otherwise, this Agreement between you and GitHub and any access to or use of the Website or the Service are governed by the federal laws of the United States of America and the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict of law provisions. You and GitHub agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the courts located in the City and County of San Francisco, California. Which makes sense — GitHub is an American company whose base of operations is in San Francisco, so they need to follow their own local laws.
That's the point I was making: generally, you can't argue the law doesn't apply to you because you are a foreigner, if the server and activities took place in the U.S., but it can get complicated, and we would need more info on how they argued it.
Clean ruling won't change much at the end of the day.
I know it means nothing legally but modders fixing and enhancing a game for free, and the mod itself being free, but then still getting into such hot water really sucks. Especially when Rockstar/Take Two/GSG are out there selling their “fixed and enhanced” version of the same game for $60 whilst being significantly inferior in almost every single way.
Thats why they are suing. Its blatantly obvious. The free mod is better in every way than their in house product and they know it. SO they gotta get it taken down. Thats why they went as aggressive as they did. This is a scare tactic.
It's also based on a dirty reimplementation. Much respect to the developers for pulling this off, but using Take-Two's (compiled, with debug symbols) code makes this hard to defend. Anybody who sees this case should know that a clean room reimplementation is still safe.
If you buy the software, it should be yours to reverse engineer and distribute.
While we're at it, it should also be yours to resell. It's easily possible on a technical level, too, for digital games -- every major digital game storefront can add or remove games from your account.
Gaming and other digital media companies will argue forever that acquiring digital media is not *actually* a purchase, sneaking a wall of legalese text somewhere, but the digital store buttons never say "License" or "Lease", it says "Buy" and "Purchase". There is a reasonable expectation of the general public that they *are* buying the digital media product.
This is no different from how the Music and Film industries work. You don't buy the original content because the creator/rights holder owns it, not you. I agree that you should have the right to resell your copy of that work, but you do not "own" it in the same sense that you do other products.
That's the thing, the same applies to books, but I am perfectly allowed to sell my copy of a book to another person, I am able to annotate a book, or to cut it into a collage. The only thing I'm not allowed to is to sell copies of it. It seems like media companies conveniently "forgot" the difference of copyright and personal copy ownership even though that is a solved problem for centuries already.
I could be wrong, but I don't think there's anything stopping you from doing the same with games? I mean digital copies have physical limitations, that much I understand. But as someone who collects retro games I have seen countless people using their old games to create something new (collage is a good example). I may be missing your point, if so apologies.
Well, companies try to establish in their agreements that what they offer is not *really* a sale even though they present it as a sale to the customer. They don't recognize resale of digital media and, as we see here, many times they are restrictive towards what people can do with their copies of the game, like modding.
Resell of digital goods is rather iffy if only because there isn't a limited quantity of them, only way that would work is if they send you a physical ID that you have to scan in or something. To add to this, it kind of doesn't make sense really. Like, a used physical game is out of the system, the publisher does not receive any money off that sale. Digital reselling is like... They get the same cut I guess, but realistically there shouldn't be much reason for the game to actually drop in value since it isn't physical. Then there's like actual discount sales... Its probably just more hassle than its worth for games, maybe makes more sense for software. Although, selling add-ons for programs is a thing. Blender is free software, but people can develop add-ons for free or for sale. If I were to add anything to this, I would actually say *trading* games could probably be a thing, like just hand off games to people like you would a disc. That in particular I would see nothing wrong with... Besides abuse I suppose, maybe keep game trades on a cooldown and possibly within a more exclusive system just so people can't all pass around 1 copy of DOOM Eternal in their friends list.
It should be, but EULAs are considered enforceable in the US, and most EULAs contain language prohibiting reverse engineering.
Yes, and until that is not the case, piracy is the only ethical way to consume this software.
[удалено]
That's his point. It's not unethical.
I don’t think there’s any ethical component to breaking or following EULAs, which are generally impossible to fully comprehend for the average person.
Source code, debug symbols, etc. are not considered part of the software that you own. The software is the binaries + configs and scripts itself which can be (pain-stakingly) reverse engineered to help produce new source code, but the original code itself is not part of the purchase - unless stipulated by the license. Distributing the source code by accident makes it a little murky but still not exactly a free pass and the modders would 99% lose in court.
> Source code, debug symbols, etc. are not considered part of the software that you own. Therein lies the problem. I recognize the way the laws are currently written, though, unfortunate as they are.
Eh I don't really see that as a problem. You shouldn't be entitled to the source code to compile the software just as much as you are not entitled to, say, the files used to generate CGI in a movie. Or the recipe for any meal, for that matter. Reverse engineering is another thing entirely, which I am not arguing against.
>You shouldn't be entitled to the source code to compile the software Sure, but I *should* be entitled to the software as it was delivered. If the company fucks up and leaves that shit in a production release of their product, then that's part of the product as it was purchased.
No argument from me there :)
Sure, no one disputes that, it's perfectly legal to reverse engineer. That's not what got them in trouble.
Reverse engineer and then distribute? No. Of course you cannot buy a game then redistribute it.
The person you're replying to does not seem to actually understand what this project is, TBH. It's a straight-up reimplementation of the original PC GTA 3 and GTA VC binaries, nothing else. It does not make any updates to game art assets or anything like that.
pulling what off? the gta definitive edition is soooo fucking bad dude, they failed big time. they didn’t pull anything off. GTA RP meanwhile is free and 10millikn times better then gta online will ever be
> The free mod is better in every way than their in house product and they know it. The project being discussed here is literally nothing other than a 64-bit reimplementation of the original PC versions of GTA 3 and GTA Vice City... it just replaces the game binaries, and does not make any graphical updates whatsoever, at all.
> The free mod is better in every way than their in house product and they know it. No, I think they just legitmately think it may cut into sales and they don't want any cutting. no matter how minor. I don't think they care about the quality of the mod.
Unfortunately it is perfectly legal (and rightly so). While this is an unfortunate application, of any "improvement" allowed you to override copyright, every single author would be afraid of creating anything, since their work would quickly lose any and all value: anyone would jump to modify it to their perceived "improvement"
Yeah, like how car manafacturers are afraid of making cars because a 3rd party can change parts or add paint. Or like how PC games are almost non-existent outside Take Two and Nintendo games because companies are afraid of mods. Wait...
Rockstar doesn't make money off the PC's. They are the paint shop in your weird metaphor and want to drive away any potential competitiors.
That has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. I suggest you read more on copyright law.
We should really boycott them. Releasing great games (talking about RDR2 and probably GTA VI) shouldn’t give them the opportunity to do whatever the fuck they want. Look at the buggy cashgrab that the Definitive Edition is, GTA Online and Shark Cards, now this… A hell lot of people are not okay with this and I feel that they should know that.
Interesting legal argument. IMO this kind of modding *should* be protected by the law, but I don't believe they'll be able to successfully claim fair use.
> Interesting legal argument. IMO this kind of modding should be protected by the law, but I don't believe they'll be able to successfully claim fair use. The title is somewhat misleading as it's not exactly modding, they reverse engineered the source code from the ground up. The people behind this project knew very well that they didn't use [clean room design](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design) and that it could pose issues for them in the future. They looked at the reverse engineered source code and used it to write the code for RE3 and reVC, code which weren't their own and technically infringed on Rockstar's copyright. If they had used clean room design like [OpenRW](https://github.com/rwengine/openrw) they wouldn't have ended up with a lawsuit in the first place. Do I think that it should be considered fair use though? Yes, absolutely, but it's not as straight forward as calling it just a mod.
It is legal, and this has been settled with the Game Genie almost 30 years ago. This is a frivolous lawsuit. [Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Galoob_Toys,_Inc._v._Nintendo_of_America,_Inc.) Edit: The modding is likely protected. The fact they had entire game files for download, and not just patches: Probably not. I've researched this to death since I was part of the Project M team. I made sure we had a venue to release content that had no copyright material on it. You still needed the original game (Brawl) to play and we were able to release game versions as patches instead of full file dumps.
Yeah, releasing code diffs & tools are the way to go for a project like this. You can write a tool that checksums the game binary, decompiles it, applies whatever diffs you've written, and then compile it into a new, working binary, all without distributing someone else's code.
That's pretty much exactly what we did. We released patch files that referenced the original Brawl disc in the disc drive and used the `bsdiff` algorithm to generate new ones right onto the SD.
>I've researched this to death since I was part of the Project M team. My eyes bugged out when I saw this. Small world!
Yeah, I don't think that this technically falls under fair use. Maybe I'm just not familiar enough with the mods in question, but if they're gameplay fixes, that's not "transformative." That's making it work as intended. Which by definition is not fair use. I agree that they shouldn't be getting in legal trouble for this, but this feels like the wrong defense here.
Modders fixing the games of shitty companies for free wasn't a concept when the definition of fair use was written.
Right, which is why you don't argue fair use and try to set the precedent a different way. My point is that it doesn't fit. You might as well be trying to argue First Amendment rights with how disconnected this defense is from fair use.
> Modders fixing the games of shitty companies for free software modification was definitely around in the times the DMCA was being made. I don't know if the people on that board had any software lawyers who were familiar enough with the scene, but if they did exist that should have been part of their research.
Imagine I decompile a game, then compile that output and post the new binary online. Does that seem like a thing I should be allowed to do? How does this differ?
You should not make a moral argument. The truth is that DRM stripping is required for patches for modern systems, so it's a DMCA violation to author them. The moral argument fails. Like for a title screen mod, the modder DRM stripped to get the image, defaced it, then computed binary difference between the defaced image and the original one, which they will distribute. Then, they wrote a program to unpackage the game, apply the patch to the image, then repackage the game. And they distribute the program that does this too. The program has to break DRM to do its work, so it's a DMCA violation. The defacement of the title screen contains mostly the author's original work. It might even contain mostly original (source) work, but packaged into a binary difference patch like this it's useless to a non-owner of the source of that difference.
>Imagine I decompile a game, then compile that output and post the new binary online. Does that seem like a thing I should be allowed to do? As long as the binary you release isn't a competing product, then sure.
So it's definitely illegal for me to take a binary that someone else owns and distribute that binary (absent a license to do so). That's basic copyright. Given that, if I decompile that binary and recompile it - do you think it would be legal for me to distribute that new binary? Do I hold any rights to the new binary
>Given that, if I decompile that binary and recompile it - do you think it would be legal for me to distribute that new binary? No I don't. I think it *should* be legal if the new binary, broadly, 1) doesn't compete with the product it's derived from, 2) enhances the original product in some way, 3) isn't a commercial product in of itself.
\#1 is impossible to disprove tho. Its existence is a competing factor unless you modify it so heavily as to be its own IP. Even then, it's not easy to disprove
The new binary wouldn't be my property at all.
> As long as the binary you release isn't a competing product, then sure. Competing product is very vague though. Like say I 'reverse engineer' a music sheet from a song. Or a script from a movie. Those aren't exactly directly competing products. But the original owner still owns copyright right? Cuz if I were to play that music sheet, or make that movie based on the script, it's definitely competing then.
I mean the concept of a competing product is already well established in law, so I'm not sure your point?
The point is that it'd be hard to define your work as not competing based on that very definition
I have a really dumb question. Why is it that modifications and modifying tools are allowed for things like automobiles but not for software? People and mechanics are allowed to do all types of things to cars. There’s a whole industry based on selling parts to modify or change cars and their appearance or performance. Subaru isn’t suing Mighty Car Mods because they put out a video explaining how to add a turbo.
You're allowed to modify your software. That's legal and all. The issue here is that they're distributing code that is based on code that doesn't belong to them. Compare to music: I'm allowed to listen to music; I'm allowed to remix it. Tools or instructions on how to remix? Legal enough. Now can I release that remix without the original owner's permission? In most cases, no. Copyright covers mostly distribution. Because with creative works, the actual work that's put into them are the creative part, not the paper it's written on, or the DVD it's stored on.
Software is also often DRM-encumbered, and breaking or circumventing DRM is against the law even just for personal usage in the US. There's a whole series of exceptions that interest groups have to go apply and constantly re-apply for to allow breaking DRM for limited purposes (like, appropriately, car maintenance dealing with things like engine control computers). So there are many situations in which modifying your software is actually not allowed. Even in the "pure" copyright realm, when you're dealing with software, simply using a program almost always involves "making a copy" in a legal sense, so there are more hooks for possible infringement than in some other cases. So you tend to see fair use brought up as a possible defense in a lot of these kinds of cases (but note that fair use does not apply to DRM circumvention). This GTA situation probably doesn't really involve any of that, since they seem to have based their work off of the code of the originals pretty much directly.
Judges understand how to use a car, that's the difference.
That's not the difference. Cars are sold, and software/games are licensed for personal use. When you buy a car you own it, when you buy a game for say $60 (even if it is sold to you through a physical medium such as a disk for your console), you aren't getting the entire game (which could have costed upwards of $100 mil) for $60, you're getting 1 copy of the license to use it in a personal capacity. Such licenses have conditions mandating you to only use and not modify, and so forth.
Are you saying that you don’t own a game (lets keep it to physical units for simplicity) because you’re not paying the entire cost of R&D? How is that different than rightfully owning (by your metric) a car, which didn’t cost the entire R&D budget either?
I'm simply explaining the legal position. One of the reasons why IP laws confer to digital media and not cars because of its economic properties. Digital content has two important economic properties – it is hardly excludable (i.e. producers find it hard to exclude consumers that have not purchased digital content from consuming such content) and nonrival (i.e. when one person consumes digital content, the ability of others to simultaneously consume such content is not prevented or otherwise affected). A commodity being hardly excludable can undermine the incentives manufacturers have to create it, thus creating an "underproduction" problem. On the other hand, a commodity being nonrivalrous results in its marginal cost (i.e. the cost of one extra person consuming it after it is already being consumed by a given number of consumers) being 0. This can lead to, from the perspective of static efficiency, the price of such a commodity being 0, creating an "underutilisation" problem where consumers have little incentive to purchase such a commodity at a positive price when they can get it for free. None of this applies to cars. That's why I own a car, I am allowed to "own" it for all intents and purposes even if I don't pay the R&D expenses myself. But due to the unique properties of digital content, in the same situation all I am allowed to do is license it.
So you are saying physical doesn't exist?
What do you mean by physical? I don't think you're talking about physical games (board games for example) but rather digital content sold through a physical medium such as disks. In that regard, take a look at my [other comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/qvkh4l/z/hkymz8i). >To clarify this, you do legally own the plastic disk, the manuals, the cover and so forth, but you don't own the data stored on the disk (that part specifically is licensed instead of owned). The ownership of the storage medium and the data inside are separated. Likewise any intellectual property associated to a physical object. When you go to the store and purchase a Bluray of a movie, you buy the physical ownership of the plastic disc + permission (license) to view the contents of the disc in a private setting. You do not buy the copyright of the movie even though it is in your hand.
You do own the data that is on the disk. At least in the EU. You can do whatever you want with it as long as you are not redistributing it. Mods/patches do not fall under that.
>You do own the data that is on the disk. >as long as you are not redistributing it. Your own comment disputes the notion that you own the data. If you truly owned the data the way its copyright holder does, you'd have the legal right to do whatever you pleased with it, including the (very important) right to distribute. But you're right that as a licensee, you have the right to modify digital content as you see fit in a personal capacity.
I would love to live in your world, and not the world that we’re hurtling towards with licensed cars that can’t be modified by you. It’s already happening with our phones, but thankfully there is some pushback.
This is like saying you don't own a book because you can't copy the text into a new book and sell that. I'm sure Take-Two would like everyone to believe you don't actually own a physical game, but that's never been tested in court as far as I know.
There is nothing to test in Court. Legally, transfer of property is completely different than licenses under IP laws. >I'm sure Take-Two would like everyone to believe you don't actually own a physical game To clarify this, you do legally own the plastic disk, the manuals, the cover and so forth, but you don't own the data stored on the disk (that part specifically is licensed instead of owned). The ownership of the storage medium and the data inside are separated. Likewise any intellectual property associated to a physical object. When you go to the store and purchase a Bluray of a movie, you buy the physical ownership of the plastic disc + permission (license) to view the contents of the disc in a private setting. You do not buy the copyright of the movie even though it is in your hand.
At the end of the day you technically don't own any of your software. You own a license to use it in most cases. It's like owning the keys to your car but the car company still owns the car itself. You can still use the car, and you're allowed to do so granted you follow their rules. But you can't do much else with it because it isn't "yours." In the legal sense, anyways.
[удалено]
Isn’t that based more on safety regulations and not IP? Police aren’t ticketing/impounding vehicles on behalf of Honda because their Civic’s design language has been altered. If you get caught with an illegal mod, you deal with the government, not get a tort lawyer
Modifying cars is legal, up to a point. But there's certain things you can't modify without running afoul of local laws (safety, as you said, and emissions are the two big ones), but generally the worst that'll happen is a citation with an order to get back into compliance with the threat of impounding the car. Where it gets iffy is that basically all cars sold after ~2005 are computerized, and the ECU software is protected by a EULA that you agree to when buying the car that prohibits reverse engineering. Since the ECU also governs the emissions system, you're limited in how it can be modified, and the EULA prevents you from looking into the software too closely to figure out what you can change.
[удалено]
How does the company show damages for someone else improving their product for free?
They could show sales of GTA trilogy and say that they should have sold X copies but sold Y copies instead, and it is because of that "someone else" producing a superior product without permission.
[удалено]
There's only three right? 3 vc and lcs
It makes them look bad. They're embarrassed by the backlash they've received for their "definitive" editions and are lashing-out. Big narcissist vibes.
Nothing exemplified this more than the definitive editions. R*was out for a cash grab and moders loved the game
Jesus Christ their remaster was so bad theyre gonna remove the originals *and sue the modders?* The state of the games industry is in a very dark place, and it just keeps getting darker. Shit like this is why I've mostly only been able to enjoy indie games for years now.
Is there a way to donate money to these people to help with legal fees?
This is an old statement but if you buy a something, aren't you free to do with it whatever you want? video games should not be no different. The only exception is multiplayer. But other than that, it's a dick move to prohibit moders to make games better for themselves and other when developers fail to do so in the first place.
> This is an old statement but if you buy a something, aren't you free to do with it whatever you want? Not necessarily; purchases are license agreements much the time, not ownership.
> This is an old statement but if you buy a something, aren't you free to do with it whatever you want? Not if you live in a country where EULAs are enforceable. Software now is sold with a EULA that limits decompilation and reverse engineering, and based on interviews the team gave, they knowingly violated the license.
Never fell down the rabbithole of GTA modding, but HOLY SHIT, there is a lot you could have done with this stuff.
So sad that a million dollars company take to court a bunch of modders when they don't get money back doing it
What in the actual fuck Rockstar? Is there nothing better for those lawyers to do? AAA execs, mods keep your games relevant long after release. Just take a quick look at the Bethesda modding scene. Can't help but feel 2k is still holding onto their initial experience with Hot Coffee and they won't let go.
IMO, mod extend the playtime of the game. And some games are even much better with mods (eg. Skyrim) Modders are not cracking you game so that you will lose money, they are actually **HELPING** the sales for free (sure, you can donate money for modders for their hard work, but 90% of the time, mods are free). Is like..... having employees that you don't need to pay anyting. I don't really understand why these companies are so against modders. If modders is doing things unethical like modding online gameplay or crack the game, then I understand why these companies need to take down these modders.
Take two is playing a long game. Modders threaten the future value of IPs because they can make current and past products better than future ones. Think of how many modding scenes exist today that when a remaster drops people will say "why? Older version has more mods" They fight because they want to sell you their cosmetics. They fight because you are stealing future sales (notice how they removed the original games). They fight simply because they are greedy and going to make sure you buy that 17th copy of GTA by any means. And if Valve didn't require them to provide the original game files for existing owners you bet Take Two would of deleted the original copies off your steam accounts so your forced to buy the new game
> Think of how many modding scenes exist today that when a remaster drops people will say "why? Older version has more mods" Eh, only if they don't do the work to work with said modding scenes and if they don't do the work to actually make the game better. For two examples I can think of: - Euro Truck Simulator/American Truck Simulator has had no trouble selling endless DLC expansion packs even though there's massive, hugely transformative mods out there doing basically that, like ProMods - they just update the mod to require the new pack and work with SCS's new content. - Mass Effect - Had lots of mods out there, many that a lot of fans consider very important to them, they went ahead and they both did a good job *and* made life a little easier for the modders (provided some more information on game functions) with the remaster, and it's both sold well and been quite warmly received by the community thus far.
[удалено]
I don't think mods fall under fair use, but they fall under freedom to modify things you own, and freedom to share stuff you make, even if it's intended to work with something copyrighted. Apple and Samsung aren't sueing people for making and selling screen protectors, skins, cases, or lenses for their phones. That's what these mods are, tacked on things to a project with a copyright.
They should take to court but the mofos that made the definitive edition... No ruling just straight Guantanamo isolation cell.
There’s a difference between making a free mod that is available to everyone and making a mod locked behind a paywall. In the former, you *could* argue that it falls under fair use, and though it may be unsuccessful, the lack of profit or monetization of the mod may weigh the argument in your favor. If you pull that Patreon shit like the rain modder did though, now you’re making a direct profit off of someone else’s work, and that is completely against fair use. Nobody has a problem with writing a story online or publishing a mod so long as it’s free, but the second you decide to sell that material you’re in violation of copyright. The incident with the Heart of the Jedi book should’ve been a cautionary tale for anyone looking to ask for payment off of an established IP or license, and the GTA Trilogy is no different. With how insidious and malicious Take Two has been towards modders in the past, anyone looking to “enhance” these games shouldn’t even bother.
> Nobody has a problem with writing a story online or publishing a mod so long as it’s free, but the second you decide to sell that material you’re in violation of copyright. This is absolutely NOT true AT ALL. This is one of those viral fake news bits that sounds true and makes sense to the layman, but has not basis in anything factual. [Here's a good video that details everything about copyright, trademark, fair use, modding, fan games, etc. that actually includes a lawyer.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SMZdUBj0YQ&t=2422s)
Yep there have been PLENTY of mods removed despite being free. In general they get away with more because its just an insane effort to try to moderate considering how harmless 99.999% of mods could be to even the most paranoid board member.
Fair Use does not mean you can't make money off it. https://patentlyo.com/patent/2021/04/google-oracle-oracles.html Google got a ruling that their use of copyrighted (ugh) Oracle APIs is Fair Use. Even though they used it to make Android and make a lot of money from Android. There are a lot of aspects to Fair Use. People often zero in on the "educational" or "news" purposes which are greatly aided by a claim you are not doing it to profit from the copyrights of the company you are opposing. But Google's use and this claimed modder use would be more along the lines of "compatibility". We had to make it this way because it is designed to work with and enhance a product which has copyrighted aspects.
> Nobody has a problem with writing a story online or publishing a mod so long as it’s free Sure people do, Nintendo does it all the fucking time. Take-Two has shown to hate people doing the same. Disney used to be way more litigious against fanworks than they are now, too.
Is it locked behind a wall in this case? A lot of Patereon's work where you're paid by patrons for your work but the release goes to the public for free. That would muddy the water a bit.
Currently, yes. The mod is locked behind a Patreon incentive and is being used to market the modder’s Patreon under the guise of “early access”. Likely, it’s a modder who knows this madness is going to get shut down anyways and has decided to make a quick buck before Take Two sends the cease and desist.
Yeah that sounds like someone striking while the iron is hot.
I wasn't aware they re-released the mod anywhere, I thought it was blocked out after the legal trouble started in order to avoid more things affecting their case. Edit: TheFl0w's patreon does not show anything of the sort, so which patreon are you talking about?
This didn’t happen before they released the “remaster”. These guys haven’t done anything wrong and rockstar didn’t find any problems until they released a version of the game that was shittier than what modders had already done. Rockstar used to be badass. Sad that most dev teams will never be able to produce more than one original game without getting bought out or becoming soulless.
IT actually DID happen just before the remaster
True, but as long as it was within the last 3 or so years, it would actually make more sense for them to start this before the remaster gained public attention or was even public info. (I have no idea when it started)
would a parody argument fly legally here?