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Well this is a shame but in many ways to be expected. Take-Two Interactive Software, the parent company of Rockstar Games, has filed a lawsuit against the developers of the reverse-engineered GTA III and Vice City code.

This is a bit of an ongoing saga, as Take-Two first got the GitHub repositories taken down, which were later restored when the developer of a fork submitted a counter-notice which wasn't argued so they all went back up. The repositories are still live on GitHub right now. The notice mentions this with Take-Two saying the counter notices were "were made in bad faith, and knowingly and deliberately misrepresented to GitHub the contents".

Plenty more is argued as well of course. In the notice it complains how the code now runs on platforms it was never released for where the "Defendants have sought to exploit a potential market that belongs exclusively to Take-Two", it argues against new cheats enabled in the source code which "are strictly prohibited under Take-Two’s terms of service". It goes further, complaining about modding which Take-Two say "encouraging users to further infringe the original Games and to violate their agreements with Take-Two that prohibit such activities".

As a result of the code being public, Take-Two are claiming it the "Defendants have caused and continue to cause irreparable harm".

Take-Two are looking to get damages paid which as of yet "are not currently ascertainable", so they want it to be worked out. On top of that they want the "maximum statutory damages of $150,000 for each work infringed" and they also want their "attorneys’ fees and full costs" paid as well.

The point about cheats is a funny one. Single-player games from the early 2000s have cheats added in? Extra modding too? Oh no, how completely terrible for people to further enjoy them.

Why was this lawsuit coming to be expected? Well, reverse-engineered code tends to be a grey area with it often being against the law, and code from leaks is a big no for all sorts of obvious legal reasons. That said, the source code did require people to actually buy the games for the data, so Take-Two would have still be getting revenue thanks to it.

Sadly though, like most major publishers, they shy away from any sort of open source. In this case, Take-Two and Rockstar are reportedly doing a big GTA Remastered Trilogy so moving to fully protect their code was obvious.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Misc
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Alm888 Sep 3, 2021
"Defendants have sought to exploit a potential market that belongs exclusively to Take-Two"
WUT?
Last time I checked it was an open market not "belonging" to some arbitrary company. Do "defendants" prevent Take-Two from selling its game on other platforms? No. Do they sell the exact same product? No. That's just an entitlement feeling on Take-Two's part, IMO.
Zlopez Sep 3, 2021
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: elistoCopyright need to be removed from existence.

I agree. But we should still honest author rights (Developer studio rights) for the game, but when the game is no longer officially supported, the code should be made open and the license should be changed to free software license automatically. This is what every software should do, not only games.

If company no longer supports the software, please give it to public, it will either die, if it's not popular or it will be supported by community.
slapin Sep 3, 2021
  • Supporter Plus
As I understand new world, corporations split the "markets" between them and became upset someone got to their territory. The claims is so anti-market and anti-capitalistic as whole so I wonder what is going on.
slapin Sep 3, 2021
  • Supporter Plus
I wonder why they ask for Jury Trial in copyright case too? What do they expect?
slapin Sep 3, 2021
  • Supporter Plus
BTW have somebody poked Leonard French about this one? I wonder what his opinion is.


Last edited by slapin on 3 September 2021 at 10:46 am UTC
omer666 Sep 3, 2021
Just as if we wanted to use a PS2-era engine to develop our own games...
Cyril Sep 3, 2021
This whole story is a joke seriously, IMO, all of this kind are.
The kind of jokes we live with everyday.
Obviously I also backed up the repo too.
Fuck'em.
slapin Sep 3, 2021
  • Supporter Plus
These are expensive jokes bro, expecially if judge decides no attoney fees gets paid. Which is frequent in copyright cases.
Vulphere Sep 3, 2021
T2 is turning into ActiBlizzard, AAA game publishers with greedy CEOs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jREw369WoAw

All for the sake of GTA Remastered...


Last edited by Vulphere on 3 September 2021 at 11:47 am UTC
CountVlad Sep 3, 2021
QuoteDefendants have sought to exploit a potential market that belongs exclusively to Take-Two
Well, nobody is making money from it, so it's not exactly "exploiting" the market. It's also a market that T2 have not shown any interest in exploiting for the past 20 years and are very unlikely to exploit in the foreseeable future (specifically the Linux and FreeBSD versions).
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