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Take-Two Sues Enthusiasts Behind GTA Fan Projects Re3 and ReVC

157 points by askl 5y ago

CannisterFlux 5y ago
Do the enthusiast devs have a legal leg to stand on? The repositories cited - like the re3 one on github - don't contain the original GTA3 game assets. It's all "new" code that runs the original game assets, or emulation/simulation wrappers to get OpenGL or DirectX to function like an old PS2 renderer. To play the re3 version of the game, you need the original GTA3 game for PC. To me, it seems more like SCUMM VM or a high-level emulator. Is that copyright infringement?
- flatiron 5y ago
  It’s tricky (obviously) but the code itself is certainly protected. If they decompiled the code and just cleaned it up it’s very grey. If they simply studied it’s workings and coded it fresh that’s pretty clearly not infringing. But if take-two can point at chunks of code that’s exactly the same they have a bit of a leg. Mainly though they know they won’t fight back so why not just sue? They have nothing to lose.
  - Hamuko 5y ago
    >If they decompiled the code and just cleaned it up it’s very grey. This is from the CODING STYLE document: "Don't just copy paste code from IDA, make it look nice" https://github.com/GTAmodding/re3/blob/master/CODING_STYLE.md https://github.com/GTAmodding/re3/blob/master/CODING_STYLE.m...
    - rasz 5y ago
      amateurs, should of been: "Don't just copy paste code from IDA, pull it thru GitHub Copilot first"
  - carl_dr 5y ago
    > If they decompiled the code and just cleaned it up it’s very grey. From the filed complaint, Take-Two quote one of the developers : > GTA 3 and Vice City were originally written in [programming language] C++ . . . The compiled executables that are shipped are in machine code. So the general task is to go from machine code back to C++. . . . To go back to C++ is by no means a simple 1:1 mapping, but over the last 10 or so years decompilers have appeared that help with this process. . . . So what we typically do is work with the output of the decompiler and massage it back into readable C++ And although this probably has no relevance from a legal standpoint, but sounds pretty bad in the context of the complaint, from right at the bottom of https://github.com/GTAmodding/re3/blob/master/CODING_STYLE.md https://github.com/GTAmodding/re3/blob/master/CODING_STYLE.m... : > Generally, try to make the code look as if R* could have written it
    - londons_explore 5y ago
      So in most jurisdictions, what they did was clearly copyright infringement. It's a shame a simple take-down request wasn't sent (and complied with) first...
      - carl_dr 5y ago
        That’s on the developers. From TFA : > The lawsuit says that after the company filed a DMCA takedown notice to remove the projects from Github, the defendants filed a bad faith counter notice to have the content reinstated, thus triggering this copyright infringement lawsuit.
- danhor 5y ago
  My understanding is that the code is directly reverse engineered/decompiled from the original code, so while it doesn't contain game assets, it's based on (compiled) code copyrighted by Take-Two.
  - bogwog 5y ago
    It'd be interesting to see if this actually goes to court, because decompiled code is technically new code, not the original. Decompilers can't retrieve the original code written by Rockstar devs, but it can write new code that behaves like it. Is that a derivative work? If a person were to do that by hand, I think most people would say it's fair use.
    - carl_dr 5y ago
      From the filed complaint, Take-Two quote one of the developers : > GTA 3 and Vice City were originally written in [programming language] C++ . . . The compiled executables that are shipped are in machine code. So the general task is to go from machine code back to C++. . . . To go back to C++ is by no means a simple 1:1 mapping, but over the last 10 or so years decompilers have appeared that help with this process. . . . So what we typically do is work with the output of the decompiler and massage it back into readable C++ I know, as a software developer, I don’t consider that fair use, and I very much doubt any reasonable person would either.
      - teawrecks 5y ago
        Why? Nothing about the decompiled source guarantees that it will compile to the same binary. And once you compile it for a new platform that TT never published for, it's an original binary generated from original source. It's as if person 1 built a machine (source+compiler) that generates paintings (binary) to sell, and then person 2 saw the painting and built an entirely different machine that can do the same thing. Person 1 can't tell person 2 what to do with their machine.
    - klodolph 5y ago
      Think about it this way: if you compile source code, you get something that is technically new code (and not the original), but it is a derivative work. Why would decompiling be different from compiling? In both cases, you are transforming code from one language to another and ending up with something "new", which is a derivative of the original. In any case, you can have a human come in and clean up, refactor, extend, or make changes... and the result is still a derivative of the original. It doesn't really matter if you are doing it by hand or machine. I just don't see how that is relevant. There's a process involved where the input to that process is the original GTA 3, there's a bunch of steps, and the output to that process is code based on the original GTA 3 machine code, but in C or C++ instead of machine code. There are two ways to get around this. The first way is fair use, which is complicated but certainly doesn't apply here. The other way is the "clean room" reverse engineering, where one team reverse engineers a product to figure out what it does, and produces a specification, which a second team uses to create a new implementation which does the same thing.
- bsksi 5y ago
  It's reverse engineered using IDA and such. I think even the class/functions names are the same since the developer forgot to strip one of the binaries. As much as I support this kind of project, I would say they are legally screwed. But they already knew that when they started.
  - CannisterFlux 5y ago
    Yeah, sounds that way, if it's almost literally the same code rejiggered to build as C. A proper clean-room rewrite effort would be so much slower. You'd need one guy in IDA decompiling/understanding, then explaining the design of how it should work to read and render the assets etc without actually writing the code to do that, and someone different reading the spec and implementing it without touching the original code at all. Or a single person doing both halves but being almost impossibly strict about it.
Const-me 5y ago
Probably someone in the upper management of take-two had the idea of downsizing their legal department. That department have decided to demonstrate how incredibly useful they are, by suing a few people from Germany, New Zealand, Turkey, and United Kingdom. > Defendants are well aware that they do not possess the right to copy, adapt, or distribute derivative GTA source code, or the audiovisual elements of the Games, and that doing so constitutes copyright infringement. I think the opposite is true, what they did was fair use. The defendants are outside US, pretty sure everything they did was 100% legal in their jurisdictions. > Defendants have made the Games fully and freely available to the public They have made the game engine (the .exe) freely available to the public. To run the game, one also needs assets of the game. Assets require overwhelming majority of disk space, take overwhelming majority of development budget to produce, and can be obtained legally by buying the original game.
- klodolph 5y ago
  > I think the opposite is true, what they did was fair use. The defendants are outside US, pretty sure everything they did was 100% legal in their jurisdictions. There's just no way that it's fair use to distribute a decompiled copy of a game. Reverse engineering and decompiling are generally legal, but they don't strip away copyrights from the code. Think about it this way... compiling source code does not change who has the copyright on the code. Decompiling source code does not change it either. Cleaning up the output from IDA or Ghidra does not magically strip away copyright. If I went to a Broadway show and sat down with a pad of staff paper so I could transcribe all the songs, and then put my transcriptions up on GitHub, I could get sued by the composer and the composer would win.
  - Const-me 5y ago
    > no way that it's fair use to distribute a decompiled copy of a game That’s not what these people did. A source code of a re-implementation of a game engine is not a copy of the game. I have compiled and tested that thing, but it was only legal for me to do so because I had the original one bought on Steam. > I could get sued by the composer Right. “The great thing about this country is you can sue anyone for pretty much anything, and you probably win. Or at least, get a settlement.” https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Rakin_and_Ponzer https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Rakin_and_Ponzer
dasKrokodil 5y ago
Man, regardless of who is in the right legally, I wish these big corporations had a better sense of humor and would understand and appreciate that the people who go to these lengths to understand and recreate the original code aren't their enemies, but their biggest fans.
- klodolph 5y ago
  They make money from having lots of customers, not from having a few obsessed fans. I’ve heard this argument before but the kind of people who are obsessed enough to reverse-engineer old games don’t necessarily even play new games. They’re often fans of the old games and don’t play new games, or they’re people who are interested in reverse engineering. You can release a remaster of an old game, but any reverse-engineered version would be competing with it.
  - sam0x17 5y ago
    That said, using any of these mods requires a valid GTA V license, so OP is right, by killing this project, they are killing their own sales.
    - elif 5y ago
      Not if they intend to release remastered versions of their own content, which is likely.
      - sam0x17 5y ago
        It's funny because I bet a GTA V license costs more than whatever they are going to charge for remastered. So they are competing with themselves by offering a cheaper option (if we ignore the fact that a lot of people already own GTA V). I'd be willing to bet a lot of people who want to play the remastered older games haven't played GTA V because they normally wouldn't. So still lost revenue imo.
  - Crosseye_Jack 5y ago
    > You can release a remaster of an old game, but any reverse-engineered version would be competing with it. The Console HD (Well 720p) remasters of the 3D GTAs don't even compete with the original versions with mods imo :-P. They are the ported from the mobile ports of the games, have tons of bugs (Edit: some of the bugs on the 360 stem from RROD issues on consoles that have just not yet RROD'ed), break many of the game mechanics and redender models like trash. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhVdb4K1M-M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhVdb4K1M-M <- Sa comparisons as an example (Note: I know you are on about how mods / RE projects compete with offical releases from a product standpoint, not a quality standpoint. Just wanted to say that RS had their chance to improve the longevity of the older 3D titles and they fucked it up)
A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
I am no legal expert, but the gamer in me instinctively sides with DMCA recipient. I am tired of the lazy ports, rushed remasters and overall shit show that gaming industry has become. It does help that I don't play as much as I used to, but I would like to have a better world for my children:P
Hamuko 5y ago
>As per legal requirements, Github complied with the takedown demand but, as TF noted at the time, the team behind the projects had the option of filing a DMCA counter-notice if it was confident that its work is permitted under copyright law. >After assessing its options, that’s exactly what the team did, leaving Take-Two just a couple of weeks to file a lawsuit to prevent the content reappearing on Github. When that time expired, the coding platform restored ‘re3’ and ‘reVC’, as per the law. As far as I can tell, this is a pretty generous take on what happened. The Take-Two counter notice [1] was filed by td512, who had a fork of the re3 repo, but doesn't seem to have any commits in the repo, so it's kinda hard to call him part of the team. And his reasoning for filing the counter notice was that the repo contained "no code owned by Take Two", which is a bit questionable (I guess it's now up for the court to decide) since the code is decompiled and then cleaned up. Meanwhile in May, Ash R., who I believe is part of the re3 team (and is in fact beind sued as Doe 1), posted on Twitter [2] about how the team was close to filing a counter notice before the news of the repo being restored hit the news, potentially tanking the whole project. [1] https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2021/04/2021-04-08-take-two-counternotice.md https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2021/04/2021-04-0... [2] https://twitter.com/Ash_735/status/1391916368166113280 https://twitter.com/Ash_735/status/1391916368166113280 EDIT: Actually, it looks like there are two more counter claims as per the suit, however they seem to have been filed after the initial counter claim was filed and indeed after the repository was restored / news of the restoration were reported on. The first [3] seems like a carbon copy of the first claim while the second one [4] seems a bit more carefully worded. [3] https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2021/05/2021-05-13-take-two-counternotice.md https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2021/05/2021-05-1... [4] https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2021/06/2021-06-10-take-two-counternotice.md https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2021/06/2021-06-1...
- elliekelly 5y ago
  > The company says that the counter notices sent by the defendants in response were not legitimate. > “In at least three separate instances between April and June of 2021, Defendants Orçunus, Morra, and Graber submitted sworn counter notifications to GitHub claiming the takedown of the repositories was mistaken or otherwise not legitimate,” the lawsuit reads. > “Take-Two is informed and believes, and on that basis alleges, that these counter notifications were made in bad faith, and knowingly and deliberately misrepresented to GitHub the contents of the re3 GitHub Repositories.” It really isn’t fair to put all of this legalese in front of laypeople (and in this case, laypeople in other countries/legal systems) and then allow highly experienced corporate attorneys to nitpick their obviously inadequate understanding of the language and its implications.
eurasiantiger 5y ago
I played a pirate copy of VC when I was a poor student and loved the game. Hearing of ReVC just now made me consider buying it, a 20 year old game. Take-Twos belligerent approach just killed that consideration. They have fans both hardcore enough to restore the game and loving enough to provide the restored version to others, and they choose to slap them with a lawsuit over a 20 year old game? We the people don’t have the right to distribute copyrighted files, but we do have a right to repair broken software, just like we have the right to repair other things we own, and we certainly have a right to help others do the same.
- m-p-3 5y ago
  I suspect that they plan to rerelease or remaster the game, and having a fan project being of higher quality than their own product would undercut their sales expectations.
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    They're coming this fall. https://kotaku.com/the-gta-remastered-trilogy-appears-to-be-real-and-comi-1847474620 https://kotaku.com/the-gta-remastered-trilogy-appears-to-be-...
  - philipov 5y ago
    Being an asshole should also undercut their sales expectations.
    - m-p-3 5y ago
      They probably accounted for that, and the loses from being an asshole were likely smaller on paper than the loses from a better fan remake. That might change if it goes viral tho.
  - brezelgoring 5y ago
    >[...]having a fan project being of higher quality than their own product[...] Seeing how the recent GTA:SA releases perform, that's quite easy to achieve. Makes me think there should be some legal contemplation that if you don't actively distribute or charge for this stuff you get to do it anyhow.
sebyx07 5y ago
Why work on these kind of projects with a github account associated with your identity? And why use github in the first place? Go self hosted
eljimmy 5y ago
I'm surprised this type of development hasn't been driven underground/anonymous into the warez scene.
sjreese 5y ago
The plaintiff claims that the apple is theirs and any pictures of the apple is also theirs .. this may undue Take-Two as to why fair use exists. The outcome is far from certain - which means Take-Two may be the real target
beej71 5y ago
I'll bet Take Two has a case here. That said, they've just guaranteed they'll never see another dollar out of me. This is one of those cases where they had another play that was win-win. (Well, except for the lawyers.)
kjrose 5y ago
Is anyone here a lawyer who can explain why it's worth taking such a big publicity hit over this by Take-Two? Like it is clear these guys are not taking away any business from them, nor are they really losing any money. Is there some sort of IP reason, like they need to defend the IP lest it be marked as being abandoned? Or is there some other legit reason beyond spite that they are taking this on? I dont see Take-Two losing any significant amount of income from this enthusiast project, but I could be wrong and I am willing to be corrected.
- everyone 5y ago
  Legal department / managers etc. needed something to do.
  - jrm4 5y ago
    IAAL, and this is actually pretty accurate. Also of note, there is a princple within the law that basically suggests "if you don't vigorously defend your IP, that can be taken to mean you don't much care in the future as well." Honestly, in our modern environment, I don't find that much compelling (as something to really worry about from a developer POV), but it does exist.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
      > a princple within the law that basically suggests "if you don't vigorously defend your IP, that can be taken to mean you don't much care in the future as well." I thought that was only trademarks?
      - jrm4 5y ago
        You may be right that, for now, that's where its mostly clearly stated..but.. I don't do much IP personally, but I'm familiar enough to have seen that a lot of people, even judges, don't always draw those technical clear lines between different types of IP. So, going both ways -- it's not unthinkable that someone would try to 1) apply this reasoning but with copyright and/or 2) claim (if flimisily) that this is trademark infringement, despite it not exactly fitting with how the law is supposed to work.
petermcneeley 5y ago
Related Tie fighter total conversion is still up: https://www.moddb.com/mods/tie-fighter-total-conversion-tftc https://www.moddb.com/mods/tie-fighter-total-conversion-tftc Does anyone know the legal status of this project?
WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
Example #4,776,901 of how copyright ruins everything it can
teawrecks 5y ago
Wow, incredibly short sighted of take two. They were being handed free money and decided to shred it. Wonder how the shareholders will feel about that...
teddybloake 5y ago
I'll make a similar comparison. Let us take technology out it: I make a board game and give away instructions on how to play the game. The game instructions include going out and buying Lego pieces to assemble the boardgame. Lego now wants to make boardgames and sues me. Is what I'm doing illegal?

157 points by askl 5y ago

Do the enthusiast devs have a legal leg to stand on? The repositories cited - like the re3 one on github - don't contain the original GTA3 game assets. It's all "new" code that runs the original game assets, or emulation/simulation wrappers to get OpenGL or DirectX to function like an old PS2 renderer. To play the re3 version of the game, you need the original GTA3 game for PC. To me, it seems more like SCUMM VM or a high-level emulator. Is that copyright infringement?

flatiron 5y ago
It’s tricky (obviously) but the code itself is certainly protected. If they decompiled the code and just cleaned it up it’s very grey. If they simply studied it’s workings and coded it fresh that’s pretty clearly not infringing. But if take-two can point at chunks of code that’s exactly the same they have a bit of a leg. Mainly though they know they won’t fight back so why not just sue? They have nothing to lose.
- Hamuko 5y ago
  >If they decompiled the code and just cleaned it up it’s very grey. This is from the CODING STYLE document: "Don't just copy paste code from IDA, make it look nice" https://github.com/GTAmodding/re3/blob/master/CODING_STYLE.md https://github.com/GTAmodding/re3/blob/master/CODING_STYLE.m...
  - rasz 5y ago
    amateurs, should of been: "Don't just copy paste code from IDA, pull it thru GitHub Copilot first"
- carl_dr 5y ago
  > If they decompiled the code and just cleaned it up it’s very grey. From the filed complaint, Take-Two quote one of the developers : > GTA 3 and Vice City were originally written in [programming language] C++ . . . The compiled executables that are shipped are in machine code. So the general task is to go from machine code back to C++. . . . To go back to C++ is by no means a simple 1:1 mapping, but over the last 10 or so years decompilers have appeared that help with this process. . . . So what we typically do is work with the output of the decompiler and massage it back into readable C++ And although this probably has no relevance from a legal standpoint, but sounds pretty bad in the context of the complaint, from right at the bottom of https://github.com/GTAmodding/re3/blob/master/CODING_STYLE.md https://github.com/GTAmodding/re3/blob/master/CODING_STYLE.m... : > Generally, try to make the code look as if R* could have written it
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    So in most jurisdictions, what they did was clearly copyright infringement. It's a shame a simple take-down request wasn't sent (and complied with) first...
    - carl_dr 5y ago
      That’s on the developers. From TFA : > The lawsuit says that after the company filed a DMCA takedown notice to remove the projects from Github, the defendants filed a bad faith counter notice to have the content reinstated, thus triggering this copyright infringement lawsuit.
danhor 5y ago
My understanding is that the code is directly reverse engineered/decompiled from the original code, so while it doesn't contain game assets, it's based on (compiled) code copyrighted by Take-Two.
- bogwog 5y ago
  It'd be interesting to see if this actually goes to court, because decompiled code is technically new code, not the original. Decompilers can't retrieve the original code written by Rockstar devs, but it can write new code that behaves like it. Is that a derivative work? If a person were to do that by hand, I think most people would say it's fair use.
  - carl_dr 5y ago
    From the filed complaint, Take-Two quote one of the developers : > GTA 3 and Vice City were originally written in [programming language] C++ . . . The compiled executables that are shipped are in machine code. So the general task is to go from machine code back to C++. . . . To go back to C++ is by no means a simple 1:1 mapping, but over the last 10 or so years decompilers have appeared that help with this process. . . . So what we typically do is work with the output of the decompiler and massage it back into readable C++ I know, as a software developer, I don’t consider that fair use, and I very much doubt any reasonable person would either.
    - teawrecks 5y ago
      Why? Nothing about the decompiled source guarantees that it will compile to the same binary. And once you compile it for a new platform that TT never published for, it's an original binary generated from original source. It's as if person 1 built a machine (source+compiler) that generates paintings (binary) to sell, and then person 2 saw the painting and built an entirely different machine that can do the same thing. Person 1 can't tell person 2 what to do with their machine.
  - klodolph 5y ago
    Think about it this way: if you compile source code, you get something that is technically new code (and not the original), but it is a derivative work. Why would decompiling be different from compiling? In both cases, you are transforming code from one language to another and ending up with something "new", which is a derivative of the original. In any case, you can have a human come in and clean up, refactor, extend, or make changes... and the result is still a derivative of the original. It doesn't really matter if you are doing it by hand or machine. I just don't see how that is relevant. There's a process involved where the input to that process is the original GTA 3, there's a bunch of steps, and the output to that process is code based on the original GTA 3 machine code, but in C or C++ instead of machine code. There are two ways to get around this. The first way is fair use, which is complicated but certainly doesn't apply here. The other way is the "clean room" reverse engineering, where one team reverse engineers a product to figure out what it does, and produces a specification, which a second team uses to create a new implementation which does the same thing.
bsksi 5y ago
It's reverse engineered using IDA and such. I think even the class/functions names are the same since the developer forgot to strip one of the binaries. As much as I support this kind of project, I would say they are legally screwed. But they already knew that when they started.
- CannisterFlux 5y ago
  Yeah, sounds that way, if it's almost literally the same code rejiggered to build as C. A proper clean-room rewrite effort would be so much slower. You'd need one guy in IDA decompiling/understanding, then explaining the design of how it should work to read and render the assets etc without actually writing the code to do that, and someone different reading the spec and implementing it without touching the original code at all. Or a single person doing both halves but being almost impossibly strict about it.

Const-me 5y ago

Probably someone in the upper management of take-two had the idea of downsizing their legal department. That department have decided to demonstrate how incredibly useful they are, by suing a few people from Germany, New Zealand, Turkey, and United Kingdom. > Defendants are well aware that they do not possess the right to copy, adapt, or distribute derivative GTA source code, or the audiovisual elements of the Games, and that doing so constitutes copyright infringement. I think the opposite is true, what they did was fair use. The defendants are outside US, pretty sure everything they did was 100% legal in their jurisdictions. > Defendants have made the Games fully and freely available to the public They have made the game engine (the .exe) freely available to the public. To run the game, one also needs assets of the game. Assets require overwhelming majority of disk space, take overwhelming majority of development budget to produce, and can be obtained legally by buying the original game.

klodolph 5y ago
> I think the opposite is true, what they did was fair use. The defendants are outside US, pretty sure everything they did was 100% legal in their jurisdictions. There's just no way that it's fair use to distribute a decompiled copy of a game. Reverse engineering and decompiling are generally legal, but they don't strip away copyrights from the code. Think about it this way... compiling source code does not change who has the copyright on the code. Decompiling source code does not change it either. Cleaning up the output from IDA or Ghidra does not magically strip away copyright. If I went to a Broadway show and sat down with a pad of staff paper so I could transcribe all the songs, and then put my transcriptions up on GitHub, I could get sued by the composer and the composer would win.
- Const-me 5y ago
  > no way that it's fair use to distribute a decompiled copy of a game That’s not what these people did. A source code of a re-implementation of a game engine is not a copy of the game. I have compiled and tested that thing, but it was only legal for me to do so because I had the original one bought on Steam. > I could get sued by the composer Right. “The great thing about this country is you can sue anyone for pretty much anything, and you probably win. Or at least, get a settlement.” https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Rakin_and_Ponzer https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Rakin_and_Ponzer

dasKrokodil 5y ago

Man, regardless of who is in the right legally, I wish these big corporations had a better sense of humor and would understand and appreciate that the people who go to these lengths to understand and recreate the original code aren't their enemies, but their biggest fans.

klodolph 5y ago
They make money from having lots of customers, not from having a few obsessed fans. I’ve heard this argument before but the kind of people who are obsessed enough to reverse-engineer old games don’t necessarily even play new games. They’re often fans of the old games and don’t play new games, or they’re people who are interested in reverse engineering. You can release a remaster of an old game, but any reverse-engineered version would be competing with it.
- sam0x17 5y ago
  That said, using any of these mods requires a valid GTA V license, so OP is right, by killing this project, they are killing their own sales.
  - elif 5y ago
    Not if they intend to release remastered versions of their own content, which is likely.
    - sam0x17 5y ago
      It's funny because I bet a GTA V license costs more than whatever they are going to charge for remastered. So they are competing with themselves by offering a cheaper option (if we ignore the fact that a lot of people already own GTA V). I'd be willing to bet a lot of people who want to play the remastered older games haven't played GTA V because they normally wouldn't. So still lost revenue imo.
- Crosseye_Jack 5y ago
  > You can release a remaster of an old game, but any reverse-engineered version would be competing with it. The Console HD (Well 720p) remasters of the 3D GTAs don't even compete with the original versions with mods imo :-P. They are the ported from the mobile ports of the games, have tons of bugs (Edit: some of the bugs on the 360 stem from RROD issues on consoles that have just not yet RROD'ed), break many of the game mechanics and redender models like trash. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhVdb4K1M-M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhVdb4K1M-M <- Sa comparisons as an example (Note: I know you are on about how mods / RE projects compete with offical releases from a product standpoint, not a quality standpoint. Just wanted to say that RS had their chance to improve the longevity of the older 3D titles and they fucked it up)

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago

I am no legal expert, but the gamer in me instinctively sides with DMCA recipient. I am tired of the lazy ports, rushed remasters and overall shit show that gaming industry has become. It does help that I don't play as much as I used to, but I would like to have a better world for my children:P

Hamuko 5y ago

>As per legal requirements, Github complied with the takedown demand but, as TF noted at the time, the team behind the projects had the option of filing a DMCA counter-notice if it was confident that its work is permitted under copyright law. >After assessing its options, that’s exactly what the team did, leaving Take-Two just a couple of weeks to file a lawsuit to prevent the content reappearing on Github. When that time expired, the coding platform restored ‘re3’ and ‘reVC’, as per the law. As far as I can tell, this is a pretty generous take on what happened. The Take-Two counter notice [1] was filed by td512, who had a fork of the re3 repo, but doesn't seem to have any commits in the repo, so it's kinda hard to call him part of the team. And his reasoning for filing the counter notice was that the repo contained "no code owned by Take Two", which is a bit questionable (I guess it's now up for the court to decide) since the code is decompiled and then cleaned up. Meanwhile in May, Ash R., who I believe is part of the re3 team (and is in fact beind sued as Doe 1), posted on Twitter [2] about how the team was close to filing a counter notice before the news of the repo being restored hit the news, potentially tanking the whole project. [1] https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2021/04/2021-04-08-take-two-counternotice.md https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2021/04/2021-04-0... [2] https://twitter.com/Ash_735/status/1391916368166113280 https://twitter.com/Ash_735/status/1391916368166113280 EDIT: Actually, it looks like there are two more counter claims as per the suit, however they seem to have been filed after the initial counter claim was filed and indeed after the repository was restored / news of the restoration were reported on. The first [3] seems like a carbon copy of the first claim while the second one [4] seems a bit more carefully worded. [3] https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2021/05/2021-05-13-take-two-counternotice.md https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2021/05/2021-05-1... [4] https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2021/06/2021-06-10-take-two-counternotice.md https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2021/06/2021-06-1...

elliekelly 5y ago
> The company says that the counter notices sent by the defendants in response were not legitimate. > “In at least three separate instances between April and June of 2021, Defendants Orçunus, Morra, and Graber submitted sworn counter notifications to GitHub claiming the takedown of the repositories was mistaken or otherwise not legitimate,” the lawsuit reads. > “Take-Two is informed and believes, and on that basis alleges, that these counter notifications were made in bad faith, and knowingly and deliberately misrepresented to GitHub the contents of the re3 GitHub Repositories.” It really isn’t fair to put all of this legalese in front of laypeople (and in this case, laypeople in other countries/legal systems) and then allow highly experienced corporate attorneys to nitpick their obviously inadequate understanding of the language and its implications.

eurasiantiger 5y ago

I played a pirate copy of VC when I was a poor student and loved the game. Hearing of ReVC just now made me consider buying it, a 20 year old game. Take-Twos belligerent approach just killed that consideration. They have fans both hardcore enough to restore the game and loving enough to provide the restored version to others, and they choose to slap them with a lawsuit over a 20 year old game? We the people don’t have the right to distribute copyrighted files, but we do have a right to repair broken software, just like we have the right to repair other things we own, and we certainly have a right to help others do the same.

m-p-3 5y ago
I suspect that they plan to rerelease or remaster the game, and having a fan project being of higher quality than their own product would undercut their sales expectations.
- cinntaile 5y ago
  They're coming this fall. https://kotaku.com/the-gta-remastered-trilogy-appears-to-be-real-and-comi-1847474620 https://kotaku.com/the-gta-remastered-trilogy-appears-to-be-...
- philipov 5y ago
  Being an asshole should also undercut their sales expectations.
  - m-p-3 5y ago
    They probably accounted for that, and the loses from being an asshole were likely smaller on paper than the loses from a better fan remake. That might change if it goes viral tho.
- brezelgoring 5y ago
  >[...]having a fan project being of higher quality than their own product[...] Seeing how the recent GTA:SA releases perform, that's quite easy to achieve. Makes me think there should be some legal contemplation that if you don't actively distribute or charge for this stuff you get to do it anyhow.

sebyx07 5y ago

Why work on these kind of projects with a github account associated with your identity? And why use github in the first place? Go self hosted

eljimmy 5y ago

I'm surprised this type of development hasn't been driven underground/anonymous into the warez scene.

sjreese 5y ago

The plaintiff claims that the apple is theirs and any pictures of the apple is also theirs .. this may undue Take-Two as to why fair use exists. The outcome is far from certain - which means Take-Two may be the real target

beej71 5y ago

I'll bet Take Two has a case here. That said, they've just guaranteed they'll never see another dollar out of me. This is one of those cases where they had another play that was win-win. (Well, except for the lawyers.)

kjrose 5y ago

Is anyone here a lawyer who can explain why it's worth taking such a big publicity hit over this by Take-Two? Like it is clear these guys are not taking away any business from them, nor are they really losing any money. Is there some sort of IP reason, like they need to defend the IP lest it be marked as being abandoned? Or is there some other legit reason beyond spite that they are taking this on? I dont see Take-Two losing any significant amount of income from this enthusiast project, but I could be wrong and I am willing to be corrected.

everyone 5y ago
Legal department / managers etc. needed something to do.
- jrm4 5y ago
  IAAL, and this is actually pretty accurate. Also of note, there is a princple within the law that basically suggests "if you don't vigorously defend your IP, that can be taken to mean you don't much care in the future as well." Honestly, in our modern environment, I don't find that much compelling (as something to really worry about from a developer POV), but it does exist.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    > a princple within the law that basically suggests "if you don't vigorously defend your IP, that can be taken to mean you don't much care in the future as well." I thought that was only trademarks?
    - jrm4 5y ago
      You may be right that, for now, that's where its mostly clearly stated..but.. I don't do much IP personally, but I'm familiar enough to have seen that a lot of people, even judges, don't always draw those technical clear lines between different types of IP. So, going both ways -- it's not unthinkable that someone would try to 1) apply this reasoning but with copyright and/or 2) claim (if flimisily) that this is trademark infringement, despite it not exactly fitting with how the law is supposed to work.

petermcneeley 5y ago

Related Tie fighter total conversion is still up: https://www.moddb.com/mods/tie-fighter-total-conversion-tftc https://www.moddb.com/mods/tie-fighter-total-conversion-tftc Does anyone know the legal status of this project?

WarOnPrivacy 5y ago

Example #4,776,901 of how copyright ruins everything it can

teawrecks 5y ago

Wow, incredibly short sighted of take two. They were being handed free money and decided to shred it. Wonder how the shareholders will feel about that...

teddybloake 5y ago

I'll make a similar comparison. Let us take technology out it: I make a board game and give away instructions on how to play the game. The game instructions include going out and buying Lego pieces to assemble the boardgame. Lego now wants to make boardgames and sues me. Is what I'm doing illegal?