When a publisher needs a binary crack to get the own games running, we can assume they themself have no access to source code or the required build chain anymore. To me that is the really embarrassing part of the story.
Eh, I wouldn't be that bothered about that part as the game is over 20 years old. Rereleases weren't much of a thing back then. I'd say companies that kept the source code back then, after the product was not going to get any more commercial releases, were the exception, rather than the norm.
@@Joseph-ke3xc Well, if you want to re-release the product you better have the effort to get the chain running on modern systems, because otherwise your release wont be very stable or even able to utilize the hardware at all. After all, they want to earn money from it.
It comes full circle. Pirates crack the executable for a game in turn making it "free". Game developers "steal" the crack and sell it back to gamers. 😂
...and unfortunately, too many "gamers" are too stupid to realize it... they just keep dumping money into these huge companies' pockets like mindless drones waiting to be screwed out of more money with the release, the re-release, the re-re-release, the 'special edition re-re-re-release.... all (of course) overhyped and overpriced. It's like prostitution - sell the same thing over and over, each time claiming it's "new". 🤣
as anal retentive as they are. they should be FORCED to sue themselves. and also be required to not only give monetary compensation to the og crackers for their own brazen theft.
That would make sense taxes wise. As money you get from a court case is not subject to taxation. Meanwhile money you lost due a court case can be put as an expense. So is a win win if you sue yourself. If you win, you get to pay yourself tax free money while placing the amount you spend a business related cost. If you loose you counter sue yourself and do the same. The only reason is not common is lawyer fees.
@@RicardoSantos-oz3ujyou're still paying yourself with money you acquired before your own lawsuit. All you are doing is spending money on lawyers, and advertising that you aren't double taxed as opposed to single taxed... not sure what your point is even remotely here
If I was razor I would employ a check that makes the crack not work if this signature is erased. I don't know if they actually did that. Someone can check. I don't think they expected companies to steal cracks, but other hacking groups, yes, and it already happened in the past.
I saw similar move in music industry. One of my favorite groups just uploaded low quality "cracked" version of their song to their official youtube channel. The song has voice of someone telling the name of the website they took the song from.
It's embarrassing, but what can anyone do about it? Like if someone from Razer tries to knock on their door and try to sue for plagiarism, Rockstar is gonna turn right around and ask if they had anything to do with these million illegal downloads. Reminds me of the 'Breakfast can wait' cover art.
how exactly is it embarassing? if they dont want the drm anymore or have access to the source code, why not? theyre pirated versions,rockstar owes them nothing.
Literally this. While I don't distrust these crackers in particular, in theory these games could contain malicious code because Rockstar did the lazy thing and grabbed a crack instead of doing it themselves. There are in fact several groups that HAVE inserted malicious code into their cracks in the past, so it's baffling when people like the one you're responding act as if it's really nothing to be concerned with. @@mikeywhelan2362
the razor demos were my favourite part of cracks. i have watched every one back then and they were like 8kb in size, it was pretty impressive to me and i loved the animations
Is it embarrassing? Honestly, I think it's really smart. I imagine the meeting to discuss the cost and time involved in removing the DRM ended with the words 'What are they going to do, sue us?' lol
oh man, you explaining what a no-cd crack was made me feel like im old. I remember using those to play tons of games way back in the early '00s. Razer 1911 and Reloaded were my go-to for years and years. haha
It was surprising to read the name 'Boris Schneider-Johne' being at Microsoft in this video at 6:40. Of course, I forgot he was working at MS nowadays. This guy was a real guru in the 80s homecomputer era! He actually developed the first software fastloader for the C64 himself and was part of the 'Powerplay' redaction, which was the most popular and influental German games magazine since the dawn of games and for many years!
I remember even using a cloned original iso with alcohol 120% to avoid having to put a cd all the time in order to start a game... let alone those abysmal loading times from a CD drive. DRM is the problem, but most game studios think that every customer should pay twice or thrice for a game they already owned instead of just simply deciding to remove DRM after a year or so in circulation - or even better, not use DRM at all.
I remember the Baghdad Bob meme in 2003 "There is no Max Payne 2". People were foaming at the mouth to see which release group was going to crack it first.
Would love to see your work on Razor 1911! Not only them, but other scene groups from the 80's and 90's. I wasn't around PC Gaming at the game (for a lot of those years, I wasn't even born lol), so more information on those that came before the scenes we know now is very much appreciated
How rockstar handled manhunt must embarrass them not only did they rely on a crack for a game that they should have a clean version easily available or easily cleaned, they also messed it leading to DRM that few people experienced being commonly experienced on brought copies.
imagine if Razr done a DMCA on rockstar games because of that, would be hilarious if it was legal to do "oh, you want to shut us down and profit off our tools? fine... let's destroy your steam reputation"
Now thats funny, for a bigger laugh play a chord like Barre A, Blitz bop or what ever its called on score attack and see you don't get 90-100 %, just keep that beat. Rocksmith 2014
GameCopyWorld and Razor, they gave me so many good times with their work. I started pc gaming hard when the Need For Speed thing started. And downloading cracked stuff was my only way of testing before maybe buying. Yes, buying. My favourite still is GTA, I tested a cracked version before going and buying the dvd´s, I still have them. Ahh, those were the days where You actually owned what You bought...
Yeah i heard about that that publishers just steal cracks, patch their own games and sell them like this. I know that hearing this will make people angry, but it is fully legal that companies use those cracks in their own games - because those cracks violated the original copyright in the first place and has no legality. On the other hand, it does not display that company/publisher in a good way, doing such practice. But i am totally grateful to those cracking crews (except for ones, that inserts trojans and viruses in the executables) for making cracks, because thats the only way old DRM protected games can be played these days.
Isn't it hypocritical to prosecute someone for cracking a game and then using their crack to get around your own DRM? They at a minimum should be PAYING the developer that wrote the crack! Better yet, leave them alone!
I understand this isn't pretty, but I am happy to see old games keep getting released. Ideally, I would like to see some small improvements or something from time to time. Developers could give it to GOG and they will spend the time for such things.
If only those publishers bothered to keep a clean executable without anti-piracy bullshit or source code they could recompile, but no, for them it is just temporary profit, to be discarded next year - only gamers actually care enough to preserve those games. But now, they learned they can monetize nostalgia and trying to re-sell those games they didn't bother to preserve themselves.
Yeah but have you played manhunt 1 on pc? It doesn't even work because of the razor1911 crack If i pay rockstar $20 for a game, i want an exe with no drm made by rockstar
Having it available for convenient download (with a simple installer or galaxy frontend) has value of itself. I'm perfectly happy purchasing a (safe) warez copy on gog or other drm free storefronts like humble.@@Thesavagesouls
It's a very bad practice because I'm sure that the publishers don't test a game with a crack. And there will be a case in the future when the cracked version would contain a dangerous code for end-user...
Very bad practice, but also very hilarious practice. When the case comes about and whatever sensitive data is stolen, the legal proceedings are sure to be intriguing.
@@HarrietJade-e4m A lawsuit is a power. And it's very unfortunate that the publishers cannot be sued for using the cracks under copyright laws by hackers 😅
BSG is selling the hacks for Tarkov. They are double dipping. When someone gets caught for being too obvious they ban the account and then they end up selling a second account and likely more hacks to that person.
I've stopping purchasing Rockstar titles ever since my account got comprised in a big leak of theirs and they refuse to help me get it back. Paying customer I was, until they removed that option for me
I'm guessing some group of new hires at Rockstar were tasked with putting these games on Steam. Conversation between them went something like this: A - "We need to make these playable without the CD." B - "People already made these playable without the CD; you can find the cracked versions online." A - "Well, what are you waiting for? Dump that into the Steam store and call it a day."
I have said for years that triple AAA game developers have hacked their video games or paid someone to hack their video games I worked for Nintendo I saw it first hand!
Corporations will always be trying to transmute ownership into rental, and rental into prevention of ownership. Its the kinds of greed government used to legislate against. Still, seems like the EU is still fighting a decent fight in some quarters (cite removable mobile phone batteries, and no weasling for Valve selling in the EU regarding game libraries etc).
This is a great example of how DRM hurts legit customers. I think it's good from a video game preservation stand point. However, they should give credit and pay the groups a royalty on all games sold using the crack.
1 minute: *tells the story* 9 more minutes: "this is embarrassing blahblahbla, it's not new they did it before and will do it again blahblahblah, it's embarrassing but they don't care blahblahblah, blahblahblah, blahblahblah, here is me filling up my video with blahblahblah to reach 10 minutes for monetization blahblahblah" Hurray for blahblahblah
Honestly my Favourite 'DRM' has to be systems like Spyro where you could still play the game but it would have a bunch of intentional glitches that make playing a huge pain, but you could struggle through if you really wanted to, at least until a point
While i dont support piracy and always buy the games , but have to admit piracy helps to preserve the decade old games and softwares Like i wanted to buy the old GTA trilogy but not defective edition but its not available on steam or anywhere so i my only option was to sail the seas When developer no longer supports & benefits selling very old games there should be no problem pirating it unless you're Nintendo
Imagine you, a musician, had your custom guitar stolen by someone who wrote their initials all over it and tried to hock it off on eBay. Then imagine you stole it back. If I were Rockstar, I would parade that guitar around, initials and all. I would call them out by name and thank them for being such a wonderful piece of garbage. Now THAT would be living up to the name "Rockstar."
i think this shows the industry has a real problem with data/source code rot, or products which depend on more and more ageing, unsupported and retired products and services. Intel started to remove support for old instructions in their latest CPU's, so eventually old software and games won't be run on new hardware unless it's in an emulator like Qemu. It's kinda dissapointing if you see games as an art which at some point can't be experienced anymore in the original intended way, and to do so would mean doing data archeology and the software equivalent of restauration work
I just think it's really bogus from Rock Star games. Because, why would their own games feature 3rd party cracks when they have source code and publishing rights to the original software (including physical hard-copy?)
These re-release game projects probably have very little budget and time allocations so this is a no-brainer for a Dev who is in that situation. Very bad look for Rockstar but when your that big you don't care about this kind of thing that most people won't even comprehend.
Should look for people in FLT, RzR, PDX, MYT, RLD, CLS, deviance, HLM and others. These are the most prominent ones from the ISO-scene at least. Also look at how the Scandinavian scene was pioneering but eventually turned to shit with the p2p stuff and rented sites causing all sorts of issues. Chugging along nicely now days tho
I bought red dead redemption and ended up refunding it on steam because I couldn't get past the drm. I pirated the next rockstar game I played, simply because I expected I'd have to go through the same nonsense again and potentially be unable to play my game.
Eventually the website you purchased the game will stop supporting you os and take every game away until you are forced to upgrade to a new windows like windows 1,380,580
To me it sounds like their drm was so embedded in their games that it was either impossible or not cost effective to remove it. So they instead just used readily available cracks.
Was Digital Restriction Management ever a usefull thing in the first place? It costs money to implement/license, it costs money to support, it costs lots of nerves on paying, honest customers and made so much trouble. And nowadays relasing games on windows or linux is difficult just because of legacy DRM which doesn't run anylonger. I would bet that the costs of DRM were much higher than the additional sales by patronizing honest customers. Especially as most games were cracked in a matter of days, if at all. People who couldn't afford the official game would not contribute to the sales anyways, so it is some sort of gaslighting of the publishers themselfes.
There's a certain irony in their (and the common take) that people only use no-CD cracks to pirate, while they're using it to sell their own game without any work. Also a similar irony is complaining about somebody's hard work being stolen. It's absolutely ridiculous that they can't simply rebuild the game without it. Next level laziness.
We will see what is left of R* when GTA6 comes out and how they handle it in the first year. Financially it will be a success, because everyone will buy it. But the interesting part will be, if the game is actually playable at launch, or if it will be a complete mess. And ofc how they support the game, handle issues and fix bugs. Being a GTA5/GTA Online player for years and knowing R*, I´ll set my bet on GTA6 being a bugged, rushed mess, with bad support and dozens of issues R* will never fix. And the war against modders will be lost after 1 week.
Ah, DRM. Costs money to implement, costs money in PR, costs money in support, then costs money to remove (which rarely happens because hey it cost money and we fired the devs ages ago). Truly a necessity in modern gaming.
Right?! I spent HOURS with Rockstar Games Support because even themselves didn't know that you CANNOT launch Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC when your computer is disconnected from the Internet.
Yep, I really miss those days, I was too broke to afford games back then so I had to wait until a group would release a crack to be able to play. Nowadays I'm so broke that I can't afford any gaming platform, I haven't played a game since 2011.
30s 😂😂😂😂 Try 53 Lil homie. I was in this very scene. Seen alot of Razors stuff. There was actually several groups. Another couple old groups. Extalia, & Hackers Alliance. So by trying to be first to make releases. Hackers Alliance released the first Wall hack for the do called unhackable Call of Duty 2. Whats funny about that is. The hack was released 2 days after the full version of Call of Duty 2 released. They had released a demo version of the game. In which the EXE, which was the same as the full release. Which is the real reason the hack release was only 2 days out. Just long enough to test it on the full release. It was a slap in the face to the boasting of it being unhackable. Even BlackBart took the L on his scanner. Simple bit hacking to make it look at a clean directory vs hacked one lol.
Back in the day when games were 3-4 GB in install size, getting a 320 GB hard drive and filling half the desktop with shortcuts was truly an experience. No CD cracks were a must.
truly an experience. now 3 generations of windows later, and you cant even restart it without all the icons getting birdshot blasted all over the desktop
@@axethepenguin i mean, it still runs on pretty much the same kernal as the very first windows.... hence backwards compatibility and being able to chose windows 95. but imo windows vista even more useful than windows 10/11. ive been using windows 10 for the past 5yrs, and still completely avoid the taskbar LOL... honestly was really hard going from freedom of file access, to having to right click the file explorer just to open up my drives, and many computers i diagnosed is where explorer.exe causes issues LOL
I pirate now a day because I use to be a a nice paying customer. I have over 1000 games multiple platforms today but when even the game that I bought doesn’t run I have to get a crack to make it run correctly. Not condoning piracy but I definitely don’t support the current trend of release broken games and day one patch them later if it cant run on my system I dont want it
Par for the course anymore. Pirated gamers get everything unlocked (example: Hogwarts legacy) and don't have to deal with those annoying launchers. They make me want to pirate more and more every single game
This happened to me. Bought a game (one of the LEGO Star Wars games) and even though I paid for it, it couldn't run because of the piracy methods! So I went to the Net, downloaded a CD crack and played the game with that.
I think you would have to prove that the gains from reselling the cracked product outweigh the losses of the pirated product. Even still, do you think Rockstar would leave money on the table if an existing crack didn’t exist? I’m sure they could hire someone like MVG to crack the title. Lone wolves are out there cracking the games for clout. They can afford to pay someone.
@@GamesFromSpaceYou assume that the people that pirated the game would buy the game. Also, since there are no demo versions of this game, many people use the seven seas version in order to know is a game they would like and not. Finally, some DRM are just developer sanctioned MALWARE.
It’s not about old source code , it’s to do with new employees with modern systems who might not know how to work with old compilers. I have some game dev experience. My software going from version 5.0 to 5.0.1 destroyed my work. I tried fixing every line of code but its was endless error loop . I just had to redo the whole thing and make sure never to update programs during ongoing projects.
@@AleksPizanaoh you sweet misguided kids. They don't want to do it right because they don't care, they know anything they list will sell enough to cover the cost of labor to put it up for sale.
I'm surprised you didn't mention that Rockstar used the improper crack version and the game throws every anti-piracy measure it has at you making the game unplayable. It starts up, but you can't really progress unless you do some hexediting of the executable to fix things. This has been a complaint for a long time, but Rockstar seems not to care to fix it themselves anymore. The broken game is still being sold on Steam.
Oh the irony. Same can be seen with EA's Spore on Steam. The game is absolutely broken and the only known ways to functionally play it is either the EA launcher (ew.) or a crack (which is what I'd use if it weren't for the fact that I need to access servers to enjoy 99% of the game!)
I think the words you're looking for to describe NoCD cracks in their day is "quality of life". As we can probably all remember, DRM really only ever punished legitimate users.
I still can't believe that certain games get a horrid reputation among circles because Denuvo makes it run poorly on PC...and then they bring Denuvo to switch! Screw DRM, lmao.
@@jr2904Oh we do, believe me we do. But most companies are often a POS who exploits their developers and customers as much as possible. Most games nowadays are often designed to rip you off. I'm not going to give money to companies that don't deserve it.
@@jr2904 I'm sure you DO care about draconian DRM software being installed on your system for a game your legally purchased, right? Well that was the response to zero-day cracking because those companies wanted to protect their bottom line. It was a direct response to the over-zealous cracking scene. Game companies would much rather be investing in development, not copy protection, but if they're losing more money to piracy than to the cost of developing and implementing DRM, they're going to invest in DRM.
The only reason I used No-CD cracks back in 2005 was because my 48x CD-ROM drive made a terrible loud noise. Luckily I can now still hear with my right ear.
No not really. The CD (and DVD) players first picked up the disc and spun it, stopped it completely and returned it down to the tray. Only reason for scratches was bad user handling
@@michaelbuckers Wasn't that written in an understandable way? Everyone expects their mechanic to do a good job on a huge variety of brands, models and engines. Is it really so far out that the CD/DVD drive manufacturers expect users to be capable of 1 single repeatable task, that's completely the same for almost every single disk drive in the world, at a level where the disk doesn't get damaged?
Or a full VM of your build host. I would imagine that's the biggest issue. Backward compatibility with software is atrocious, and it's highly likely that 1) the source tree wouldn't build correctly on modern tools; and 2) the original tools would probably not run well, or at all, on modern OSes. So the only way to rebuild from source would be to have a full Windows XP (or whatever) host in fully working order, with contemporary Visual Studio, etc. etc.
I agree it's hilarious, but I don't think it's any lesson for publishers. It's a brilliant move. Regardless of personal feelings, the warez groups did illegal things the companies didn't want them doing. Now it's come full circle where the companies need to do the same thing, and they can save money by simply taking the work from the warez groups. It's not like they can complain. They can't copyright their cracks, and even if they could it would be against the principles they made them under. If anything, they should be happy their work is being taken and shared without compensation. It's hilarious. I love it.
@@AlbatrossRevenue 2 minutes. It took 2 minutes of Googling to find out that game cracking groups are FAMOUS for not charging for the games they crack. They do it for ego and competition with each other. See who can crack faster and neater. Some take donations, just like some hacking groups take donations even when they aren't hacking for any monetary gain. Some don't even release the games they crack. And some of the more famous game cracking groups have no problem with DRM. If anything, it's just a bigger challenge, and more bragging rights to crack. But yeah. This doesn't take work from them, because it's not work. It's a hobby.
@@AlbatrossRevenueNo. On a broad scale, this all literally screams, "Rockstar say using cracks is fine." It's a PR disaster - from their point of view, mind you.
@@Honeypot-x9sThey wouldn't win. This is law 101. The moment they touched Rockstar's game, Rockstar owns all their work. It's why they can shut down any mod they choose no matter what work you put into it or how original the work is.
Getting caught using a nocd patch is embarrassing for R*, but my real problem with the whole thing is that they’re selling a copy of Manhunt on steam that literally doesn’t work for paying customers because it’s been patched poorly
How do you know it's embarrassing for them? If you owned your car free and clear and you wanted to kick in the sides of your sheet metal, that's your own business. I promise you, the only people that care are people who not full filled in their lives and instead worry about other peoples business instead of their own.
@@all.day.day-dreamer Get f****d. It's the business of all gamers, as it impacts anyone unfortunate enough to purchase a copy of this broken, and embarrassingly poorly patched game.
It's ironic that these companies don't like piracy and try to crack down on them. But when it's suits them they use it lol. Surely this practice could be use against these companies should they try to sue these groups.
If rockstar didnt own the ips then sure. But at the end of the day they can use these cracks to run their games all they want because they down own the games
That doesn't change the hypocrisy, simply embarrassing for rockstar no matter if they're legally allowed to do so, that's why they pulled it off steam. .@@isaac-ga @LolWutMikehSM
the fact that he makes sure to get english voices too, since he's russian, is great as well. he could just make vids towards russians like many others, but he intentionally tries to make his findings as accessible as possible.
The main thing that comes to mind for me in these cases is - the next step. The equivalent thing happening nowadays. All those stupid "games as a service" that end up shutting down, rendering them unplayable, but were genuinely good games. For the more popular games, there's people attempting to bring private servers and such online, so they can be played again -- Will those be the next in line for the publishers to bring back up again, and grab the hard work of those people that actually cared about the games?
Private servers won't happen for most games, look at test drive unlimited or combat arms or other games where the IP owners even tho they don't care about the games, they shut down private servers or force them into something dumb, test drive unlimited 2 private server requires a legit copy of the game which just requires you to buy it again since old copies didn't depend on launchers like these days Combat arms private servers straight up got shut down even tho the still running servers are borderline unplayable League of legends also had incidents with private servers, they all got threatened with DMCA even though they were of versions 7 years ago that can't be played otherwise
True Crime devs: Hey we will just copy Rockstar and will make an open world game! Damn it if they call it a GTA-clone Rockstar: We will just copy them and will do things that can be considered True Crimes.
The problem with CD-ROMs was that they became more worn out the more often you inserted them into your drive. I had many cases where my CD-ROMs became so scratched, the computer couldn't read data from them anymore, and consequently, my games refused to boot up anymore, asking for the games disk to be inserted. When that happened, you had two choices: pay for another CD or download the NO-CD crack
Still, CDs were a massive improvement over floppies... How many times back in the day did I end up with a bad sector on floppy #24 halfway through a Windows install... CD's were pure magic!
I just tended to put them in the cases when I took them out and handled them correctly at all times. The only reasons they became scratched was because careless children would scratch them.
Lately people have been praising BG3 for no MTX in their game, but everyone fails to mention how Larian alongside CDPR are one of the very few AAA devs who publish their games day1 without DRM both on Steam and GOG. It shows as long as you make a good game and price it reasonably people will buy it
It's just as Gabe Newell said. The best anti-piracy method is to convince people, not that pirating your software is bad, but that getting it legitimately is a good idea.
These scene groups allowed me to play games at a young age when my parents couldn't afford video games. Growing up I began to hack and network and now I'm a Net Admin. All self taught and inspired by these guys.
@@francesfuego6950 not too bad as long as you are technical and good at problem solving. Getting games for free evolved into setting up custom wow server and learning networking to make it open to public. Then that got me into media servers then setting up a website for wow server. You learn about what dns is and port forwarding. Then before you know it your configing firewalls
@@Coregame3because paying customers are the ones that have to deal with not being able to play the game due to bugs or server checks that the DRM implements. Person with the cracked exe doesn't have any of those problems. I'm against software piracy, but I'll still use cracks to remove DRM from games I've legally purchased.
@@saadhero9107 Riot Vanguard anti-cheat does it when installing games by Riot, then requires the PC to be restarted in order to install itself at kernel level. Not sure about any DRMs though.
@@Coregame3 Denuvo is infamously hard to crack and costs a notable chunk of performance - this is due to the way it checks the legitimacy of the game. Cracked Denuvo games have been shown to run at higher framerates than legitimately bought and installed versions of the game because the DRM was removed.
Too bad its their game. If they don't give the ability to modify the game by default, you violated their terms to gain access to their content. Which if you took said content that was protected and released it publicly, it would violate copyright. The crack isn't a change of the game in anyway, no mechanics are changed, no gameplay changes, nothing but the launcher.
it surprises me that the studio publisher didn't keep a DRM-free copy of their games for situations like this. But also I guess it makes sense because everyone thought CDs were gonna be the future forever during the dial-up era.
the witcher 3 did that.. someone from inside, leaked the denuvo-free exe online, i have been very thankfull and because it was a good game i've bought it.
What probably happens is they hire someone to officially crack it so they can get it on steam. The person then just grabs the hacked version from the internet but holds off for a couple of days, filling out timecards, pretending that they're working on it. Finally, it submits it to the company, grabs a paycheck (probably with a bonus for getting it done so fast), and then moves on to the next project. The company probably doesn't know because not knowing how to crack is why they hired out in the first place.
if they do this, and there isnt a clause in the hiring contract that says you cannot do this, theyre somehow even more incompetent than letting this happen knowingly
It doesn't really matter how it happens. If they hire someone or not. They're responsible for the final product. It's like a studio making a game, the game flops, and they blame the programmer. No, that's not how it works, it's the studio that must bear the blame, or the CEO of that company.
CD DRM was always a massive joke. I was never going to dig through piles of games to find the one CD i needed, so i obviously used no-cd cracks for all of my games
Looking forward to seeing the Razor 1911 longform video! Also a video on the "keygen" apps from back in the day would be awesome, the ones with those awesome chiptunes!!
Super excited about the teased Razer 1911 video. Cracking groups are something that have always been so mysterious to me since I was a kid. I remember the first time I downloaded some cracked software that had a really fancy installer with music and flashy graphics with the group group name (don't remember what it was) when I was about 13, it was really exciting but in a weird way scary and made feel like I was part of a secret society. Can't wait, keep the amazing work as always MVG!
A LOT of the scene people also go on to create some of the greatest games ever made. Many of the most talented people developed their skills in groups like Razer 1911. DICE (makers of Battlefield) is a typical example. Just go and take a look at intros like 'We Have Accidently Borrowed Your Votedisk' here on UA-cam and keep in mind that it's made with 64k of data. That's as much memory as it takes to store a single Windows icon. The people who claim that piracy hurts gaming more than it helps have no clue what they're talking about. Without the scene and inseparably; piracy, gaming would be in a far worse shape today.
Haha, I just have to reply here, because I felt EXACTLY the same as a teen. I'm still fascinated about the whole subculture, the history, the legends and rumors, the connections to art, to the computer industry, the gaming industry, foreign commercial pirates etc. Watching a cracktro, a game rip installer, ascii art in an nfo, and listening to chiptunes in keygens still gives me those vibes.
Well, just for conversation, they probably harmed sales at the time by cracking those games, so in a way it is only fair for rockstar to compensate their loss. In the end, i think that what matters is that we can play those games today, at the time i used NO CD cracks for their convenience, i don't see a problem using them today to the same end :)
@@OlivierGrasakaoloWell, just for conversation, studies have shown that pirated games and movies cause no significant, measurable damage to the rights holders. In very short, it became evident that most of the people using them simply would not have bought the media either way and instead just not consumed it. The amount of people who actually would have bought something but then didn't only because it could also be pirated is marginal. Almost (?) all studies suggesting the opposite are financed and commissioned by the large anti-piracy lobbyist groups.
@@Nitidus i don't say novd cracks where bad, far from it, having used them myself. Just saying i don't see harm to these groups, al those years later, if their work still allows us to play these games :)
When a publisher needs a binary crack to get the own games running, we can assume they themself have no access to source code or the required build chain anymore. To me that is the really embarrassing part of the story.
even if they have the source at hand, why? just get a cracked exe
OR the original games uses software or libraries that the company can no longer legaly use... licenses are a pain in the ass
Eh, I wouldn't be that bothered about that part as the game is over 20 years old. Rereleases weren't much of a thing back then. I'd say companies that kept the source code back then, after the product was not going to get any more commercial releases, were the exception, rather than the norm.
Or just they don't want to pay programers to do the job
@@Joseph-ke3xc Well, if you want to re-release the product you better have the effort to get the chain running on modern systems, because otherwise your release wont be very stable or even able to utilize the hardware at all. After all, they want to earn money from it.
It comes full circle. Pirates crack the executable for a game in turn making it "free". Game developers "steal" the crack and sell it back to gamers. 😂
piracy vs privateering.
its all in the paperwork and whos in charge
...and unfortunately, too many "gamers" are too stupid to realize it... they just keep dumping money into these huge companies' pockets like mindless drones waiting to be screwed out of more money with the release, the re-release, the re-re-release, the 'special edition re-re-re-release.... all (of course) overhyped and overpriced. It's like prostitution - sell the same thing over and over, each time claiming it's "new". 🤣
Reminds me of Nintendo's mini consoles. Some of those ROMs are old pirated releases. They even left the header from the ROM dumping tool in.
can't steal what's given away freely
IP is not real property!
Piracy destroys videogames.
I hope Rockstar sues Rockstar to the ground!
as anal retentive as they are. they should be FORCED to sue themselves. and also be required to not only give monetary compensation to the og crackers for their own brazen theft.
That would make sense taxes wise. As money you get from a court case is not subject to taxation. Meanwhile money you lost due a court case can be put as an expense.
So is a win win if you sue yourself. If you win, you get to pay yourself tax free money while placing the amount you spend a business related cost. If you loose you counter sue yourself and do the same. The only reason is not common is lawyer fees.
@@RicardoSantos-oz3ujand that no judge would actually hear a trial for only one party?
@@RicardoSantos-oz3ujyou're still paying yourself with money you acquired before your own lawsuit. All you are doing is spending money on lawyers, and advertising that you aren't double taxed as opposed to single taxed... not sure what your point is even remotely here
IP is not real property!
The funniest part is that they could've easily erased the group's signature off the binaries by simply writing over them on a hex editor.
That's truly the most embarrassing part.
Nope. Gotta make another GTA online update first..
@@maniac4658what's wrong with that?
too much works to validate the program probably, potential bug by changing bit length of the exe
If I was razor I would employ a check that makes the crack not work if this signature is erased. I don't know if they actually did that. Someone can check. I don't think they expected companies to steal cracks, but other hacking groups, yes, and it already happened in the past.
Rockstar finally acknowledging the Razor 1911 warez release is straight up better than their own version.
Always has been :D
So what. There is countless stolen (cracked ) versions of gta, why rockstar cant use same tactics?
@@faenethlorhalien THATS WHAT I WAS GONNA SAY 😭
"always has been, kid"
@@ivan4087 Because they take modders to a court of law and ruin their lives over things exacly like this
@@ivan4087bruh you got hit in the head or what, talking jiberish 😂
I saw similar move in music industry. One of my favorite groups just uploaded low quality "cracked" version of their song to their official youtube channel. The song has voice of someone telling the name of the website they took the song from.
It's embarrassing, but what can anyone do about it? Like if someone from Razer tries to knock on their door and try to sue for plagiarism, Rockstar is gonna turn right around and ask if they had anything to do with these million illegal downloads. Reminds me of the 'Breakfast can wait' cover art.
how exactly is it embarassing? if they dont want the drm anymore or have access to the source code, why not? theyre pirated versions,rockstar owes them nothing.
@@Glace-gone the reason why not is because they are letting their customers run code that they did not write. It could contain literally anything.
Literally this. While I don't distrust these crackers in particular, in theory these games could contain malicious code because Rockstar did the lazy thing and grabbed a crack instead of doing it themselves. There are in fact several groups that HAVE inserted malicious code into their cracks in the past, so it's baffling when people like the one you're responding act as if it's really nothing to be concerned with. @@mikeywhelan2362
It also shows a bunch of amateurs can outsmart them decades in the future
@@Glace-gone It's embarassing because Rockstar is basically outsourcing all their work to an entity they consider the scum of the earth.
the razor demos were my favourite part of cracks. i have watched every one back then and they were like 8kb in size, it was pretty impressive to me and i loved the animations
Is it embarrassing? Honestly, I think it's really smart. I imagine the meeting to discuss the cost and time involved in removing the DRM ended with the words 'What are they going to do, sue us?' lol
I'm with you on this. I think it's cool, and if I was a person cracking the games I'd be so happy that my crack became official lol
oh man, you explaining what a no-cd crack was made me feel like im old.
I remember using those to play tons of games way back in the early '00s.
Razer 1911 and Reloaded were my go-to for years and years. haha
No love for Fairlight 😢
It was surprising to read the name 'Boris Schneider-Johne' being at Microsoft in this video at 6:40. Of course, I forgot he was working at MS nowadays. This guy was a real guru in the 80s homecomputer era! He actually developed the first software fastloader for the C64 himself and was part of the 'Powerplay' redaction, which was the most popular and influental German games magazine since the dawn of games and for many years!
What if games that have gold seller in them. Say they will ban people buying gold. Then the game company themselves are selling the gold.
I remember even using a cloned original iso with alcohol 120% to avoid having to put a cd all the time in order to start a game... let alone those abysmal loading times from a CD drive. DRM is the problem, but most game studios think that every customer should pay twice or thrice for a game they already owned instead of just simply deciding to remove DRM after a year or so in circulation - or even better, not use DRM at all.
I remember the Baghdad Bob meme in 2003 "There is no Max Payne 2". People were foaming at the mouth to see which release group was going to crack it first.
Would love to see your work on Razor 1911! Not only them, but other scene groups from the 80's and 90's. I wasn't around PC Gaming at the game (for a lot of those years, I wasn't even born lol), so more information on those that came before the scenes we know now is very much appreciated
Would be absolutely hilarious if Razor sues them for copyright infringement.
How rockstar handled manhunt must embarrass them not only did they rely on a crack for a game that they should have a clean version easily available or easily cleaned, they also messed it leading to DRM that few people experienced being commonly experienced on brought copies.
I broke my vice city play disc years ago. This introduced me to the world of no cd cracks and it was honestly a life saver
imagine if Razr done a DMCA on rockstar games because of that, would be hilarious if it was legal to do "oh, you want to shut us down and profit off our tools? fine... let's destroy your steam reputation"
Imagine the customers taking Rockstar to court for selling them cracked games.
I think it would be funny if one of the crack authors claimed IP rights. haha... Funny, but probably not wise.
@@nickwallette6201Worth the risk.
I remember a lot of times it would say no CD in the drive, when it WAS! That shit really annoyed me. Off to find a crack...
Man even pirates gets things stolen from them.What kind of pirateception is this?
Now thats funny, for a bigger laugh play a chord like Barre A, Blitz bop or what ever its called on score attack and see you don't get 90-100 %, just keep that beat. Rocksmith 2014
Good morning MVG and everyone
Good morning Sean
Sometimes the NO_CD crack was an iso file to mount as a CD on alcohol to make the system believe the real CD was inserted.
GameCopyWorld and Razor, they gave me so many good times with their work. I started pc gaming hard when the Need For Speed thing started. And downloading cracked stuff was my only way of testing before maybe buying. Yes, buying. My favourite still is GTA, I tested a cracked version before going and buying the dvd´s, I still have them.
Ahh, those were the days where You actually owned what You bought...
Yeah i heard about that that publishers just steal cracks, patch their own games and sell them like this.
I know that hearing this will make people angry, but it is fully legal that companies use those cracks in their own games - because those cracks violated the original copyright in the first place and has no legality. On the other hand, it does not display that company/publisher in a good way, doing such practice.
But i am totally grateful to those cracking crews (except for ones, that inserts trojans and viruses in the executables) for making cracks, because thats the only way old DRM protected games can be played these days.
Isn't it hypocritical to prosecute someone for cracking a game and then using their crack to get around your own DRM? They at a minimum should be PAYING the developer that wrote the crack! Better yet, leave them alone!
I understand this isn't pretty, but I am happy to see old games keep getting released.
Ideally, I would like to see some small improvements or something from time to time.
Developers could give it to GOG and they will spend the time for such things.
They were still available on the internet before that. You're basically paying for a warez version to be accessible in your gog or steam library.
If only those publishers bothered to keep a clean executable without anti-piracy bullshit or source code they could recompile, but no, for them it is just temporary profit, to be discarded next year - only gamers actually care enough to preserve those games. But now, they learned they can monetize nostalgia and trying to re-sell those games they didn't bother to preserve themselves.
Yeah but have you played manhunt 1 on pc? It doesn't even work because of the razor1911 crack
If i pay rockstar $20 for a game, i want an exe with no drm made by rockstar
Having it available for convenient download (with a simple installer or galaxy frontend) has value of itself. I'm perfectly happy purchasing a (safe) warez copy on gog or other drm free storefronts like humble.@@Thesavagesouls
@@georgelopezat3am993exactly
No CD cracks were also known as delta hacks or “no delta”, as most people’s CD rom drive was labeled with Drive letter D.
It's a very bad practice because I'm sure that the publishers don't test a game with a crack.
And there will be a case in the future when the cracked version would contain a dangerous code for end-user...
Very bad practice, but also very hilarious practice. When the case comes about and whatever sensitive data is stolen, the legal proceedings are sure to be intriguing.
@@HarrietJade-e4m A lawsuit is a power. And it's very unfortunate that the publishers cannot be sued for using the cracks under copyright laws by hackers 😅
BSG is selling the hacks for Tarkov. They are double dipping. When someone gets caught for being too obvious they ban the account and then they end up selling a second account and likely more hacks to that person.
9:35 Oh shit you called it gta 6 was announced
I've stopping purchasing Rockstar titles ever since my account got comprised in a big leak of theirs and they refuse to help me get it back. Paying customer I was, until they removed that option for me
I'm guessing some group of new hires at Rockstar were tasked with putting these games on Steam.
Conversation between them went something like this:
A - "We need to make these playable without the CD."
B - "People already made these playable without the CD; you can find the cracked versions online."
A - "Well, what are you waiting for? Dump that into the Steam store and call it a day."
I have said for years that triple AAA game developers have hacked their video games or paid someone to hack their video games I worked for Nintendo I saw it first hand!
Corporations will always be trying to transmute ownership into rental, and rental into prevention of ownership. Its the kinds of greed government used to legislate against. Still, seems like the EU is still fighting a decent fight in some quarters (cite removable mobile phone batteries, and no weasling for Valve selling in the EU regarding game libraries etc).
So they realise their own measures are dumb meaning they have to rely on cracked games that were made strictly because of their anti piracy measures.
This is a great example of how DRM hurts legit customers. I think it's good from a video game preservation stand point. However, they should give credit and pay the groups a royalty on all games sold using the crack.
Its just a cost vs benefit scenario, and its not like a crack author is going to be able to go after them legally.
1 minute: *tells the story*
9 more minutes: "this is embarrassing blahblahbla, it's not new they did it before and will do it again blahblahblah, it's embarrassing but they don't care blahblahblah, blahblahblah, blahblahblah, here is me filling up my video with blahblahblah to reach 10 minutes for monetization blahblahblah"
Hurray for blahblahblah
So is stealing something that has been stolen from you, actually stealing?
Honestly my Favourite 'DRM' has to be systems like Spyro where you could still play the game but it would have a bunch of intentional glitches that make playing a huge pain, but you could struggle through if you really wanted to, at least until a point
While i dont support piracy and always buy the games , but have to admit piracy helps to preserve the decade old games and softwares
Like i wanted to buy the old GTA trilogy but not defective edition but its not available on steam or anywhere so i my only option was to sail the seas
When developer no longer supports & benefits selling very old games there should be no problem pirating it unless you're Nintendo
Imagine you, a musician, had your custom guitar stolen by someone who wrote their initials all over it and tried to hock it off on eBay. Then imagine you stole it back. If I were Rockstar, I would parade that guitar around, initials and all. I would call them out by name and thank them for being such a wonderful piece of garbage. Now THAT would be living up to the name "Rockstar."
ironically razor 1911 makes higher quality cracks than the games themselves uncracked
i always thought of that scenario when the publishers use a cracked version just because it's easier
well, i never thought it will happen actually
Surely whoever cracked the game owns the cracking code. Could they theoretically sue Rockstar for distributing their code without a licence?
Can we consider it as stealing an intellectual property of Razor?
Can we play Despacito?
i think this shows the industry has a real problem with data/source code rot, or products which depend on more and more ageing, unsupported and retired products and services. Intel started to remove support for old instructions in their latest CPU's, so eventually old software and games won't be run on new hardware unless it's in an emulator like Qemu. It's kinda dissapointing if you see games as an art which at some point can't be experienced anymore in the original intended way, and to do so would mean doing data archeology and the software equivalent of restauration work
When AAA companies can’t be bothered to make Steam versions work without a CD so just use piracy software...
Razor 1911 should take Rockstar to court for stealing their IP
Oh my god. You just reminded me of GameCopyWorld. Woah. The memories...
I just think it's really bogus from Rock Star games.
Because, why would their own games feature 3rd party cracks
when they have source code and publishing rights
to the original software (including physical hard-copy?)
Nice to see them giving their games much needed crack instead of just smoking it.
These re-release game projects probably have very little budget and time allocations so this is a no-brainer for a Dev who is in that situation. Very bad look for Rockstar but when your that big you don't care about this kind of thing that most people won't even comprehend.
Should look for people in FLT, RzR, PDX, MYT, RLD, CLS, deviance, HLM and others. These are the most prominent ones from the ISO-scene at least. Also look at how the Scandinavian scene was pioneering but eventually turned to shit with the p2p stuff and rented sites causing all sorts of issues. Chugging along nicely now days tho
wait... what??? The game owners used cracking software on there own games to sell??? 🤦♂🤦♂🤦♀🤦♀
I bought red dead redemption and ended up refunding it on steam because I couldn't get past the drm. I pirated the next rockstar game I played, simply because I expected I'd have to go through the same nonsense again and potentially be unable to play my game.
Eventually the website you purchased the game will stop supporting you os and take every game away until you are forced to upgrade to a new windows like windows 1,380,580
To me it sounds like their drm was so embedded in their games that it was either impossible or not cost effective to remove it. So they instead just used readily available cracks.
Was Digital Restriction Management ever a usefull thing in the first place? It costs money to implement/license, it costs money to support, it costs lots of nerves on paying, honest customers and made so much trouble. And nowadays relasing games on windows or linux is difficult just because of legacy DRM which doesn't run anylonger.
I would bet that the costs of DRM were much higher than the additional sales by patronizing honest customers. Especially as most games were cracked in a matter of days, if at all. People who couldn't afford the official game would not contribute to the sales anyways, so it is some sort of gaslighting of the publishers themselfes.
There's a certain irony in their (and the common take) that people only use no-CD cracks to pirate, while they're using it to sell their own game without any work. Also a similar irony is complaining about somebody's hard work being stolen. It's absolutely ridiculous that they can't simply rebuild the game without it. Next level laziness.
Nintendo's hacked roms anyone?
Floppies were called sides and we also used BBS for distribution.
We will see what is left of R* when GTA6 comes out and how they handle it in the first year. Financially it will be a success, because everyone will buy it. But the interesting part will be, if the game is actually playable at launch, or if it will be a complete mess. And ofc how they support the game, handle issues and fix bugs.
Being a GTA5/GTA Online player for years and knowing R*, I´ll set my bet on GTA6 being a bugged, rushed mess, with bad support and dozens of issues R* will never fix. And the war against modders will be lost after 1 week.
A game company pirating its own games, Hell really is gonna freeze over
Ah, DRM. Costs money to implement, costs money in PR, costs money in support, then costs money to remove (which rarely happens because hey it cost money and we fired the devs ages ago). Truly a necessity in modern gaming.
Right?! I spent HOURS with Rockstar Games Support because even themselves didn't know that you CANNOT launch Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC when your computer is disconnected from the Internet.
@@bowi1332 How did you even reach them without internet?
@@thechugg4372using data on their phone, perhaps ?
@@bowi1332Should have used a crack instead ;)
Well, it slows down the distribution of pirated software by about 1-3 days. So that's totally worth it
Razor 1911 saved me so much BS as a kid. They kick ass. Even in my 30s, seeing that name come across my screen puts a smile on my face.
Those Chiptunes were the best!
@@MediumHalf Leaving keygens open for hours 😂
Yep, I really miss those days, I was too broke to afford games back then so I had to wait until a group would release a crack to be able to play. Nowadays I'm so broke that I can't afford any gaming platform, I haven't played a game since 2011.
Im with you❤
30s 😂😂😂😂 Try 53 Lil homie. I was in this very scene.
Seen alot of Razors stuff.
There was actually several groups. Another couple old groups.
Extalia, & Hackers Alliance.
So by trying to be first to make releases.
Hackers Alliance released the first Wall hack for the do called unhackable Call of Duty 2.
Whats funny about that is. The hack was released 2 days after the full version of Call of Duty 2 released.
They had released a demo version of the game. In which the EXE, which was the same as the full release. Which is the real reason the hack release was only 2 days out. Just long enough to test it on the full release. It was a slap in the face to the boasting of it being unhackable. Even BlackBart took the L on his scanner. Simple bit hacking to make it look at a clean directory vs hacked one lol.
Back in the day when games were 3-4 GB in install size, getting a 320 GB hard drive and filling half the desktop with shortcuts was truly an experience. No CD cracks were a must.
truly an experience. now 3 generations of windows later, and you cant even restart it without all the icons getting birdshot blasted all over the desktop
You mean
@@JT-xu1qd lol... not when the drives were 320gb. it took a while before a hard drive was bigger than a single cd/dvd 😂
@@MrPaxioand windows probably still has files from 3 versions ago, Microsoft for ya
@@axethepenguin i mean, it still runs on pretty much the same kernal as the very first windows.... hence backwards compatibility and being able to chose windows 95. but imo windows vista even more useful than windows 10/11. ive been using windows 10 for the past 5yrs, and still completely avoid the taskbar LOL... honestly was really hard going from freedom of file access, to having to right click the file explorer just to open up my drives, and many computers i diagnosed is where explorer.exe causes issues LOL
When actual paying customers are screwed more than the people who pirate
I thought actual paying customers are supposed to be dogmatically loyal and not question the lack of ethics.
I pirate now a day because I use to be a a nice paying customer. I have over 1000 games multiple platforms today but when even the game that I bought doesn’t run I have to get a crack to make it run correctly.
Not condoning piracy but I definitely don’t support the current trend of release broken games and day one patch them later if it cant run on my system I dont want it
Par for the course anymore. Pirated gamers get everything unlocked (example: Hogwarts legacy) and don't have to deal with those annoying launchers. They make me want to pirate more and more every single game
This happened to me. Bought a game (one of the LEGO Star Wars games) and even though I paid for it, it couldn't run because of the piracy methods! So I went to the Net, downloaded a CD crack and played the game with that.
DRM sucks
AAA developers proving empirically that piracy is good for the industry...
You'll love to see it 🎉
I think you would have to prove that the gains from reselling the cracked product outweigh the losses of the pirated product. Even still, do you think Rockstar would leave money on the table if an existing crack didn’t exist? I’m sure they could hire someone like MVG to crack the title. Lone wolves are out there cracking the games for clout. They can afford to pay someone.
Sure, saving 10 to 20 grand worth of wages is totally worth losing millions in sales.
@@GamesFromSpaceYou assume that the people that pirated the game would buy the game.
Also, since there are no demo versions of this game, many people use the seven seas version in order to know is a game they would like and not.
Finally, some DRM are just developer sanctioned MALWARE.
@@RicardoSantos-oz3uj I never said every download was a lost sale. But pretending none of them were lost sales is completely dishonest.
It’s not about old source code , it’s to do with new employees with modern systems who might not know how to work with old compilers.
I have some game dev experience. My software going from version 5.0 to 5.0.1 destroyed my work. I tried fixing every line of code but its was endless error loop . I just had to redo the whole thing and make sure never to update programs during ongoing projects.
Just downgrade your program
DRM is getting out of hand when companies can't crack their own game.
It's not that they can't, it's that they won't dedicate the resources to do it.
They would have to pay people and/or companies to do it and that's what they don't want to do.
@@AleksPizanaoh you sweet misguided kids. They don't want to do it right because they don't care, they know anything they list will sell enough to cover the cost of labor to put it up for sale.
It's not that they can't but there's a crack right there so why bother
@@KaitouKaiju Would you stake your reputation on selling code you got from the shady corners of the internet? smh
I'm surprised you didn't mention that Rockstar used the improper crack version and the game throws every anti-piracy measure it has at you making the game unplayable. It starts up, but you can't really progress unless you do some hexediting of the executable to fix things. This has been a complaint for a long time, but Rockstar seems not to care to fix it themselves anymore. The broken game is still being sold on Steam.
Which game, MP2?
@@XPimKossibleXManhunt
Oh the irony. Same can be seen with EA's Spore on Steam. The game is absolutely broken and the only known ways to functionally play it is either the EA launcher (ew.) or a crack (which is what I'd use if it weren't for the fact that I need to access servers to enjoy 99% of the game!)
Wow. I know I'm not buying anything Rockstar in the near future! What an embarrassment!
@@XPimKossibleX The very first link in the video description takes you to the long explanation of what's going on and how exactly the game is broken.
I think the words you're looking for to describe NoCD cracks in their day is "quality of life". As we can probably all remember, DRM really only ever punished legitimate users.
as a GTA4 copy owner, very true
I still can't believe that certain games get a horrid reputation among circles because Denuvo makes it run poorly on PC...and then they bring Denuvo to switch! Screw DRM, lmao.
@@lpfan4491why bring it to switch
Throwback to 2005 when Sony's DRM came with a rootkit and several vulnerabilities, as well as being impossible to uninstall... yeah...
switch runs good on pc ;p, Mario Wonder is fun.. @@lpfan4491
Just goes to show how unjustified DRM is in the long-term, vindicating pirates as being the harbingers of preservation whether they like it or not.
In the long term, yes. In the short term, no. DRM/copy protection in the first few weeks of a release is essential for sales of a game.
@@soviut303 most of the people here don't care about a company making money from their work.
@@jr2904Oh we do, believe me we do. But most companies are often a POS who exploits their developers and customers as much as possible. Most games nowadays are often designed to rip you off. I'm not going to give money to companies that don't deserve it.
@@soviut303 No I don't think so
@@jr2904 I'm sure you DO care about draconian DRM software being installed on your system for a game your legally purchased, right? Well that was the response to zero-day cracking because those companies wanted to protect their bottom line. It was a direct response to the over-zealous cracking scene. Game companies would much rather be investing in development, not copy protection, but if they're losing more money to piracy than to the cost of developing and implementing DRM, they're going to invest in DRM.
The only reason I used No-CD cracks back in 2005 was because my 48x CD-ROM drive made a terrible loud noise. Luckily I can now still hear with my right ear.
Your CD-ROM drive goes broken or the CD goes transparent.
48x? meh, try liteon cd-rw 52x. loud as f... i had ltr-52327s... even my neighbours can hear this recorder
@@tennickjestzajety69 there also was 72x by kenwood (not that loud surprisingly) and 56x by mad dog (probably loudest from all)
It was annoying AF. I found out after many years that there are small programs for windows that helped you to limit the cd-rom speed. 🤦
@@Misack8 Or the CD shatters into a million shards because there was a small crack....RiP Battlefield Vietnam :(
One of the real reasons for NO CD cracks was to preserve the CD. The CDs would get scratched up after a while become unplayable after about two years.
No not really. The CD (and DVD) players first picked up the disc and spun it, stopped it completely and returned it down to the tray. Only reason for scratches was bad user handling
I still have my SOF2 discs I got in 2003 that I still also have the NOCD crack for
@@VikingRul3s "Just completely avoid damaging the disk ever under any circumstances whatsoever, it's that easy bro"
@@michaelbuckers Exactly, just like you expect your mechanic to do on each and every job. Welcome to the human race
@@michaelbuckers Wasn't that written in an understandable way? Everyone expects their mechanic to do a good job on a huge variety of brands, models and engines. Is it really so far out that the CD/DVD drive manufacturers expect users to be capable of 1 single repeatable task, that's completely the same for almost every single disk drive in the world, at a level where the disk doesn't get damaged?
I think this is 100% hilarious, and also a lesson to the publishers for the future. Keep a DRM free version in the vaults for future use.
Or a full VM of your build host. I would imagine that's the biggest issue. Backward compatibility with software is atrocious, and it's highly likely that 1) the source tree wouldn't build correctly on modern tools; and 2) the original tools would probably not run well, or at all, on modern OSes. So the only way to rebuild from source would be to have a full Windows XP (or whatever) host in fully working order, with contemporary Visual Studio, etc. etc.
I agree it's hilarious, but I don't think it's any lesson for publishers. It's a brilliant move. Regardless of personal feelings, the warez groups did illegal things the companies didn't want them doing. Now it's come full circle where the companies need to do the same thing, and they can save money by simply taking the work from the warez groups.
It's not like they can complain. They can't copyright their cracks, and even if they could it would be against the principles they made them under. If anything, they should be happy their work is being taken and shared without compensation. It's hilarious. I love it.
@@AlbatrossRevenue 2 minutes. It took 2 minutes of Googling to find out that game cracking groups are FAMOUS for not charging for the games they crack. They do it for ego and competition with each other. See who can crack faster and neater.
Some take donations, just like some hacking groups take donations even when they aren't hacking for any monetary gain. Some don't even release the games they crack. And some of the more famous game cracking groups have no problem with DRM. If anything, it's just a bigger challenge, and more bragging rights to crack.
But yeah. This doesn't take work from them, because it's not work. It's a hobby.
@@AlbatrossRevenue This. Nobody can sue them for copyright of a crack so they might as well.
@@AlbatrossRevenueNo. On a broad scale, this all literally screams, "Rockstar say using cracks is fine." It's a PR disaster - from their point of view, mind you.
Imagine the irony of taking Rockstar to court over copyright theft of their cracks lol
Would fucking love that! specially if they won and shook up the gaming world !
It's like a burglar whining that the homeowner "stole" a tool they left behind when trying to break in.
Thats like calling the cops when your drug dealer scams you lmaooo
@@Honeypot-x9sThey wouldn't win. This is law 101. The moment they touched Rockstar's game, Rockstar owns all their work. It's why they can shut down any mod they choose no matter what work you put into it or how original the work is.
That is not even remotely a valid case, sorry to break your bubble.
"Preservation is just another word for theft" - every publisher
I'm looking at you Nintendo
Videogame devs throwing the source code of the game into a pit of fire
@@unoriginalperson72 ***publishers
the devs are “”illegally”” saving their code anyway lmao
yeah, if only those cracks came out years after th game release. but no, they come day 0 or even pre-launch.
@@ElvenSonic corrupt publisher: your game lol it's our game now
Getting caught using a nocd patch is embarrassing for R*, but my real problem with the whole thing is that they’re selling a copy of Manhunt on steam that literally doesn’t work for paying customers because it’s been patched poorly
Their stories games didn't work on android for a long time, they may still not, but they still sold them.
How do you know it's embarrassing for them? If you owned your car free and clear and you wanted to kick in the sides of your sheet metal, that's your own business. I promise you, the only people that care are people who not full filled in their lives and instead worry about other peoples business instead of their own.
@@all.day.day-dreamer Get f****d. It's the business of all gamers, as it impacts anyone unfortunate enough to purchase a copy of this broken, and embarrassingly poorly patched game.
@@Gecko....not much works well on android
@@all.day.day-dreameryeah imagine a consumer caring about the thing he paid for being shitty
It's ironic that these companies don't like piracy and try to crack down on them. But when it's suits them they use it lol. Surely this practice could be use against these companies should they try to sue these groups.
If rockstar didnt own the ips then sure. But at the end of the day they can use these cracks to run their games all they want because they down own the games
Rockstar owns these games they can do whatever they want
That doesn't change the hypocrisy, simply embarrassing for rockstar no matter if they're legally allowed to do so, that's why they pulled it off steam. .@@isaac-ga @LolWutMikehSM
they showed that it okay to used cracked, i noticed..@@isaac-ga
Rockstar knowing it's incapable of providing a better experience than a pirated copy is perfect. They have been incredibly inept for years.
I'm glad that Vadim M is getting more attention, his content is amazing and has so much effort put into it
the fact that he makes sure to get english voices too, since he's russian, is great as well. he could just make vids towards russians like many others, but he intentionally tries to make his findings as accessible as possible.
@@albummutation2278 Vadim M is Latvian iirc but regardless, that person has a large chunk of Russian viewer base.
Does he has a youtube? Any links to his medias?
@@attractivegd9531 just look up Vadim M, lol
he looks like a natzii
The main thing that comes to mind for me in these cases is - the next step. The equivalent thing happening nowadays. All those stupid "games as a service" that end up shutting down, rendering them unplayable, but were genuinely good games. For the more popular games, there's people attempting to bring private servers and such online, so they can be played again -- Will those be the next in line for the publishers to bring back up again, and grab the hard work of those people that actually cared about the games?
Private servers won't happen for most games, look at test drive unlimited or combat arms or other games where the IP owners even tho they don't care about the games, they shut down private servers or force them into something dumb, test drive unlimited 2 private server requires a legit copy of the game which just requires you to buy it again since old copies didn't depend on launchers like these days
Combat arms private servers straight up got shut down even tho the still running servers are borderline unplayable
League of legends also had incidents with private servers, they all got threatened with DMCA even though they were of versions 7 years ago that can't be played otherwise
The saddest part about the story is that this is the only acknowledgment Rockstar will give their Midnight Club franchise in a long time.
A modern Midnight Club reboot with the full backing of Rockstar would wipe the floor with Forza and NFS, it's just a massive missed opportunity IMO
No one will understand this but... Midnight Club still cancelled soz?
@@or-whatI understand unfortunately
MC2 was my life back then! Also the music choices were bangers! My favorite car was the Torque JX😆🤩
That car is SICK and wicked when drifting.@@yodoleheehoo90
The awful state these older games are left in due to Rockstar/ take 2's actions is the true crime here. Absolutely shameful.
True Crime devs: Hey we will just copy Rockstar and will make an open world game! Damn it if they call it a GTA-clone
Rockstar: We will just copy them and will do things that can be considered True Crimes.
not that big of a deal go cry
They still have games that they aren't doing shit with.
Oni, anyone?
Max Payne 2 and Manhunt need community patches to run. What a shame.
The problem with CD-ROMs was that they became more worn out the more often you inserted them into your drive. I had many cases where my CD-ROMs became so scratched, the computer couldn't read data from them anymore, and consequently, my games refused to boot up anymore, asking for the games disk to be inserted. When that happened, you had two choices: pay for another CD or download the NO-CD crack
same. And the drive itself had a short life.
Still, CDs were a massive improvement over floppies... How many times back in the day did I end up with a bad sector on floppy #24 halfway through a Windows install... CD's were pure magic!
I just tended to put them in the cases when I took them out and handled them correctly at all times. The only reasons they became scratched was because careless children would scratch them.
Is this a joke?
Lately people have been praising BG3 for no MTX in their game, but everyone fails to mention how Larian alongside CDPR are one of the very few AAA devs who publish their games day1 without DRM both on Steam and GOG.
It shows as long as you make a good game and price it reasonably people will buy it
Also a good way to stop me pirating atleast is to have a good multiplayer mode or for it to be available on geforce now.
It's just as Gabe Newell said.
The best anti-piracy method is to convince people, not that pirating your software is bad, but that getting it legitimately is a good idea.
Now if only BG3 was a good game.
@@yurisei6732 It had potential to be on par with Divinity: Original Sin II, but they botched it by making the progression way too open.
Yes, in 2023 that's true, but if games back in the days of the internet wild west had no protection, they would sell zero copies.
These scene groups allowed me to play games at a young age when my parents couldn't afford video games. Growing up I began to hack and network and now I'm a Net Admin. All self taught and inspired by these guys.
How was the learning curve, I want to start making the leap and being professional whats first??
@@francesfuego6950start with internships and move up from there.
@@francesfuego6950 not too bad as long as you are technical and good at problem solving. Getting games for free evolved into setting up custom wow server and learning networking to make it open to public. Then that got me into media servers then setting up a website for wow server. You learn about what dns is and port forwarding. Then before you know it your configing firewalls
It's proven time and time again that DRM harms the paying gamers more than anybody else
How
@@Coregame3because paying customers are the ones that have to deal with not being able to play the game due to bugs or server checks that the DRM implements.
Person with the cracked exe doesn't have any of those problems.
I'm against software piracy, but I'll still use cracks to remove DRM from games I've legally purchased.
@@Coregame3 I think it was ubisoft but one DRM requests you turning off your PC protection so it can install itself at the kernel level
@@saadhero9107 Riot Vanguard anti-cheat does it when installing games by Riot, then requires the PC to be restarted in order to install itself at kernel level. Not sure about any DRMs though.
@@Coregame3 Denuvo is infamously hard to crack and costs a notable chunk of performance - this is due to the way it checks the legitimacy of the game. Cracked Denuvo games have been shown to run at higher framerates than legitimately bought and installed versions of the game because the DRM was removed.
A DMCA takedown notice should be issued on Rockstar for selling pirated games.
Who going to file the take down notice?
@@lukasperuzovic1429 Exactly, it's not like Razor911 is a registered corporation.
Too bad its their game.
If they don't give the ability to modify the game by default, you violated their terms to gain access to their content.
Which if you took said content that was protected and released it publicly, it would violate copyright.
The crack isn't a change of the game in anyway, no mechanics are changed, no gameplay changes, nothing but the launcher.
They hold the rights to the game so they are immune. You can't pirate something you own the rights to.
As a joke, this was funny. But if you're being serious I feel sad for you.
it surprises me that the studio publisher didn't keep a DRM-free copy of their games for situations like this. But also I guess it makes sense because everyone thought CDs were gonna be the future forever during the dial-up era.
the witcher 3 did that.. someone from inside, leaked the denuvo-free exe online, i have been very thankfull and because it was a good game i've bought it.
What probably happens is they hire someone to officially crack it so they can get it on steam. The person then just grabs the hacked version from the internet but holds off for a couple of days, filling out timecards, pretending that they're working on it. Finally, it submits it to the company, grabs a paycheck (probably with a bonus for getting it done so fast), and then moves on to the next project. The company probably doesn't know because not knowing how to crack is why they hired out in the first place.
that actually makes sense!
if they do this, and there isnt a clause in the hiring contract that says you cannot do this, theyre somehow even more incompetent than letting this happen knowingly
It doesn't really matter how it happens. If they hire someone or not. They're responsible for the final product.
It's like a studio making a game, the game flops, and they blame the programmer. No, that's not how it works, it's the studio that must bear the blame, or the CEO of that company.
CD DRM was always a massive joke. I was never going to dig through piles of games to find the one CD i needed, so i obviously used no-cd cracks for all of my games
Or when blizzard entertainment uses cheap cds where a light surface scratch made them skip and often unusable.
i literally dont know ONE person who didnt use noCD cracks me included.
Looking forward to seeing the Razor 1911 longform video!
Also a video on the "keygen" apps from back in the day would be awesome, the ones with those awesome chiptunes!!
i miss keygens 😢
Razor 1911 was the stamp of quality. Legends
Was? Still are.
Super excited about the teased Razer 1911 video. Cracking groups are something that have always been so mysterious to me since I was a kid. I remember the first time I downloaded some cracked software that had a really fancy installer with music and flashy graphics with the group group name (don't remember what it was) when I was about 13, it was really exciting but in a weird way scary and made feel like I was part of a secret society.
Can't wait, keep the amazing work as always MVG!
I really can't wait for this
same! their mystique is mesmerizing. i miss the magic of piracy. now that im 30 i havent pirated a game in over a decade lol.
The heart attack when the music starts blasting!
A LOT of the scene people also go on to create some of the greatest games ever made. Many of the most talented people developed their skills in groups like Razer 1911. DICE (makers of Battlefield) is a typical example.
Just go and take a look at intros like 'We Have Accidently Borrowed Your Votedisk' here on UA-cam and keep in mind that it's made with 64k of data. That's as much memory as it takes to store a single Windows icon.
The people who claim that piracy hurts gaming more than it helps have no clue what they're talking about. Without the scene and inseparably; piracy, gaming would be in a far worse shape today.
Haha, I just have to reply here, because I felt EXACTLY the same as a teen. I'm still fascinated about the whole subculture, the history, the legends and rumors, the connections to art, to the computer industry, the gaming industry, foreign commercial pirates etc.
Watching a cracktro, a game rip installer, ascii art in an nfo, and listening to chiptunes in keygens still gives me those vibes.
It would be terribly amusing if one of the scene groups managed to successfully sue Rockstar or whoever for distributing their copyrighted logo.
Agreed. I'd be pulling out the popcorn and watching it live
Well, just for conversation, they probably harmed sales at the time by cracking those games, so in a way it is only fair for rockstar to compensate their loss. In the end, i think that what matters is that we can play those games today, at the time i used NO CD cracks for their convenience, i don't see a problem using them today to the same end :)
Aren't they hiding identities?
@@OlivierGrasakaoloWell, just for conversation, studies have shown that pirated games and movies cause no significant, measurable damage to the rights holders. In very short, it became evident that most of the people using them simply would not have bought the media either way and instead just not consumed it. The amount of people who actually would have bought something but then didn't only because it could also be pirated is marginal. Almost (?) all studies suggesting the opposite are financed and commissioned by the large anti-piracy lobbyist groups.
@@Nitidus i don't say novd cracks where bad, far from it, having used them myself. Just saying i don't see harm to these groups, al those years later, if their work still allows us to play these games :)