Rockstar publishes own cracked games
Frederik Bockslaff
Rechtsanwalt, Fachanwalt für Medien- und Urheberrecht und Cannabis Gründer der ersten Stunde
Everyone working in the games industry is probably familiar with Rockstar as a major publisher. The studio is responsible for the GTA series, Red Dead and Max Payne.
In recent days, the website www.bleepingcomputer.com posted that the publisher was distributing its own games, originally equipped with so-called DRM systems, as cracked versions on steam.
Digital Rights Management (also Digital Rights Management, Digital Restriction Management or DRM for short) is a type of copy protection that does not prevent copying, but rather aims to control the use (and distribution) of digital media. Digital rights management is used primarily for digital film and audio recordings, but also for software, electronic documents or electronic books. In principle, it enables providers who use such DRM systems to offer new billing options, for example, to use licences and authorisations to obtain payment for rights to use data instead of the data itself. For the end user, this means a restriction (see wikipedia).
Usually, these are handled as licence models per sale between publisher and provider of the DRM.
Now, to avoid royalty payments for the distribution of older games, Rockstar seems to have resorted to cracks from the Razor 1911 group. This was discovered by the well-known modder Silent, as can be seen from the screenshot below.
Legally, DRM systems are protected in Germany by § 108B UrhG. The norm is enforceable by the public prosecutor's office itself as a so-called as well as official offence. Therefore, no criminal charges need to be filed.