Oops ! Rockstar sold pirated copies of its games on Steam

To circumvent some compatibility issues, Rockstar sold pirated copies of its own games.

This concerns various titles marketed through Valve’s streaming platform, Steam.

Pirate copies of Rockstar games, sold… by Rockstar?

It seems that his hack last year gave Rockstar Games ideas. Like other publishers, it is particularly vigilant regarding piracy of its video game productions and various cheat mods. However, on Steam, the American publisher has sold pirated copies of its own games in order to avoid various compatibility problems.

So, like many PC games, home titles like Manhunting, Midnight Club 2 Or Max Payne 2 feature a DRM protection system that protects them from piracy, among other things. These DRMs pose compatibility concerns, particularly for Manhuntingone of the protections (SecuRom) consists of verifying that the original disk is indeed present in the reader.

To sell certain titles on Steam, Rockstar therefore resorted to pirated versions of its own games, which then had executables whose DRM protections had been removed by piracy experts. This practice could also cause various problems with Steam, which also has its own executable verification systems.

According to developer Ben Golus, many studios have admitted to using pirated versions of games for re-releases. Teams tasked with porting older games to new platforms often don’t have access to the original hardware and can’t call on original development staff. It also happens that some publishers no longer have access to the initial source code and/or that old DRM prevents access to certain PC games. In any case, this problem should not affect GTA VIwhich the publisher would potentially release next year.

Source : TechSpot