Take-Two-Gate: R* To The Rescue?

JayOTT
Don't pull numbers out of thin air to try to justify a decision to back down from injustice. This isn't a piracy issue, it would be hard to place any sort of monetary value in the 'damages' of third party mods since everyone presumably needs to have bought the game from T2 anyway to play these mods.
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$88 million in damages is what the private server modders of WOW had to pay. Do you need thicker air than that?
 
88 million in damages is the default judgement for when the private server modders didn't bother showing up for their court date about them actively and deliberately harming the ability of Blizzard to collect subscription fees for their online service; so JayOTT is right: Don't pull numbers out of thin air.
 
Now it has gone to "ineviteably".

:lol:



JayOTT, just ignore him. He didn't enter this thread actually looking to debate the matter sincerely and you're wasting your time trying to get him to do so.
 
I will ignore after answering his final question; ZERO DOLLARS, because the mod did not make piracy any easier. And the case is a lot more winnable than you might think as the new content created by the mods would be considered transformative.

But again, if they're not willing to fight for justice, then they don't deserve justice.
 
JayOTT
I will ignore after answering his final question; ZERO DOLLARS, because the mod did not make piracy any easier. And the case is a lot more winnable than you might think as the new content created by the mods would be considered transformative.

But again, if they're not willing to fight for justice, then they don't deserve justice.
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It's not about how much money they would lose if they lost the case, it's about the astronomical cost of getting into a case in the first place. You seem to be under the impression that they'd easily win because they're in the right, but Take Two almost definitely has some of the best, most expensive lawyers that money can buy, and as a result their case would be near enough impenetrable without having your own expensive, competent lawyers - expensive enough to be out of the reach of a bunch of hobbyists. You claim that the community would all come together to bail them out, but how much would you, personally, realistically be willing to spend?

With the current situation, there's a reasonable chance that T2 will cave in from all the backlash and release a statement allowing the OpenIV team to resume distribution of the software. There's no point in trying to fight for justice when at worst they'd end up completely ruined and at best T2 would be almost completely unaffected and just end up targeting a different mod instead (or frankly just the same mod with more and more C&Ds over time until they cave in).
 
Snorevette
best, most expensive lawyers that money can buy
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Unless you want to suggest that Take Two can buy off the judge and/or jury also, a lawyer is only going to get them so far. Is there even a precedent for declaring non-profit game mods as illegal?
 
JayOTT
Unless you want to suggest that Take Two can buy off the judge and/or jury also, a lawyer is only going to get them so far. Is there even a precedent for declaring non-profit game mods as illegal?
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There's definitely a precedent. Game mods have always been a legal gray area - the reason this doesn't happen more isn't because you can't sue someone for distributing tools that access and modify the game code, but rather because most developers and publishers recognize that a big modding scene can actually draw in more sales (and if the scene is huge like in Bethesda and Valve games they can try and exploit their modding community to get an even bigger profit margin, but that's another story). It's only in cases like these where the mods in question could possibly have an effect on microtransaction sales and where the publisher is crying that they're 'undermonetizing their userbase' in a game where you can spend $20 in microtransactions and barely have enough to afford the prerequisites for accessing new multiplayer content that they start going after mods. The OpenIV team have worked as hard as possible to stay within just about every law that they can, but as long as the program can be used to modify game code, T2 can easily say 'the game code is our property, you can't do that' and even justify it by claiming that it could, hypothetically, have a vulnerability that lets people use it online.
 
I think Take 2 only wants money from micro transactions because from what they stated they are not getting any money from them, so. They attack the modding community to decrease the amount of mods coming in. On what's funny is that Rockstar and Take Two were fine with the mods until now, hell Rockstar themselves supported the modding community on their own blog. These mods never affect online gameplay of any sort, in fact if your running a modified GTA it will just boot you offline, so there is no way a OpenIV exploit is even possible. They need to think this logically because the mods from offline give it more life than the ordinary game itself.

This could fall flat on Take Two themselves because no one is going to buy another game of theirs. It'll destroy their reputation compared to how it was on GTA IV modding. Which, Rockstar supportered a map mod from the community.

Can't you see obvious greed from this situation?
 
JayOTT
Unless you want to suggest that Take Two can buy off the judge and/or jury also, a lawyer is only going to get them so far. Is there even a precedent for declaring non-profit game mods as illegal?
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You must already know that answer to be making such confident claims about what the verdict would be.

Stop pretending to be an expert while accusing others of not wanting a genuine discussion.

How would a user 'fight' against intellectual property rights of something they don't own? How could they 'fight' against the terms of the EULA they must accept to play the game?
 
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BenMillard
Stop pretending to be an expert while accusing others of not wanting a genuine discussion.
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I'm not pretending to be an expert, I just don't want everyone to roll over and take it up the ass from the big corporation because if you do that, more big corporations get the same idea and sooner or later game modding is dead, period.

I know, you know, everyone knows that what Take Two is doing is unjust. There has to be a way to win that case, otherwise the justice system has failed and/or become a corrupt cesspool of money.
 
JayOTT
I will ignore after answering his final question; ZERO DOLLARS, because the mod did not make piracy any easier. And the case is a lot more winnable than you might think as the new content created by the mods would be considered transformative.

But again, if they're not willing to fight for justice, then they don't deserve justice.
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Piracy isn't the only thing that is illegal. If T2 thinks that your mod is hurting the image of their IP they can sue you for damages. If they think that your mod is hurting their sales (for instance, by diverting a substantial amount of players from online play to offline play) they can probably sue you for even more money.

Zero dollars is not the worst case scenario outcome of a court case. That's an extremely naive expectation.
 
Micro Transactions... The worst thing to ever happen to video games. And sadly, we have no on to blame but ourselves or fellow users.
 
JayOTT
I'm not pretending to be an expert, I just don't want everyone to roll over and take it up the ass from the big corporation because if you do that, more big corporations get the same idea and sooner or later game modding is dead, period.

I know, you know, everyone knows that what Take Two is doing is unjust. There has to be a way to win that case, otherwise the justice system has failed and/or become a corrupt cesspool of money.
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They could very easily win the case; as I've said before, it could be an issue of attorney fees the modders may not have the money for.

Unless you & several others are willing to fund what could be a potentially expensive case (b/c this is against a big company that could look for ways to increase court costs by fighting a losing battle), there's no reason to tout, "Fight for justice!" if you're not doing the fighting.
 
I'm sure I would be willing to put some money into the cause, but if the developers of OpenIV won't lead the charge, then there's no point speculating about money as they have already lost. Ultimately, it's on them to fight, then everyone else will follow.
 
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JayOTT
I'm sure I would be willing to put some money into the cause, but if the developers of OpenIV won't lead the charge, then there's no point speculating about money as they have already lost. Ultimately, it's on them to fight, then everyone else will follow.
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There is a reason to speculate about money, because you called them out on it (and in an extremely rude way):

...sissies like OpenIV keep backing down from a fight they know they can win because "IT COSTS TOO MUCH!" or "IT'S TOO MUCH HASSLE!"
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It's easy to put up such an attitude when you are just a bystander. If you ever receive a cease and desist letter yourself you won't take it so lightly.
 
Snorevette
but rather because most developers and publishers recognize that a big modding scene can actually draw in more sales
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Agreed. I already had a PS3 copy but went out and bought a used gaming PC and another copy of the game off Steam just for the modding.
 
JayOTT
It's my honest opinion about them and honesty shouldn't be mistaken for rudeness. If you really want rude, I can call you an idiot if you want?
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It's not about hiding your opinion, it's about expressing it in a respectful manner.

If you don't know how to do that you better start practicing, because the AUP states that:

  • You will not behave in an abusive and/or hateful manner, and will not harass, threaten, nor attack any individual or any group.
Which also means that no, you can't call me an idiot.
 
The AUP exists whether a moderator sees it or not.
Claiming I'm violating the AUP when no moderator has said anything about it isn't being respectful either. You have now been ignored.
 
TotalBiscuit takes 10 minutes to discuss T2/R* vs. OpenIV, which I'd say sums up this conundrum quite well:



Sadly, he speaks the truth. They can live just fine without the minority that is us, the informed ones. They'll do just fine regardless of the Steam rating being as low as 66% thanks to this recent :censored:storm. To the point where they can do whatever the 🤬 they want and never have to face the consequences.

Which is actually quite ironic, given *that* particular ending of GTA V, and I can no longer un-C that.
 
In other words, T2 and R* are money-grubbing pirates. Big news, right? But like that video suggests (good video by the way) they'll keep making their money, they'll keep getting away with their practices and they'll keep doing exactly what they're doing.
 
lbpomg95
In other words, T2 and R* are money-grubbing pirates. Big news, right? But like that video suggests (good video by the way) they'll keep making their money, they'll keep getting away with their practices and they'll keep doing exactly what they're doing.
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That's why making ourselves heard is so important. OpenIV is gone - T2 and R* have won this battle; they're fully aware that they've made as much money off this game as they need to and don't need to draw in any new sales, they know that RDR2 (and, in the future, GTA6) is also going to make boatloads regardless, and they have literally no reason to rescind the cease & desist (in fact, I suspect other mod tools are going to get targeted over time). However, if this is just forgotten about, other publishers will start to do the same thing and phase out their modding community to add grindfest online modes, and we don't want that. Let everyone know how awful these companies are, make sure they're as hated as EA, Ubisoft etc. and then other companies who have much more to lose might not try the same business practices. Call it slacktivism, but really it's the best thing the average person can do to help.
 
An important video about the legal issues:


This video actually is on Open IV's side, and has research to prove them right about everything.
 
..aaaand, just to add insult to injury (or a molotov to a leaking fuel tanker), TotalBiscuit, Nerd3 and co. take out 15 minutes of the weekly podcast to discuss GTA. It does get derailed a bit, and there is some NSFW language in there, but worth it for the burn factor.



Basically the conclusion of this first-week-and-a-bit is that.. yeah, just listen to the first few lines in the above video, says it all, really.
 
Snorevette
make sure they're as hated as EA, Ubisoft etc. and then other companies
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What I want to know is how many of you guys actually boycott one,or more of those companies?

I haven't bought an EA game for my PS3 or 4. Because of seeing ridiculous money being asked for the smallest of things in a game. It has been so long that I can't even remember which game it was.
 
I stopped buying Call of Duty since Black Ops 2 for the lack of dedicated servers on console. Black Ops 2 up to its end cycle is very laggy. Doing upwards of 8 seconds of lag. (yeah I timed it) While at that same year, the worst I can get in MW3 is just about 1-2 secs. So I played Battlefield 3 and MW3 instead. And I don't like futuristic shooters anyway. But the new COD is very tempting though.
 

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