So... this was all made up?

Not that I have any special reasons to doubt the devs answering in their forums, but others like RPS are also echoing with the new and I don't think the devs are currently in a position to say other than this:

http://www.oovee.co.uk/forum/topic/12604-official-statement-re-bug-issue-and-sabotage-allegations/

Thing is, this is not the first time this issue comes to light it seems:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/01/02/the-flare-path-continuum/

As you scroll down on this, you can read Hopefully, “Keep Pavel Zagrebelnyj happy” was on Oovee Game Studios ‘new year’s resolutions’ list.

I don't know, the more I try to read about this, the more mixed results I end up getting...

Well, "Gaming Journalism" at it's finest.

Can't even be arsed to check if what they publish is true, or even if the interviewed is really who and what he claims and not just some random troll from 4chan.

But guess they just couldn't pass on that sweet clickbait... given that these sites hardly ever had any credibility to begin with, not really that surprising.

Patches being tested properly, and being able to decide for yourself if and when to install a new update, certainly has its advantages. And removing music or other content from a game wouldn't work on GOG at all, at least as long as users keep their own back-ups of their DRM-free games. Wouldn't want to give up on any of those luxuries, even if it means we have to wait a bit longer for game updates.

But this makes me wonder, what about Racing games on Steam? Licenses for car brands etc. expire all the time, so what do they do about that? They don't remove those games from user libraries, do they? And if they do nothing, then why was GTA different?

And in the case of GTA, as I understand it, they would only lose the right to keep selling the game in its current form, once the licenses expire. It doesn't really make sense to remove already purchased content from their user's libraries. Maybe it was simply convenient -- They had to make changes to the version they're still selling, and it would have been too much effort to keep a separate, old version on Steam. ( Unlike what GOG did with the old copies of the Fallout games. )

I saw that. Both the publisher and developer lose. They get nothing. Good Day, Sirs.

I'm not buying the 'whoops, it was a "BUG", gonna fix it now' explanation.

I don't know.

Hard coded dates?
Date based anti-piracy checks?

Still seems fishy to me.

What kind of "genius" uses multiple instances of hard coded dates to implement a completely ineffectual anti-piracy check?

It's probably checking the dates of the files and the latest patch changed the date on one which was checked, or failed to add the new date to the permission list.

Basically. A publication took actual facts and lead their audiences by the nose into correlating those facts with assumptions to commit borderline slander. If a publisher and developer had a falling out and the game suddenly stopped working, it MUST be the dev’s sabotage! There’s simply no other explanation! Except the one they gave. Whoops.

I wouldn't mind a mistake now and then, but the way the article pushes its unsubstantiated narrative feels really dirty. "Dev 'Sabotages' game" says the title. There's quotation marks around sabotages so it's okay! "Update: Developer denies rumours." Wait, these were rumours? There was no mention of that in the article. "What could it be? Possibly a mirage." So now you're making fun of the developer's denial. Good show.

I don't think so. The original description was that there were chunks of code set to execute after certain dates, and there were 14 different hard coded dates. One of the work around was to change system date.

And what kind of "genius" would check file dates for authenticity. You'd use a hash for that, not a date.

Edit: I did try and play it last night. Crashed after about 30 seconds. Tried three times with the same result. I'm obviously not the best test case - it's running in WINE. I've had issues with SpinTires and WINE in the past, but never crashes, just performance issues. The last time I played was a couple months ago, and my kid played it for an hour without issue.

As mentioned earlier Gears of War had a similar issue.
http://www.wired.com/2009/01/drm-now-renders/

I'm pretty sure a lot more DRM out there use something similar as well. It's just that we only hear about them when a serious bug occurs as a result. Most companies aren't likely too keen to release details about their DRM that would allow it to be circumvented.

[Personal Experience] Terraria on my android phone has a date based DRM. If I changed the date to get holiday items/encounters - the game goes into demo mode. If there was a bug in the code that screwed up that check - I wouldn't be able to use the full game without a workaround.

The short of it though...
The latest patch made the anti-Piracy code think legitimate copies were pirate copies.
Seems they spent so much time integrating an interwoven complex system of checks for piracy (attempting to make it difficult to pirate), that their own patch triggered the effect.

Using specific dates as time bombs makes a bit of sense, such that the pirates think they have a working copy until that date kicks in.

The problem was the reckless article which just jumped to assumptions with no facts.

I remember thinking of backing the kickstarter but then but I wasn't convinced that there would be enough gameplay and I found the demo good graphic wise but the gameplay of getting stuck in the mud ect. certainly didn't appear much to me. Really sad to here how everything went down after for all the customers who brought and backed the game in good faith.

Seriously, what do you mean? Did you read the rest of the thread and the "hoax"? This is like any game that releases a bad patch. Unfortunate the game is screwed up for a number of days, but it will be fixed shortly. Not that big a deal...

Fair enough. Pavel has been such an abrasive nutbar throughout the life of the game it's easy to jump to the conclusion that it was intentional.

And like almost all DRM/anti-piracy measures, this one was pointless. There was a user-created patch available almost immediately that "fixed" the problem. Once again, the only person negatively affected by the DRM was the paying consumer.

Of course not, this is the Internet after all.