Y'know, I've never liked that Drog guy. Always played ma Arcanum without his patch, and always thought that one has to be an enormous dick to give oneself the right to modify content (and I mean quests) in a game of such caliber. I'm just waiting for the idiot to rename Virgil into... dunno, Dante?
Now, I just think he's butthurt. Who gives a what if it's "pirated"? You pay for the license, and get an XP/Vista/7 ready game, with a bunch of goodies. Anyways, I'm starting to think that Drog believes he OWNS the rights to the game.

That Drog guys definitely sounds like an asshole - that was my initial impression as well. Who gives a damn where they got the crack from? It's a 10 year old game that we can finally get in a legal way again and for me, that's what matters. It's not like GOG breached any copy right or openly condoned piracy.

It's really very simple: the Codex doesn't give a damn about "copyright" and have corrupted morals and ethics.
Many Codexians <span class="bold">actively oppose</span> old games being re-released on GOG, both because in many cases the original developers don't get any money (because they have shut down and/or someone else actually owns the rights) and also because it results in honourable abandonware sites taking down the downloads for these games and linking to GOG instead ("I think it is pathetic that they hunt down every other download of the game. If people don't mind getting an older game up and running ... then GOG should back off").
The apparent use of a scene crack with the attribution removed is just further "proof" of GOG's "unethical" behaviour and one more justification for spitting upon GOG's good intentions.
Their total disrespect of copyright even extends to veiled or open admission of piracy in ways that would get you promptly banned on any other forum. I guess the staff don't care because they hold the same views.

I'm administrator on one of the biggest Abandonware sites out there and I gladly removed downloads to link to GOG. There's plenty of other good games GOG doesn't have and is unlikely to ever have. Yes, I would like the original developers to get paid for this as well - but GOG are not Valve and I like them earning money off oldies because I respect them and they will make an effort to make old games running on modern machines which can't be said of Steam.

Which is all that matters. Thanks for the clarification. It's just a shame that publishers aren't so quick to realise that sometimes end users need these little fixes too.

Frankly, I think that clarification is only going to be truly meaningful to us here, even though most of us already knew instinctively that this was the situation. The people over at Codex are just going to take it as GOG admitting their "crime".

The crack falls under Activision's copyright. If they want to piss and moan about how their facilitation of piracy has been used instead to aid legal sales, then leave them to it. :P

Oh, irony. You can be so beautiful sometimes.

It means Activision approves. Who gives a flying f**k what the hacker groups and the Codex think?

Some nice euphemisms you got goin' on there.

Why would you even ask if the hacker groups approve? They are not "relevant rights owners"; they do not own any rights to what they did, only Activision does. As long as Acti approved, that's all that matters, legally or morally.
I can't believe I just said something like that about a giant software publisher's rights, they are supposed to be the big, evil corporations and we hates them. However, in this case, even if we don't like what these companies do from a moral standpoint, that doesn't give anyone the right to do something equally immoral or illegal in defiance of that. As my mother used to say when I was wee GOGer "two wrongs do not make a right... but three lefts will"
Okay, so maybe I could have left that last part out, but you get the point.

That just means using cracks and reverse engineering, and not drug trafficking, kidnapping etc.?
... just asking.

I honestly can't tell if you're joking or not ;)