And more importantly, it's ILLEGAL. Which is why most of us couldn't give a shit about it. You want praise for "hard work", make sure it's legal "hard work" first.

Hey, obviously people don't understand.
I didn't crack it, the people from HOODLUM did.
I am just trying to see it from their point of view.
Shooting the messenger because they see both sides of the story isn't nice. Are they not entitled to their views? Or must they stick with the whole piracy = ick argument and be a GOG fanboy?

When you defend a specific point of view you are no longer just a messenger. You're certainly entitled to that point of view, but don't get upset just because people are arguing against it.

I understand their pov.....
Sure it took a lot of hard work.... no one is denying it... It also took the people at Goldman Sachs or Enron a lot of hard work to do what they did. and yet..... it was still against the law..
I know I know apples to oranges...

Sorry then, I just am a very strong minded person with even stronger views. I just feel the ends to not justify the means.

I can see their point of view. But frankly, if a thief has his work stolen, it's hard to have a lot of sympathy.

Exactly, the issue is quite hypocritical: I tried GOG.com because I wanted to go legit for a change, and then I find the exact same materials in pirated products as in GOG.com ones.....That really goes against my intent to go clean. And so, I have lost a huge amount of respect for GOG.com in the process, since I like the whole "legit" idea. And then I see its a bit shady so.....
And I guess I have strong viewpoint, moral and ethical issues then.
And to me, thieving from thieves does not really make sense to me at all. Its just as bad in my personal opinion.

hokay.
let's us invoke godwin's law! (seriously. three pages and no comparison to hitler and nazi? so sad guys)
Nazi experimented on people. hurt them really bad.
so should we not use their knowledge and work because it originated from torture of thousand of beings?
even tough that work is useful?
:D
but seriously:
Developers fight cracks because they think it damage their sales (whether it does is not a thing to discuss here)
but it comes a time that they want to remove a cd check from their games. for various reason.
It is not hypocrisy. It is business strategy to try to maximize the profit. Nothing wrong with that.

but it is not thieving...
to steal something a victim must own that.
crackers do not. they don't have any rights whatsoever.
and like i said and you ignored me
GOG or any publisher CANNOT thank for the crack.
Dosbox... they can acknowledge it. and so they did. be thankful for the crack? No.
Cd-projekt seem to be bunch of pretty good guys. So i am pretty sure they wouldn't mind saying thx to whoever made their job a bit easier. hardly a big deal for them
unfortunately as a legit company they cannot do that.

As I understand it, GoG doesn't usually deal with the developers of these games though - just the publishers and the rights holders. For whatever reason, the rights holders may not have the ability to recompile the EXE minus DRM. Be that code rot, lost source code, no contact with the original developer or it may actually cost them to remove the DRM.

Thank you lukazthegreat for making a excellent point and well thought out response :) Hence why I have the moral dillemma, its like the Nazis and the water torture experiments with hypothermia and we use the results from those tests today.
(not being sarcastic at all)
So I guess you got me checkmated, well done. I'll keep checking if GOG.com uses materials like this, just as a courtesy instead of making a fuss. I apologise for the overreaction people :)

nah. don't be. we overreact all the time.

Well, I agree with that. I was under the impression they did their own cracking where necessary, which I put trust in as they're professionals. And in my pirating days I've come across a few shady cracks so...it hurts the trust a bit. And we've already seen evidence of issues as a result...
Nevertheless, I agree with ak when he said if you want credit for your work, you (meaning anyone in "the scene") should seek legitimate, paid work instead. It's just part of the territory. Cracks are shady in their own way -- it's pretty silly to get upset when someone else does something shady with them.
Anyway, do hope you stick around. It's generally a great place, and no real issues with games. We just get overly passionate sometimes when it comes to issues like piracy, DRM, cracking, etc.

Can't these crack scenes just use Creative Commons license or GPL or something (I'm not well-versed in copyright issues) for their crack? At least when the license is violated, they can rally the whole open-source scene groups behind them.

@Catshade: The warez scene shows attribution through NFO files. As explained earlier, it opens up a massive can of worms if GOG has those with along their installers.