You're going by a thoroughly discredited allegation by an disreputable source who had actually no evidence to back up the claim made.

Your attitude is certainly not worth my time.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/kings_bounty_gog_version_is_bugged/post188

So?

So you don't know what you're talking about, but feel free to continue embarrassing yourself.

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/gog_arcanum_release_uses_warez_scene_crack/post170

To be clear, I don't condemn them for using scene based files when gold masters aren't available. I think it's perfectly legitimate for a user to ask the question though.

Yeah, I know this was in a thread in a post I was replied to earlier.

Nowhere does the gog.com representative say or infer that they use cracks and no it's a fucking retarded question. You're just assuming it's a crack from a third party.

Obviously sometimes games need to be cleansed of their copy protection or CD check and the developer is long since dead and gone.

That is never ever done with a third party crack. Ever. There's no indication and certainly no evidence of that. How many fucking ways can a game be cracked? It's gonna look pretty damn similar to a third party crack, no matter who does it and how.

So the question is fucking retarded at worst and misinformed at best.

Similar sure, identical other than the scene header, not a chance. Scene groups have their own internally developed cracking tools, so when multiple groups crack the same game, their cracked executables have distinct differences.

If you understand anything about context, it's pretty clear what Vandal was saying. I would have phrased it pretty much the same, and again I don't blame gog for using what is available. If it were a false allegation he would have flatly said so, no need for obfuscation.

More puzzling is why you are so defensive and angry about the question. He asked politely, and never resorted to name calling. You are entitled to your own opinion (wrong as it is), but I doubt your hostility will do much other than make these forums a more hostile place.

Cheers regardless, have a nice life.

Of course it could have been indentical as the "scene" header. That's in fact pretty damn likely. The copy protection is a constant in the code, removing it is also a constant result. The question isn't "does gog.com remove copy protection", no it's does gog.com use third party cracks and the answer to that is no, never.

Have a nice life yourself pal. I don't care why you're so hung up about this, but you realize how incredibly insane it is to claim something without any evidence and then being all indignant because people like myself call you and your likes on the bullshit.

You can believe whatever you want, but then you're going to have to either keep it to yourself or accept very valid criticism when you make your insane belief public.

And the answer to that is bull, shit. Go and open up a few files yourself before coming here and telling people how things are done. There's plenty of evidence for the use of scene files, and there's nothing particularly horrifying about it. Again, though, you can't really appreciate that until you pull up your sleeves and poke around the files yourself. In the meantime, kindly refrain from insulting people and acting authoritatively.

Scene methods can certainly be "sanctioned". The difference lies in a piece of paper with a signature. Why are you so convinced publishers care what they release? They don't. That's why half the stuff on Steam doesn't work properly or at all. It's GOG who are doing the lifting and bear the liability, and if a scene file works better than whatever garbage the publishers gave them, guess which one they'll use. And be grateful that it's so.

Yes it's the responsibility of gog.com to make sure the games work on modern systems, but whatever gog.com does to any game they sell, it must be sanctioned and condoned by the publisher. There can be no code distributed by gog.com that is not properly licenced and approved by the appropriate publisher. I

Not a single scrap of code. If gog.com wants to distribute a game even with a free fan patch which enables a game to run better or at all on modern systems, that has to be approved by both the publisher and the creators of the fan patch. Even though it is freely available.

It is worth noting that it is not the responsibility of gog.com to remove the copy protection, but I know they have talented people who can provide such service if required - and only with the blessing of the publisher.

If for argument's sake gog.com wanted to use a third party crack to make a game work, the same applies. gog.com can't legally distribute anything, any code or any executable that isn't approved, sanctioned and condoned by any and all rights holders. Setting aside the hacker, because he's not likely to sue, that still means that the publisher has to approve of this.

While the originator of a hypothetical crack isn't likely to sue, he isn't likely to stay silent either.

One of the games which has been insinuated to be hacked with a third party hack is published by Activision. What you people are suggesting is that Activision approved the use of a crack on a rather obscure title just so it could be published on gog.com

The legal ramifications and liabilities that Activision and gog.com could get themselves into if they'd allow such a thing are astoundingly huge compared to the miniscule reward possible by publishing said game. Not to mention the shitstorm against Activision if it was made public.

"scene" method can be sanctioned, no question, a lot of things can be sanctioned, but it just makes no monetary or financial sense to do it. I don't think these companies are above hypocrisy or underhanded dealings, at least not Actvisiion, but we all know they understand money. Using a "scene" crack to distribute a title that isn't even relevant in the grand scheme of things doesn't even start to make sense.

Not at all. I can't even begin to imagine where you think these ramifications and liabilities might be. It's not the crews they give permission to, it's just the one party, namely GOG. No legal ramifications. Distributing or modifying the files without license to do so is still a breach of copyright; once you have the licence, it's "patching". And since the author of the crack had not right to modify the files to begin with, he has no right to the crack itself and can't sue even if they tried. Not even GOG seems to have a right to the files they modify, judging by all the GOG packages being dumped on Steam lock, stock, and barrel.

Once you rid yourself of the notion that there is some legal danger to the publisher, the monetary incentive is right there. Zero work for tangible profit.

Allright, liabilities in botched execution of programs, software damage, hardware damage, facilitating spyware, virus and everything else that in general publishers reject liability for in their licence agreements - which they can because it's their software that they wrote in good faith. Their actual licence agreement is legally rather worthless.

When code x is insterted into an app, code which the developer has no oversight over - code that is in fact determined to be undesirable code by the developer, any defense based on good faith is out. Thus the developer becomes liable, inserting code out of his control in bad faith.

When you do something that causes damage and that thing you did is something that you knew or should have known that caused an unreasonable risk, you are liable. That's first year tort.

No licence agreement or EULA can save the developer there. That's how, but Activision has lawyers and they know. Even if you do not. I am not a lawyer for Activision. For the record.

There is no escaping the very real risk of liability nor the risk of unfavorable publicity - the hacker who had his product allegedly lifted is bound by no NDA. There's no upside to this, not for any party. Not the publisher, distributor or customer.

You think Arcanum is multimillion dollar profit cash cow for anyone? Tens of thousand of dollars at best, perhaps hundreds of thousand over a few years.

There is no risk worth 100-300 thousand dollar profit for Activision that could potentially cost them that ten times over. If only in legal fees. Even if they didn't have any liability as you want to claim, this kind of behavior that you are advocating opens up the very reasonable question of liability, which in a private case is not difficult to prove if the publisher inserted a "scene" hack into a game.

There is just no financial reason for Activision or gog.com to do what you claim. It's far cheaper to not release the one or two games in question. It's probably more of an issue for gog.com, still not a huge issue - there's long list of games not released because of technical reasons and for legal reasons.

Again, this all seems to stem from the fact you've never actually opened a scene file. Really, try it sometime! They don't bite! You won't even have to run them, just examine them side by side with a GOG or original release file. You'll learn a great many things about them, including that there's precious little "inserted" code. And just in case you're wondering, GOG aren't idiots and have their own people doing that and more to actually make sure that these are safe.

As to your legal arguments, I'd love to see a related precedent for such damages over the EULA. More relevant, however, is that it's GOG who take on any outstanding liability for their releases and it's their reputation and publicity that's on the line.

Don't assume things about me, or what I have or have not done. I'll simply ignore such meanderings.

The rest stands.