2023-09-07 05:48:14
Years later, this game from the GTA 5 devs continues to punish innocent people because of its anti-cheat system
Published on 07/09/2023 at 07:48
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No one is unreachable, not even Rockstar whose security has already been breached on rare occasions. Rare, but important enough to be reported: this is particularly the case of the game Manhunt, which is still a problem today.
Strong, but imperfect
Fin 2022, Rockstar was experiencing a huge leak which exhibited the first images of a Grand Theft Auto VI in full development: a huge buzz on the net and in the video game industry, causing the discontent (legitimate) of a firm for a long time essential in the media landscape.
However, this is not the first time that Rockstar has been had. In 2010, dataminers realized that their PC version of Max Payne 2, purchased directly from Steam, actually contained traces of a crack signed Razor 1911, buried in the .exe file. This crack was basically used to be able to play the game without needing the disc, when the physical format was still present in the Windows sector.
Then, the players realized that Max Payne 2 was not an isolated case: Midnight Club II and Manhunt are also concerned. The pirated version of these games is the one that Rockstar has put online on Steam, in order to sell it to the public.
A history of DRM
YouTuber Vadim M just posted a video recently, exploring the problem and especially for Manhunt and Max Payne 2. As said before, the Razor 1911 crack was originally used to launch the game without the need for the disc and to circumvent the DRM. We explain: when you launch Manhunt, the first layer of DRM (“Digital rights management” as a reminder) will check if you have the game disc. This “examination” is called SecuROM.
The second phase of DRM reacts according to the first. If you have the game disc, then you can play freely (still happy, some would say) ; if you don’t have it, then the game will realize the hack and do everything to harm your experience. For example, all doors will lock as soon as you open one and getting health items will cause freezes, until the title no longer responds to keys pressed after a quarter of an hour of play.
To counter this, the Razor 1911 crack emulated the verification features in DRM, making the game fully playable without discs. The problem is that for one reason or another, Rockstar did have this pirated sale to the public on Steam.
Punished for being straight in his boots
Faced with the bad-buzz, Rockstar then replaced the pirated .exe files with others “cleaned” of all cracks, in 2010. For Manhunt, for example, it is still this version that is sold today on the platform of Valve: The real big problem is that by deleting the crack from the game file, Rockstar also deleted all the SecuROM files and updated it, causing all the penalties normally intended for hackers to be activated, including we spoke to you above. Race results: if you bought the title on Steam after 2010, you therefore have an unplayable version, although perfectly legal.
“What concerns me here is that they didn’t analyze the binary code to figure out exactly what is fixed in the Razer 1911 copy, or they saw it and left it”admits a cybersecurity expert. “I can’t imagine their engineers saw this and decided not to mask the Razer 1911 crack to hide it.”
So why would Rockstar knowingly sell a pirated version of its own game to Internet users? The firm did not wish to give any answer, but a theory remains: already at the time, since no one owned a physical version of PC games anymore, Rockstar would have simply used crack (after all very functional) to sell digital copies directly, without having to invest the time and money themselves to return these copies playable without disc. One hell of a story…
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