Take-Two Sues Enthusiasts Behind GTA Fan Projects Re3 and ReVC

https://torrentfreak.com/take-two-sues-enthusiasts-behind-gta-fan-projects-re3-revc-210903/

by askl • 5 years ago

157 90 5 years ago

Do the enthusiast devs have a legal leg to stand on? The repositories cited - like the re3 one on github - don't contain the original GTA3 game assets. It's all "new" code that runs the original game assets, or emulation/simulation wrappers to get OpenGL or DirectX to function like an old PS2 renderer. To play the re3 version of the game, you need the original GTA3 game for PC. To me, it seems more like SCUMM VM or a high-level emulator. Is that copyright infringement?

flatiron• 5 years ago

It’s tricky (obviously) but the code itself is certainly protected. If they decompiled the code and just cleaned it up it’s very grey. If they simply studied it’s workings and coded it fresh that’s pretty clearly not infringing. But if take-two can point at chunks of code that’s exactly the same they have a bit of a leg. Mainly though they know they won’t fight back so why not just sue? They have nothing to lose.

Hamuko3• 5 years ago

If they decompiled the code and just cleaned it up it’s very grey.

This is from the CODING STYLE document:

"Don't just copy paste code from IDA, make it look nice"

https://github.com/GTAmodding/re3/blob/master/CODING_STYLE.m...

carl_dr3• 5 years ago

If they decompiled the code and just cleaned it up it’s very grey.

From the filed complaint, Take-Two quote one of the developers :

GTA 3 and Vice City were originally written in [programming language] C++ . . . The compiled executables that are shipped are in machine code. So the general task is to go from machine code back to C++. . . . To go back to C++ is by no means a simple 1:1 mapping, but over the last 10 or so years decompilers have appeared that help with this process. . . . So what we typically do is work with the output of the decompiler and massage it back into readable C++

And although this probably has no relevance from a legal standpoint, but sounds pretty bad in the context of the complaint, from right at the bottom of https://github.com/GTAmodding/re3/blob/master/CODING_STYLE.m... :

Generally, try to make the code look as if R* could have written it

danhor• 5 years ago

My understanding is that the code is directly reverse engineered/decompiled from the original code, so while it doesn't contain game assets, it's based on (compiled) code copyrighted by Take-Two.

bogwog• 5 years ago

It'd be interesting to see if this actually goes to court, because decompiled code is technically new code, not the original. Decompilers can't retrieve the original code written by Rockstar devs, but it can write new code that behaves like it. Is that a derivative work? If a person were to do that by hand, I think most people would say it's fair use.

teawrecks3• 5 years ago

There's not one way compile or decompile code, though. Yeah, their goal is to create source code that produces the same binary as the original once run through a compiler, but the source on its own doesn't guarantee that will happen.

bsksi• 5 years ago

It's reverse engineered using IDA and such. I think even the class/functions names are the same since the developer forgot to strip one of the binaries.

As much as I support this kind of project, I would say they are legally screwed. But they already knew that when they started.

CannisterFlux2• 5 years ago

Yeah, sounds that way, if it's almost literally the same code rejiggered to build as C. A proper clean-room rewrite effort would be so much slower. You'd need one guy in IDA decompiling/understanding, then explaining the design of how it should work to read and render the assets etc without actually writing the code to do that, and someone different reading the spec and implementing it without touching the original code at all. Or a single person doing both halves but being almost impossibly strict about it.

Const-me7• 5 years ago

Probably someone in the upper management of take-two had the idea of downsizing their legal department. That department have decided to demonstrate how incredibly useful they are, by suing a few people from Germany, New Zealand, Turkey, and United Kingdom.

Defendants are well aware that they do not possess the right to copy, adapt, or distribute derivative GTA source code, or the audiovisual elements of the Games, and that doing so constitutes copyright infringement.

I think the opposite is true, what they did was fair use. The defendants are outside US, pretty sure everything they did was 100% legal in their jurisdictions.

Defendants have made the Games fully and freely available to the public

They have made the game engine (the .exe) freely available to the public. To run the game, one also needs assets of the game.

Assets require overwhelming majority of disk space, take overwhelming majority of development budget to produce, and can be obtained legally by buying the original game.

klodolph9• 5 years ago

I think the opposite is true, what they did was fair use. The defendants are outside US, pretty sure everything they did was 100% legal in their jurisdictions.

There's just no way that it's fair use to distribute a decompiled copy of a game. Reverse engineering and decompiling are generally legal, but they don't strip away copyrights from the code.

Think about it this way... compiling source code does not change who has the copyright on the code. Decompiling source code does not change it either. Cleaning up the output from IDA or Ghidra does not magically strip away copyright.

If I went to a Broadway show and sat down with a pad of staff paper so I could transcribe all the songs, and then put my transcriptions up on GitHub, I could get sued by the composer and the composer would win.

Const-me7• 5 years ago

no way that it's fair use to distribute a decompiled copy of a game

That’s not what these people did. A source code of a re-implementation of a game engine is not a copy of the game. I have compiled and tested that thing, but it was only legal for me to do so because I had the original one bought on Steam.

I could get sued by the composer

Right. “The great thing about this country is you can sue anyone for pretty much anything, and you probably win. Or at least, get a settlement.” https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Rakin_and_Ponzer

rhn_mk12• 5 years ago

It's not a decompiled copy. A decompiled copy is not useful for anything, as it would have to be recompiled. State of the art decompiles produce incomprehensible garbage, rarely even possible to compile.

In such projects, what's distributed is a recreation of the compiled form of the original software, bearing little resemblance to what the original creators worked on. In terms of work and creativity involved, it's more like watching a movie, summarizing the plot, and then plugging back the holes to make another movie that has the same feel.

I don't know about fair use, but if the defendants are not in the US, then the concept of fair use is not even necessarily in play.

dognotdog2• 5 years ago

It seems like using something that's reverse engineering to achieve "interoperability", in this case playing the games on modern hardware, is generally legal in the US/EU, as long as you also own a license to the original, which seems like is a requirement to use the Re* versions, as you need the original game assets.

Decompilation / reverse engineering is very different from "transcribing" a play. Transcribing a play, you would get back an almost exact copy of the source material, whereas decompiling is more akin to taking a car and measuring all the bits of it. You would certainly not get the original drawings or CAD files back out of it. You do not decompile "source code", but machine code, and the source code you get back is not a recreation of the original copyrighted code, but the decompiler's analysis of the machine instructions, stripped of the original design and intent (the creative work part which makes source code copyrightable in the first place).

Measurements (or information) in general is not copyrightable, despite what IP protectionism claims, and in this analogy the machine code is much closer to the mechanical pieces of the car that make it work than the original designs. Either way, the fair use / reverse engineering provisions already create an exemption.

The questions is wether there are enough legal loopholes to squash these generally allowed uses through some other parts of the law or licensing terms, eg. by claiming that some IP (patents, trade secrets) are infringed some other way by publishing the reverse engineered code.

realusername• 5 years ago

There's just no way that it's fair use to distribute a decompiled copy of a game. Reverse engineering and decompiling are generally legal, but they don't strip away copyrights from the code.

In France it's legal to redistribute it if it's for "interopability purposes" which is very easy to defend in this case since RE3 is primarly used to make a massive amount of ports (Switch, Vita...) which would not exist without this project.

duckmysick• 5 years ago

Isn't Fair Use a concept that applies just in the United States? There might be similar concepts in other countries, but they're not equivalent.

Const-me7• 5 years ago

they're not equivalent

They are not, but AFAIK these concepts are somewhat close, at least on the high level.

The developers were not distributing the game, the game engine they made is useless without the assets. The developers probably obtained their copies of the games legally. AFAIK, their primary motivation was to make the game work better on modern computers (that’s why the rendering patches), and to make the game run on the platforms not supported by Rockstar such as ARM Linux on Raspberry Pi. The laws regulating reverse engineering often have exceptions for compatibility purpose. Most importantly, the developers have not profited from their work, they did it for fun.

bdowling• 5 years ago

pretty sure everything they did was 100% legal in their jurisdictions.

Probably not, but they also uploaded the reverse-engineered source code and binaries to Github in the United States. They then filed DMCA counter-notices, which opens them up to personal jurisdiction in federal district court in the U.S., per 17 USC 512(g)(3)(D). [0].

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512

dasKrokodil2• 5 years ago

Man, regardless of who is in the right legally, I wish these big corporations had a better sense of humor and would understand and appreciate that the people who go to these lengths to understand and recreate the original code aren't their enemies, but their biggest fans.

klodolph9• 5 years ago

They make money from having lots of customers, not from having a few obsessed fans. I’ve heard this argument before but the kind of people who are obsessed enough to reverse-engineer old games don’t necessarily even play new games. They’re often fans of the old games and don’t play new games, or they’re people who are interested in reverse engineering.

You can release a remaster of an old game, but any reverse-engineered version would be competing with it.

sam0x172• 5 years ago

That said, using any of these mods requires a valid GTA V license, so OP is right, by killing this project, they are killing their own sales.

Crosseye_Jack2• 5 years ago

You can release a remaster of an old game, but any reverse-engineered version would be competing with it.

The Console HD (Well 720p) remasters of the 3D GTAs don't even compete with the original versions with mods imo :-P.

They are the ported from the mobile ports of the games, have tons of bugs (Edit: some of the bugs on the 360 stem from RROD issues on consoles that have just not yet RROD'ed), break many of the game mechanics and redender models like trash. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhVdb4K1M-M <- Sa comparisons as an example

(Note: I know you are on about how mods / RE projects compete with offical releases from a product standpoint, not a quality standpoint. Just wanted to say that RS had their chance to improve the longevity of the older 3D titles and they fucked it up)

KMnO4• 5 years ago

Here’s another data point since it’s not always as simple as “remastering”.

Nintendo released Super Mario 3D All Stars for a limited purchase window between Sept 2020 and March 2021. Super Mario 64 was included in its original 1996 glory, included a low frame rate, 4:3 aspect ratio, low res textures (iirc they were slightly improved). In fact, Nintendo’s bundle was literally a N64 emulator running on the switch.

At the same time, a group of reverse engineers had decompiled the original ROM, converted it to readable C, and added many improvements: 60FPS, widescreen support, high res textures, etc. Most notably, the project allowed them to compile the source code to native Switch architecture, which greatly improved performance and power consumption.

Most enthusiasts would agree that the “fan project” is objectively a better experience.

dasKrokodil2• 5 years ago

You can release a remaster of an old game, but any reverse-engineered version would be competing with it.

Technically, that's correct of course. But realistically, how many people will build one of these projects from the source code they obtained from GitHub, download the game assets from somewhere and spend a lot of time to make it all work on their machine instead of just buying the remastered version? Some, sure, but I don't see Rockstar losing a lot of money here.

If I were in their shoes I would simply hire these developers. And leave their fan projects alone as a sign of good-will and generosity towards the community.

AnIdiotOnTheNet2• 5 years ago

It's something I really appreciate about Sega's handling of Sonic IP: as long as you aren't trying to make money you can pretty much get away with anything. I think Sonic's continued popularity is in no small part due to this policy.

refracture• 5 years ago

It's also something that makes me appreciate how Capcom approached the Resident Evil 2 remake. They invited the devs up to their studio to show them the official remake and then asked them to cease developing theirs. No drama or bad blood.

werds• 5 years ago

like this guy making a 16x16 recreation of Sonic on pico-8 https://twitter.com/troypicol

doublerabbit2• 5 years ago

I really appreciate about Sega's handling of Sonic IP: as long as you aren't trying to make money you can pretty much get away with anything.

I disagree. Sega can be an awful-bully when it comes to their IP. It wasn't until the SteamDB issue went viral that they backed-down [1] and the Streets of Rage remake. [2]

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/03/sega-forces-mistaken-...

[2] https://www.destructoid.com/sega-has-streets-of-rage-remake-...

quakeguy• 5 years ago

I‘d simple offer employment if i where in the position to do so. Let them improve the games from within, they surely showed talent and knowledge. Legal action can have the opposite effect here.

WarOnPrivacy2• 5 years ago

I‘d simple offer employment if i where in the position to do so.

That doesn't provide the same buzz as ruinous legal action

AlwaysRock3• 5 years ago

Often folks who make these mods are young or based somewhere outside of the US. Not that there couldnt be a job for them but its not all that likely that there would be a role that would actually be a good fit skill wise and location wise if there were even eligible to work in that country.

AlwaysRock3• 5 years ago

Isnt part of the issue here copyright law? If they don't shut down things like this then eventually one of them grows large enough that it does start making money, ends up in court with Take-Two, and the judge could say that GTA copyright doesnt hold up since they failed to protect their copyright when they knew there were many people infringing on it.

I don't support this action by Take-Two but I think this is more of a legal situation rather than a, "How dare they try to rip off our game?" situation.

thethimble• 5 years ago

Why don’t they approach the creators and license the franchise while still preserving their rights? Seems like this is the best of both worlds?

rainbowzootsuit• 5 years ago

My understanding is that this applies to trademark — the necessity to defend it — but not to copyright.

A4ET8a8uTh0• 5 years ago

I am no legal expert, but the gamer in me instinctively sides with DMCA recipient. I am tired of the lazy ports, rushed remasters and overall shit show that gaming industry has become. It does help that I don't play as much as I used to, but I would like to have a better world for my children:P

Hamuko3• 5 years ago

As per legal requirements, Github complied with the takedown demand but, as TF noted at the time, the team behind the projects had the option of filing a DMCA counter-notice if it was confident that its work is permitted under copyright law.
After assessing its options, that’s exactly what the team did, leaving Take-Two just a couple of weeks to file a lawsuit to prevent the content reappearing on Github. When that time expired, the coding platform restored ‘re3’ and ‘reVC’, as per the law.

As far as I can tell, this is a pretty generous take on what happened.

The Take-Two counter notice [1] was filed by td512, who had a fork of the re3 repo, but doesn't seem to have any commits in the repo, so it's kinda hard to call him part of the team. And his reasoning for filing the counter notice was that the repo contained "no code owned by Take Two", which is a bit questionable (I guess it's now up for the court to decide) since the code is decompiled and then cleaned up. Meanwhile in May, Ash R., who I believe is part of the re3 team (and is in fact beind sued as Doe 1), posted on Twitter [2] about how the team was close to filing a counter notice before the news of the repo being restored hit the news, potentially tanking the whole project.

[1] https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2021/04/2021-04-0...

[2] https://twitter.com/Ash_735/status/1391916368166113280

EDIT: Actually, it looks like there are two more counter claims as per the suit, however they seem to have been filed after the initial counter claim was filed and indeed after the repository was restored / news of the restoration were reported on. The first [3] seems like a carbon copy of the first claim while the second one [4] seems a bit more carefully worded.

[3] https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2021/05/2021-05-1...

[4] https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2021/06/2021-06-1...

elliekelly• 5 years ago

The company says that the counter notices sent by the defendants in response were not legitimate.
“In at least three separate instances between April and June of 2021, Defendants Orçunus, Morra, and Graber submitted sworn counter notifications to GitHub claiming the takedown of the repositories was mistaken or otherwise not legitimate,” the lawsuit reads.
“Take-Two is informed and believes, and on that basis alleges, that these counter notifications were made in bad faith, and knowingly and deliberately misrepresented to GitHub the contents of the re3 GitHub Repositories.”

It really isn’t fair to put all of this legalese in front of laypeople (and in this case, laypeople in other countries/legal systems) and then allow highly experienced corporate attorneys to nitpick their obviously inadequate understanding of the language and its implications.

eurasiantiger• 5 years ago

I played a pirate copy of VC when I was a poor student and loved the game.

Hearing of ReVC just now made me consider buying it, a 20 year old game. Take-Twos belligerent approach just killed that consideration. They have fans both hardcore enough to restore the game and loving enough to provide the restored version to others, and they choose to slap them with a lawsuit over a 20 year old game?

We the people don’t have the right to distribute copyrighted files, but we do have a right to repair broken software, just like we have the right to repair other things we own, and we certainly have a right to help others do the same.

m-p-32• 5 years ago

I suspect that they plan to rerelease or remaster the game, and having a fan project being of higher quality than their own product would undercut their sales expectations.

cinntaile• 5 years ago

They're coming this fall. https://kotaku.com/the-gta-remastered-trilogy-appears-to-be-...

philipov• 5 years ago

Being an asshole should also undercut their sales expectations.

brezelgoring• 5 years ago

[...]having a fan project being of higher quality than their own product[...]

Seeing how the recent GTA:SA releases perform, that's quite easy to achieve. Makes me think there should be some legal contemplation that if you don't actively distribute or charge for this stuff you get to do it anyhow.

eljimmy• 5 years ago

I'm surprised this type of development hasn't been driven underground/anonymous into the warez scene.

beej71• 5 years ago

I'll bet Take Two has a case here. That said, they've just guaranteed they'll never see another dollar out of me. This is one of those cases where they had another play that was win-win. (Well, except for the lawyers.)

kjrose2• 5 years ago

Is anyone here a lawyer who can explain why it's worth taking such a big publicity hit over this by Take-Two? Like it is clear these guys are not taking away any business from them, nor are they really losing any money.

Is there some sort of IP reason, like they need to defend the IP lest it be marked as being abandoned? Or is there some other legit reason beyond spite that they are taking this on? I dont see Take-Two losing any significant amount of income from this enthusiast project, but I could be wrong and I am willing to be corrected.

everyone• 5 years ago

Legal department / managers etc. needed something to do.

jrm42• 5 years ago

IAAL, and this is actually pretty accurate. Also of note, there is a princple within the law that basically suggests "if you don't vigorously defend your IP, that can be taken to mean you don't much care in the future as well." Honestly, in our modern environment, I don't find that much compelling (as something to really worry about from a developer POV), but it does exist.

kjrose2• 5 years ago

Doesn't the fallout from this like make it a bad thing to do though? They are pretty much attacking their biggest fans. I am pretty sure that's generally not a good idea from a marketing standpoint.

petermcneeley• 5 years ago

Related Tie fighter total conversion is still up: https://www.moddb.com/mods/tie-fighter-total-conversion-tftc

Does anyone know the legal status of this project?

WarOnPrivacy2• 5 years ago

Example #4,776,901 of how copyright ruins everything it can

sjreese• 5 years ago

The plaintiff claims that the apple is theirs and any pictures of the apple is also theirs .. this may undue Take-Two as to why fair use exists. The outcome is far from certain - which means Take-Two may be the real target

teawrecks3• 5 years ago

Wow, incredibly short sighted of take two. They were being handed free money and decided to shred it. Wonder how the shareholders will feel about that...

teddybloake• 5 years ago

I'll make a similar comparison. Let us take technology out it:

I make a board game and give away instructions on how to play the game. The game instructions include going out and buying Lego pieces to assemble the boardgame. Lego now wants to make boardgames and sues me. Is what I'm doing illegal?

Take-Two Sues Enthusiasts Behind GTA Fan Projects Re3 and ReVC

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