Earlier this week, we reported that the source codes for Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto Vice City were fully reverse-engineered and made available to download as re3 and reVC respectively. However, their availability was short-lived as Take-Two Interactive, the publisher of the series, seems to have taken notice of this homebrew activity and issued a DMCA takedown, making the repository unavailable. The message below can be seen if you visit the page:

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Take-Two's request is also publicly available and reads:

The content in the links below consists of copyrighted materials owned by Take-Two. The use of our copyrighted content in these links are unauthorized and it should be removed immediately.

You can read the rest of the request here.

This takedown might put a halt to modding efforts (at least for those who did not have access to the GitHub repository before the DMCA notice) but the original modders might come with a cleaner reversed code that could be legally shared. That, however, remains to be seen.

 

[xdarkx]

Expected as much. Surprised there was no DMCA when news on the two games being reverse engineered and the code posted to the public.

 

[Artur95]

another big corpo sending out false dmca takedowns, as always.

 

[DarkCoffe64]

Might as well not bothered, it's prolly re-uploaded everywhere now, good luck trying to get something off the internet :v

 

[Deleted User]

I wish we could have gotten a 3DS build before they pulled the plug.

 

[Deleted member 668561]

https://onionshare.org/

Here's the greyhat solution

 

[Deleted member 668561]

I wish we could have gotten a 3DS build before they pulled the plug.

Well there's unity engine, though it's part of official 3ds sdk, so becareful

 

[Magnus87]

It was nice while it lasted

 

[MiiJack]

Busted

 

[ShadowOne333]

Just to get this straight to all the people saying "took them long enough", this SHOULDN'T be happening, fyi.
Reverse engineered projects are legal, if none of the original game's copyrighted assets are included.
That means, no music, no graphics, etc., just the engine/code itself that was RE'd, and some process setup to dump the assets from an original game or original game's data.

The reverse engineered code that was constructed should be good for sharing as open source, that is why the projects done this way are supposed to request for the original game, so the project can extract the assets from it, and then compile accordingly.

This stupid DMCA can, and SHOULD be countered asap.
The only reason why the DMCA could pull through is if the developers were naive enough to leave some data from the original game within the repository, and that's the ONLY way the DMCA can succeed.

I encourage the developers to counter the DMCA, but make sure the repository is clean and safe, and then counter it accordingly.
If you guys don't do this, you will be opening the flood gates for pieces of shit companies like Nintendo to effectively bring down tons and tons of community-focused repositories in GitHub that work under a similar work structure (of requesting the original game to dump the assets).

Please, PLEASE counter the DMCA!

 

[nero99]

aw come on
They don't even get money from it anymore
Can't we do whatever the hell we want with games no one make profit with anymore except flea market?

seeing as how they still own the game and all the rights to it, no. That's like saying pirating NES games is legal while Nintendo still has rights and owner ship to those games.

 

[linuxares]

Just to get this straight to all that people saying "took them long enough", this SHOULDN'T be happening, fyi.
Reverse engineered projects are legal, if none of the original game's copyrighted assets are included.
That means, no music, no graphics, etc., just the engine/code itself that was RE'd, and some process setup to dump the assets from an original game or original game's data.

The reverse engineered code that was constructed should be good for sharing as open source, that is why the projects done this way are supposed to request for the original game, so the project can extract the assets from it, and then compile accordingly.

This stupid DMCA can, and SHOULD be countered asap.
The only reason why the DMCA could pull through is if the developers were naive enough to leave some data from the original game within the repository, and that's the ONLY way the DMCA can succeed.

I encourage the developers to counter the DMCA, but make sure the repository is clean and safe, and then counter it accordingly.
If you guys don't do this, you will be opening the flood gates for pieces of shit companies like Nintendo to effectively bring down tons and tons of community-focused repositories in GitHub that work under a similar work structure (of requesting the original game to dump the assets).

Please, PLEASE counter the DMCA!

It must be CLEAN ROOM code however. So if it's clean room, it's perfectly legal.

 

[ShadowOne333]

It must be CLEAN ROOM code however. So if it's clean room, it's perfectly legal.

As far as I know, it all was.
I don't think there's been any GTA source code leaks, have there?

 

[linuxares]

As far as I know, it all was.
I don't think there's been any GTA source code leaks, have there?

aye, I think it was. But read somewhere on a news site it was just reversed with like Ghidra to Assembly, then translated back to C++ with it as well. Then it apparently can be a very grey area.

 

[ShadowOne333]

aye, I think it was. But read somewhere on a news site it was just reversed with like Ghidra to Assembly, then translated back to C++ with it as well. Then it apparently can be a very grey area.

Still though, using Ghidra to disassemble and/or reverse engineer the code it's fairly legal, as it's still RE and not the original source code. They're using the original binaries of the game to recreate its code in C++, so it should be fine in that aspect.
The most likely issue here is that they might have forgotten some asset somewhere in the repository, which could end with Take2 going for it.

Still, there's also the chance that they're just being bullies and decided to take it down, even if not on legal grounds and without caring to see if the project was indeed safe for public source.

 

[linuxares]

Still though, using Ghidra to disassemble and/or reverse engineer the code it's fairly legal, as it's still RE and not the original source code. They're using the original binaries of the game to recreate its code in C++, so it should be fine in that aspect.
The most likely issue here is that they might have forgotten some asset somewhere in the repository, which could end with Take2 going for it.

Still, there's also the chance that they're just being bullies and decided to take it down, even if not on legal grounds and without caring to see if the project was indeed safe for public source.

Maybe, I don't know how legal it is to just dump and build. It would be really shady for sure, since you really didn't do much if anything.

Take Two will just bully them for sure. Didn't the SM64 decompile project also get a DMCA before returning?

 

[ShadowOne333]

Maybe, I don't know how legal it is to just dump and build. It would be really shady for sure, since you really didn't do much if anything.

Take Two will just bully them for sure. Didn't the SM64 decompile project also get a DMCA before returning?

Thing is, using Ghidra and other types of RE software is not as easy as just "drop & build".
There's a LOT of debugging, understanding, labeling, converting and sometimes recreate sections of the binaries on other languages. It takes a lot of effort. Sure, not as much as recreating the actual game from scratch, but it's still a hefty amount of time and effort nonetheless.

And my intuition tells me they're just being internet bullies because they don't like the attention the project has gotten.
I believe the SM64 PC project did get a DMCA, and got canned, but I am not sure if it was the actual repository or the executables that got it. I want to say (and wish) it's the former and Nintendo got fucked, but I am not 100% sure.

 

[FAST6191]

Thing is, using Ghidra and other types of RE software is not as easy as just "drop & build".
There's a LOT of debugging, understanding, labeling, converting and sometimes recreate sections of the binaries on other languages. It takes a lot of effort. Sure, not as much as recreating the actual game from scratch, but it's still a hefty amount of time and effort nonetheless.

And my intuition tells me they're just being internet bullies because they don't like the attention the project has gotten.
I believe the SM64 PC project did get a DMCA, and got canned, but I am not sure if it was the actual repository or the executables that got it. I want to say (and wish) it's the former and Nintendo got fucked, but I am not 100% sure.

Effort. Certainly.

I can't just take the latest new york times bestseller, translate it to Russian and call it my own work though.

Same here, if not even easier and more direct still than a translation.

Code still attracts copyright protection and firing it through a disassembler does not remove it.

 

[ShadowOne333]

Effort. Certainly.

I can't just take the latest new york times bestseller, translate it to Russian and call it my own work though.

Same here, if not even easier and more direct still than a translation.

Code still attracts copyright protection and firing it through a disassembler does not remove it.

I think we had this discussion before in the SM64 PC thread
Sure, there's a lot of technicism involved when it comes to reverse engineering software of all kinds, but still, the precedent of Bleem and other emulators back in he 90s and early 2000s gave a safe legal ground when it comes to RE of gaming, and the same applies for game engines.

 

[FAST6191]

Yeah echoes of that were happening here when typing things in the various threads discussing this.

Emulation is not decompilation and disassembly though, even those emulators that do dynamic recompilation (the temporary nature of such things being in play there), and the only place games differ to other things really is in the DMCA exemptions/allowed activities that get changed every few years (usually games being more restricted than other things thanks to the ESA et al whispering sweet nothings in the ear of the librarian).

 

[depaul]

Anyway it's the internet. If you look for it you'll find it.

BTW, I never liked GTA. I don't understand those types of games where you steal cars and massacre people in cold blood.