Take Two send out more P.I's to deliver C&D letters to developers of alternate GTAV multiplayer clie
53 replies, posted
FiveM developers have once again been visited by private investigators, this time to deliver cease and desist orders.
One of the lead FiveM developers has quit after receiving the letter.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/dKaZJzB.jpg[/IMG]
[url]https://www.reddit.com/r/FiveM/comments/3vvego/avail_no_longer_developing_fivem_as_a_result_of/[/url]
Posting from phone sorry if it's messed up
[B][UPDATE][/B]
Update on the FiveM situation, lead developer NTAuthy is considering shutting down the project and moving on to IV instead. He fears if he continues he will be sued and hit with an injunction and be stopped from modding any past or future titles.
He is considering developing a standalone multiplayer client for GTA IV instead of FiveM that-way he is less likely to be sued and will be able to mod future/passed titles (whereas if he continues FiveM he will probably get sued and be banned from modding any R* titles)
His post on the FiveM subreddit
[QUOTE]
So with TTWO not easily giving up on pursuing the FiveM project, we're pretty much at an impasse. Technically, the legal position of the project is (sadly) dubious, and as seen with GTA:MP in the past, TTWO even had a 'thing' against a project that never even was released, let alone had people abusing it for pirate game copies like early versions of FiveM.
Even with proper enforcement of license checks and detection of cracks in FiveM, it's unlikely that TTWO will easily give up, and likely that I'll be sued/have an injunction issued over a minor technicality as happened with ATVI in the past, and eventually be forced to sign a general cease and desist contract which likely would destroy any chance of being involved in any GTA/R* game modification whatsoever, including downlevel games.
Again, I have no interest in such a restriction, which is why when I (among another undisclosed developer, who did sign their C&D contract) was visited again yesterday with 'a final offer of signing [a C&D]' opted not to do so, leaving other options open.
Now, my larger-scale question is as follows: should V runtime support (that is, the entire FiveM multiplayer component and singleplayer map loader, excluding the V targeting for the RAGE development toolkit) be removed from the CitizenFX codebase and the FiveM authentication parts shut down to prevent past games from being used so I can 'lower the heat' placed on me by TTWO, and be able to continue work on, say, IV and possibly Max Payne 3?
Even though most of you people would go 'aww, but I love V, and IV sucked', it's likely futile to continue development on V, and a lot of flaws IV (and by extension, CitizenMP:IV) had are fixable with some code work - I'm assuming some amount of you have seen the ViIV modification for GTA IV, which was built on the CitizenFX framework and provided pretty much the entire V map inside of IV... yes, even the 'bad optimization' of the main map should be somewhat fixable by porting the game to a more modern graphics API like D3D12.
So, anyway, what do you think?[/QUOTE]
[url]https://www.reddit.com/r/FiveM/comme..._and_resuming/[/url]
I don't think I'll be buying anymore Rockstar games
[URL="http://tohjo.eu/citidev/citizenmp"]Being released under an MIT license[/URL] means it'll never die, you fuckers.
So say a dev ignored the C&D, would Take-Two have any legal ground to stand on if it were to go to court?
[QUOTE=ART1E117;49269976]So say a dev ignored the C&D, would Take-Two have any legal ground to stand on if it were to go to court?[/QUOTE]
This is basically the intimidation step before actually going to court and testing whether or not FiveM is actually legal.
And if you can't afford a lawyer fight, you give up immediately. Generally, any employer would fire you if you got sued for outside-of-work activities, because it'd look bad on them, so the consequences for standing your ground and testing the legality of a multiplayer mod for a game versus a large entertainment company with basically unlimited money to spend on lawyers is not tiny, even if you have a good chance of winning when the judge makes the final decision. The typical plan for the corporate aggressor is to make it a war of attrition and make victory so costly the consumer just gives up.
[QUOTE=ART1E117;49269976]So say a dev ignored the C&D, would Take-Two have any legal ground to stand on if it were to go to court?[/QUOTE]
Wouldn't be very smart to ignore it imo. Despite it being a non-profit project Blizzard has won similar court cases in the past for WoW private servers after they ignored multiple CnD orders.
[QUOTE=ART1E117;49269976]So say a dev ignored the C&D, would Take-Two have any legal ground to stand on if it were to go to court?[/QUOTE]
depends, there is a ton of legal precedents of companies allowing modders to extend and expand on the orignal multiplayer, even rockstar has in effect let this happen with SA:MP, they want to hide behind the DMCA but they'd have to demonstrate that this is for circumventing DRM, but its mostly an intimidation step
[editline]8th December 2015[/editline]
[QUOTE=Saxon;49270080]Wouldn't be very smart to ignore it imo. Despite it being a non-profit project Blizzard has won similar court cases in the past for WoW private servers after they ignored multiple CnD orders.[/QUOTE]
those were servers meant to circumvent blizz's DRM, there are servers that require you to log in through blizz's system before you can play, which they haven't taken down
[QUOTE=IliekBoxes;49269932]I don't think I'll be buying anymore Rockstar games[/QUOTE]
yeaaah you will
[QUOTE=IliekBoxes;49269932]I don't think I'll be buying anymore Rockstar games[/QUOTE]
Is it really fair to put this on Rockstar when it's Take Two doing all this shit anyhow
[QUOTE=Sableye;49270158]depends, there is a ton of legal precedents of companies allowing modders to extend and expand on the orignal multiplayer, even rockstar has in effect let this happen with SA:MP, they want to hide behind the DMCA but they'd have to demonstrate that this is for circumventing DRM, but its mostly an intimidation step
[editline]8th December 2015[/editline]
those were servers meant to circumvent blizz's DRM, there are servers that require you to log in through blizz's system before you can play, which they haven't taken down[/QUOTE]
Blizzard sued Wowscape for running for-profit services. They made millions in sold VIP gear. [url]http://www.geek.com/games/blizzard-wins-88-million-from-scapegaming-over-illegal-wow-servers-1277800/[/url] Blizzard didn't really care about small servers that didn't make any considerable amounts of money. I used to be a developer for ArcEmu and we got C&Ds all the time but since we didn't actually distribute any of their IP, just the source code and tools to run the servers they had no legal ground to shut us down. All we did was distribute a piece of open source software that was listening to very specific network traffic and sent replies. The actual ToS and EULA violation came from disassembling the game client and hosting a server but Blizzard only went after the big profiters. Scapegaming had something aking to 25 000 active players on their most popular server.
[QUOTE=Hoffa1337;49270307]Blizzard sued Wowscape for running for-profit services. They made millions in sold VIP gear. [url]http://www.geek.com/games/blizzard-wins-88-million-from-scapegaming-over-illegal-wow-servers-1277800/[/url] Blizzard didn't really care about small servers that didn't make any considerable amounts of money. I used to be a developer for ArcEmu and we got C&Ds all the time but since we didn't actually distribute any of their IP, just the source code and tools to run the servers they had no legal ground to shut us down. All we did was distribute a piece of open source software that was listening to very specific network traffic and sent replies. The actual ToS and EULA violation came from disassembling the game client and hosting a server but Blizzard only went after the big profiters. Scapegaming had something aking to 25 000 active players on their most popular server.[/QUOTE]
pretty great clarification there
[QUOTE=IliekBoxes;49269932]I don't think I'll be buying anymore Rockstar games[/QUOTE]
Rockstar is a videogame developer. Take-Two is the publisher that owns them and hundreds of other studios.
[QUOTE=IliekBoxes;49269932]I don't think I'll be buying anymore Rockstar games[/QUOTE]
I stopped at Grand theft auto four, Grand theft auto five is a piece of shit.
[QUOTE=coldroll5;49270383]I stopped at Grand theft auto four, Grand theft auto five is a piece of shit.[/QUOTE]
Well its campaign is certainly fun, the end game is even more feature bare than 4 because a bunch of features probably went into the online mode, like there is absolutely no reason why you cannot insure cars in the game like you do online, all the planes, boats, and large stuff is insured but if you want to spend some of that loot on a car, drive it like it were priceless because once it's gone its gone, and they've been promising more single player content for over a year now with statements saying they were for sure going to release a sp expansion in the summer, bu t instead its just more multiplayer stuff, and multiplayer isn't really fun or really enjoyable its way too grindy to even get meager rewards and everything is priced to basically force you to buy the shark cards
Instead of threatening modders T2 could just spend more money on proper anti-cheat system and code cleanup for GTAO. FiveM won't be completely necessary, GTAO will be fine again, everyone's happy. But of course that won't happen because T2 are greedy pieces of shit who think they can do anything because they've earned billions from GTA V alone.
[QUOTE=TurtleeyFP;49270354]Rockstar is a videogame developer. Take-Two is the publisher that owns them and hundreds of other studios.[/QUOTE]
But any future Rockstar game will be published by those fucks and most of the profits will go to them.
If GTA:O wasn't complete shit then maybe people wouldn't wanna make their own.
Maybe T2 should spent all that fat lawyer money on improving their image rather than enforcing it.
Take Two expect us to be playing on a hacker infested game buying their shitty sharkcards, not going to happen.
I've actually only ever played GTA Online once on PC and that was for 20 minutes, until I went back to FiveM.
Reasons we need FiveM
[video=youtube;cy3A4u22f5M]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy3A4u22f5M[/video]
[video=youtube;bK2PG5_-mJU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK2PG5_-mJU[/video]
[QUOTE=ART1E117;49269976]So say a dev ignored the C&D, would Take-Two have any legal ground to stand on if it were to go to court?[/QUOTE]
If take-two thought they had a real case they wouldn't be hiring people to stalk and intimidate modders, they'd just get on with it. They don't.
As I've said before, won't be buying GTA V on PC anytime soon.
So, They can get rockstar for harassment? Right Or will they send Carl Johnson down there to keep them quite?
[QUOTE=Passing;49272015]So, They can get rockstar for harassment? Right Or will they send Carl Johnson down there to keep them quite?[/QUOTE]
how is this harassment? Theirs nothing illegal about what happened, honestly you would much rather have this happen than get a court hearing letter in the mail. At least this was free for the people.
As shitty as this is; anyone could have seen this coming from miles away. As soon as Shark Cards were seen when the PS3/360 versions of the game came out, I couldn't help but feel sorry for the people waiting for the PC version for the online mods.
Of course, it's perfectly acceptable to hack the shit out of GTA Online on the PC; which is really weird when you'd think that would be hurting sales of shark cards as well. I guess it'd cost too much investment to actually fix GTA:O compared to intimidating modders.
[QUOTE=HoodedSniper;49272294]how is this harassment? Theirs nothing illegal about what happened, honestly you would much rather have this happen than get a court hearing letter in the mail. At least this was free for the people.[/QUOTE]
If you're 100% certain that take two can't sue you then you can easily take them to court for harassing you with legal threats to force you to stop doing something entirely legal. It'd be an open and shut case. These aren't just e-mails, they paid people to hunt them down in real life and hand deliver notices.
[QUOTE=Grenadiac;49272481]If you're 100% certain that take two can't sue you then you can easily take them to court for harassing you with legal threats to force you to stop doing something entirely legal. It'd be an open and shut case. These aren't just e-mails, they paid people to hunt them down in real life and hand deliver notices.[/QUOTE]
That isn't harassment
[QUOTE=Grenadiac;49272481]If you're 100% certain that take two can't sue you then you can easily take them to court for harassing you with legal threats to force you to stop doing something entirely legal. It'd be an open and shut case. These aren't just e-mails, they paid people to hunt them down in real life and hand deliver notices.[/QUOTE]
Actually, any kind of game modding is technically illegal, it's just that most companies don't care.
[QUOTE=KillerJaguar;49272744]That isn't harassment[/QUOTE]
If I hired a PI to follow someone and serve them threats of legal action, with no actual legal ground for doing so, I could be sued.
[QUOTE=simkas;49272758]Actually, any kind of game modding is technically illegal, it's just that most companies don't care.[/QUOTE]
ahaha, no, its not.
[QUOTE=Grenadiac;49272772]If I hired a PI to follow someone and serve them threats of legal action, with no actual legal ground for doing so, I could be sued.[/QUOTE]
A PI knocked on their door and delivered them a C&D
That's hardly harassment
Update on the FiveM situation, lead developer NTAuthy is considering shutting down the project and moving on to IV instead. He fears if he continues he will be sued and hit with an injunction and be stopped from modding any past or future titles.
He is considering developing a standalone multiplayer client for GTA IV instead of FiveM that-way he is less likely to be sued and will be able to mod future/passed titles (whereas if he continues FiveM he will probably get sued and be banned from modding any R* titles)
His post on the FiveM subreddit
[QUOTE]So with TTWO not easily giving up on pursuing the FiveM project, we're pretty much at an impasse. Technically, the legal position of the project is (sadly) dubious, and as seen with GTA:MP in the past, TTWO even had a 'thing' against a project that never even was released, let alone had people abusing it for pirate game copies like early versions of FiveM.
Even with proper enforcement of license checks and detection of cracks in FiveM, it's unlikely that TTWO will easily give up, and likely that I'll be sued/have an injunction issued over a minor technicality as happened with ATVI in the past, and eventually be forced to sign a general cease and desist contract which likely would destroy any chance of being involved in any GTA/R* game modification whatsoever, including downlevel games.
Again, I have no interest in such a restriction, which is why when I (among another undisclosed developer, who did sign their C&D contract) was visited again yesterday with 'a final offer of signing [a C&D]' opted not to do so, leaving other options open.
Now, my larger-scale question is as follows: should V runtime support (that is, the entire FiveM multiplayer component and singleplayer map loader, excluding the V targeting for the RAGE development toolkit) be removed from the CitizenFX codebase and the FiveM authentication parts shut down to prevent past games from being used so I can 'lower the heat' placed on me by TTWO, and be able to continue work on, say, IV and possibly Max Payne 3?
Even though most of you people would go 'aww, but I love V, and IV sucked', it's likely futile to continue development on V, and a lot of flaws IV (and by extension, CitizenMP:IV) had are fixable with some code work - I'm assuming some amount of you have seen the ViIV modification for GTA IV, which was built on the CitizenFX framework and provided pretty much the entire V map inside of IV... yes, even the 'bad optimization' of the main map should be somewhat fixable by porting the game to a more modern graphics API like D3D12.
So, anyway, what do you think?
[/QUOTE]
[url]https://www.reddit.com/r/FiveM/comments/3vylz0/polling_interest_canceling_fivem_and_resuming/[/url]
[QUOTE=efc-luke-efc;49274807]Update on the FiveM situation, lead developer NTAuthy is considering shutting down the project and moving on to IV instead. He fears if he continues he will be sued and hit with an injunction and be stopped from modding any past or future titles.
He is considering developing a standalone multiplayer client for GTA IV instead of FiveM that-way he is less likely to be sued and will be able to mod future/passed titles (whereas if he continues FiveM he will probably get sued and be banned from modding any R* titles)
His post on the FiveM subreddit
[url]https://www.reddit.com/r/FiveM/comments/3vylz0/polling_interest_canceling_fivem_and_resuming/[/url][/QUOTE]
I suppose then that our vote here could be decisive. I'm personally going ahead and upvoting any comments that point out that Take Two doesn't actually have the legal high ground, and downvoting ones that say that he'll be sued if he continues.
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