It has recently been revealed that Rockstar Games, an influential game development company renowned for its hardline stance against piracy and cheating, has been utilizing pirate cracks in order to remove digital rights management (DRM) protections from some of its games sold on the popular gaming platform Steam. According to an article by BleepingComputer and blogger Vadim M., Rockstar Games has resorted to using cracks developed by the hacking group Razor 1911 to bypass its own anti-piracy measures.
Vadim M.’s video demonstrates the measures taken by Rockstar Games to combat piracy in the game Manhunt.
Rockstar Games and its parent company, Take Two, have been long-standing opponents of cheat developers and individuals involved in reverse engineering of games. Therefore, the revelation that the company itself is utilizing pirate cracks has come as a surprise to the gaming community.
The sequence of events began with Vadim M.’s video, where he discussed how Rockstar Games used pirate cracks for both Manhunt and Max Payne 2 games on Steam. This caught the attention of modder and reverse engineer, Silent, who decided to investigate whether the same technique was employed in other games, such as Midnight Club II, which is no longer available for purchase on Steam. The investigation revealed that the executable file “TestApp.exe” included in the game also utilizes the Razor 1911 crack.
Compatibility issues arose as a result of using these cracks. Silent explained that it caused well-known