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The DRM protection (Digital Rights Management) of older games often proves to be useful for publishers, for example to save unnecessary ones To avoid license costs. Rockstar Games seems to have made it particularly easy for itself in the past – the company apparently used cracks from Razor 1911.
Cracks discovered in Manhunt and Midnight Club II
Rockstar’s approach was noticed for the first time YouTuber Vadim Mwhich already last weekend in the last 8 minutes a total of 53 minutes long video showed how the publisher had installed a crack in the Manhunt game sold on Steam in order to bypass the copy protection mechanism originally implemented.
Like from one Report from BleepingComputer emerged, then referred to X under the pseudonym Silent Well-known modder was looking for other titles that Rockstar Games might have sold with a crack. He found what he was looking for: in the installation directory of the racing game Midnight Club II, which is now 20 years old and no longer available on Steam he discovered an executable file called testapp.exethe contents of which indicated a crack from Razor 1911.
As part of the discoveries brought Silent and Vadim M The cracks are also linked to crashes and other problems with Manhunt and Midnight Club II from Windows Vista onwards. According to Silent, the built-in crack may have interacted with one .bind section of the Steam DRM the Data Execution Prevention of the operating system.
Razor 1911 has been around since 1985
At Razor 1911 is a warez and demo group founded in Norway in October 1985 that originally created cracks for Commodore 64 software. It is considered the oldest game software piracy ring on the Internet and in the past provided cracks for many well-known computer games that allowed players to circumvent the DRM protection mechanisms implemented in them. This included not only titles from Rockstar Games, but also those from other major game companies such as Electronic Arts, THQ, 2K Games and Ubisoft.
Razor 1911 also didn’t miss the opportunity to ask X about the reports of Rockstar’s use of his cracks react: “*cough cough* First rule: Don’t sell warez.“
Already on Wednesday pointed BleepingComputer to have asked Rockstar Games whether the company had actually sold its own games with cracks on Steam. However, the publisher does not seem to have provided an answer yet.
Further effects are still unclear
The consequences in terms of security and the legal consequences that the sale of cracked games potentially entails also remain questionable. The publisher could face a lawsuit from both the players and Razor 1911, although this would put the Warez group on pretty thin ice. In addition, it remains unclear whether other game publishers may also use existing cracks to circumvent their DRM protection measures, for example for economic reasons.
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