Russian 'Pirate' Unofficially Ports Xbox Live Arcade Game To The PC; Moral Conundrums And Fractured English Ensue
from the in-Soviet-Russia,-the-dept-is-from-you dept
Usually when software is cracked, it's to remove DRM or other limitations that were inserted to prevent unauthorized reproduction and distribution. Once that's complete, the unauthorized reproduction and distribution begins, with these illicit copies occasionally ending up in the hands of paying customers who just want the software they paid money for to work correctly. (Funny how that works/doesn't work.)
That's the usual scenario. There's nothing "usual" about Russia, as anybody who's reworked a Yakov Smirnoff quote/watched a few hundred hours of dash cam footage can attest. A Russian hacker going by the name of Barbarus cracked an Xbox Live Arcade game... to port it to the PC.
Ska Studios released their excellent hack-’n'-slash sequel, The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile, back in 2011, exclusively on the Xbox 360. This was the follow-up to the original The Dishwasher game that won the Dream.Build.Play contest back in 2007, which scored the studio $10,000 and an Xbox Live Arcade publishing contract. So when creating the sequel, Ska and Microsoft were already set up to carry on the exclusive publishing contract on XBLA, which meant that the game never saw a release on any other platforms. But that hasn’t sat well with some people, and now a PC port has been managed outside of any official parties.Barbarus uploaded his unofficial port to torrent site rustorka.net, but the traffic jump took it down. He has since posted it at Yandex as well. The unofficial port is in (unofficial) beta, but is obviously very popular with PC users (or Xbox users who also want to play the game on their PCs). It also has triggered a bit of backlash in support James Silva, one of the game's developers. Barbarus posted this in response.
The ethics of publicationBarbarus' arguments defending his actions are not completely without merit. It can be argued that Ska Studios does lose money from this unofficial PC version (diverting Xbox users who now have a way to play the game without purchasing it through the Xbox Live Arcade), but then again, no PC version exists, so any amount of money lost lies in the realm of the theoretical.
The view was expressed that, with respect to the authors, it is not very nice to publish the game on the PC. I have to argue that the part of the authors are not very nice to publish the game exclusively for the Xbox 360, making it impossible for PC gamers to play such a great game.
About Piracy
Piracy – yes, that is bad. On the other hand, we did not steal the game for the Xbox 360; we released it for the PC port. Given that the developers ignored the PC platform, about any loss of profit for them is not out of the question. After all, if they wanted to earn money, then the game would be issued on all available platforms. If the game came out on PC officially, then this thread would not exist.
On the other hand, James Silva didn't ignore the PC market. The terms of his contract with Microsoft made it exclusively an Xbox title. Again, one can argue against the limitations of the deal or second-guess Silva's wisdom in agreeing to these restrictions, but that doesn't do much to address the issue at hand: how much does Barbarus' port harm Silva and Ska Studios?
Barbarus goes so far as to claim his liberation of Silva's game from the confines of the Xbox was a "restoration of justice" rather than piracy. This it clearly isn't. But it really isn't piracy either, at least not in the normally accepted sense of the word. It's somewhere in between, traveling in the gray area usually populated by emulators and fan translations. The original has been altered, made to do things it normally doesn't (run on other operating systems, speak English) and released to the public.
James Silva's response is understandably conflicted.
“I guess you could say my reaction is mixed. I’m flattered that there’s this much interest in Vampire Smile on PC. I’m not mad about the crack itself; in fact, I’m actually pretty impressed. But I’m bewildered by the cracker’s attempt to justify the morality of it. He assumes a lot about why Vampire Smile’s not on PC yet, and he could have cleared up a lot of those assumptions by just emailing me. I get that piracy is a service problem, but that’s a consequence, not a justification.”If there was a potential PC market for Silva's game, Barbarus has beaten him to market (so to speak) with his own game. Barbarus, for his part, has continued to defend his actions, pointing out that his port is far from perfect...
The PC version has a lot of limitations. Cooperative gameplay is unavailable, network gameplay is unavailable, achievments is unavailable...and offering a bit of an apology to Silva.
I should apologize to James Silva did not put him know before porting. Sorry James. I did not want anything bad. I just wanted to give an opportunity for PC gamers to play this game.A very strange situation. Most people seem to agree that porting a game without the developers' permission is just bad form (at the very least). On the other hand, porting a game to a platform where it isn't currently available does very little harm as it's sort of hard to damage a market that doesn't exist. Could it undercut an official port to the PC? Possibly, but it looks as though Silva is choosing to go the route of combating infringement by crafting a bigger, better version of Dishwasher for the PC.
Sorry the game's not on PC in any official capacity yet! The main reason it's not is because even though the game was developed on a PC, releasing on PC and working out all of the input, display sizes, graphics options involved is a lot of work (and a lot more work than it sounds like!). I know Dean was working on Dust PC for at least a few months before it was even announced (sorry if I've said too much, Dean!), and for us, when Vampire Smile shipped, we were already full speed on Charlie Murder. Once Charlie ships, I'd like to try working on a Vampire Smile PC port, but I'd really like to give it a Director's cut treatment--rework some areas, add environmental hazards and new enemies, etc., so we wouldn't really be missing out if there's a cracked torrent with broken shaders floating around somewhere.And honestly, out of all the possible responses, Silva's chosen the best one. Going legal is prohibitively expensive and tends to turn a certain amount of public opinion against you, no matter how right you are. If an unofficial, cracked port exists, it's not going to be as polished as the original. This weird little saga only adds to the reasons for fans to support Silva when the official PC hits and his graceful handling of this screwed up situation should land Ska Games even more supporters.
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Filed Under: barbarus, cracks, pc games, porting, russia, the dishwasher: vampire smile, video games, xbox, xbox live
Companies: microsoft, ska studios
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An interesting quote, although it isn't a foreign concept to regular readers here.
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Dumb to use morality
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Re: Dumb to use morality
In case someone jumps in saying I shouldn't have done it...
1) I bought my Wii second-hand off of someone on Ebay, thus I have no contractual obligation to Nintendo to Not Do Certain Things.
2) The Wii never greeted me with a splash page saying "Press A to agree to these Terms and Conditions". The first thing it shows you is a Health and Safety warning, which is something completely different
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Re: Re: Dumb to use morality
It's not like you agree to any sort of implied or actual contract (other than give money receive product of course) when you buy retail anyway.
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So, some consoles do have a licensing screen now. Having bought the Wii 2nd hand, if it wasn't set to factory defaults (which may or may not affect the Firmware updates -- I've heard the Wii U keeps the current Firmware version), you had no way of knowing if the Wii has such a screen on first start up or not.
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Re: Dumb to use morality
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Re: Dumb to use morality
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Re: Re: Dumb to use morality
Without piracy software probably be a mirror market of the drug market in the US, it didn't go that route because a) Hackers are shameless pirates and b) Once they got their act together and found a legal framework(i.e. open source) they started to create real competition that keeps in check the most egregious behavior of companies in that market.
This is the difference between having knowledge and not having it, if you have it, you are not bound by the morality or rules of others, if you don't you become enslaved by the people who do have that knowledge.
A simple concept really that even politicians understand perfectly, this is why GPS is not the only satellite navigation system in the world.
This is why people start "hacking" drugs in their homes so they start acquiring the know how to ultimately create their own safety net and not have absurd market distortions created by monopolies like prices that make it cheaper to fly to New Zealand to have an operation with first class treatment than it is to have done in the US.
Personally I think pirating what others did is not really that cool, copying like in making your own version of it I would have no moral problems with it ever, even though some people would disagree with that position, but ultimately I see piracy as not a real problem but a symptom of underlying issues that spawn that kind of behavior, I also believe that it can be good thing for the market and consumers since it practically destroy any wet dreams of monopolizing the market by the force of law alone.
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Re: Dumb to use morality
One of the points in this video is that the next gen of consoles are going to live or die on exclusive games because they have utterly failed to offer other reasons to buy. There's no big jump in fidelity and the boxes are becoming more like the PC's who price can almost match them.
The market is fundamentally different and the result is exclusive games more than ever feel like they are being held hostage as a way to make you buy into a platform you don't want rather than more reason to buy into one you do.
So in that regard I think there is an argument for this action in that it highlights that people are becoming a little sick of being gated from games they want based on having to choose between platforms that have a huge buy in.
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What would happen, then, if the Russian guy just built a wrapper around the XBox game to allow it to run on Windows?
I ask this because that is what WINE does on Linux: it is a set of libraries that implement the Windows API, allowing Windows applications to run on Linux (with varying degrees of success). And this is legal, AFAIK.
IANAL though.
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The sad thing is the anti DRM provisions of the DMCA still probably make this illegal in the US. Even just a wrapper that gets around DRM is illegal here.
Of course, he just released the whole thing as a torrent file. It would have been much more interesting, legally and morally, if he'd done what we are talking about.
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FIrst paragraph admits the real piracy to paying ratio:
You all know it's hordes of pirates to the few who've paid and are inconvenienced by DRM.
"Most people seem to agree that porting a game without the developers' permission is just bad form (at the very least)." -- That's based on common law principles, the same as all copyright: who makes it owns it. But it's quickly ignored here whenever that principle gets in the way of Mega(upload) or other grifters getting cash off someone else's product. You've no consistency except on money, and then it's entirely subjective, not to say selfish: pirates to avoid paying, grifters to divert income streams, but you do generously allow that the producers can try to scrape up what little is left by competing with free from honest people, plus selling T-shirts.
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Re: FIrst paragraph admits the real piracy to paying ratio:
Don't forget the hats!
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Re: FIrst paragraph admits the real piracy to paying ratio:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law
" Charles II of England was concerned by the unregulated copying of books and passed the Licensing of the Press Act 1662 by Act of Parliament,[4] which established a register of licensed books and required a copy to be deposited with the Stationers' Company, essentially continuing the licensing of material that had long been in effect...
The British Statute of Anne (1710)"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#History
"The Copyright Clause of the United States Constitution (1787) authorized copyright legislation:"
(same article)
Copyright is NOT Common Law. It was not decided on a case by case basis by judges. It's origins lie in the parliamentary areas of government. It was enacted by STATUTE, so please, shut the fuck up with your common law bullshit. It is outright false, as false as saying the moon is made of cheese.
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Re: Re: FIrst paragraph admits the real piracy to paying ratio:
So this asshat is arguing a position repudiated in the 19th century.
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Re: Re: Re: FIrst paragraph admits the real piracy to paying ratio:
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Re: Re: FIrst paragraph admits the real piracy to paying ratio:
Don't even bother asking. I've already refuted this point, to him directly:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130412/16073622693/julie-samuels-favorite-techdirt-pos ts-week.shtml#c618
He's obviously not capable of listening to reason. He's just here to recite the same old lies, while believing he's proved something. In other words, he's only interested in making an ass out of himself.
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I really hope you do get payed for this crap (as you have been accused of so many times), for you would never survive in the real world.
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So piracy is the cause of and solution to DRM?
Can I quote you on that?
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Oh, look -- once again it's competition that's incentivizing innovation, not exclusivity. He wants to have a better PC port than the Russian one. Without the Russian port to motivate it, there likely wouldn't have ever been any "director's cut".
Anyone who still thinks that anything remotely resembling copyright is fit for purpose (where that purpose is "promote the progress") at this point must be stark, raving mad.
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Port this
No consoles needed, there is no such thing as piracy of digital crap they are just 1s and 0s and once it hits the net its up for grabs.
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Re: Port this
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I built a theoretical system on NewEgg, but I can't get the sharing link to work correctly...
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Even a MAME port is not out of question it would be painlessly slow but could be done.
The real problem is speed not the emulation, which can be addressed by some clever engineering.
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Vocabulary Modification
Similar vocabulary changes in the European Parliment have shown a pretty impressive increase in how much people think when digesting information related to copyright-related legislation.
Maybe its positive impact could be replicated on internet news sites and their readerships too.
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