Ubisoft Steals 'No-CD Crack' To Fix Rainbow 6: Vegas 2

[Zakamiro]

UbiSoft has long been against No-CD patches. Referring to them on their forums would get you warned or banned. But now, they have just officially released a patch for Rainbow 6: Vegas 2, which, when opened in a hex editor, can easily be identified as coming from the RELOADED scene group, not from UbiSoft programmers. A picture of hex analysis is shown in the story. See? Piracy isn't that bad! It saves you from having to code fixes for your own games! (Watch the drama on the Ubi Forums before it gets scrubbed clean.)

[MortifiedocAlot]

But my point was. Ubisoft stole & used a no-cd crack from an illegal pirate release group as a means to fix a problem that they created.

..... .

Oh lawd, that's rather shitty. I seriously think gaming companies have their heads up their asses half the time.

[Bobbias]

Hah, I saw something about this earlier. That's pretty funny. Reloaded is a great group though. They make some pretty cool work. Class is another great group, and they have Cracktros with some wicked ass music too.

Lol @ the morons on that site. There's only one person with a functioning brain in that thread so far.

[Spectere]

I'm kinda doubting that it's as cut-and-dry as that.

Really, there's no reason that Ubisoft wouldn't be able to easily disable the protection itself.  R6V2 is a multiplatform game so there would have to be a way to easily disable the PC CD protection.  I highly doubt it was a company sanctioned decision to use the RELOADED crack.

[Bobbias]

Well, people have been suggesting that if they didn't have the actual programmers available to do anything, they might have done this.

[MortifiedocAlot]

So they were too busy to fix a large bug in their own damn game? Hell, they should AT LEAST give the people who made it credit.

[Spectere]

It's not so much that it's a bug in the game, it's that the wrong executable (one that checks for a CD) was given as an update for Direct2Drive customers (who, obviously, don't have CDs).

I'm just really having a hard time seeing why this would have happened.  When a big company like Ubi would do an update, wouldn't they simultaneously build releases for all platforms?  After all, the game is available for the PC, PC via D2D, Xbox 360, and PS3.  I just don't understand why they wouldn't have an uncracked executable readily available as part of their build process (a Ubi employee even alluded to that fact in the thread that Z linked to).

What I find amusing are people that suggest that RELOADED should sue.  Are you fucking kidding me?  Are people seriously that bloody stupid?  If the judge didn't laugh that case out of the courtroom I'd be disappointed.

[Bobbias]

Well, D2D is separate from Ubisoft. D2D has to rewrite portions of the game code to be compatible with their security system as opposed to checking for CDs, and has been known for being ungodly slow at releasing patches for their versions.

[Spectere]

If D2D handles the patches themselves that could explain why Ubi had to step in.

Even so, you'd think that disabling the protection would be a matter of flipping one compiler switch (since the Xbox 360/PS3 versions obviously don't have SafeDisc/SecuROM/whatever) and pushing out a release.  Definitely not something that would require more than one or two programmers.

[Zakamiro]

Ubi says that they have all of the original source code, and that making a suitable update would be easy... If this was the case, why wasn't it done?

[Bobbias]

Yeah, true. I honestly don't know why they did this, but i still think it's pretty funny.

[MortifiedocAlot]

Ubi says that they have all of the original source code, and that making a suitable update would be easy... If this was the case, why wasn't it done?

Because they're french.

[Spectere]

Ubi says that they have all of the original source code, and that making a suitable update would be easy... If this was the case, why wasn't it done?

Probably because the tech support department (or whoever was responsible for pushing out the patch) wasn't following company policy.  It certainly wouldn't be the first time something like that happened.

Really, what other reason could there be?  The programming staff just didn't feel like building an unprotected executable that day?  I don't see how it could be anything but an employee with power doing something that he/she wasn't supposed to do.  That's basically the only explanation that makes any logical sense in this case.

Edit: Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that this is the right way to do it (though really, when you think about it, RELOADED did illegally distribute a modified version of their binary), I'm just saying that I doubt the company just went ahead and said, "RELOADED's good, right?  Let's just release their crack, official-like!"

[Bobbias]

Yeah, it certainly sounds like someone just released it bypassing company policy.