Does Cloanto bundle cracked games?

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by malko

What about adding a poll about correctness of Clanto's behaviour ?

I just read the thread about how "bad" the vampire team is and that the members should be banned. There is obvious lots of haters in the community and they use legal discussions because that is better looking than just saying "I hate Vampire and I hate the Vampire team".

Then I look at the current eab threads and what I see...

the next "I hate XXX thread" masked as "XXX is doing something bad"

In this case Cloanto

funnily most active are people who are involved in another "OS development project to update 3.1"

What a surprise

That includes the moderators here (at least partly)

Be at least honest... "I hate Vampire and the team" and "I hate Cloanto because I am a big fan of Hyperion"

That would be something. I rarely look in this forum and almost never post anything here because of the people here (the same BTW on amiga-news.de forum). It just nerves today...

If there is a discussion about Aros the same people pop up. Discussions about legality are more difficult then of course but it is still possible to downtalk it without knowledge. If you ask what and when they have used it mostly no answer. Always the same scheme. BTW the same regarding f.e. Magellan. "I do not like it". If asked "why" and "what are the problems" mostly no answer. The same if asked when they used it...

Regarding using cracked software... I know of cases where the copyright owners no longer could offer his original software so the cracked versions were the only software available.

[malko]

^@OlafSch : Take responsibility for what you say without arguing behind a quote that has nothing to do with what you're saying.

[rsn8887]

Indeed any persons work is their copyright by default. So cracktros are copyrighted, no?

[chip]

Good question .....

[rsn8887]

I think if Cloanto had any decency, they would offer original unmodified versions of games, or remove protection themselves, instead of including cracked versions.

This is not so much a matter of legality for me, but a question of laziness and unprofessionalism on Cloanto's side.

Also, did Cloanto thoroughly test all the cracked versions they bundle to make sure they are bundling 100% versions? Many cracks had problems. For example, some cracks were sometimes based on pre-release versions, or would crash later in the game towards the end, because the crack wasn't 100%. Did Cloanto actually play through all the bundled cracked games to make sure they are 100%?

Or does Cloanto just bundle some untested stuff, like they did with bundled beta and hacked unofficial kickstart roms back in the 90s?

This makes me wonder, do they even have the license for WinUAE? And are they bundling a tested, newest version of WinUAE? Or do they give users old, obsolete WinUAE emulator versions with known problems?

I don't know what more to say. By bundling cracked versions of games, Cloanto pretty much lost all my remaining trust. Not that I had much trust in them after I found out they bundled hacked, unofficial kick.rom files with some additional DRM crap in my commercial copy of Amiga Forever that I own.

[chip]

I use emulation, so i am actually not interested in commercial Amiga packages

But for sure i would never pay for cracked games

[rsn8887]

I agree, it seems insane. Bottom Line: Cloanto wants you to pay money to get cracked games. WTF?

Also, at least in my AF version, they don't even include the manuals to the games.

Indeed: No box artwork, no manuals, nothing. All you get from Cloanto is a single screenshot and a two sentence description like "Blasteroids: A good coin-op conversion inspired by one of the original arcade games."

Cloanto was too lazy even to scan in the manuals of the games they bundle? Seriously?

They are treating their own bundled games like trash.

Shame.

Their package is a joke.

[Exodous]

Originally Posted by rsn8887

This makes me wonder, do they even have the license for WinUAE? And are they bundling a tested, newest version of WinUAE? Or do they give users old, obsolete WinUAE emulator versions with known problems?

On Windows, if you right click on the "winuae.exe" (or "winuae64.exe"), click "Properties", then look at the "Digital Signatures" tab, you'll find that the executable is signed with Cloanto's digital signature.


Therefore, I would say that the answer to the first question is yes, they have some arrangement with Toni.


And for the second one, the latest Amiga Forever 8 comes with the version of WinUAE that was current when it was released. If you update AF from within it's interface, it updates WinUAE to 4.4.0, which is the current version as of me typing this.

[sparhawk]

Originally Posted by rsn8887

I agree, it seems insane. Bottom Line: Cloanto wants you to pay money to get cracked games. WTF?

That's a bit misleading. It's probably rather, they want you to pay for games they licensed (which is perfectly valid), but they took the easy way by providing cracked versions. It's probably more effort to make sure that protected games really work.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by OlafSch

the next "I hate XXX thread" masked as "XXX is doing something bad"

In this case Cloanto

funnily most active are people who are involved in another "OS development project to update 3.1"

What a surprise

Err, what? Just black and white thinking? I am against selling games with dubious information in them, so I must be a fan of Hyperion? The world is not that simple, mate. I'm not a fan of Hyperion at all, they are a disfunctional company. But neither am I a fan of people that pirate software from colleagues, or sell software that has a certain "smell".

Originally Posted by OlafSch

Be at least honest... "I hate Vampire and the team" and "I hate Cloanto because I am a big fan of Hyperion"

Which is just wrong. I'm not at all affiliated with Hyperion at all these days, and neither a fan of their disfunctional company. I am a bit involved in iComp as you might have observed. Do you know why? Quite simple: Jens *paid* my fellow developer colleagues, unlike the vampire team that just took what they wanted. See the difference?

Originally Posted by OlafSch

If there is a discussion about Aros the same people pop up. Discussions about legality are more difficult then of course but it is still possible to downtalk it without knowledge. If you ask what and when they have used it mostly no answer. Always the same scheme.

No, not the same scheme. I just don't use it. I do not make any claims about its value or legitimity. I just don't see the point, and I neither want to entangle you in IP problems that may arise if I would engage myself. You know that.

Originally Posted by OlafSch

Regarding using cracked software... I know of cases where the copyright owners no longer could offer his original software so the cracked versions were the only software available.

I believe I mentioned this possibilty, and in fact, I do not know what they own or do not own or from whom they licensed. However, as a maintainer of such software, offering this to customers as business for profit, I would at least make a bonified attempt of making the thing *look* legit and remove "cracking" notices, and potentially even replace them by a "licenced to Cloanto". Not that it would be overly hard to do - after all, the thing is cracked already, and they do have licence to resell, don't they?

[lilalurl]

Let's stick to Cloanto, AF and cracked games guys.

[boatofcar]

So I've been alerted that somewhere in this thread someone heard Aaron and I talking about this on the show. After talking to Mike from Cloanto, it appears they have licensed the titles they include with the package, but maintain their cracked versions for ease of use as well as a nod to the groups that provided them. They include this information in the Amiga Forever software itself. See the screenshot below. I apologize if our comments on Amigos led anyone astray--it's possible we were not aware of this at the time either.

[rsn8887]

I wouldn’t mind if they provided the cracked versions as an additional option to choose from in addition to unmodified versions.

But only including the cracks is not ok IMO. It is legal because they have the license, but I find it unprofessional. Also it is misleading because if I buy a commercial package I don’t expect to get cracks.

Explaining it in a tooltip doesn’t make it ok.

Missing box art scans and manual scans is also not ok for a package like AF. It comes across as not treating the games with respect but just slamming something together with absolute minimum effort.

Of course they can do whatever they want with AF but I wonder how many other users were disappointed seeing cracked games bundled.

[alpine9000]

It’s a really interesting question as to if distribution of a cracked game would be legal even with the permission of the rights holder of the original game. A cracked game would be an unauthorised derivative work, but that doesn’t give the game rights holder authority to authorise distribution of the derivative work. I guess you would need permission from the rights holder of both the original game and the crack/intro.

In reality a moot point, but interesting at least for me to think about.

The thought of hypothetically a cracking group taking action against illegal distribution of their work, really cracks me up

[Tomislav]

I think that is because it is harder to remove copy protection for each game (and somebody already did that job). Also, disk images as ipf, fdi and scp can be very big. And to find which originals will work or not as adf is time consuming job. That's why they provided already cracked versions of games.

[Shadowfire]

Originally Posted by robinsonb5

(I'd agree, however, that the chances of anyone coming after them for it are vanishingly tiny.)

I agree, the crackers would probably not want to bring people to court over copyright violations when they themselves were liable for it.
Only in corporate America (specifically, overprotective legal departments) could you possibly have the prerequisite, staggering amount of hubris to pull a stunt like that.

[Lord Aga]

Genius move! Piracy worldwide drops to 0%

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Shadowfire

I agree, the crackers would probably not want to bring people to court over copyright violations when they themselves were liable for it.
Only in corporate America (specifically, overprotective legal departments) could you possibly have the prerequisite, staggering amount of hubris to pull a stunt like that.

It blows my mind to think about it. It would be a good question for Legal Eagle to cover in lieu of an actual court case.

[fractalsister]

Originally Posted by rsn8887

I wouldn’t mind if they provided the cracked versions as an additional option to choose from in addition to unmodified versions.

But only including the cracks is not ok IMO. It is legal because they have the license, but I find it unprofessional. Also it is misleading because if I buy a commercial package I don’t expect to get cracks.

Explaining it in a tooltip doesn’t make it ok.

Missing box art scans and manual scans is also not ok for a package like AF. It comes across as not treating the games with respect but just slamming something together with absolute minimum effort.

Of course they can do whatever they want with AF but I wonder how many other users were disappointed seeing cracked games bundled.

99.9 % of the users who buy AF will probably download and set up the games separately anyway; I see the inclusion of a bunch of fully-licenced games more as a convenience, so that the user can try out the installation directly and see that everything works.


Personally, I'd take a game with a crack intro over one without anytime; the intros are an integral part of loading up an old game.

[fxgogo]

Agreed. I consider them an added bonus. Could care less if they were cracked or not.

rsn8887 raises an interesting point around the box art, manuals etc. I would like to see that included. I have not investigated the RP9 container heavily, but I seem to remember there was places to add that detail. I would then like a view where the box art is the displayed format.