Rockstar’s History of Leaks and DRM Issues: From Grand Theft Auto VI to Manhunt

Strong, but imperfect

End of 2022, Rockstar was experiencing a huge leak which showed the first images of a Grand Theft Auto VI in full development: a huge buzz on the net and in the video game industry, provoking the (legitimate) discontent of a firm that has long been essential in the media landscape.

However, this is not the first time that Rockstar has been had. In 2010, data miners realized that their version PC Max Payne 2, purchased directly from Steam, actually contained traces of a crack signed Razor 1911, buried in the .exe file. This crack was basically used to be able to play the game without needing the disc, when the physical format was still present in the Windows sector.

Then, the players realized that Max Payne 2 was not an isolated case: Midnight Club II and Manhunt are also concerned. There version pirated of these games is the one that Rockstar has put online on Steam, in order to sell it to the public.

A history of DRM

YouTuber Vadim M just posted a video recently, exploring the problem and especially for Manhunt and Max Payne 2. As said before, the Razor 1911 crack was originally used to launch the game without the need for the disc and to circumvent the DRM. We explain: when you launch Manhunt, the first layer of DRM (“Digital rights management” as a reminder) will check if you have the game disc. This “examination” is called SecuROM.

The second phase of DRM reacts according to the first. If you have the game disc, then you can play freely (still happy, some would say) ; if you don’t have it, then the game will realize the hack and do everything to harm your experience. For example, all doors will lock as soon as you open one and getting health items will cause freezes, until the title no longer responds to keys pressed after a quarter of an hour of play.

To counter this, the Razor 1911 crack emulated the verification features in DRM, making the game fully playable without discs. The problem is that for one reason or another, Rockstar did have this pirated sale at the public on Steam.

Punished for being straight in his boots

In front of bad-buzz, Rockstar had then replaced the pirated .exe files by others “cleaned” of any crack, in 2010. For Manhunt for example, it is still this version which is sold today on the Valve platform: the real big problem is that by deleting the crack from the game file, Rockstar also deleted all the SecuROM files and updated it, causing the activation of all the maluses normally intended for the pirates of which we spoke to you above. Race results: if you bought the title on Steam after 2010, then you have a version unplayable, although perfectly legal.

“What concerns me here is that they didn’t analyze the binary code to figure out exactly what is fixed in the Razer 1911 copy, or they saw it and left it” admits a cybersecurity expert. ‘I do not arrive to imagine that their engineers saw this and decided not to mask the Razer 1911 crack to conceal it.”

So why would Rockstar consciously sell a version pirated from son own game to Internet users? The firm did not wish to give any answer, but a theory remains: already at the time, since no one had a version physical of PC games, Rockstar would have simply used crack (after all very functional) to directly sell digital copies, without having to invest time and money itself to make these copies playable without disc. One hell of a story…