Game Development Community

Piracy of newer versions of TGEA - NOT COOL

by Ronald J Nelson · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 03/04/2009 (3:21 pm) · 14 replies

I found this by accident while looking around the internet for others that work with TGEA. I hope the staff can shut this nonsense down.

I put the link in the private section since everyone that has access to this is already a license owner.

www.namln.com/2009/02/torque-game-engine-advanced-sdk-18-171.html?showComment=12...
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Torque 3D Owner Deborah M. Fike
Default Studio Name
#1
03/04/2009 (3:47 pm)
Thanks, Ron. We'll see what we can do to shut this down. (Fighting Internet piracy is kind of like fighting the ocean with a teacup, though :P)

Associate Steve Acaster
[YorkshireRifles.com]
#2
03/04/2009 (4:41 pm)
rapidshare links, should be fairly straight forward to get pulled.

Torque Owner Mike Rowley
Mike Rowley
#3
03/04/2009 (5:01 pm)
Piracy is not cool at all. www.stampoutpiracy.com/

Torque 3D Owner Brett Seyler
Default Studio Name
#4
03/04/2009 (5:56 pm)
Thanks for pointing this out, Ron. Dealing with this kind of stuff is like whack a mole. It rarely makes sense for us to spend time squashing it. We hope we do a good enough job building good products that people will want to do the right thing and pay us for them, but obviously that's not always true. In any case, I'd rather spend our time working on the products than worrying about pirates. Chasing them down just *feels* self-defeating and I hate DRM too much to try to spend much time implement something like that. Plus, with our available source model, it's nearly impossible to do anyway.

Associate Steve Acaster
[YorkshireRifles.com]
#5
03/04/2009 (6:46 pm)
I suppose the good news for GG is that it's operation is setup in such a way that without the treasures locked within the Private forums/resources, any pirate isn't going far on their own, and if they were serious about making anything with Torque, they wouldn't be warezing it in the first place. (but maybe I'm niave - shrugs)

I do feel that the Private forum/resources setup offers the best possible form of DRM, both to GG and us humble users.

Associate Manoel Neto
Default Studio Name
#6
03/05/2009 (11:45 am)
Steve is right, it's not like random pirates will be able do anything with it without community access anyway, so it's not worth spending precious resources on it. But reporting illegal RapidShare links you stumbled upon randomly doesn't hurt.

Associate Konrad Kiss
Bitgap Games
#7
03/05/2009 (12:44 pm)
I did some searching... here's more bad news

I went to the cracker team's home page. Here's their Torque-related inventory:

TGEA up to 1.8.0, even 1.0.1
TGE 1.5.2
Torsion (several versions),
RTS Starter kit,
RTS Environment Kit,
TGB 1.7.4 (and other versions),
Torque MMO Kit 1.3,
"Some Torque stuff you'll like" (whatever that is),
Torque Content Packs: Medieval Weapons Pack
AFX (seems to be a part of some 8GB pack)
AFX ComboPack
TorqueX
Game Programmers Guide To Torque (the book)
Showtool Pro
Constructor
PD Particles
Arteria-Gaming Fantasy and dungeon music and sound packs
RTS Building Packs - Orcs
RTS Building Packs - Humans
Dream Games' MMORPG Kit
Basic Torque Motion
SynapseGaming Torque Lighting Kit

A user named Blackcode is behind posting most of these as far as I could tell. Some other names that came up as submitters were LinXP, s2003r, BinaryN3wZ, St0nehead, xa3apg, cha0s, segafan, nabarunr.1, but I haven't found anything about them here.

My russian is very very bad, but as much as I hate to see it, I've seen one familiar nick thanking for a TGEA release. He is a currently active member of our community. He submitted the GPGTT book to that site 2 years ago.

I am not going to say his name here, because I an thinking that I must be wrong, and its probably (hopefully) some mistake.

I am hoping he will explain stuff here before anyone'd taint his name.

--Konrad

Torque Owner Brandon Baker
World Core Studios
#8
03/05/2009 (1:10 pm)
ya its hard trying to find all these cracker jackers they do need to be taking down though. i not saying to be taken down lightly ether.

Torque 3D Owner Deborah M. Fike
Default Studio Name
#9
03/05/2009 (1:22 pm)
@Konrad: Feel free to e-mail me the name of the community member and we'll investigate, and not mention that you reported him/her. I'd rather not name anyone either...it's best to handle these privately.

deborahm@garagegames.com

Associate Konrad Kiss
Bitgap Games
#10
03/05/2009 (2:20 pm)
@Deborah: I'd hate to make any accusations behind his back. I'll get in touch with him and ask him to contact you. I hope you understand. If I were in his shoes, I'd probably appreciate the same opportunity.

Torque 3D Owner Deborah M. Fike
Default Studio Name
#11
03/05/2009 (2:37 pm)
@Konrad: That's fine too. I'm with you on not blindly accusing people.

Torque Owner Andy Rollins
ZDay Game
#12
03/06/2009 (2:12 am)
Just did a quick search and appears this stuff from blackcode is available on some Bittorrent sites to, it's a 900mb download so must contain a fair whack of stuff.

I know how hard it can be to try and police anti-piracy of your software.

Associate Tom Spilman
Sickhead Games
#13
03/06/2009 (3:39 pm)
@Konrad & Deborah - I outed 'blackcode' in an associates forum thread about 2 years ago (old unreachable forum thread). Back then i seem to remember that his access to Torsion and other products he was pirating was revoked as well as forum access.


Torque 3D Owner Bo Bjering
#14
03/24/2009 (11:40 am)
In the end, it doesnt really matter though.

They cannot release anything they make until they have a valid license (would be pretty stupid, easy to track the creators down), and its quite easy to see if the game is using TGEA or not.

Of course piracy sucks, and i payed, so should they, but i for one aint wasting time hunting them down (not saying you shoudnt) :).