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Hello, is it an official forum? Are illegal matters ok here (cracks, mods, cheats, scripts etc)?

Welcome!

The posting language is English. No illegal stuff, no pornography, no spam links, no links to cracks, etc. We have a zero tolerance policy towards piracy because we are in contact with a lot of developers and we know they are all hard-working people who deserve to be paid for the long hours at the office.
Our forum is not official. So you can express your opinion freely as long as you don´t insult anybody. Diskussing mods and fan patches is of course okay.

Originally Posted by The Dzopas
Hello, is it an official forum? Are illegal matters ok here (cracks, mods, cheats, scripts etc)?

Mods, cheats and scripts aren't illegal, only cracks are. Modding should be encouraged, cause it brings new things to the same game. A cheat or a script is in fact not so different from a mod, cause like a mod it changes the game, mostly giving it a higher replay value.
A crack however is imo only meant to make a copy of the game and by this distributing it. And yes, I know that some of us like to make an iso on their HD of their own purchased CD/DVD, but I don't see the point of doing that (it runs marginally better)

Originally Posted by Bartacus
And yes, I know that some of us like to make an iso on their HD of their own purchased CD/DVD, but I don't see the point of doing that (it runs marginally better)

Some people also don't like to dig for CD's when starting a game. When you have 30+ games on your HD, it's nice to just click the icon without worrying which game is in the drive. Then, some older games will have you swap discs during the game. For the ones that have copy-protection, it's a godsend to just mount another image, or in some cases, have the game switch to a new virtual drive automatically, thus eliminating the need for disc swapping altogether.

I know that The Pandora Directive has gone up 300% in value now that I'm playing it off the HD 100%. Of course, the game doesn't have copy-protection…

Cracks are not illegal unless you use them for illegal purposes. Taking a backup or ripping your own game, then cracking it to play it without a DVD/CD, is legal as far as I know.

Originally Posted by Maylander
Cracks are not illegal unless you use them for illegal purposes. Taking a backup or ripping your own game, then cracking it to play it without a DVD/CD, is legal as far as I know.

You can't really put it in general terms like that. What is legal or illegal obviously depends on each country's own jurisdiction. What's legal in Norway may be illegal in Germany, the UK or the US.
For example, what you described, i.e. "cracking a game to play it w/o a DVD/CD" is illegal in Germany. It is illegal over here to circumvent a copy protection mechanism. What's funny is that it is legal to make private copies for backup, however.
So we have this paradoxical situation here that -yes- you are allowed to make backup copies of your games, music etc but -no- you are not allowed to circumvent the copy protection on the disk to do so.
This means that in practice you need to hope that it is possible to make a 1:1 image of the media without the need to break or circumvent any copy protection. The right to make a backup is not an acceptable justification for working around the copy protection. Cracks/hacks/anything that helps in circumventing the copy protection is simply illegal here.

And Mo would NEVER do anything illegal!! (He's a bird lover)

You actually can't crack your own copies according to certain laws in certain countries? I thought sites like GameCopyWorld were perfectly legal in most nations, and they supply tools to copy/crack games for personal use.

Maybe they are perfectly legal in some countries.
It´s a difference to offer a crack and to actually use it. The latter is illegal in Germany. Whether anybody cares about it, including publishers, is a different question.

Another interesting detail is that in Germany consumer software is usually not "licensed" but "purchased". Which makes all the nasty details in the EULA hard to enforce because they are not visible when the contract between retailer and customer is made at the store´s cash desk.

Originally Posted by Corwin
And Mo would NEVER do anything illegal!! (He's a bird lover)

i r teh gangstah!!!1111one!!! --- ph34r miiii!!!!1111one!

You actually can't crack your own copies according to certain laws in certain countries? I thought sites like GameCopyWorld were perfectly legal in most nations, and they supply tools to copy/crack games for personal use.

That's right. The criminal (= punishable) act according to our laws in Germany is circumventing the copy protection. I do not think that downloading a crack or possessing one is illegal… just like buying a kitchen knife isn't illegal. It only becomes illegal if and when you use it to circumvent the copy protection or to stab someone, respectively. I'm not sure if running the GCW servers in Germany would be legal but in some countries it obviously is legal since merely offering the cracks doesn't seem to be a punishable act under certain countries' jurisdictions.
BTW, I do use a no-CD/DVD crack for Gothic III since I'm too lazy to look for the DVD every time I want to play the game but don't tell anyone .

Don't worry Mo, WE won't!!

Yes, the German laws are a bit confusing.

Originally Posted by Corwin
Don't worry Mo, WE won't!!

Are you speaking in plural about yourself these days, Corwin?

Yes We are!!

Gaaghh………… and we have to play NWN with them later today?

Originally Posted by Cm
Gaaghh………… and we have to play NWN with them later today?

Sounds like you're suffering from the same dissease, CM. Perhaps it's an elderly thing?

While being legal or not, i do use nocd cracks for single play games, but not for online games, since punkbuster doesn't like modified exe files, i hate being forced to insert a cd everytime i want to play a game. All my games are legally bought, so in my opinion it's up to me whether i use cracks or not.