Rockstar sells cracked versions of its own games ‘Midnight Club 2’, ‘Max Payne 2’, and ‘Manhunt’ on Steam

New York-based game developer Rockstar Games suffered a huge embarrassment when it accidentally sold the cracked version of some popular games like ‘Midnight Club 2’, ‘Max Payne 2’, and ‘Manhunt’ on Steam.

Generally, cracked versions are immensely popular as they offer some top-rated titles free of cost. However, most of these cracked versions contain files that can damage the systems on which they are downloaded. Earlier the data miners found that Rockstars was selling cracked copies on Steam. Now it is confirmed.

Rockstar Games and Razor1911

In a Twitter (now X) post, game developer Silent claimed to have found these cracked versions on Midnight Club 2. It said that the racing game contained a file belonging to a group called Razor1911. This group has been disbanded, but once it was popular for releasing crack versions.




Silent said in another post, “This gets better - Razor's crack is fine, The reason both Midnight Club 2 and Manhunt crashed when these cracks were in use was the fact that Steam DRM included a .bind section that was code not marked as code - thus tripping Data Execution Prevention.”

Steam version of ‘Manhunt’

A similar problem was reported for the Steam version of ‘Manhunt’ as the files belonging to Myth were found, but they were unused. Players had to pay for this game, which could have been downloaded free otherwise. In an X post, Silent said, “Manhunt has more issues indeed, .bind section being just one of them. Midnight Club 2 on the other hand works fine, a retail no-CD works fine without any changes, so does a Steam test with Steamless applied.”

Rockstar silent

This development has put Rockstar in a weird situation, no game developer wants to associate itself with piracy as the laws related to it are strict. Rockstar Games are silent on these issues and it may further complicate the matter.

FAQs

Why the cracked versions are popular among users?

The cracked versions are popular among game users because they can enjoy the top-rated games for free. But they also are exposed to the problem because the cracked versions can damage their systems.

What Rockstar Games has said?

Rockstar Games is simply silent on the issue, it has not said anything, complicating the issue further as there are strict anti-piracy laws.