Posted By
Luca
on 2025-02-05
10:27:03
 |  Re: Balatro
@Csabo basically it usually works like you've already described, but I think that into certain bounds, changing a title is not enough, and we had some veeery on-topic past case studies about that, even since 1987: the Katakis/Denaris and the Giana Sisters precedents. Plus, we also have ancient stories of sued programmers in the Atari golden era, and so many others nowadays from the 5th generation consoles and forward.
Said that, as I wrote in the previous text, Playstack shot their own feet with this miserable and grotesque request. They probably tested their power to shield their products against a dummy enemy. Certainly, no one with an healthy mind could wonder stuff like "Oh if they're gonna to play the PETSCII version, they won't buy the original on Steam and GoG!" 
About the C64 crackers: well, you've probably met my comment under the release of the Preview 3 by Blazon, so you know how I was a tad scandalised by the hungry need to release something which is unavailable yet.
Nonetheless, I must point out that the meaning of "crack" got pushed beyond the strict meaning of "unlocking a protection" since the '80s: passing thru any possible protection is only one of the many "services" which allow to completely exploit the game, and fully expose it to show all its potential.
You are probably all aware of the scoring system to be assigned to the aforementioned individual characteristics added to a crack, in order to feed "The List", the great ranking that has been updated for more than thirty years now, aimed at rewarding the best cracking groups, who compete for time and quality to climb position after position year after year.
On the other hand, the presence of crackers who were responsible for examining the games, fixing them, saving them, finding them if lost, reconstructing them if never completed, is undoubtedly a resource of constructiveness in the Scene.
Half way of these two visions, there it lies the ethic of the Cracker, between the river of the hasty and amoral rush to crack just to get there before others, and the river of positive motivations that lead him to take care of the fruit of the programming made by others before him.
You know that for a few years I have imported both the practice and the lexicon of the cracking scene onto our shores, in some way sponsoring and encouraging it. Maybe even too much, which sometimes triggers justified irony from, for example, @Chronos
Well, all those cracks have been released to respond directly to a specific need: repair a level, publish a first perfectly functional crack that was previously missing, add new commands to be able to play it well, improve the graphics consistently, and so on.
None of them are purely unrealistic (at least, I hope so, and I tried to), and this is my personal vision of cracking scene, according to the standards that I consider consistent with it. |
