ghost
commented
3 months ago It's important to understand the difference between "Free Open Source Software" and "Free/Libre Open Source Software". The first is free to use, the second gives the user freedom.
This software costs no money to use, but does not provide actually provide the user with freedom. I can't think of a single thing more pointless than DRM on an open-source project. The Beat Saber developers clearly do not give a single shit about the modding community, as there are several ways they could implement new music packs without breaking mods, but they still choose to break mods.
This has been an issue since before Facebook even bought Beat Saber, and it's extremely silly to see that this awful DRM check is still here years later. What if someone pirated a game from the trillion-dollar platform?! They would bankrupt instantly!
Basically, the modding developers are trying to appeal to a corporation who actively go out of their way to break their shit. "Why the piracy check?" is a great question that I would love to see the answer to. If pirates can break through DRM no problem, then adding it to an open-source project is literally useless and goes against the nature of free, open source software.
There's no reason for them to try and appeal to Facebook, which has been made clear time and time again. There's no legal obligation for such a check to be added either, after all the game already has DRM, and if the developers wanted to better protect against piracy they would have added a proprietary DRM service such as Denuvo.
Downloading copyrighted content for personal use is also legal in several countries such as Switzerland (as long as that content is not then shared further for monetary gain), not to mention countries with weaker economies where piracy is overwhelmingly common. As such, users accessing the game through completely legal means are blocked from accessing modding tools. Here in India it is very rarely punished.
It's not like this tool can undo piracy of the game or undo whatever 'damage' they believe has been done. This check is pointless by every single metric, and when discussing DRM and piracy I often mention and laugh about this exact project. It is very funny. I cannot fathom anything more useless than open-source software using DRM, let alone DRM for copyright material that is not even theirs.
I imagine this will never be fixed. The developers clearly do not care about this, presumably they all already own the game so the issue they cause can't impact them. Ironically the code that checks the MD5 hash shows that they are continuing to download pirated versions just to block them. Which, assuming they are based in a country with anti-piracy law, is still illegal! So incredibly ironic and horribly funny that they would opt to violate copyright law to protect the copyright of intellectual property they have no affiliation with, rather than just ignore it and let everyone use their software.
mitch030504
im genuinely trying to understand, why the piracy check? this aint nintendo, they aint gonna sue you if you remove it.