darkSpyro

http://www.escapistmagazine.co...ease-and-Desist

Apparently some guy (whom hacks only for good nature) was going to hack into Skylanders, and before he could even complete any sort of data, Activision sent him a warning in the form of a cease and desist letter. The guy was essentially going to try and hack into the game and it's security, so that he wouldn't have to buy figures and would have all of them on the spot.

The strange part is that he didn't break any of Activision's terms of service at the moment, so it appears as though Activision was a little quick to judge on this.

Just something worth sharing.

P.S. I find it odd that Activision is so quick to get their lawyers on this, but they take ages (if ever) to respond to standard customer feedback, service, or questions.

I don't see why some fans can't just be patient instead of resorting to do hacks to get the other Skylanders...

It's better to have the actual figures. It takes the point of the game away if they are just their in the game and not in your hands.

The unreleased Skylanders haven't been fully registered into the game yet, which can result in a very bad hack.

Some guy posted videos of him playing as the unreleased Skylanders, Camo and Cynder, and uploaded them on Youtube but those characters still have the names Spyro and Trigger Happy as their official names, which means the hacker overwrited the original game models of Spyro and Trigger Happy and simply replaced them with the models of Camo and Cynder.

Activision got to him though, as fans were starting to question how the hacker 'got' the other unreleased Skylanders.

aura24 you are wrong. the videos on youtube are the PC version with the hacked folders thing. (done by a totally different guy)

the emulator this guy wanted to make was probably a bit too much. even tho it would have been for a $100 dollar plus calculator and needed extensive knowledge of computers to make work. what the guy actually released was just the data about what part of the figures memory stores what, he never actually released anything. he just had his source of his little program to read and write information on his webpage for like 2 days before activision sent a lawyer to his door.
And i dont know why this is news all of a sudden, this happened in OCTOBER. for some reason all the news sites picked this up today.

for anyone how knows the joys of making their toys/computers/phones/etc do stuff they werent intended to do, like a rooted android device, a jailbroken iphone, linux on everything, etc etc. its an act of love for that device that we want to use it for everything its capable of.

I know it's not the same person, exo. You misread my post.

Hacking is pointless, it just gets you in to troubble.

Speaking of sneaky thing I am looking round Dark52's Skylanders lair now

Nice lair Dark52!

sorry for misreading your post aura
without hacking we'd be stuck with locked down os's forced app stores, no freedom to customize or do anything to anything you own. if you want to modify bits of data on a memory chip, or paint the thing yellow, itd be your toy to mess with. hacking pushes the limits and makes things excel in areas were it wouldnt have if just left to be..

It shouldn't matter as long as they aren't hacking the game AND THEN SELLING IT TO SOMEONE ELSE FOR MONEY.

It shouldn't matter unless they are stealing something from someone's account or whatnot.

Hacking is completely fine as long as it's not used for evil.

That's my 2 cents.

Quote: Aura24

I don't see why some fans can't just be patient instead of resorting to do hacks to get the other Skylanders...

He wasn't doing this to exploit Activision and get them for free.

This guy is generally just an experimenter.

Sadly, that's how it goes in the corporate world. All of our laws are set up to protect them, and they can pretty much do whatever they want. It stinks to be a human being in a world that is essentially run by balance sheets and quarterly earnings statements, but that's the depressing reality of it. Poor guy.

Was he right to hack Skylanders? Eh, morality is all subjective. It's not my place to say. This is definitely disproportionate retribution, though.

Quote: Tashiji

Was he right to hack Skylanders? Eh, morality is all subjective. It's not my place to say. This is definitely disproportionate retribution, though.

In all fairness, Activision simply sent him a cease and desist - they did not press charges or initiate litigation. Heavy handed? Yes. Disproportionate? Not so much...

How the hell did they even find him? Was he stupid enough to go online with it and just go "Oh hey I am going to hack this now don't arrest me"

FYI, Hacking is illegal.

So is emulation...but that hasn't stopped me yet.

neither is illegal by itself, its when you try to use those things to do something different is when it gets bad and ppl get all scaredy cat. the game genie, gameshark, pro action replay, all devices that let you cheat in your games. but now cheating is just not morally something something, even if its offline, just for fun, cease and desist!!!!!111!1!!!

Quote: Jackson117

How the hell did they even find him? Was he stupid enough to go online with it and just go "Oh hey I am going to hack this now don't arrest me"

yes he actually did that.... here is what he wrote...

Quote:

Why am I talking about [Skylanders?] Because I documented the protocol it uses, and the encryption method used to store data on the toys.

I plan to work on emulating the portal using an 84+/SE or 89Ti for all the major consoles. And for the Xbox 360, it's especially interesting because I'll have to work around the Infineon security chip that protects the Xbox 360 from third-party USB peripherals.

I could go into further detail, but then I'd sound more and more crazy, so perhaps I'll wait until I get basic portal emulation working. Stay tuned!

Quote: Jackson117

How the hell did they even find him? Was he stupid enough to go online with it and just go "Oh hey I am going to hack this now don't arrest me"

He did, as seen in the post above me, and in the link itself.

The problem is that he's posted about his tinkering several times, and only now got any sort of action taken against him....................before he even did anything or break any terms of service.