Crax Payne 2: Rockstar’s Suspected Steam Blunder

If you own a Steam copy of Max Payne 2, you may have noticed it updating today.

This update had nothing to do with adding features to a seven year old title, and everything to do with removing embarrassing evidence that appeared to show Rockstar circumnavigating the game’s DRM by … err … using a no-CD crack created by the Myth group.

As noted by an eagle-eyed Steam forum poster, when Max Payne 2’s executable was viewed with a hex editor the Myth logo appeared in ASCII text.

After today’s rapid Steam update, this is no longer the case. Whether somebody actually updated the code as well as simply removing the logo is not known.

In 2008, talking about the decision to implement SecuROM in the PC release of GTA IV, Rockstar said: “Having copy protection allows us to protect the integrity of our titles and future investments.”

Indeed, SecuROM protects the game so well that even people buying GTA IV in 2010 continue to have problems running it.

Myth may have been able to offer a quick solution to those issues too, but the group has been defunct since the FBI shut it down in 2005.