GTA 6 leaks prompt Take-Two to subpoena Microsoft for Windows device IDs of everyone in three Discord servers — daily gameplay leaks shatter cloud of secrecy around the much-hyped game
Tom's Hardware
GTA 6 leaks prompt Take-Two to subpoena Microsoft for Windows device IDs of everyone in three Discord servers — daily gameplay leaks shatter cloud of secrecy around the much-hyped game
The publisher wants MachineGuid identifiers, login IPs, and OneDrive contents by September 4.
It’s my understanding that this essentially amounts to the legal and collateral doxing of hundreds of thousands of people, if it spans all members of these servers.
Stop using Windows. Stop using Discord.
Where will i post the classified documents if not discord?
War Thunder forums.
Depends on the classification. TS is only approved on Signal group chats.
You can join my Stoat I’ll add a chat for you near the top of the list.
https://stt.gg/Nmysvqc8
It’s not encrypted at the moment, though, but if the other members stay dormant I’ll consider it.
Why use a password manager if you can send yourself a list with your most used passwords?
Yep. On it almost a year now, ever since 10 was EOL’d and I learned Discord was building a profile on every user based on usage.
Linux has been awesome and Discord mostly sucked anyway.
What solution did you end up on post Discord? If you had a group of people you communicated on Discord with, did you have luck migrating them out? I’d like to move, but my use is already really minimal and I feel like getting my friend group out is going to be difficult to non-existent in some cases.
Matrix is what I moved to. To make transition easier for my core friends I wrote a guide with step by step instructions and pre-made a replica of our discord server. I got probably 70% of them to come over.
The real hit was large communities. For roughly a month I came in daily letting my communities know about what was happening and that I was gonna switch so if people wanted to find me here is where they could find me. I got 3 kinds of replies:
Moving to the new platform, giving a grace period to friends, and then moving and cutting contact with the platform had the highest success rate. People that want to talk with you will move, even if it’s just to only talk with you. But the hardest thing is accepting that some people just don’t care about their privacy and want the easy to use features enough that they are willing to lose contact with you.
None. I was never invested in it very heavily. I had one channel that I was a pretty involved member on but the whole “you don’t have to tell them how old you are, they’re going to use an algorithm and your usage patterns to deduce it,” I was just haha no, fuck that, and I quit.
Fair enough. I strictly use it for comms in games I play with friends. I’m not active in any other communities and I’m certainly not paying for nitro. I’d like to migrate but getting everyone to do so probably won’t happen. I could maybe convince my closest game friends, but I have a clan in a game with people I don’t know that we use discord to chat. Definitely not getting all 40+ to move.
Can’t speak for the other person, but I just left. Told my old groups I couldn’t stand Discord. Sometimes you don’t need an alternative idk I just chat with deferent people on different programs now.
My irl friends think I’m a weirdo but I’m at peace, and they know how to reach me.
They’re fishing with a dragnet subpoena for everyone on 3 discord servers whether or not they had anything to do with to the leak.
This is like demanding the lifetime customer history of everyone who had ever gone to a bar where a crime happened.
Stopped using discord a long time ago. If this doesn’t make people stop, nothing will
This isn’t even remotely as bad as the ID thing, which was only delayed.
they only need to get one, intimidate that 1 person to come foward, set an example. they do this with movies being pirated in the past. mass subpeona for certain movies and shows.
No government is requesting this and nothing can stop this massive transfer of personal information. This is a company mad at facing contempt for their anti-consumer practices and exercising extra-legal methods to find the justice they will buy against the people they deem responsible.
Take-Two is not stopping at who is responsible either. They are scrapping ALL records of everyone who has ever touched those Discord servers. And there is nothing innocent people can do to appeal or stop this.
Corporations are authoritarian motherfuckers.
I‘m more upset about the union busting than their anti-consumer practices but that‘s mostly because I have no interest in buying it. Either way it‘s an insane demand for a company to make. How about just let authorities handle it like everyone else would?
It’s a civil suit, not criminal.
Plenty of governments don’t need to request it because they already have all this info. Like China.
My point is highlighting that this action is outside of any established set of laws. There is literally no regulation around what a company can do to keep information private.
Aren’t they using the legal system in this case? So it is by definition, within a set of established laws. Though to me it’s not clear if the judge will let them actually get this data. If this were Apple, Apple would probably push back. Microsoft might just give it away for fun though.
My point was simply refuting the “no government” part of your statement. There are plenty of authoritarian governments that are just as bad on privacy
Rockstar and Take-Two are performing the investigation themselves, not law enforcement. This is corporate vigilantism where the business finds someone they think is guilty and hands them over to the police to enact the justice the business advocates. The police should be investigating and requesting records, NOT the business.
Basically, Microsoft spies on everyone. They’ll identify you and let the feds trawl through your OneDrive account. On Windows, it actually takes a very conscious effort to NOT upload files to OneDrive.
They’re targeting a guy just because he unknowingly interacted with the suspect. As a joke.
If anyone questions why people like me have a GrapheneOS pixel connecting to self-hosted cloud storage on a home linux server, this is why.
There’s been more efforts to catch someone because of a game than millionaires evolved in pedofilia and human traffic
The only thing we will not get before GTA 6 is the full and unredacted Epstein files.
🤞🤞🤞
It’s not a “game”, it’s a “product”.
And they will do the same when food and water becomes a “product” too.
…Food and water are products. Literal tons of food are destroyed every single day because giving it away to those in need might affect profit margins.
Companies like Nestle buy up the water rights from under people just to bottle it and sell it right back to them.
Go attempt some vigilante justice there and see how it goes. There is no “when”. We’re there and we’ve been there for some time.
That also gives you several other informations:
So the only solution is to get the fuck away from everything Microsoft.
mostly agree, but I think it might just be the Discord program that has access, not websites
You are correct. Installed programs can see it, websites can’t.
I mean, Edge is an installed program…
Ok. That’s great.
How does that let websites access the ID?
I’ll echo what most others say here: stop using discord and everything microsoft.
And maybe also reconsider if modern gaming is a worthwhile passtime.
Look, I love a good game as much as the next person. But with everything that is coming to light lately I can’t shake the feeling that I want as little digital backdoors for their tentacles around. Because they are harvesting data all over the place.
i went and set up my own hosted team speak server. tried to get my discord group of 12 people to switch over during the whole discord bullshit.
i did all the work and hosted it myself
guess how many switched over even just initially?
did you guess zero? because it was zero. “yea we are upset at discord, but if we are loud about not being happy they will change!” the real answer is ‘ i hope they change because i don’t want to be slightly inconvenienced’
I hear you (figuratively speaking, because I don’t use voice chat for gaming). My answer would be to quit.
Now I know that’s a bit extreme for some. We all have our things that we’re willing to give up or not. (Outside of gaming also).
I for example have a hard time getting people of whatsapp (pos meta spyware that it is). But keep at it, some changes take time. However, as extremer this world gets, the more people will open their eyes and take steps.
Modern tripple A games are shitty 9 times out of 10, and remaining good ones are way overpriced. But gaming is on all time rise, the amount of incredible games around, made by passionate and talented people are staggering. Indy is where it’s at!
i want to stop using discord, but some important people to me refuse to leave it and its my good point of contact/talking with them, sadly.
This right here. I am in a LDR with my partner and we only use discord to talk. I have tried moving us to another platform but she doesn’t understand the big deal.
i wish my situation was that understandable, for me the other side is mostly just “I have nothing to hide, why should I care and upend everything because of it??” and the fact there is no real viable alternative that gives you even most of the stuff that discord does.
Complacency is the death of privacy.
A good argument I have here is that you also decide for everyone else that they don’t have anything to hide
The hypocrisy is strong from this company making a game that glorifies theft.
It’s got at least as much murder too. So, uh…
maybe we will get a stresisand effect, and people will boycott it due to this?
Fucking peoples lives over for leaking what is essentially advertising is an insane timeline to be living in. In a proper world, Take-two would get laughed out of court and Microsoft /Discord would be under investigation for spying on its users.
Daily reminder that buying GTA 6, or any other Rockstar game for that matter, directly supports some of the worst oligarchy and authoritarianism present in the west.
Instead of buying any of their worthless slop - pirate, seed, don’t even play it, share any and all leaks. Do your part to hurt their bottom line, and let us hope another Luigi takes up the case. Or ten.
sorry I’m genuinely out of the loop, but how is gta 6 supporting some of the worst oligarchy and authoritarianism?
The CEO (Strauss Zelnick) has links to Epstein
Every time I see his name it reminds me of a villain from Mr Robot lol
Yeah but who doesn’t these days.
Vast majority of people
Scotland innit
After seeing the leaks, I can now understand the panic. This can result in a lot of hype going away and cancelled pre-orders due to the fact that it just looks like another GTA game and not some miracle that many tried to portray.
Probably a reason they started pre-orders before showing gameplay.
Manage your expectations people.
Imagine the legal theory of their case against the leakers. “Members of the jury, these leaks caused my client to experience irreparable economic harm when they showed what a piece of shit this game was instead of allowing my client to hoodwink nostalgia driven nerds for an undoubtably countless number of pre-orders.”
Preorders for games that are going to be available digitally… it’s wild shit.
“Bu-but you can download it be-before hand and play it once the clock show the right time!!”
yeah I was wondering how they’d pull off some kind of revolution in rendering tech… is there a source to see these leaks?
There’s cyberleek subreddit, last leak was posted 3 hours ago
eh, I can wait lol. reddit… eeuuhhehehehhhhghhhghh… thanks tho
Just wear a condom
that’s lolworthy
And once again: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf5Uj4XIT1Y
Oh sick! So if this goes through, precedent is set that anyone who can come up with a reason greater than “my video game leaked”, can legally broker collect harvest request data from select discord servers that can directly tie the real identity of an individual to their windows device id.
I can’t see that being abused at all.
Maybe Discord will build them some premium level corpo only API endpoints so this can be automated ✨ /s
Discord is trash, but they have no legal reason to comply with this request unless they just want to.
Wasn’t there a thread the other week warning everyone about Microsoft device fingerprinting and there were chuds in the comments saying it was a nothing-burger and the fingerprinting was necessary for licensing or some shit? Talk about timing!
Yeah that one was over a torrent site, I think nyaa.si
lemmy.ca/post/69262372
techspot.com/…/113446-years-long-investigation-un…
there goes the planet (quote the spaceballs apes)
If Cyberleek isn’t shitposting out of his ass and actually has a deadman’s switch which could leak the build in its entirety online, then this could be a very dumb move on Take Two’s end. The authorities would need to go full Ross Ulbricht on his ass and hope they can control the switch.
What’s even sadder is that T2I and Rockstar have been such greedy litigious fucks over the years that I’m genuinely rooting for a crypto scammer who has used this entire leak to promote his shitcoin over them.
Just the fact that the GTA6 Extended Look will be a timed Netflix exclusive gives me the ick. That’s one step removed from releasing game trailers as exclusive PPV events.
If we’re gonna start treating game reveals like UFC and WrestleMania then I’m out.
man I honestly do not know how these people are so brave. Seriously. They’re going to be absolutely giga-fucked when they’re found out, and it sounds like they’re going to be since they’re using OneDrive, Discord, and it sounds like their crypto address is directly linked to a known crypto exchange who validates IDs. It’s only a matter of time. At this point they should be planning on leaving the country IMO.
Also note how they’re asking for Machine IDs. We only heard about their existence a month ago over “security” and already the lawyers are using them. Don’t trust non-open-source.
Take Two won’t forget this, they go after mod developers. They’re only a step down from Nintendo in terms of their legal pushes.
If there is no jail (which at this point I’d be surprised), minimum they’re going to have millions owed. Guaranteed these are some idiot kids who are going to fuck up the rest of their lives.
It’s probably some 20 year old who thinks they are making a statement. They are getting gassed up by people agreeing with with stated goal. But gonna really regret it a year from now when they are screwed and everyone forgot
Yeah it’s important to keep perspective. To Take Two this represents material loss, millions of dollars potentially gone, ruining an entire marketing campaign and wasting shitloads of money. (Remember, whether or not you agree, that’s their perspective).
To this hacker’s perspective, it is a 100 dollar game. Do I agree with the fact that gaming has gotten insanely shitty? Absolutely. However at the end of the day it’s a game, and you’re gambling your entire future livelihood and wellbeing.
This is the one I take issue with. If selling your game involves secrecy and hype, rather than making a good game, then that is solely their fault for a poor business decision.
Yah if you have argue that your lies were undermined in order to prove “damages” (dubious) then I feel like you have to buy everyone lunch for wasting their time.
Really it’s free advertising. Their shitty response to the leaks is doing the biggest damage imo. Like what a bunch of fucking chuds of the most unchill demeanour.
Like I want to buy a game glorifying a life of total criminal freedom from a bunch of nerds who whine over some leaked mp5s. Rofl gtfo guys
He/She will never use the term “a hill I’ll die on” the same
I doubt someone does all that alone. Looks more like a semi-professional group to me.
What a fucking joke. It’s a video game. There are very real issues in the world right now, I wish people would stop talking about this like some white hat saint.
Nobody has any real fucking values anymore
Ironically of you had read my other comment too…
Once again, Microsoft sells you snitchware.
Did they check the marketing department?
Yes but they have to make it look like it wasn’t them.
Oh shit, I’m fucked!
No, wait, never mind, I use Linux 🤣
can microsoft still throw a GDID on a linux machine if you sign into a microsoft account while on linux? maybe not as powerful as on windows, but still as a unique identifying cookie or something?
If you run their software, yeah they can fingerprint your device. That includes if you visit their websites — it’s completely feasible to take a deterministic reading of various unique qualities of your machine that can be used to later identify your device as the same device in another circumstance. That doesn’t inherently provide lineage to anything identifying you, but it can easily lead to something.
Unless you have a very unique device, I imagine it’s not possible to do this posthoc with standard data collection from web traffic. You’d need to be intentionally doing this beforehand for it to be reliable.
Though… I wonder if there are certain softwares where telemetry can reasonable be used to fingerprint a device. Maybe a browser like Edge — though, who’s using Edge on Linux lol?
I would not be surprised if they used minecraft for it, which is why I had my initial concern/question.
Its probably got a larger install base than any non-corporate microsoft product outside of an OS. Which would make it a fantastic snooping tool
Telemetry is usually non-identifiable (by law if your country follows GDPR).
This form if ID is also pretty circumstantial. That might fly for advertisers but in a court of law I have my doubts.
No.
If you allow everything and all cookies most things are possible in theory. In practice most distros are secure enough and most users savvy enough to not accept everything blindly that it probably doesn’t happen.
Yes, they can. Every computing device has an ID similar to Windows GDID. You can see yours in Linux with “cat /etc/machine-id”. If I am not mistaken, it changes when you install another distros, but I’ve never checked. Now, since there is a machine ID, using Microsoft services are highly likely to grab that ID, but I am not certain that would happen, I’m just guessing it does, because Microslop. In any case, my suggestion is to remain away from any big tech bullshit as much as your needs will allow.
cat /etc/machine-idThat’s a machine ID, GDID is Winblows exclusive. And in my case, I don’t use any big tech crap, so I’m sure that, even if they could get it, they can’t do shit with my machine ID either. I can always nuke my system, reinstall Fedora, and BOOM! new machine ID.
“Ooo, I can’t believe I’m going to pay $100 for GTA 6 after all this shit!”
- A Gamer
I haven’t looked in the directions of these servers… and I feel itchy.
Big for Matrix and XMPP and maybe Delta, sure why not.
j/k, they’ll never leave discord
We only get their best. The ones who stay with Discord we don’t want
Ngl, the fact that they’ll probably block me out of playing because of my OS of choice already killed the hype for me
OS of choice in this case being anything that isn’t a game console.
I am not going to buy the game multiple times, if I’m going to get it I’m gonna get it on PC where I can get mods because as sure as hell I have no interest in GTA online
Fair point
Single player will probably work. It did for V. That’s all I give a shit about personally. That said, this is kinda feeling like a yoho kinda game to me.
Some games even block you out of single player if you don’t have that kernel malware installed sadly. Battlefield 6’s single player for instance.
For sure, I’m just looking to V as precedence, but things could certainly change.
Yah that’s fair, I’m expecting things to get worse before they get better. I still have my older games, so it’s fine. I’d like to be able to try 6, but it’s not a high priority for me.
OneDrive contents? No company should be allowed access to that. Looks like it’s time to encrypt OneDrive. Actually, all cloud storage should have some encryption that doesn’t rely on the provider.
rcrypt can handle encryption transparently: rclone.org/crypt/. You can use
rclone mountto mount storage from practically any provider.If they’re not using burner accounts on disposable/amnesiac Linux installs, its kind of on them.
You have to be this stupid if you’re using discord to discuss and plan illegal activities.
Doesn’t change the fact that this is severe overreach that any sane judge would slap them down for.
One drive too apparently.
Couldn’t give a rat’s ass about GTA.
So much so that you couldn’t be bothered to comment about it!
Cool!
You’re so cool! I wish I could be like you!
They have had amazing free marketing and they still want to sue people.
It even made me a bit curious and I think GTA is dead to me after San Andreas, and Rockstar can go fuck themselves because every game they make just feels janky.
I liked San Andreas, but, for me personally, Vice City will always be peak GTA because of the story and atmosphere. Four was the last good GTA and I really liked the “weighty” vehicle handling while V was playable, but notably worse. I’ve had zero real interest in VI, especially with what gaming has become.
I’ll be very disappointed if they’re running windows on bare metal
Hold up I misplaced my tiny violin
I can’t believe people expected it to look like the trailer cutscenes.
tenor.com/buyBL.gif
Guilty of that. I’m surprised (from the leaks, so take a massive grain of salt with that) it looks and feels like Red Dead Redemption 2, but in Florida, with cars…
Not to defend anybody involved here but the article does not say that the request has been fulfilled, only filed
Any use in alternate clients?
github.com/Milkshiift/GoofCord
Not if you use Windows.
They’ll get the IP from Discord and then give Microsoft that IP to look up in their own data.
Microsoft owns Discord? Not understanding how they’d provide that info.