Its not the end of the world, Is it!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

 

Oh, the black screen of death has come up and “says that your account has been suspended until the 24th June 2018 from Grand Theft Auto Online for cheating,” At first you are thinking I do not cheat, It must be some new Modder trick, but no Rockstar Games has royally fucked up once again, The first thing to remember is do not panic they must get this all the time, second thing to remember is do not panic, The third thing to do is panic, because why should you take a suspension lying down while being fucked over by Trevor with a fuggily stick if you have never cheated, ever!

Contrary to belief, but in this great nation we call Great Britain you have as we have just discussed been labelled a cheat by a big corporation, with out any evidence provided, That in my book is liable.

Why should a big corporation feel they can blacken an individuals name and provide no evidence to back up their claim?

If the shoe was on the other foot and you made the claim about companies that are going to be exposed in this blog, the likes of Take Two Interactive Software Inc; and their subsidiaries Rockstar Games they would soon be sending in the private investigators and banging the legal drums with their big lawyers to protect their interests.

Here is my story so far, going against a company called Take Two Interactive Software Inc (Take 2) and one of its subsidiaries Rockstar Games, these companies have brought you the games like Bully, Mafia 3, LA Noir, Grand Theft Auto Five to name a few:

through mergers, acquisitions under the banner of Take2 they have become one of the largest video game manufactures, publishers, and distributers in the world.

What happened?

On the 24th May 2018 after a four month sabbatical from Grand Theft Auto Online, and for around two years playing this game with out a hiccup prior to this logging over 800 Hours of game play I had returned to the game to prepare for the up and coming Night Club DLC that was to be added to the game.

Many of us from the gaming community have heard the term “Grinding the game” this is where the like of Take2 have designed the game to have a one off cost of say $40, and if you play the game to an inch of its life, you could earn all the extras and the DLC for free instead of taking the as I like to call “Greed is Good option” and buy all the DLC and extras for over $200 straight away and never use half of it.

Grinding the game is something that I hold dear to my heart I could be classed as a first generation gamer, My grand parents had an Atari up in the loft before I was even born, and I had my first computer, a commodore VIC 20 when I was 10 minutes old in 1981, fair doo’s I could not effectively start playing the games until 1984, but my dads heart was in the right place. I was born on the Generation X side of 1981, with the MTV generation upbringing.

Most of what could be classed as first generation gamers are on the cusp of; and smashed through the mid-life crisis (That’s 40 years old) and there is simply no point in cheating, we are the generation that shaped and instructed the computer game companies of what we wanted the games that the thirteen year old kid locking themselves away in their room can enjoy and play for hours, leaving the other forty year old somethings soon to be grand parents if not grandparents already! to enjoy some piece and quite for two minutes, so for our generation of gaming there is no point in cheating we learned long ago there is just no fun in it, and the only way that you are going to get anywhere in life is making sure you do not spend money where you do not need to, and working hard with what you have got to win the game as it was designed for in the first place.

I asked myself if I have been accused of cheating on GTAV, when I have not, and I have thirty days where I am banned playing GTAV, how is Take Two Interactive Software Inc and it subsidiaries cheating the system?

With over 800 hours logged playing Grand Theft Auto Five (GTAV) and a break for a short time, because there is only so much grinding, stealing cars, taking out an online gang leaders from a building roof tops, reporting the odd 13 year old for cheating on the game, The fact that GTAV has a mature 17+ rating and previous titles in the series were 18 rated the 13 year old (LB) should not even be playing the game anyway!

This (LB) should be banned straight away, but if Rockstar and Take2 banned every under seventeen year old kid from playing the platform, which GTAV is designed for adults and you are not classed as an adult in most countries until you are eighteen, Take2 would find their profits plunge overnight most probably by about 50 – 60%

This would mean layoffs in the computer game industry in both the United States, and the United Kingdom, not to mention leading technology pension funds that have up to 45 – 50% stakes in the computer game company Take2.

There has to be some moral ground by throwing capitalism out of the window and off set the fact that the people that are going to retire today on a quick buck on the back of not placing stopgaps in teaching the kids of tomorrow that, Violence, killing people on a whim, prostitution, and murder, followed by getting smashed of your head on drink and drugs, waking up and starting the whole cycle again is acceptable normal life behaviour, while they are locked in their room playing these Games titles from the moment they wake up and go to bed, most kids fail to differentiate between what is make believe and what is reality and if they are spending up to ten hours a day playing titles immersed in this environment eventually them lines are going to get blurred especially on the advent of VR technologies on the horizon which will add to the emersion further.

For me coming back after four Months after playing a rival Game title for this time, I was in the game for about fifteen minutes , when I crashed, nothing new Grand Theft Auto servers were State of the Art ten years ago, now they fail just under shear load, for the past twelve months I have had to sign the GTAV Terms of Use and EULA every time I signed in to GTAV Online. This is something that was questioned highly with others that I played the game with. They only had to sign these documents once and could boot the online portion of the game directly from the loading screen, where I had to take a different route in to the Online game and proceed through back menus in the game. It was almost as if the online part of GTAV had separated from the main single player game and neither was talking to one another!

All the while nothing was flagged up to me personally by Rockstar or Take2, like most you just do not think about it, and being an engineer by trade “If it isn’t broke don’t fix it” all was good until I logged in for a second time, did a mission and was told that I had been banned from the game until the 24th June 2018 and was given the first accusation by Take2 and Rockstar that I had cheated in the game.

To make that statement, I went epileptic was a bit of an understatement a company had accused me of cheating, with in the community of any game that I play I am known as a clean player who detests as I said above the 13 year old (LB) that should not be playing the game in the first place fucking the game up for everybody else with a passion so to be labelled a cheat is just plain wrong, especially if there are no comebacks and evidence to support this, Take 2 is wrong in this case.

The First thing I did was contact Rockstar Support as there had clearly been a mistake on Take2 and Rockstar Games behalf, I was very tame and told them kindly to see the error of their ways have a look at my account, and in my view once the mess was all sorted all would be forgotten just like I had forgotten about their little mishap in 2014, at least then I did not need to report anything!

In 2014 an account with a matching IP address to a Take2 Windsor office broke in to my personal Facebook account then placed Malware on to my PC, This malware then killed my PC when my virus software quarantined the malware and tried to uninstall it. this resulted in my PC needing a whole new operating system being placed on to the PC and the old operating system placed in to a partition locked down until it could be deleted safely, loosing a lot of my personal work.

Normally I would not batter an eyelid at this because a virus checker is only 5% effective against intrusions of this kind, so every time you go on to the internet you take a risk that your computer will be hacked. In this case action needed to be assessed as at the time I was working for a subsidiary for an arms company on an Expo in Paris staying at the Novotel in Paris city centre.

At 475 euros a night it was going to be damn secure for the work that I was doing, and because of the job that I was doing, there was several alerts out from several European Agencies that there was high potential risk of protester activity (This protester activity was reported as being varied, from your micky mouse brigade based in Brighton UK, right the way through to some serious anti use of weapons against Palestine movements) everything being administered, by a special branch of the NCA and all employees with in the UK arms industries phones were being monitored by these agencies down to the point that they were tracking known terrorists and terrorist cells movements the idea was that my smart phone became my best friend over night and I had similar protection to what a serving United States President would have. If a known protester or terrorist entered into my exclusion zone using a well known social media App I would be given instructions to avoid the threat, the threat level, and best guidance to meet up with friendly authorities in any country around the world, and the NCA had provided clear instructions on how to secure down our own social media and highlight all log in attempts. (For the uneducated among us the NCA are the equivalent of Americas FBI)

The Settings that were given by the NCA for my Facebook social media were a god send. No one could even sniff at my social media especially my Facebook account without me knowing about it every time myself or somebody logged in to my Facebook account an (arp -a) request was placed.

An (arp -a) request is where anyone that tries to go sniffing around on my Facebook account a ping will automatically go back to them but this is not an ordinary ping, this ping request circumvents the firewall that is in place of the individual requesting access so in theory you could with the right equipment go right the way back to the station that has made the request. When I opened up the mail saying that there had been a new log in on my account I was already thinking strange as I had not logged in since coming out to France but was expecting that something had pinged off my mobile in the hotel. so the e-mail should have read blah, blah, blah, France, Paris, 123.456.789.101

Normally not being the one to be worried, it said that there was a new log on to my account from London, from an IP based there, and strait away knew something was not right. I carried out a ping request on the IP that was provided by Facebook, it was active and the switch was open and still in use.

Back In 2014 there was functionality for google maps that it had stored every server location in it application, almost like an indexed A-Z of IP addresses. On a good day you can still carry out a root IP check from your command line then put the information in to google maps and it will track your request, giving you good intel of every place your ping had gone; for example if you ping google using this method from the UK it would most probably take you:

• To the nearest server from your house
• To a level 3 communications server farm just outside some village in the North of Yorkshire at this point all the traffic is exclusively google as they are so big they have there own physical internet.
• Boom straight over to the United States
• Bounce around the United States some
• Ping off a hanger at the local airport near Google offices
• And finish off at the point where the line enters Google HQ

The check is that good if it is done right! and reading the right books google openly invite you to do this as they want to make sure that their system is as secure as it could be, some have even said that there is a job for life if you manage to get in and out undetected!

With the IP address in hand which Facebook had given me it was time to go fishing and I did not have to wait very long, as soon as the address was placed in to google maps a great big red dot had pinged of a wireless interface outside Take2 offices in Windsor One could assume that someone has either gone sniffing, or data is being transferred out of the office via encrypted microwave communications to a back up drive but, something from a switch in the office was pinging off the wireless link and had accessed my Facebook account, and all my games associated with Take2 were on my PlayStation I had not seen the light at that point and moved to PC, more importantly Take2 should have been nowhere near my PC and made it even more suspicious that it had happened while I was clearly going to be away from it for some time.

This aside I had nothing to hide if a protester wanted to have a look at my system they would find very little of interest and if they tried to go anywhere near the wife like me being ex-military going against her in unarmed combat it hurts a lot I know. and this did not concern me, the fact that it appears that Take2 offices in Windsor had a major intrusion in to their system, and have never reported it publicly is a major concern to me and others that have a Social Club, or Facebook account linked to their Social Club that were having issues during 2014 may want to dig a bit deeper. Currently if my countries authorities find that there has been a security breech that has not been reported the company could be fined 20 million Euro’s or 4% of gross revenue which ever is greater, this is something for investors to think about.

But digressing, when Rockstar were approached for a response to this and why my account had been banned, it was not responded to and closed down, a second request was made again this was closed down, a third, and a fourth, then a fifth, still nothing, Then I moved the request out of the banning issue and in to another issue on the request site, clearly there was activity as almost immediately it as moved in to a banning issue and closed down. I managed to get a request through and it came back with the same cut, copy, paste answer that everyone was saying about on the internet, when I tried to go back requesting further information, Rockstar Social Club reduced the word count I was allowed to put in the request box, I then placed it in a word document and attached it to the request, Rockstar Social Club answered that with the same cut, copy, and paste answer the last person had sent, either way, the way that they were acting it was as if they were shoving their heads in the sand and acting like the guilty party in all this.

I will make the statement again the only things I have been guilty of in GTAV are:

• I have Never bought a shark card (This is where you can buy additional in game cash from Rockstar, and is currently part of bankrolling the company to the tune of $500 million a quarter adding to a $15 Billion enterprise with Take2 and working out if I did go down the route and buy shark cards with all the grinding that I did this would have netted $250 to Rockstar)
• At the point of being banned I was three days off being selected for a closed Beta for a rival companies computer game sequel (which in most of the top 5 YouTube videos The Crew is regarded to be in loose competition with the GTAV franchise)

Well the Next thing is where do you go when Rockstar Support is refusing to answer your request? that’s right the very public drums of Facebook and Twitter, and make sure that @RockstarGames @RockStarSupport @TTWO Take Two Interactive Software Inc. is added to every post. This seemed to work some. They refused to answer my posts on the public forums on these sites, but they opened up all the closed down requests on the Rockstar social club, gave them all the generic answers that I received on the other two they responded to. Then restricted my access to the social club so I could not even log in to the single player GTAV game on steam.

At this point I am smelling a massive rat, and just at the point where I was debating if I wanted to venture down this rabbit hole this settled it for me. Clearly Take2 wanted me quite, well the simplest thing to do would be to apologise and give me my usage back to the game, instead of banning me from access to my friends on the community and sending me to the naughty step. a 0.5% drop on the stock market due to some bad press is one thing have that over a couple of days 2% of your stock price is dropping off just when your CEO has said that RDR2 that is a year overdue is not allowed to slip again, right around E3 if I was In that position I would be hoping it was just a blip. And how long are the major investors going to prop up the slack for recently they have increase their stake by up to five percent and on $15 Billion that is a lot of peoples personal pension Investment pots being staked on one company. (If you have a pension I would check Just how much exposure you pension manager has propped up against Take Two Interactive software because reading on you might want to be asking him to pull out of the company)

My response back to Take2 was very simple now, They had accused me of being a cheater with in the gaming community, placing my credibility in every game, and every future game I use my gamer tag in doubt. When I win which is very little people will say I have cheated, I grind another games and buy a car for a million credits people will say I must of placed a cash cheat in to the system and gave myself a million credits. Rockstar and Take Two Interactive Software Inc. set a president making this statement about me so they can back it up with evidence.

I placed a GDPR request with Rockstar Games and Take Two Interactive Software Inc. this basically moved the argument from me being a small mouse in a very big wheel against a big lion, but started this argument on the road to using my rights that had literally came in to force a couple of weeks prior which my countries information commissioner would be able to become involved to get this information out of them and find out who they were sharing this information with.

I continued with the twitter and Facebook campaign calling for greater transparency on the information that Take2 hold on individuals, and this was being posted on public twitter and Facebook posts from players all over the world wanting to know after reading the terms of use and EULA:

• Which agencies were Take2 transmitting information two in the US and Europe (This blog may have some explanation later on and why)
• what gave Take2 the right to be allowed to openly bypass someone’s firewall and assess their whole computer system and assess all hardware fitted to that system. (This was actually posted by a person on Take2’s ghost Facebook page, and was illustrated in the GTAV On line terms of use)
• What makes Take2 so special that they are not accountable to the UN on ground of bribery, ethics, and corruption in a country that has ratified the UN resolution (And yes they claim that they are exempt in their Terms of  Use policy and EULA)

This was being posted by hundreds of users around the world and yet Take2 refused to answer any of their requests for information, I felt that I had nothing to loose by placing the GDPR.

Rockstar Social Club Responded on behalf of Rockstar to the GDPR with the generic response that they had placed on all the other tickets and gave me the most basic of user information like the following:

• My Gamer Tag
• My steam account details, and my steam account name
• My current dynamic IP address to the PC

(This proved that they do exercise the right of by passing firewalls with out an exemption in the game directly to your PC. This can be quite dangerous as they just shared this information with me, They never carried out any data protection checks to prove the individual was me, big no no)

Then a brash as anything the responder said we have all the other information you requested but we hold the right not to transmit it, but if you click on this Hyper-link here and follow the instructions this will give us the legal right to destroy all you account information and all other information we hold on you. The thing is, it was written in such away that if you or I was not paying attention you would thing that by hitting the hyperlink for completely the opposite reason.
This Just made me even more determined to get the information I requested, because Take Two Interactive Software in less than twenty lines of text placed two fingers up at my countries data protection policy and two fingers at my countries data transmission policy. And tried to dupe me in a fraud to delete all the information that they have not transmitted they really did think they were above reproach by me and my country.

But it is a Gaming avatar you say what rights do you have in game you ask?

This is where it becomes interesting and companies like Rockstar and Take Two Interactive Software Inc will be shitting their pants, Very recently an actress called Linsey Lohan hit the world news in heavily censored statement around the world saying that she had lost her case clearly Take2 had place their spin on the world media because they won the case in part!

By using an uncensored search engine, hate to say it but Google, Bing and several other main stream vendors have so much censorship on them you will never find a copy of the completing statement by the judge start using Duck Duck Go, and TOR you want the news you will get the news and I managed to get hold of a copy of the court statement revolving around the case here:

Current & Previous Legal Issues

LOHAN v. TAKE TWO INTERACTIVE SOFTWARE INC

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ny-court-appeal/1892879.html

We all know that Linsey Lohan Lost her case for the supposed use of her likeness and things that were happening in her personal life as she had not entered in to contractual discussions with Take2 prior to her likeness being used, so this allows for artistic  temperament by the graphical designer, and it was not Linsey Lohan’s voice that was used for the character, that was easy for the judge to prescribe

But when you read the text what is hidden in the text could effect the route of future roleplaying and massive online multiplayer games until this ruling has been repealed, because what the judge did say in the ruling was that an avatar in a game, or a likeness in a game, can be counted as a real person so your strawman in effect. If you enter in to a contractual obligation with the company, (which you do when you sign a Terms of Use and the EULA). If the character has been generated in your likeness (so you have created a self portrait of your self with the tools on offer) and the character uses your own voice (which you use by using GTAV VOIP bespoke speech app that is part of the Game to communicate to other players, and your avatars facial expressions and mouth moves with the use of voice). Then this in my personal view would meet the criteria that your gaming avatar can be classed as a real individual, who is representing you in the gaming community entitled to the same laws under the New York Bar, this is where the case fell down for Lindsey Lohan, but for an average gamer using the game, it essentially has just made the Rockstar Terms of Use, their EULA and their exemption from Investigations by the United Nations defunct over night and places Rockstar and Take2 in serious jeopardy for killing constitutional rights for every gaming avatar / real person that they have banned from entering Los Angeles.

This was the other item that the Judge proclaimed in the case against Take Two Interactive Software Inc. and advised Take2 to change their language in the case material submitted. You cannot closely map or recreate a city like Los Angeles and call it something like Los Santos for intents and purposes for this case and any future case Los Santos will be known a Los Angeles, so could we be seeing a case brought forward by the state of LA and the builders of all the building engineers that have copyright on the buildings and land marks in Los Angeles used with out permission making a copyright claim against Take2 this is something I am now personally looking at closely.

Other cases currently going through the system.

There are a couple of other cases going through the system at the moment that can be found on the site illustrated above, but one that has caught the eye is a case that is going through annotated Unsocial Social Club, which no transcripts have been produced, but the judge has placed a note on the case awarding the complainant 90 additional days to gather evidence as the judge is happy with what has been produced so far, and that Take2 has during in that same period to transfer information to the complainant, that they have requested, or they will be awarding the case in the complainants favour which at the moment there is undisclosed sums been registered and the last thing that Take2 being judged against them around the week that RDR2 will be launched.

So again the question need to be asked why and how have Take2 manage to cheat the system for so long?

My twitter and Facebook posts started to gain some traction with the other game companies, but still Take2 refused to interact with me and answer my very public questions, so I decided to take in up a notch, Yellow pages or 192.com as it is in the UK Rockstar Games originally had no reviews, it now has one, and it has one star! which will hit their ratings some, but the weird thing is when I tried to leave a one star review with the same address that I have for the Rockstar social club 192 in a very bias fashion said that I was banned for leaving a review for Rockstar and Take2 with these credentials! I mean what the Fuck, would a company really go to this extreme to protect its own interests, needless to say the pseudonym e-mail address worked fine.

I am that confident that I did not cheat in any form and Take2 have no evidence to back this claim up, I will openly trounce their reputation on any site that would ask for a review about them.

For glass door I did not need to do anything, Rockstar’s and Take2’s Current and former employees have done that job for me and a note to the thirteen year old little bastard that should not be playing the game in the first place. If you see a company that says all the staff are over worked but under paid, their managers are off on another planet some where and should of drank the cool aid before leaving college, but the tea and coffee is free give that company a very wide birth (a life lesson to you)

But Take2 and Rockstar need 300 people for a new project that they are starting supposedly the rumour control was for GTA6 but do they honestly want to go against he likes of Cyberpunk 2077, Rockstar have confirmed that it is Bully2 in the making on several sites.

this included right around the time of E3, and my Facebook and twitter posts must have been hitting some strings as it was noted in PC Gamer that Take2’s stand was very subdued and the fact that they have a major games release coming in October it would be a bit more boom looks what coming, and if you go in to the local shops the game is getting very little advertisement, this has been expressed by one of Take Two’s CEOS in a recent article saying “we know RDR2 is going to sell, but we just do not know how well” coming from a previous marketing environment in a different industry, but the language is still the same this comment translates in to: (I will quote so that Gena Feist from Take2 can comment in response to this part of the blog later if she wishes)

“Our pre-order sales are lower than we expected for this title, most probably skewed by the fact that we have delayed the title twice since it’s inception, so consumer confidence is down. Hopefully this confidence has not subsided enough for when that title is formally released and our sales team can collate more suitable data”

and other companies that were wanting to ensure that that every effort was made that their information gathering was transparent, and a big thanks for the support from:

@Bethesda these were one of the first to openly come out and say that they have been taking anonymous data from players on their Quake Champions platform, but have instructed the company that administers this information collecting, to cease all operations until further notice and destroy all data collected, Bethesda Game Studios have said that they will be open and transparent in the future and inform all players of when they have instructed their company to start taking anonymous data, and this data will be kept solely with in the Bethesda Group.

@EAGames, they sent a personal e-mail to me saying that they did collect anonymous game playing data, but this would stay with in the EA group and is not shared with any third parties.

@Bohemiainteractive Confirmed their stance and again they confirmed that they collect anonymous data for game playing only but this is not shared with any other outside agency

Several other companies made contact during this period stating their policies some that I have not even heard of in the 34 years that I have been playing video games, but again thanks for your support and your transparency during this process including the indie company that did not leave a return address or a name, you all make some very good title’s and game playing experiences, and if I play titles with your companies and you have never flagged me for cheating then why has only Take2 and Rockstar!

Through all this honesty from the other vendors the main questions that I was asking Take2 and Rockstar games, I was getting complete radio silence. I had placed the GDPR with them and as we have discussed they killed my Rockstar Account, so now I could not even log in to the single player game. so they were stoking the fire even more, and that is not the thing that you do when you have an angry bear is poke the thing with a stick because that bear will grab a log and hit back ten times harder!

With being completely suspended from GTAV, GTAV Online, and Rockstar Social Club until the 24th June 2018 I thought I would scurry down the rabbit hole a little bit more and see what I could find, and prepare a canary trap for Rockstar to see if they were investigating my case or just decided that they were going to continue to stick their head in the sand rather than admit they have made a mistake.

We discussed earlier one comment that had been made on social media to Take2 concerning what United States and US Government agencies were being provided detailed game play information to. and the likes of Cyberpunk 2077 well on it way to being released.

Cyberpunk 2077 has been in development for around five years by a polish out fit called CD Projekt, the initial trailers for the game have been that well received and to show further confidence in the title the polish government has placed $7million in to its generation securing European jobs in the industry for the future.

It will be initially released in single player on all console and PC formats at the same time with the multiplayer format coming after the single player release this is to ensure that the project gets to market before what was believed to be other potential titles like a possible GTA6 which reading several posts is not going to materialise leaving Cyberpunk 2077 in a good position to effectively kill off the GTA series when Cyberpunk multiplayer series follows the single player release.

As Rockstar and Take2 will be on the back foot with RDR2 over a year late, follow on titles not even started this will give the chance for cyberpunk 2077 to gain a firm footing for the next decade if its marking and implementation strategy is right.

One hopes that CD Projekt hold off any legal battle or take over attempt by the likes of Take2 in an effort to protect its own interests with RDR2 or the GTA series of games where they could either shelve the project, or reformat the project in to GTA6. But if CD Projekt are approached by the likes of Take2, remember your particular genera of Cyberpunk 2077 and on the face value of it Take2 only really have one title making any real money which at the moment it is the GTA series. This is going to fall sharply when RDR2 is released, especially where there is no online element! so in game cash takings are going to fall off, how much out of the $500 million a quarter this is going to be as we have said above not even the CEO knows either way it is going to be a big hit in Take2 net earning of $15 Billion and between now and going in to the new year this will be the time to watch this fall off.

Looking at this data I would say that Cyberpunk 2077 has an initial intrinsic value to market of $4.5billion to world wide markets, this includes trailing profits matching Rockstar’s GTAV Online, once Cyberpunk is brought in to the online realm, and dependent if they go for the DLC pay option or subscription option it is just the way the industry is going.

Now there is no way that Investors with 45 – 50% stake in Take2 is ever going to agree on behalf of the pension portfolio backers to risk two years income from one of it subsidiary arms to protect it, and not for a European company. This said paying $4.5billion for a European company like CD Projekt to enable the option of Take2 to move there legal status and there servers out of the United states could pay dividend  as it will move Take2 laws out of the remit of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement (CALEA) HEAR COMES THE SNOWDEN PART!

For the un educated among us, Any company that says that its Terms of Use, and its End User Licence Agreement EULA is based in the united states and that any United States, State law will be used and all associated agencies will be informed of in-depth game play and voice transmission whilst in game, run as far away as possible from that games provider, and any associated title that may use similar language in it’s EULA, Terms of Use, or Conduct whilst using that companies software.

It means that your information is about as safe, as you leaving it outside your house and placing a note on it take it all, this includes everything that is supposedly said in game private chats as well probably even more so. Because regardless of what you are doing either playing a game, chatting to friends on the game, or just chatting to your friends on the telephone, if that data or voice usage goes over a fibre, copper, PSTN, Ethernet switch in the United States basically all internet activity, then the company that is in charge of handling that data is legally obliged to had that data to specific United States authorities the NSA, and the FBI to name a couple, and they have to ensure that mass surveillance can be carried by the NSA and the FBI un-hindered and with out a warrant if and when that situation presents its self.

By having their primary communications in the US Take2 have to allow he US authorities unrestricted access to there gaming ports incognito and allow them to glean any in depth information on any single player, organisation, group they wish, again with out a warrant.

Rockstar have said in their Terms of Use that they provide information to both US and EU Agencies, which this practice has been challenged by many lobbyist in the United States as invading an individuals 4th amendment rights, and strangely enough if Take2 supply this information to UK agencies with out a warrant Under article 4 of the snoopers charter this too would be highly illegal as another item that has been gagged and censored on many search engines, is that the UK supreme court in May 2018 deemed that Article 4 of the snoopers charter was unlawful and for the UK Government Agencies to stop using it immediately, The UK Government agencies refusing this despite the supreme court ruling.

This said several customers of Take2 have highlighted this to them and have expressed concern as it does states in their terms of service, and when customers have requested specifics and transparency of which agencies they pass this information on to, Take2 have refused to answer, or they have attempted to box around the question with another question!

It is understood that after reading part of the book: Future Crimes, A Journey to the dark side of technology and how to survive it. (By Marc Goodman) Mark is Silicon valleys go to guy for all things security, he exposed that Grand Theft Auto Five Online would be of use to the new tech savvy terrorist from Hard-line terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda, and ISIS as they had used snippets from the Game in a major recruitment video, making the users of this game of interest to the Authorities in both the United States and Europe and if I was savvy place all the servers on communications from Take2 under CELEA,

Marc quoted in his book:

ISIS is tech savvy and In its latest recruitment videos even edited scenes from the Video Game Grand Theft Auto Five for effect in its online video production, the reviled terror group offered new recruits the opportunity to ” Do the things you do in video games, in real life on the battlefield… Like attack a military convoy or kill police officers” the video is plastered with the ISIS Logo

There is one more thing I hate than being told that I am a cheat, is being told that I am a cheat by Take2 that allowed their content to be used by terrorist factions with out adequate stop gaps put in place to never allow this to happen, by using this information ripped from Rockstar and Take Two Interactive Software Inc. to recruit the next generation of terrorists after my generation have spent over a decade overseas and countless British, United States and NATO fighting forces to keep under paid executives of Rockstar, and Take2 in there cosy offices with free tea and coffee, and their overpriced mortgaged to the hilt apartments it makes me sick to the bone that myself being former Military have been inadvertently funding this, which I would not be if it was not covered up by Take2 in protecting their interest. Instead it took the Go to security expert from silicon valley to release it (If I found this out before being fully banned I would have never wanted back in to the game)

Reading between the lines it would appear that maybe these groups are using GTAV in setting up basic training, in command and control, city ambush tactics, convoy ambush the list is endless in basic terrorism theory.

Being a former member of the military with innate military training, yes I have used some of that training in the game, and this is not cheating it is using the tools and the skill-set that you have been taught to get the job done and win the game instead of manipulating the code. I am going in to the game with my knowledge of the British Soldier against the US marines handbook for combat operations that the GTAV online enemies have been installed with, and do you think I am going to let $3million of UK government backed training to go to waste if I have an advantage to complete a mission, this would be the same for the terrorist on the battlefield if he know that he could beat a marine level tactics in the game of course he is going to take a stab at it in the real battlefield, and hence the request that detailed player information is being passed to government agencies in the US and Europe!

This is why America and European agencies are interested in gleaning detailed player and personal information off of everyone that uses the platform, Take2 knowing that if knowledge if the video came out, and every law abiding citizen that plays the game was being monitored, the backlash in the stock of Take2, when they would have to say that part of the $2billion revenue stream that the game provides could be coming from the likes of Al-Qaeda, and ISIS, to sums that even Take2 would not even dare place a figure on. If One dollar of known terrorist cash crosses Take Two Interactive Software Inc. hands, then by rights Take2 assets, and the assets of their investors should by law be frozen immediately and there servers should be closed down as a matter of national security to protect every United States, British, and NATO fighting force member in the world that is protecting our way of living, but what is the point of killing the net that is catching all the fish!

This said after thirty days in purgatory and smelling a rat which I was hell bent on wanting to catch the company out on there cheating algorithm I had finally served my ban kicking and screaming, but I managed to survive the thirty days with out Grand Theft Auto and learned a lot about the company that Makes the game which has made me question if Take2 are actually as moral as they make out and it is appearing not.

To ensure that all reasonable precautions were taken to ensure that I could not possibly be accused of cheating in the game for a second time and allowing Take2  to liable me a second time I carried out the following actions:

• I carried out a complete un-install of GTAV
• Removed all saved content
• I then installed a fresh copy of the steam game which I had un-installed
• Asked steam to validate all the files (This was to ensure that they were all sound, If I was banned for life I would have full checks saved and logged by steam so not if, but when Take2 liable against me a second time I would be in full frame to say right prove it!
• moved my IP address to a static IP address and made sure that it was in a completely opposite end of the spectrum from the last dynamic address that was reported to Rockstar when the initial ban was issued, and when further information was requested to ensure a full investigation was made if a full ban was to be imposed there should be a very different IP provided in any report to the last one.

I logged in to the game for the first time and completed all the gumph and moved straight in to the online mode, set up my new character, now the purpose of the test, and call me sceptical, but I had a feeling that something was going to go wrong, Nobody makes that much noise and they just let someone come back in to the fold, especially when there is a potential for a 20million euro fine, or 4% of gross revenue if a complaint is to be logged with my countries information commissioner, for not sharing my personal information with me that they hold, not divulging a security breech, and trying to fraudulently be allowed to destroy my data that they hold.

But I am not a complete sadist, I was willing to let it all go, and go back to the way our relationship was before I did my homework about Take2 and how immoral they run their business. I agreed to all the gumph in the Rockstar Terms of Use, EULA etc for like the 200th time! and to be honest who ever wrote the document must of literally snorted several lines of chalk dust in the executive toilet though a $100 bill and then proceeded to wash it down with several shots of vodka out of the cleaners belly button whilst she was laying on the in company bar before writing the thing (military brain has a lot to answer for and no Gena I was not making a false statement I was making a sarcastic comment, very important when we come to the Gena Feist comments!)

either way I ticked the box!

To ensure that there was no cause to suggest that I was cheating in the game and risk any of my friends, as unbeknownst to me at the time my previous actions were gaining the attention of a compliance executive at Take2 Gena Feist, these actions were:

• I will not draw a weapon unless on a mission which requires the use of a weapon.
• I will not steel a car for risk that somebody may own that car, and I upset the course of natural game play.
• I will walk to missions until I can afford to buy a garage and then a car
• I will only enter a server to play a mission on my own if I am allowed by the game, or if I have to play with others, This will be where Rockstar / Take2 have paired me with them and I have never met them before (This way I would of had no choice to play with them on the mission and if they were found to be cheating this would be the fault of Rockstar and Take2)
• I would not write any text on the message wall, to ensure that no one could say that I was abusive to them.
• My Mic would be permanently set to off in the soft ware of the mic, and hard wired switched to off on the head set, this is to ensure that anything I said could not be heard by Rockstar or any other agency, and could not be construed as cheating or abusive to other players
• I did not fight back against other players, just in case I did kill them, and they remembered my gaming tag then accuse me of cheating
• I stopped at every traffic light that was on red to ensure that I did not have a mishap of running over and killing a player, or killing a player in a freak road accident.
• I was not going to buy a shark card as I had to start again as I personally feel that buying your way to the top is cheating in its self!

The list goes on and having thirty days to think about it I had covered what I thought was every possible angle for Rockstar not to hit the kill switch.

The Canary Trap was well and truly set!

I can say that the first four hours and thirty minutes went fine, not a problem the game was really glitchy as always but there were a few people in the room, the odd 13 year old LB, shooting the crap out of me, but still all was fine.

I completed a few races after walking to the race start, made about 50K in credits brought one of the cheapest garages and an Albany Washington, I then manage to rob two convivence stores highlighted on the map, then moved on to the first Lamar mission which was very glitchy, sitting in the passenger seat one minute I am on the road the next minute I had jumped right in the middle of a war zone, all the while a message down at the bottom of the screen saying I needed to get back in the car!, and it would not allow me to select a weapon to fire, once again Rockstar servers at there finest!

Once this mission was complete, I then proceeded to ammunation stocked up on some pistol rounds and headed to the 2nd Lamar mission at which point the black screen of death appeared for the second time saying that I had been permanently banned from the Game, and made the second false statement to me saying that I cheated in the game. I mean literally what the fuck!

The first thing I did was get straight back on to Rockstar support, again looking at the court doc’s that we were discussing earlier in the blog, against Rockstar Social Club and Take2, for what is coming I am keeping a very close eye on the case. and remember it will be very difficult to find on google or Bing and if that fellow had got to the point of taking Take2 thought the legal process and the judge has implied that he is going to side with the fellow that has brought the case, hey I thought with that case and the side ruling on the Lindsey Lohan case I have nothing to loose.

After sending a very mellow post to Rockstar implying that they have not got a leg to stand on and I would like a senior executive to look at the case because something has fallen over on their cheat algorithm, or they have a rogue employee that is killing genuine account of genuine clean players, and causing Rockstar and Take2 to liable themselves against an individual, not just once, but twice at this point. I wanted some bloody questions answered, because as I said before apart from taking part in Ubisoft’s The CREW Two closed Beta, I had done nothing wrong that would jeopardise my continued playing of Grand Theft Auto Online.

As this was a closed Beta with invite only to selected players this would have meant that the only way Take2 would have known I was part of the beta:

• Is Take2 are installing malware on to PC’s when you install GTAV and this packet is hidden in the files, with and exclusion cause written for the firewall. (This would allow them to assess hardware changes on the system, software changes, root changes, and key logged information)
• Rockstar and Take2 acquired the list through non conformal means, as the initial thirty day ban happened three days before the invite was passed out to the players

After having logged over 800hours of game play on GTAV and playing the game as I have always done for Take2 / Rockstar to not accuse me at any point though this 800 hour spell then three days before I am given access to a closed beta for a rival games company and I am accused of cheating in game, I do not believe in coincidences and this is starting to look like there is a clear position here where Take2 has entered in to some form of insider trading racket against potential rivals.

If memory serves it was when Ubisoft announced that they would be releasing The CREW Two, Rockstar released the super races DLC for GTAVO where you could swap over the map in to different vehicles and race them, Watchdogs 2 comes out, Rockstar releases another DLC for GTAVO based around computer hacking / computer going wrong, which a lot of the community were like; what is the point for this one! Looking with hindsight it would appear that Take2 are going to some extreme measures to ensure they keep market share on a programme that is over due for replacement, and a replacement is looking like it will not be ready for 3 – 6 years! and continue to flog a dead horse to keep the pension pot investors happy.

If you were part of The Crew Two closed Alpha, Beta testing and received a temporary or Permanent ban from Take2 / Rockstar for GTAVO or any other title I would like to know this will allow me to investigate further in to my claim of some form of insider trading by Take2

Some of you maybe thinking oh fuck it! I will just pay another $40 for another copy of the game, If you have not cheated and requested the information that you have not cheated, and Take2 have refused to provide that information, and as they have said the only way you are allowed back in is by buying a fresh copy of the game, I would say to you go ahead and buy another copy, because every time a player does this this places Take2 in to the realms of fraud!

Because until Take2 prove beyond reasonable doubt that you have cheated, Take2 have manipulated an action by falsely accusing you of an action, banning you from a service that you have paid for, and have used with in the terms, and then manipulated:

“an action that results in the wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain to Take Two Interactive Software Inc.”

Because Take2 banned you, refused to provide evidence at all to back up their accusation, and false statement, to resolve the issue you have to shell out another $40 to Take2 to continue playing the game. I personally do not care how Take2 butter this up it is by definition:

Fraud

I am now asking the United Nations (UN), you have not far to go to there offices round the corner and down a couple of blocks to investigate these cases, report Take2 to the US authorities for investigation, and place sanctions and fines on the company, it’s subsidiary’s, and as it is classed as fraud by definition, Take2 need to be investigated by the securities and exchange commission because these fraudulent takings are going on the balance sheet, they are then boosting the value of the company and giving a false representation to Take Two Interactive Software Inc. profits to investors, and a false representation of Take Two Interactive Software Inc. current financial status.

This is what I have found over thirty days imagine what I am going to do over the ninety days I have to log the complaints to my own countries Information commissioner where Take2 and Rockstar have offices based! May be Take2 should think twice before making false statements. because everything has a cost and this is going to cost!

Finally very late to the party we have (Gena Feist at Take2) on the 11th July 2018 after Rockstar had already given their response to the GDPR request nearly a month prior Gena being a Compliance Executive / Head of Legal to a Senior Vice President at Take2 sent me and e-mail clearly wanting to warn me off, after spending years working with compliance executives in my previous industry, you get some good ones and you get some bad the good ones manage to protect the company at the same time, as making sure their bosses don’t have the FBI ziplining from a helicopter smashing your front door in placing you in an orange suit, and then being shipped off to Gitmo, they are known as the spin merchants of the company always love watching this seen from lord of war to show compliance at its best!

so with me going up against Take Two Interactive Software Inc. version of Nicholas Cage, Oh get in, this was going to be fun! because being a former Technical manager for an arms company, is Take2 really going to go down the compliance route!

The e-mail transcript goes as follow’s:

Gena:

Thank you for your recent e-mail which was referred to me, Unfortunately a number of your earlier messages did not reach an agent because you responded to a “no reply” message.

My official answer to this segment of the e-mail:

Gena, this was where Rockstar, support kept closing down the tickets and if it was a “no reply” e-mail as you have quoted, then this would have been blocked from the server side of the transmission and a marker placed on the 1 and 0’s in the back code of the mail so you would never have received them, I  would have got a return to sender message, basically you had no way around justifying sticking your head in the sand and refusing to respond to a valid complaint.

Gena her message continues:

I understand that you received your information in response to your GDPR, but now ask for the backend gameplay data that illustrates the violations that led us to take action on your account.

My official answer to this segment of the e-mail:

No Gena, I placed the request for backend gameplay information on the first GDPR request of which Rockstar responded to the request with a plain refusal to provide any information that was requested apart from basic information like my gamer tag, my steam account information, and my IP / system MAC address, without an official explanation as to why Rockstar were not going to provide that information, and information on how I could gain the information requested, placing Rockstar in breech of my countries data laws, attached to the initial response was a link which Rockstar fraudulently tried to deceive me to granting them permission to have this information that was, and was not transmitted destroyed.

Gena her message continues:

Your account has been reviewed multiple times by our team and it is clear that it has been used in violation of our EULA and terms of service.

My official answer to this segment of the e-mail:

Really prove it, oh and that is the third time there has been a false accusation made about me by your company Take2, seriously Gena where is the evidence, I have seen this enough times to know there is none, and something has royally gone up the spout here , and someone is covering their arse.

Oh and remember the canary trap I was talking about above, the next time you say there has been a review multiple times by your team don’t just cut copy and paste the information already sent, because I set the system up that this information would change to prove the validity of your word. The fact that the IP address did not change between the investigations that Rockstar made, and your investigations bolsters my case more so

(Unfortunately I cannot place the IP information on this page as it will give away full access to my system, again I need to point out this information was transmitted by Rockstar to me with out carrying out full data protection checks which places Take2 in breach of Article 15 of the General Data Protection Regulation and Recital 64)

Gena’s message continues:

Article 15(4) of the General Data Protection Regulation and Recital 63 make it clear that Take2 is not required to provide a copy of data where this would “adversely affect the rights and freedoms of others, including trade secrets or intellectual property and in particular the copyright protecting the software… the results of those considerations should not be a refusal to provide all the information to a data subject”

My official answer to this segment of the e-mail:

Gena, you are partially right on article 15(4), it refers you to article 15(3) in making an assessment on administrative costs to providing the information to the subject and should not be preventative in handing over the information if another subject is mentioned in the data. The rest of your comment that you have placed here is bollocks and pardon me for being honest.

Recital 63, by reading makes out that if any information regarding me which is held by Take2 this needs to be transmitted on request, if this information could affect the rights and freedoms of others, this is no longer a warranted excuse to not to share the information, instead reasonable stop gaps need to be put in place to protect the other parties that could be affected in releasing the information.

My offer of signing and Non Disclosure Agreement, and assessing these documents on site at one of your London offices and the information staying firmly within the grounds of  your London offices, would have covered all aspects of Article 15(3)(4) and Recital 63, and as expressed in my response I am not going to have this going around in circles until my time for logging a complaint has expired with my countries information commissioner, so go and speak to your boss and get the confirmation and comeback to me with a date that I can view the information. Because until then Take2 is in breach of Article 15 of the GDPR including Recital 63, and Recital 64.

(Currently we have had a week of radio silence from Gena, from reading what Rockstar / Take2 have done in the past in these situations I have familiarised my self with my white card for anybody they may want to send snooping around!)

Gena’s message further continues:

Take2 Takes significant steps to protect its trade secrets – both to protect it’s own interests and those of other players that rely on Take2 to enforce fair play across our games. We have however, already provided other non – exempt information in response to your subject access request as required by GDPR.

My official answer to this segment of the e-mail:

Once again you have made a claim that I was cheating / not playing fairly with other players, that makes it the fourth time, twice in the same e-mail, that Take2 has made a false allegation against me,

And as we have established Take2 are in breach in the information that they are not providing. I don’t know how I can spell it out to you any better there is no longer an exemption on the information that you can and cannot transmit under GDPR, it is not a cut copy and paste job from the old legislation, and is there for people if they want to say something about someone else which is held by a third party it is up to that third party to share that information when requested, and if another individual has made a claim it is up to the third party to protect the individual, as much as possible, but that is the role of the dice that that individual made when they made the claim.

So again you have withheld information concerning me that your company holds, and have refused access to this information when requested, claiming an exemption clause that does not exist, and a reasonable work around has been suggested, which you have not responded to, this places Take Two Interactive Software in breach of GDPR

Gena’s message further continues:

While you have the right to file a complaint to a Data Protection Authority in the country where you live or work if you still have concerns, Please be advised that should you file a false complaint against the company (which company Gena) we will then take appropriate action against you and / or your accounts.

My official answer to this segment of the e-mail:

Gena, this is what I am going to do, and I feel that I am being fair as four times twice you have on Behalf of Take2, and Rockstar have twice a subsidiary of Take Two Interactive software Inc. have falsely made statements about me.

I am offering any Legal Firm that has a representative on the New York Bar that is willing to represent me in suing Take2 Interactive for liable on a no win no fee basis, a 75% of the cut as they will be taking all the risk for me, and as I said I am not a greedy man, hell the other 25% can go to charity for all I am cared, but the message is simple, Take Two Interactive Software Inc. and one of its subsidiaries falsely made a claim that I cheated on one of their games, with out a shred of evidence, and a bunch of bollocks to try and scare me off, so maybe in between the time it takes for someone to have the bollocks to think I fancy a substantial pay off, I will take the risk in representing this fellow, you may want to consider very quickly about how your are going to transmit that information you hold on me and are refusing to share under GDPR.

For anyone that is an interested party that wishes to take me on as their client, on a no win no fee basis, to show you have the salt and the bollocks, first phone me on my mobile leave a message (This you will need to get hold of by any means possible), then place your offer on my door step, and if you got the Information from Gena Feist or another Take2 employee this rules you out of the running!

End of message

Following further messages as we have discussed in previous parts of this blog I asked Gena tough questions, I have kept my part of a request by Gena to fully explain the security breach at the Windsor offices, how I knew Take2 had a security breach in 2014, which again from this information Gena refused to comment when requested to confirm if the company had any security breaches for that 12 month period.

I also asked Gena about which US/EU Government agencies Take2 provides detailed game player information to, Gena’s response was repetitive at best with please state in the EULA where it says we do this, to a complete refusal to answer the question

I also asked do Take2 provide information under CALEA legislation this was responded with I do not know where you are going with this and what does Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement (CALEA) have to do with anything! again a complete box around and for a Yale Law grad would of expected this to be a simple request.

Again radio silence from Gena Feist for over a week clearly there is no formal comeback!

Happy hunting peoples!