Way illegal?

**Yamoto** · January 20, 2006, 09:24 AM

Way is it illegal to mod with exe?
Way, i dont get it.

**Simetrical** · January 20, 2006, 02:52 PM

It's illegal because the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives voted to pass a bill making it illegal, and the President signed it. :original: As for why they did that, basically, software companies don't want you reverse-engineering their work. They want to keep it secret, so others don't "steal their work". Personally, I believe that this mentality is nothing short of destructive, and that the advance of programming would be greatly aided if everyone could examine the source code of a product they legally bought. Of course, this would only work if the source code of all such programs had to be made available, because otherwise there'd be no way to catch thieves.

Another reason they don't want people reverse-engineering their obfuscation is that then it's very easy to remove their copy protection and let people play without a CD. If you don't crack the EXE, you can't reverse the copy-protection, and they want to cut off such attempts at their root.

Finally, in the specific case of CA, if people could freely build on their work, they could add all sorts of features that CA wants to use for its future games, thus hurting their chances of selling sequels.

Regardless, be aware that TWC doesn't permit promotion or facilitation of illegal activity. Attempts to link to cracked EXEs of any kind will be dealt with harshly.