Would GHTV Reloaded (guitar hero live server revival) be against TA rules?

https://x.com/GhtvReloaded/status/1883726338852601970

Statement from one of the dev's here on this forum.

Nathan3197 said:I guess my question is, once this is live. If a TA user were to do this to play online and legitimately unlock achievements even with the servers offline by the dev's. Would our account be flagged?

I know services like Halo 3 servers back online are not allowed because it requires a modded xbox to host, and they can just pop achievements for you in those servers. But this is not such the case, and is like the servers turning back on. I think this should be taken a look at and given an OK before just writing it off as the user still has to legitimately earn the achievements, and there is no way for the dev team to pop them for players.

As far as the official cheat policy goes, this isnt against the rules. But i know the halo 3 servers were frowned upon.

This is similar to Halo 2 Vista. Since these are not the official servers, I would wager this would not be considered legitimate.

However, I personally think this should be fair game and also believe the same for instances similar such as Halo 2 Vista, Halo 3 sunrise, etc.

I’d be curious the legal percussion of this revival, as my understanding it gives people full access to all songs from a catalog that was behind a paywall and surely most licenses have expired by now?

oxHARMONxo said:Over on true trophies, they approved the use of GoneSpy for certain titles which allowed the restoration of servers that were once dead. This was because that service they still had to unlock the achievements legitimately (which right now with halo 3 modded servers there’s no way to prohibit users from getting achievements unlocked asap due to the way those servers are hosted). And with halo 2, it requires genuine editing of the game files to trick the game into unlocking this achievements

I’m thinking this is more of a gonespy situation, where because the users still have to unlock the achievements legitimately, and there’s no way the dev’s can pop these achievements for people, that this should be considered for approval from the investigation team.

Read more here on true trophies about that scenario: This requires basically the same method of activating the servers again, by changing DNS


https://www.truetrophies.com/forum/viewthread.aspx?tid=66210...

Gonespy: https://github.com/gonespy/bstormps3

Since then, they have added support for other games (like unreal tournament 3, and 50 cent) using a forked version of GoneSpy, and true trophies has approved the use of this. https://gitlab.com/fargonespy1/fargonespy



(Do these sites have the same investigation team? If not then I understand if they have a different stance.)

I doubt they are the same investigation team, but my understanding is the sites simply have different rules. The trophy community holds very different stances on some things than the achievement community, and it would make sense for each TGN site to respect that. What is allowed in a totally different community that happens to be run by the same handful of dev staff is not likely to be relevant to what is or should be allowed here. Private services like that have never been allowed here in the past that I can think of, not just when they required things like modded consoles to run, and there's not really anything special about this one. I'm not saying this should or shouldn't be allowed, but based on history, without an explicit rule change, I don't see how TA would justify allowing this but not others.

Ahayzo said:Do we even have an example of revived server’s on Xbox via a DNS change and how this site handled it? There are a decent amount for ps3, but I haven’t seen any for Xbox. All I’m familiar with is halo 3 sunrise server’s that require a modded console to run the plug in’s to host the servers for other people.

I truly feel this is different than the above example of halo servers, because it does not require the use of any external modification. But like you said, would probably need a clarification in the rules to even justify why this would be allowed if so. Would be nice to have an official policy on these things.



Also, going back to the reasoning why the halo 3 servers were not allowed, investigation team determined it was because you have to connect to a users modded JTAG’d console. This is not the case here
Are Halo 3 moded matchmaking servers fair game?

AFL Kr0niic said:So if you only have to change your own xbox's dns settings then this should be allowed. The cheater policy states this as cheating

Cheating Actions:

Using profile editors, trainers, or similar software to unlock achievements.
Gamesaving: Using a save from a different profile or from a different version/platform outside of supported game mechanics.
Profile swapping (Second Profile Glitch): Transferring a save or game statistics from one profile to another.
Editing or manipulating game files to unlock achievements, alter achievement requirements or to unlock options disabled by developers.
Manually adding or editing files in mod-enabled games to unlock achievements or alter achievement requirements.
Launching a game with command line arguments (or using software to do so) for the purpose of unlocking achievements, altering achievement requirements or to unlock options disabled by developers.
Account sharing: Unlocking achievements over prolonged periods that would be impossible for a single family unit to do legitimately.
Account linking: Unlocking achievements by linking an account that isn’t your own.

Nothing here about changing your dns settings, so this should be allowed.

The policy has never been that simple. I don’t see anywhere on the list that would prohibit halo sunrise, but it’s banned.

The argument made by moderation over the years is if it’s not an officially maintained server, it’s illegitimate. How you access the server is completely irrelevant.

Yea just because changing your DNS to access something is allowed doesn't mean that it doesn't matter what that "something" is. Regardless of whether or not it should be allowed, that argument is meaningless.

My interpretation of the previous rulings is that they seem to have been made with consideration that you must modify hardware/software; not just something trivial like a DNS configuration. At a glance: I can't see the GH:L situation being any different that something like a minecraft server someone is hosting in their basement. All that said: I'm making this post really just to get out my 2 cents while we wait on an official ruling.

The S bot 9000 said:To be fair, that's intended and supported functionality in Minecraft, and official support has always been a factor for things.

Ahayzo said:Being able to change the DNS is intended and supported functionality on all Xboxes.

Whether or not you are allowed to change DNS is not the question here. It's what you do with it, and you know that.

I agree that the fact that you can access GHTV Reloaded just by changing my DNS is irrelevant. Because if it was possible that someone could make and host a server that autopops achievements, no one would argue legitimacy of those unlocks with "well, all I did was change my DNS settings!" Best to just throw that aside.

What you really want to discuss is the legitimacy of this specific third-party server, although realistically before you even get into that, TA and the Investigations team needs to decide once and for all if this site is open to third-party servers at all; if it is, then we can discuss things like this on a case-by-case basis, and if it's not, then that should just be put into the cheater policy and then this never needs to be brought up again (for this game, or any other)

Given that GHTV Reloaded V3 isn't even out yet, perhaps for now it would make sense for the IM team to weigh in on that larger question first, and if third-party servers are something they're open to then I think it would make sense to hold off on this specific discussion until V3 actually comes out, and people have been able to do some evidence gathering (perhaps reading the code if it is open source, doing some testing on dummy profiles, etc)