IR Gurus Interactive and Empire Interactive both closed down in ~2009, can the devs clarify who is publishing this game?

[Alice]

I've seen someone in my horse game community claim that this is actually a cracked version of the game that can also be found on abandonware sites.

The two companies listed as developer and publisher apparently closed down about 15 years ago and I can't find anything on where the IP rights for their projects went after that.

Is this game being published by anyone affiliated with the original studio? Or by someone who took over the rights after Empire and IR Gurus went down? Because the alternative is that this is a random scam from someone just grabbing an abandonware game and making a quick buck off it on Steam.

Can someone who has already bought it check their own game files to see if they can corroborate that a "hacked by xyz" line can be found in the game files?

Does anyone have any further insight on what might be happening here?

Edit: and if anyone involved in this would like to say anything anonymously, do feel free to reach out to Alice from The Mane Quest, you can find my email if you google that.

[Alice]

further findings summarized here, if anyone's interested: https://www.themanequest.com/blog/2025/1/5/abandonware-scam-or-legitimate-re-release-lucinda-greens-equestrian-challenge-is-available-on-steam-now-but-raising-suspicions

Basically, this is definitely the same version (cracked) as you can find on abandonware sites, so it's highly unlikely that it'll get any updates. The texture issues (black/white horsees) can be bypassed by launching the .exe directly instead of pressing 'play' in Steam.

Would love to know who published this and who the revenue is going to.

[Adwaita]

Originally posted by Alice:

further findings summarized here, if anyone's interested: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/784C-923B-A4A1-C825

Basically, this is definitely the same version (cracked) as you can find on abandonware sites, so it's highly unlikely that it'll get any updates. The texture issues (black/white horsees) can be bypassed by launching the .exe directly instead of pressing 'play' in Steam.

Would love to know who published this and who the revenue is going to.

Alice, I assume you wanted to put the Mane Quest post in that link, but that's a refund link.

[Alice]

Originally posted by Adwaita:

Alice, I assume you wanted to put the Mane Quest post in that link, but that's a refund link.

Omg 🤦‍♀️
Thank you for pointing it out!! I was obviously doing too many different things at once and forgot what I had in my pastebin 🙈
Fixed it, thanks! 😄

[VicemanUral]

Manhunt from Rockstar Games is also cracked version on Steam, also Marc Eckō's Getting Up from Devolver is also cracked version. And there are plenty of examples like this. This is common practice for old games. It takes a budget to create an official toolkit to decouple a game from piracy protection. And no one will spend thousands of dollars on a game that is unlikely to recoup those costs