Okay... I guess. :)

As I said before, indeed.
There is so much hypocrisy here it ain't funny. Especially when its Valve we are talking about here, not some small publisher that people have grown to love :P

Firstly, when was this about Valve? This is Rockstar's game. They're the ones responsible for the content. Even when publishers release broken content, Valve don't do anything to stop them. Secondly, Valve was some small developer that a great many people have come to love. Sure, they're not that small developer anymore and their fanboys are mostly moronic fanatics. But still.

1) Valve has no quality control
2) Hence why I referenced it
3) You missed my reference to GOG.com, which did the exact same thing to some games, and have fanboys just as fanatical, if not, more.

So... with this cracked exe, did the game still need Steam to run in the background?

Seeing as you already know Valve don't have any quality control, why compare this to what GOG did?

Yep. The Steam wrapper must have been added after. So they were effectively trading one DRM scheme for another.

Its the same act: Using a cracked executable for financial gain. But again its their property, but still...the hypocrisy is still there.

You sure? Who did make the crack in the first place? Pirates. Where was the aforementioned crack used in the first place? The game's pirated version. So piracy is involved in full here.... And it's good, so good that even the original developers (ab)use it. Oh, I love the irony....

In their NFO they explicitely state:
"Always remember:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We do this just for FUN. We are against any profit or commercialisation
of piracy. We do not spread any release, others do that.
In fact, we BUY all our own games with our own hard earned and worked for
efforts. Which is from our own real life non-scene jobs.
As we love game originals. Nothing beats a quality original.
"If you like this game, BUY it. We did!""
and
"Support the software companies. If you play this game BUY it!"
Pirates and scene cracker groups are two different entities that come into the equation here. Sure it would be a bit naiv to think they're all clean and don't condone Piracy completely. Still the effort is there nonetheless.
What I can agree with is that Piracy in some way is an investment in the future of a game. Game companies come and go, just like development studios get created and dissolved.
Copy protections might not work on more recent Operating Systems anymore, but thanks to those patches there might still be hope to get the game running.
Although I will always try to get a title on legit ways first, before looking for it on sharing sites (last resort) if it's a really rare/old gem.
There are no good reasons for pirating stuff and if anyone feels anything but ashamed doing it there's obvioulsy a problem somewhere. So if you don't agree with a companies' methods don't buy and don't pirate it. If it's too expensive don't buy and don't pirate it.
Topic: This is all such a non-issue, what's even worse is that Rockstar rolled back to a previous version, can't those guys stand up to it? And why did it take so long to be discovered?

Well, their crack enables Rockstar to keep selling the original game in digital distribution form, so Rockstar didn't really 'violate' the crackers' original intention in supporting software companies and original games... :P

Crackers made it. No. That's not strictly true. They didn't actually make anything. They simply altered someone else's work. They claim to do it mostly for the challenge. But they certainly don't seem to care much when their endeavours get leaked into the public domain.
Where it was first used is irrelevant. If a cracked version of a game is leaked before it is officially released then that doesn't tarnish every legal version of the game with that fact. Equally, the fact that the Steam version was used in pirated versions beforehand is irrelevant. Rockstar simply used their property to remove the disc check from non-disc versions of the game.
The fact that it's their property is everything.The hypocrisy is found in the comparison between this act and their clusterfuck DRM used in GTA and the Bioshock games.

No, the fact that pirates cracked it isn't irrelevant. It's THE fact, because if the "industry" needs to use its own code in the "cracked", so-called "illegal" version to offer a better user experience than I can say the industry is fucked up. And pirates (crackers, whatever) are more useful than ever.

1. Why the quote marks around industry? Is the fact there's a multi-billion dollar games industry really up for debate? Or is this some kind of feeble attempt to belittle them when you're clearly so very fond of their output?
2. It's not illegal. It's against the EULA forend usersto modify the exe. But not the publisher. That is also not taking into account the fact that from a legal standpoint EULAs carry about as much weight as Gary Glitter trying to press sexual harassment charges against a 6 year old girl.
3. It's not to provide a better end user experience. It's to make it possible. What was removed was a disc check. Need I point out why this might not exactly be a good inclusion with the Steam version of the game?
4. It's more a matter of time saving than necessity. I'm sure Rockstar are just as capable of reverse engineering their own games as any basement dweller.

Maybe cracker groups should put their cracks under a closed non commercial license and start legal action against companies that put them in their games for profit. :D

I'm fond of the "output" from developers, but in the last years everything in between seems just garbage to me....
Who damn cares about the "unlawfulness" or not of the fact :-P Here the point is: pirates/crews crack/distribute modified versions of the game, then the original developers take these modifications and profit by them. This is the fact, and I like the irony implied...
So, a removed disc check isn't a better user experience for you? Weirdest thing I've read this week... Please review your opinion then :-P
Unimportant. The fact is: pirates do better than developers/publishers did in the first try. Take note and goodnight....