Aleron Ives wrote:It's also worth noting that Sega may have scrapped the separate HL server in order to prevent anybody from avoiding the HL fee. Back when the server was still running, there were whispers about a CB code that would let you play USv2 online for free.
Such a code was not made public on CMGSCCC or the other code sites, but if it did exist, it would probably work similarly to the bypass BlueCrab made: if somebody forced the game to skip the HL check in 2001, in theory it would have allowed you to connect without paying the HL fee, as the game server assumed all connections had been approved already by the HL server. Integrating fee management into the game server would have prevented this exploit, if it ever existed.
And there's no reason to believe that such a code didn't exist back then, especially since (as I demonstrated before releasing the patcher), it's only a two line code to do it with CodeBreaker. I don't believe for a second that I was the first to figure that out, especially not with all the (very talented) "code developers" that were around back then.