Ubisoft pirates game fix from pirates

Meanwhile . .

there is still no officially sanctioned fix for this totally unacceptable cockup.

Its unbelievable that a bunch of unpaid pimply faced teenagers can provide a better customer experience than a "properly" managed company.

FREE VS Legal

legal "licensed" Product:

1. High price tag

2. Slow down by illegal copy protection

3. DRM illegally prevent you from backing flimsy cheap CD/DVD

3. DRM illegally prevent you from fully enjoying your product

4. DRM once more is proven to be 100% NON Efficient at stoping Piracy

Free Version

1. Afordable

2. No illegal DRM

3. install image can backed on anything

4. Can fully enjoy the product whitout any illegal constraint

5. Get a good laugh at compan\ies who spend insage amouth of many on useless DRM that had NEVER WORK (and never WILL). here is a hint, want to recoup money (not really lost) to piracy? Sue the real criminal: The company that designs those flawed DRM.

How to make Licenced product apealing:

1. LOWER Price (whioudld be easy, by saving millions illegasl DRM suck up)

2. Remove any kind of DRM

3. Increase sale, consumer satisfaction!

Yep been there done that

I download the cracked versions for pretty much every game I buy. I'm not very good at keeping track of my CDs, and generally can't be bothered to swap out disks just to play a game.

Doesn't mean I think its okay to steal games though. There is only one legitimate way to protest prices or even the DRM, and that's to not buy the game.

I'm not protesting anything, I just can't be bothered with using a CD or DVD once I've installed it.

But what these companies fail to understand is no amount of DRM will stop pricks thieving their games. Its as easy to get hold of a game that's loaded with DRM as it is to get one that has none at all. You just download a second tiny file after you're game torrent is done. Sometimes they even come with the cracked exe in the same torrent, which is a pain for me because I don't need the game itself.

The truth is if businesses really want to do away with piracy, there's only one way to do so. Make drm-free, downloadable games available at zero cost. Of course this would mean no more good games, but there you go.

Oh and just because a business makes a profit selling games to people like me, doesn't make it okay for you to steal them either. You're still a thieving prick.

Silly people...

I routinely download the cracked exe for every single game I buy. It saves me having to take the CD's around with me, and it means they even load up quicker. I honestly don't know why the still include CD checks - all it does is inconvenience the user.

...yet another corp who can kiss my phat arse...

When will Goobisoft and the rest of the BumBuds of DRM realize that the more they push DRM, the more their swag gets "pirated"? This case is a perfectly glaring example of this point. Of course there are a core of h4><0rZ that stay busy cracking that code to make their stuff leet, free it from DRM Bondage, and are happy to pass it on, but mind this: this is a small-numbered group compared to the greater community of gamers who keep it clean... normally. Thanks to Goobersoft's malbuilt "patch" that was DRM'd upp all nice and crusty, they bent their online customers over without even the benefit of a reacharound. Of course they are going to hit Goobersoft up for a Fix to their lovely Patch. The bad part for Goobersoft is that they have had their swag DRM'd up so completely that even THEY couldn't figger out how to patch it... Aye, but here come the "Pirates" to the rescue. Since Ubi couldnt figure out a patch on their own, they wiezed the cracked code and upstreamed it as if it was their own. Hypocrites, the whole lot of them; they gritch about Pirates, but they Pirate the pirated code themselves. Then, when some sharp eyes spot the Reloaded sig in the Hex and fully bust Goobersoft on it, then they yank it, and continue with the customer shagging... Without the "fix", those who bought the game legit online are Forced to become "Pirates" just to fix Goobersoft's phuxup and make their game playable again. Like Matt said, this is a "perfect" example of a company making it harder to use their product legitimately than it is to use a hacked version, and thus making many more people "pirates" than there would be if the software was DRM-Free. Will they ever learn?...

Brings a whole new meaning to copy protection

Yep, agreed. There are freetards, there always will be. But if I wanted to swap out disks all day to play games when I have a huge hard drive which exists so I don't have to, then they might as well deliver us a 1980s Amiga and let us swap floppies all day. Very annoying when you've paid 50 quid for the privelege. Problems start when your CD starts to die as well, this happened to me with BF1942.

The DRM is mostly 3rd party apps that have been cracked, so they can easily apply them across all games that use it. And from a technical point of view, I don't really understand why they insist on CD's being present when the .exe that calls it is installed on the HDD. Why is this less secure than storing it (be it a key or dll or whatever) on the HDD when the .exe that the pirates patch is also there? Bizarre.

@Yep been there done that

and he said ... "The truth is if businesses really want to do away with piracy, there's only one way to do so. Make drm-free, downloadable games available at zero cost. Of course this would mean no more good games, but there you go."

I beg to differ sir! Has anyone had a peek at the open source games available for Linux *LATELY*?!

http://gamesuy.blogspot.com/2007/12/top-10-free-linux-3d-games.html

"some have won awards..."

Not too shabby eh? As if that wasn't enough, there are various frameworks with 3D engines and all, AND some people have even made use of them. What, you don't like something about one of them?? Schmooze the people that maintain it (yes, they REALLY respond!) and you'll likely get your wish!

What's more they *don't care* if you take the game and modify it!! As long as you let others play with your mods too!

DRM free since forever.

cheers!

give em a job!

its been long established that DEViANCE/RELOADED crackers are some of the most talented coders around; these guys work tirelessly on stuff like this (and not just the illegal stuff)

give em a job :p

they had it right at first ....

ok to play this game online you need a code..playing this game by yourself is good practice but thats it after you complete it its done ..the online element is everything to it so why the hell did they put a cd protection on it ????

they should let people copy the 1 player mode letthem get hooked then they will have to buy a code or a cd/code to play online.. it's a perfect way to make more money try before you buy sort of thing ...

my son bought this game and i tryed it offline first so did my wife then we went out and got one each ..you see it does work ...

and reloaded arn't spotty 16yr olds they have been around far to long now ...more like pale 25yr olds that never see the sun :) but imo there hero's of the new age ...cudos guys

@been there done that.

I gotta agree, despite the idiots who are running the company there are likely a bunch of developers who worked hard and probably had the gamer in mind. They probably feel as screwed over as the consumers.

Yes DRM sucks and Ubisoft are really taking the p*ss by still not releasing the version they claim to have. But pirating games will lead to no more good games. Or worse fewer game development companies so everything will be made by EA (oh wait..).

Try things by all means but if you want free, go open source. Ok there are very few open source games, but if you get all your other software open source then you will have money for games!

Small people need backup

When young people are given games on disc it doesn't take long for the discs to become covered with food and scratches. At this point the parents are supposed to go out and buy a new copy. I've rescued discs by washing them and carefully polishing with Duraglit to remove most of the surface scratches. Then they can be copied over to a hard drive using software that picks carefully through the protection stuff.

Yes, I guess it is illegal but when children are involved in swapping game discs over then you need some sort of back-up. Far better to copy the new disc then store it away until it's needed.

Oddly enough, that's exactly what we were all encouraged to do when everything came on a pack of floppy discs, first bit of instruction was usually to back it up and run with the back ups.

The manufacturers don't really care if you get to play the games or not -- as long as you part with the cash, that's all that matters. We have a different viewpoint as customers - we expect to have a product we can use more than a couple of times, something that lasts longer than the next game release.

Can somebody explain

Why on this and a number of other threads people claim that copy protection and DRM are illegal? I thought that, at least in the USA, DRM was actually a part of their law (although EL Reg being a British site this of course does not apply here, but tell the mericans that). I'm not much of a gamer myself so I would not have seen any of the arguments on the subject, and am genuinely interested.

Never illegally downloaded a game...

... Always downloaded cracks / mini-images for them if DRM / Copy Protection is present.

I have about 30 games installed at any one time, and I play some of them more often than others. Swapping discs constantly damages them, and good luck getting a replacement from your local retailer / game publisher when it's knackered. "That's wear in normal use. Go buy it again if you liked it so much!"

I suppose it's the wrong way to go about it, really; As long as they still get their money, they'll keep pumping out this crud.

@Kevin

"There is only one type of game protection I am 'OK' with (if you have to have it make it a light touch) and that is an online verification at the point of install. After that a random check on launch if the Internet is available"

And then we come to the next set of problems.

What happens when the servers go down? Your game does not get validated so you cannot play it. That has happened before.

What happens if you are someone who disables your internet connection to save resources when your PC is not at the top end spec-wise for the game? Your game does not get validated randomly so you cannot play it.

Sorry, that system does not work and will be cracked as quickly as any other failed DRM. If the publishers like Ubi want to solve the issue, then dropp DRM and drop the prices. That way more games will be sold and they will make more money.

DRM DOES NOT WORK

@Yay and stuff, but my question is..

Ubisoft programmers wouldn't alter the code by editing the .exe file. That's _hard_. Hell, I'm a professional C/C++ programmer and I wouldn't know how to do that. I could probably figure it out if I had to, but it's much much easier just to change the source code and recompile. That would've got rid of the "Reloaded" string in the .exe, and all the other changes made by the Reloaded team.

It sound like some poor support person wanted to help customers dispite utter cluelessness from the company. So they just took the crack, changed the documentation, renamed it from leet_warez_crack.zip to official_supported_patch.zip, and uploaded it. Now they're probably going to get fired.

Legal ramifications?

I wonder what the legal ramifications of Ubisoft officially releasing RELOADED's code. This definitely adds support for making copy protection circumvention legal, when a publisher officially releases it as a bug patch!

Copy protection is simply a bad idea, end of story. It doesn't stop piracy, and it hurts consumers! Most pirated copies represent people who would have never paid for the software otherwise!

stuff high prices

Download an emulator and play all the games you used to play years ago.

No longer playing

All of the these hoops DRM require you to jump through is *exactly* why I no longer play PC-based games.

So, all that DRM has done for PC Game companies is loose them a customer who used to buy a game a month until he got jack of playing the DRM "we consider you all criminals" game.

Great Display of the Awesomeness that is DRM-Free!

What a waste of time and money, and ultimately the effect on people that have PAID for the game losing out! This is NOT ON.

As an example:

I play WoW (I am a geek, so what?)

I went to website.

Downloaded trial.

Good game, I want.

I click "upgrade to full"

I pay.

Game downloaded.

Done.

Why should anyone else been any different. Blizz have done a great job in making it EASY for me to PAY AND PLAY. Theres no fucking rocket science there. The quicker and less painful it is for me to get the damn thing running, the more likely I am to punch my CC details in and pay for the product!

DUH!

@Joerg

'Or do you really think that "hackers, computer wizards" teenagers exist ?'

I think the only people who'd dispute the existence of crackers are those people who want to deny it because they aren't able to do it themselves and can't accept that there are people out there who possess a skill that they don't (especially if those people are younger). It doesn't take a magic universal decryption box (a la Sneakers) or an autistic savante (Mercury Rising) to crack software, just a disassembler, a hex editor, a working knowledge of machine code, a 'flexible' definition of ethics and too much time on your hands.

Mine's the one with "x86 assembler coders do it in protected mode" written on the back.

Ubisoft-cocks

This company must have the worst customer support service in the industry. I bought Assasins Creed and unfortunately got a disk from a "bad batch". That bad batch was the limited edition version, go figure. Perhaps it was limited because it didn't work. Anyways, I still have not been able to play the game as it won't install on my system. There were 11 pages on their official forum with customers having the same problem. Their response? "We'll look into it." Nothing more has been done.

Frankly, Ubisoft, you can stick it in your grandma. I'm never going near another one of your games again!

credit where credit is due

1: Ubisoft have been caught - drippy digits of rouge aplenty - and should compensate the original developer. Easier said than done I know... but a public 'thank-you' and apology would go a long way especially given the hoo-haa that develops when the situation is reversed.

2: NoCD excecutables are a fantastic idea and have saved me from countless repetitions of :=: start game - read annoying message about "wrong CD in Drive" - openCDDrive - remove CD - open CD box - carefully place CD in box - click (wince) - close box - open new box - carefully remove CD from box (wince) - click - slide CD into CDDrive - close Drive - cancel autoinstaller - restart game :=: It's not just excessive wear and tear on the CD; it's a bloody waste of time; we have numerous opportunities for inadvertant scratch damage during transfer, unnecessary wear on the CD Drive itself, the likely addition of more fingerprints to smudge the optics and further risk of incidental damage if the CD is not correctly housed before closing the Drive door. "Normal" wear and tear (the damage caused by shining a laser or two over the surface of the disk) is far exceeded.

3: A recent attempt to follow protocol when replacing the playdisk of Maxpayne2 was met with a charge of £10 plus P&P so I bought the entire game second hand off Am.az.on for less than half of that and emailed the distributor to express my disgust. The distributor isn't benefitting here, but the customer is most certaily suffering... so is it any wonder we are becoming reluctant to spend hard cash on games. How would the world react if one was required to put the XP/Vista disk in every time we wanted to make "windows" start, if one then had to look out the office disk in order to open up a word attachment to your email?

4: Why all this protection? Is it all necessary? To install, a key is required... okay - so I read my key from inside the box - my personal key ...there are many like it but this one is mine (as for a name, how about 'melanie')... the one that will be replaced if I find it is already in use. Why then do I want to register? Well why? Are you proposing to send the necessary updates direct to my inbox? That would be a first. Are you even going to tell me that an official patch has been released? I think not, adverts for unrelated games I get plenty of but bugger all support. But you have my key and my IP... and now you are after my email address too.

5: Most games these days consist of a rudimentary single player mode that does nothing more than whet the appetite for online multiplay (bugger all different from a demo version - It took me just 3 evenings to do CoD4 from the tanker to the airplane (don't call me shirley); a mate managed Crysis in just 24 hours. To play online there is registration (usually linked to a valid and therefore traceable email account) of a uniquely identifyable persona linked to your uniquely identifyable key, there is often punkbuster (for the likes of CoD4, BF1942, BF2, BF2142 yaa-dee-yah...) to detect illegal checksums and to prevent people from benefitting from some illegal content and scripts etc, play may also be restricted to specific servers (eg the very unreliable gamespy system housing TestDriveUnlimited or the EA controlled servers for registered BF2 games) to amass anything on a games points system.

6: So with all this security already in place... why exactly to we need a CDCheck... if the game was easy to copy then more people would get copies to try before they buy, get hooked on the short single player mode and demand would quickly rise for the official key in order to play online. Install game, type in your official key, register or supply username and contact email address and there is then no need to go back to the disk unless re-installing after MS-VisteXpdirectXOS does it's usual 6 monthly self implosion.

>>>> At every turn, the official game purchaser is being punished for sticking to the rules and those who are prepared to bend them slightly; those who hunt down NoCD.exe's, disk emulators, virtual image drives, masks to hide the above... etc are rewarded every time they wish to play the game. Legally, one is permitted to retain a copy of a £15 music CD as a backup... physically, one is prevented from performing the same security measure on a £30 game. Go figure Ubisoft... and someone please let EA know. We're creating a generation of pirates - because piratin's the only logical step forward from this place. Haaaa aaaAAAAAAA aaAAARRRRRRggg !!!! Sliver me Timberlakes.

Punish the innocent

The whole market is rife with this...

I bought Splinter Cell:Chaos Theory, which also came with a copy protection on the disc - was fine for XP, but not compatible with 64-bit Vista so I could install but not run the program. Have installed a NoCD patch for the exe and is fine now. Ubisoft only offered the solution of going to the 3rd Party protection maker's website, which contained an update which did sweet FA to help, so yes I had to resort to the 'crackers' to help me out with my legitimate purchase.

Also, does it not bug you that the only place you get those damn awful 'You wouldn't steal a television' anti-piracy ads is on legitimately bought DVDs? I bet it's stripped from the pirated version - so the majority of people being told not to pirate things are the people not pirating things.

Think I'm gonna get me a parrot and some pieces of eight, me hearties... just for the quieter life...

Staggered by some of the opinions here...

1) If you don't like DRM don't buy PC games. 'Ooooo having to keep putting the CD in the CD in the drive is such an inconvenience' What total f*cking twaddle. Like your switching betwen different games every 5 minutes? I don't think so. Get over it, get a console, or read a book.

2) While still totally illegal, I can at least see some small argument for torrenting film and media. Program cracks though? Do you really know what backdoors and phishing scripts your letting onto your system? The same windows users who spend half their time trying defend their computers against viruses,OS and application vulnerabilities etc then happilly install 'Game unlocked + Free Zombie PC' and then wonder why their next months broadband usage goes over it's limit.

@Joerg

I suppose you think all those people out there that make huge reproductions of the Battle Of Britain out of Airfix models or make scale replicas of the Eiffel Tower out of matchsticks are all paid professionals too? After all, heaven forbid you could make a replica of something without the original blueprints!

Just becuse something is difficult and/or time consuming doesn't mean people don't do it all the time.

Paris - 'cos even she could be l33t if she put her mind to it...