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As a PC repairman I'd also like to point out that some of the nastier DRM can completely brick your system forcing a reinstall or in some cases even destroying hardware. How is that possible you ask?

Simple: In the first cases many versions of Safedisc, Starforce, and secuROM will attempt to install X86 Ring 0 code into an X64 kernel which as anyone that knows anything about OSes knows that is a BIG fricking no no with a capital B for bad. Now not only does this malware install X86 ring 0 code into an X64 OS, causing all kinds of instability and system problems the uninstaller will NOT remove it and it can't be safely uninstalled from the OS, even in safe mode. So if you don't have a Windows Live CD like I do or have a dual boot setup you WILL be uninstalling and reinstalling. I hope you have your data or a separate partition or drive.

Second I have found when you mix differing versions of Safedisc,SecuROM, and Starforce (since often it will force you to have multiple versions, since they don't recognize each others "security") there is a serious risk of throwing any burners on the machine into PIO mode which happens more often with XP, although I have seen it twice so far with Vista as well. Since modern burners aren't made to run that slow what happens is every burn comes out useless until the drive motors burn out bricking the drive. I can't count how many nice new DVD burners I've shitcanned because of this problem, it really bites XP customers in the ass.

So my advice is this: If you are on an X64 version have disc images of the OS which is good advice anyway, along with using a site such as GameCopyWorld to hack the .exe BEFORE launching. What I've found is much of the ring 0 crap that breaks machines isn't installed until first launch, so by hacking the .exe one can bypass the crap before it can do any damage.

Second if you can buy from GOG which has NO ring 0 crap, but if you have to play one that has nasty DRM buy the game but play the cracked game instead as this allows you to again bypass the bullshit and still play the game. For an example I bought Bioshock II recently for $10 (yeah I know its a shit game, but it was $10 and I missed doing the Plasmid/weapon two step) but after reading all the horror stories of nasty DRM and GFWL having to be installed (shudder, what a POS service! MSFT needs ro STFU and realize their shit will never be as good as Steam already!) I left the one I paid for in the box and got the cracked version which works perfectly without all the crap.

TLDR? If you want a faster game running better on a more stable system then pirate the fucker. hell it doesn't matter what you do anyway as they'll use any numbers they pull out their ass to justify giving us shitty console ports anyway.

You're welcome, I just try to warn folks as most of the new machines are X64 and I've found out the hard way after having to clean broken SecuROM and Safedisc installs.

Sadly the best protection you can give yourself besides the weekly backup (which if you'd like a free program I'd recommend Paragon Backup and Recovery Free as it has many of the normally pay features like Bootable restore CD and differential disc imaging) and making a restore point before an install is to go to GameCopyWorld and get the NoCD and use it immediately after installing the game but before launching it as I've found that will keep most Safedisc and SecuROM installs from activating and boning the machine.

Which of course just proves that once again the legit customer gets bullshit and hoop jumping, while the pirate gets a lower resource and less buggy game that "just works". But if you take my advice you'll find you can install any older game hassle free. I have games from as new as this year to as old as 1997, and all "just work" thanks to a little forethought.

I'd say that the advantages of x64 computing, not only the extra RAM but having the larger math registers which makes programs like transcoding faster, are well worth the extra work. I've been x64 since XP X64 right up to Win 7 X64, and I'd never want to go back to x86. It is just sad that it isn't the programs that need the extra work and caution, it is the shitty DRM with all the Ring 0 horseshit. I swear I've seen malware that is nicer to the system than some of those SecuROM versions. Good luck and happy 64 bit computing!

This is the equivalent of buying a game or a program that requires a media check (e.g. "Insert DVD/CD-ROM to start the game") and then downloading a modified executable from GameCopyWorld.com to play your own game without the media check. Many people have been doing this for a long time and this ruling sets a precedent that effectively legitimizes the usage of these helpful executable.

The problems with GCW is that a lot of times they include a full copy of the modified executable instead of just a small patcher or cracker program so they are still violating the copyright on the original executable code by distributing it without a license from the authors. The quick solution would be to download the patchers or crackers but since many of those are built using pre-made small assembly or C modular code (not shared libraries or DLLs) that has also be used by virus makers many of these legitimate pieces of modular code have been flagged by anti-virus companies as viruses just because they were used to make them. This is why your keygen, patcher, cracker executable will end up flagging anti-virus warnings immediately on download or usage or even months or years after you've successfully used them without getting an infection since their modules were flagged later. So GCW has a hard time with false-positive virus warnings and that's why they show that web page on download about their code being 100% clean and still allow download of full executables instead of just the patchers.

I take it you never heard of Gamecopyworld dude? Me and my friends have been using it for years, not a single bug. If you're paranoid feel free to scan them all you want, I have my PC set to autoscan all incoming as SOP, but like I said never a peep from Gamecopyworld.

Oh and if you go and make an account at CD2DVD you'll find great tutorials and custom installers that will allow you to design your own DVD installer and make multi install discs like having Max Payne 1&2 on a single DVD with menu and NoCDs. Great site.

No, secure rom doesn't bother most of us because we've already accepted we have to pirate our software in order to get a decent value out of it.

Bullshit. You're just cheap. You don't have to pirate the games, just crack 'em, you asshole.

In case you haven't noticed, steam is regularly on the front pages of slashdot

And in case you haven't noticed, I'm enjoying the shit out of my Steam games. They're so worth every penny, they could disappear tomorrow, and I'd buy 'em again.

What was your point again, apart from being a hypocritical cheater? 'Cuz mine is: I, and millions of others, are getting value for money and laughing at all you prissy little queens.

I use Game Copy World, esp on old DRM that requires the CD/DVD to be in the drive all the time. There is simply no reason why we should be tolerating DRM on any media, it would be like requiring a Captain Crunch decoder ring to read a book.

GameCopyWorld is your friend, and I have never gotten a bug from them in many years of use, but I agree that it is total BS that we have to use them at all. It has gotten to the point where I refuse to buy games at release anymore, simply because there aren't cracks ready to go. I wait 6 months so that most of the patches will have been released and I can get the crack for the latest patch simply to keep my computer from being infected by DRM.

And as a PC repairman I can tell your from experience with customers that the DRM used on games IS an infection, and is often more harmful than a trojan or spyware! Why is it so dangerous? Because NONE of the different DRM schemas actually support each other and will cause conflicts. I have found that pretty much anything + starforce usually equals disaster. The machine will become unstable, or worse if you have more than 1 DVD drive, or a DVD burner installed (and who doesn't nowadays?) it can destroy your drives! When you have starforce + SecuROM or SafeDisc you end up with the conflicts causing the drives to end up in PIO mode which will burn a modern DVD drive up VERY quickly, and I have had to throw more than a few customer's drives away simply from DRM conflicts burning them smooth up. I can't even remember the last time I saw a trojan or spyware do actually physical harm to a machine.

And finally what really pisses me royally off is all this flaming hoop jumping, and risking the stability of our machines and possibly burning up our drives, does NOTHING to combat piracy! If anything the games are on the warez sites faster than ever before! So those of us that buy our games get treated like dogshit and kicked in the nuts while the pirates laugh their asses off and enjoy games without bullshit that "just work" and don't bone their systems! It truly makes me sick, but thanks to so many of the games coming from only a handful of houses anymore we really don't get a choice. So while I don't pirate I can honestly see why so many do, as they are tired of getting treated like shit or jumping through hoops just to play.

Running a 64bit OS I pretty much have to crack all the time because I get that stupid "insert disc in drive E" bullshit even when the &^%*&%^ disc is IN the drive, just like on the video! But sadly we boycott and they just scream "look, it is proof the pirates are winning!" and fuck us worse. So I really don't see what we can do except take it. I prefer single player RTS and FPS titles, which means it is either get fucked or don't play. and I have NO desire to try to play with shitty console controls, so all I can do is sit here really pissed off at how badly we are being treated. THIS SUCKS!!!!!!

Ok, ok. You almost got me. I figured "No problem, there must be a crack out there."

I found Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus and Barbie Fashion Show nocd entries (I don't pirate games, but I do circumvent copy protection on games I buy so I don't have to keep inserting the CD), but, strangely, Barbie Horse Adventures was absent at the no-cd site that I frequent. That was a surprise, given how comprehensive that site usually is for the most obscure of games. I did come across some forum posts for Barbie Horse Adventures (lots of "LOL" in that one), but not a nocd solution for it.

Oh, wait, here we go. The whole game is on torrent. I assume that is probably cracked, although I didn't try it, for obvious reasons. Like I said, I don't usually look for actual games (I buy them), but apparently Barbie Horse Adventures is available in some form.

Wait, this was your whole nefarious plan to find it, wasn't it?

Ok, ok. You almost got me. I figured "No problem, there must be a crack out there."

I found Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus and Barbie Fashion Show nocd entries (I don't pirate games, but I do circumvent copy protection on games I buy so I don't have to keep inserting the CD), but, strangely, Barbie Horse Adventures was absent at the no-cd site that I frequent. That was a surprise, given how comprehensive that site usually is for the most obscure of games. I did come across some forum posts for Barbie Horse Adventures (lots of "LOL" in that one), but not a nocd solution for it.

Oh, wait, here we go. The whole game is on torrent. I assume that is probably cracked, although I didn't try it, for obvious reasons. Like I said, I don't usually look for actual games (I buy them), but apparently Barbie Horse Adventures is available in some form.

Wait, this was your whole nefarious plan to find it, wasn't it?

Epic's repsonse may be "Working on it"
My response is http://gamecopyworld.com/

The first rule of GameCopyWorld is that you don't talk about GameCopyWorld.

My response is http://gamecopyworld.com/

I'm still a PC gamer. I made the decision this year to upgrade my PC one more time rather than buy an XBox 360 and I don't regret it. I can play Half-Life 2 (Episode 2), Titan Quest and Civ IV: Colonization, all great games that are not found anywhere else but the PC.

However, and take note of this, any lurking EA PR flacks, I have made the conscious decision to not buy several games with Securom and other irritating DRM (Bioshock, for example) because of the last time a game with it (Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory) left a bunch of crap lurking in my system that caused my DVD burner to just halt or fail for no reason when I was burning backup discs of my family photos and documents.

That's intrusive, irritating and unacceptable, EA. If you're going to put crap like that in your games, the installer must clearly state everything that is being installed on my system.

That said, I know Titan Quest has Securom but there are ways to remove it that don't require visiting dodgy Russian websites.

Probably no one will respond, and will probably get no points as I am posting this 3 days after the story came out, but I truthfully do not think its that big of an issue. Last big game I bought was Bioshock. I had to type in the serial number during install, and then it activated once on the internet. *Gasps* Oh no, its evil, it has DRM! Seriously, I have had to reinstall Windows a couple of times, cause I am always effing with stuff on my computer and not because of Windows issues, and never had any issue reinstalling it.

I bought Half-Life 2 through Steam. I am sure there are some DRM issues there as well.

And if I do not like having to insert the disc to play, I just head over to GameCopyWorld and download the NoDisc patch.

Of course, I am not much of a PC gamer anymore. I can pay hundreds of dollars to keep my system up and running, trying to find the right wireless keyboard and mouse combo, and the right settings for exporting to my HDTV without killing framerate, or I can just buy the game on my PS3, XBox 360 or my Wii. Especially with the PS3, I tend to get as good, if not better graphics, than the PC and not have to worry about the drop in framerates (unless it was just crappily coded, I have seen a couple of those).

I have been thinking of picking up Spore. Those I know who have picked it up are claiming its not that bad on the DRM side. Yes, it activates over the internet, and only has three installs, but everyone I know who has picked it up claims that is three installs in 10 days. After ten days, it resets itself, and you can do another three installs in the next ten days, or whatever. Whether or not that is true, I do not know, but this makes sense.

DRM has never kept me from buying a game, and quite frankly, I like it MUCH better than the old ways of copy protection. I used to hate it in the early 90s when I get halfway through a game, then have to go digging through my filing cabinets and such to try to find the instruciton manual for a game to look up something for a copy protection scheme, hoping that I did not throw away the manual. There were quite a few games I never completed because of that. I am still wanting to know whatever happened to Roger Wilco.

DRM has become enough of a pain that I just don't play games anymore.

What, is GameCopyWorld down for you or something?

I take this a step farther, and have done so for nearly a decade. The very first thing I do when I get a game is to rip a disk image and save it to my file server. I use Alcohol to rip and mount the images because it preserves or emulates all the copy-protection garbage. Then I put the CD back in the box and put it on the shelf, never to be touched again.

I started this when my kids were little and I was getting tired of them ruining their game disks. It was so convenient I started doing it for all my disks. These days hard drive space is cheap so there's very little reason not to keep the whole disk image around.

In the very rare cases when Alcohol can't manage a working image, I go to Game Copy World and download the no-CD crack. I don't like doing that, though, simply because it makes it hard to apply official game patches. When the game is patched, you have to get the newest version of the crack and re-apply it. (And to the grandparent... I've personally never had a virus/malware problem with anything I've found on Game Copy World.)

Disk copy protection doesn't work. It's never worked; there have always been cracks for games all the way back to the days of the Apple ][. People who want to play games without paying for them will find a way to do so within days of the game's release. After that, all copy protection does is piss off your legitimate customers. But after more than 20 years of dealing with this crap, I've given up all hope that publishers will ever get a clue.

http://gamecopyworld.com/ I found this site to be good .I always hated having to have the CD in after a full install of a game. Of course I don't play many games anymore. Not enough time :(

Almost! Over here it was GameCopyWorld.

Using Gamecopyworld mostly won't mess up your games. YMMV.

I'd consider paying for and downloading DRM-free music, but it sounds pretty risky to me.

I have ready access to all the games I could want thanks to a friend I know who's a very big pirate. I also know about GameCopyWorld.

However, I still buy games. I don't pirate them. (Then I use the stuff at GameCopyWorld to allow them to be played without the original CD, but that's because I have small kids all over the place and I keep those valuable archival media on a high shelf.) Similarly, I buy CDs and rip them (on the rare occasions that any new music actually appeals to me). I've technically 'pirated' some music, but that was only for music I already had paid for in older analog formats.

In my experience, the people who would pirate stuff, would pirate stuff if it cost any amount greater than zero. But there are plenty of people who will be honest, too. I'm sure there's a sliding scale and everyone's somewhere on the spectrum, but I think there's enough people toward the honest side to enable a successful business.

True. Just saves you have to keep the ISO on your HDD. (BTW wikipedia says latest version of Daemon tools has spyware you need to deselect on install)

This is a good place for NO-CD patches. *Seem* virus/spyware free. Legal caveats apply:

http://gamecopyworld.com/

Then the game is broken, not Windows. Try fixing it.

http://m0002.gamecopyworld.com/games/pc_king_kong. shtml#King Kong [ENGLISH] No-CD/Fixed Image

when you had to point your camcorder at the screen to "copy" it.

Frankly this is a strange thing to say in the days when the net is absolutely lousy with screeners taken in movie theaters. But regardless I take it from how absurd your example is that you realize people will have many easier and more direct ways to capture the decrypted output once it leaves your black box (be it hardware or software).

Just face it. Anyone can fire up their P2P client and see what to make of your claims about satelite security. And you said WM* hasn't been broken, that was really beyond the pale, even foolish thing to say... You're entirely busted on it. Give up. DRM is DOA - audio and video are unprotectable. The software discussion is more interesting anyway...

Most of those instructions either don't work,

Ahh... whatever.

You're just talking out your ass now.

There's no generic software crack for StarForce and never has been.

In practice companies like Starforce love to toot their own horns, but in reality everyone is on a budget of both money and time, and nobody is going to reinvent the wheel for every game. They are going to reuse work, and that reuse reduces the time to crack each new release.

It doesn't matter if they want to install a dozen device drivers. The drivers are checked for by software code, and those checks can be patched. They can use every stupid trick in the world to stop ida from working. Do you think any piece of software can make disassembly or RE that difficult?

You can spend lots of time and effort doing lots of custom engineering for each game. I'm sure if you are willing to do this enough, you can delay the inevitable. It is only a delay. Without a hardware chain of trust it's frankly a joke.

Sooner or later the software must actually run, and if it runs it can be taken apart and examined. If it encrypts itself, the first thing it must do is decrypt itself.

But you really make my eyebrows go up with this comment:

Even if you could decrypt the game content, the crack would be the same size as the original game, posing problems for distribution.

What kind of problems exactly? It's not a statement someone really knowledgable could make.

You're aware the world has broadband now, right? Feature length movies are now often packaged in 1.4GB rather than 700MB, just because they can... I see 3,4,5GB packages all the time... it's routine.

There is no longer any such thing as a "distribution problem" for digital media anymore. That's the whole point here. That's what keeps Sony up at night, writing rootkits.

I have excellent knowledge of the underlying engineering issues.

So, apparently not.

There are various lists of uncracked games

Or as you say, games that were cracked... and Starforce calls itself proud because they delayed the inevitable for some number of weeks...

Chaos Theory... cracked.

Trackmania Surprise... cracked...

King Kong... cracked...

Etc. etc. etc...

Anything else?

Your Starforce fanboy was lying through his teeth, and probably knew it.

Then again, that's basically a requirement for going into the software copy protection racket. If you can't give your customers a totally unjustifiable sense of security, that's something of a non-starter.

when you had to point your camcorder at the screen to "copy" it.

Frankly this is a strange thing to say in the days when the net is absolutely lousy with screeners taken in movie theaters. But regardless I take it from how absurd your example is that you realize people will have many easier and more direct ways to capture the decrypted output once it leaves your black box (be it hardware or software).

Just face it. Anyone can fire up their P2P client and see what to make of your claims about satelite security. And you said WM* hasn't been broken, that was really beyond the pale, even foolish thing to say... You're entirely busted on it. Give up. DRM is DOA - audio and video are unprotectable. The software discussion is more interesting anyway...

Most of those instructions either don't work,

Ahh... whatever.

You're just talking out your ass now.

There's no generic software crack for StarForce and never has been.

In practice companies like Starforce love to toot their own horns, but in reality everyone is on a budget of both money and time, and nobody is going to reinvent the wheel for every game. They are going to reuse work, and that reuse reduces the time to crack each new release.

It doesn't matter if they want to install a dozen device drivers. The drivers are checked for by software code, and those checks can be patched. They can use every stupid trick in the world to stop ida from working. Do you think any piece of software can make disassembly or RE that difficult?

You can spend lots of time and effort doing lots of custom engineering for each game. I'm sure if you are willing to do this enough, you can delay the inevitable. It is only a delay. Without a hardware chain of trust it's frankly a joke.

Sooner or later the software must actually run, and if it runs it can be taken apart and examined. If it encrypts itself, the first thing it must do is decrypt itself.

But you really make my eyebrows go up with this comment:

Even if you could decrypt the game content, the crack would be the same size as the original game, posing problems for distribution.

What kind of problems exactly? It's not a statement someone really knowledgable could make.

You're aware the world has broadband now, right? Feature length movies are now often packaged in 1.4GB rather than 700MB, just because they can... I see 3,4,5GB packages all the time... it's routine.

There is no longer any such thing as a "distribution problem" for digital media anymore. That's the whole point here. That's what keeps Sony up at night, writing rootkits.

I have excellent knowledge of the underlying engineering issues.

So, apparently not.

There are various lists of uncracked games

Or as you say, games that were cracked... and Starforce calls itself proud because they delayed the inevitable for some number of weeks...

Chaos Theory... cracked.

Trackmania Surprise... cracked...

King Kong... cracked...

Etc. etc. etc...

Anything else?

Your Starforce fanboy was lying through his teeth, and probably knew it.

Then again, that's basically a requirement for going into the software copy protection racket. If you can't give your customers a totally unjustifiable sense of security, that's something of a non-starter.

when you had to point your camcorder at the screen to "copy" it.

Frankly this is a strange thing to say in the days when the net is absolutely lousy with screeners taken in movie theaters. But regardless I take it from how absurd your example is that you realize people will have many easier and more direct ways to capture the decrypted output once it leaves your black box (be it hardware or software).

Just face it. Anyone can fire up their P2P client and see what to make of your claims about satelite security. And you said WM* hasn't been broken, that was really beyond the pale, even foolish thing to say... You're entirely busted on it. Give up. DRM is DOA - audio and video are unprotectable. The software discussion is more interesting anyway...

Most of those instructions either don't work,

Ahh... whatever.

You're just talking out your ass now.

There's no generic software crack for StarForce and never has been.

In practice companies like Starforce love to toot their own horns, but in reality everyone is on a budget of both money and time, and nobody is going to reinvent the wheel for every game. They are going to reuse work, and that reuse reduces the time to crack each new release.

It doesn't matter if they want to install a dozen device drivers. The drivers are checked for by software code, and those checks can be patched. They can use every stupid trick in the world to stop ida from working. Do you think any piece of software can make disassembly or RE that difficult?

You can spend lots of time and effort doing lots of custom engineering for each game. I'm sure if you are willing to do this enough, you can delay the inevitable. It is only a delay. Without a hardware chain of trust it's frankly a joke.

Sooner or later the software must actually run, and if it runs it can be taken apart and examined. If it encrypts itself, the first thing it must do is decrypt itself.

But you really make my eyebrows go up with this comment:

Even if you could decrypt the game content, the crack would be the same size as the original game, posing problems for distribution.

What kind of problems exactly? It's not a statement someone really knowledgable could make.

You're aware the world has broadband now, right? Feature length movies are now often packaged in 1.4GB rather than 700MB, just because they can... I see 3,4,5GB packages all the time... it's routine.

There is no longer any such thing as a "distribution problem" for digital media anymore. That's the whole point here. That's what keeps Sony up at night, writing rootkits.

I have excellent knowledge of the underlying engineering issues.

So, apparently not.

There are various lists of uncracked games

Or as you say, games that were cracked... and Starforce calls itself proud because they delayed the inevitable for some number of weeks...

Chaos Theory... cracked.

Trackmania Surprise... cracked...

King Kong... cracked...

Etc. etc. etc...

Anything else?

Your Starforce fanboy was lying through his teeth, and probably knew it.

Then again, that's basically a requirement for going into the software copy protection racket. If you can't give your customers a totally unjustifiable sense of security, that's something of a non-starter.

Personally, I perfer http://www.gamecopyworld.com/, which supports nearly every game imaginable, so it can be used with game discs. (Ex. I do not have to go searching for my Warcraft III disc, I just have to crack it, (even though Warcraft III has copy protection on the disc.)

You paying customers are getting screwed by the companies themselves. Even before it was as "rampant" as it is claimed to be today, they were building in copy-protection techniques, which made it harder for the paying customer to use their media their way. This is even truer now, with cds like "Break the Cycle" (classic example cd) unable to work on many players.

I highly reccomend a read of The hard-to-find truth about piracy, which includes excellent parts such as:

The leisure corporations are conducting, in fact, a war not against pirates, but on their own customers. For many years now, honest consumers paying full price for legitimate products have been saddled with crippled, inferior versions of what the pirate users get for free:

- Pirate users don't have to keep their precious PC game discs spinning endlessly and noisily in the drive (and being subjected to repeated handling) while they play the game.

- Pirate users don't have to sit through all those infuriatingly long, unskippable splash screens / trailers / adverts before they can watch the actual movie on their new DVD, while the poor saps who paid for it in a shop do.

- Pirate users don't get their brand-new music CD home only to find that it won't play in their computer because it's been made in a non-standard-compliant "anti-piracy" format which prevents legitimate users from legally listening to music they've paid for.

- Pirate users can use their game consoles to play games originating from any country, while legitimate purchasers of, say, a game from Japan will be unable to play it on their legitimate, but UK-bought, Playstation 2.

- Pirate users don't have to uninstall perfectly legal software applications from their PCs, or put up with the secret installation of damaging programs if they want to play their new games, unlike the unfortunate legitimate consumers.

And so on. But astoundingly, the entertainment business still doesn't think it's made life miserable enough for its honest, paying customers.

Found that nice link in NTK for Sept. 9, 2003. I'd say that as a customer, you're getting screwed over. I'm not saying don't buy what you want, please do, but I'm saying it should also be ok for you to download a "Pirated" version so that you get to use the media your way instead of theirs. No-CD Cracks should be fine, but companies are now making your $50 product useless for using them. Sad, I think.

Try here for a solution.

So?

Download the nocd crack and enjoy your game.

http://www.gamecopyworld.com/

Most games are cracked withing hours of being released, some prerelease. You shouldn't have any trouble finding information about what protection is used before buying a game. I never buy a game without checking for a crack first. I will not take origional CDs with me when I travel. That's stupid.

The difficult/annoying part in pirating xbox games is getting a modded xbox. I, for one, just find it too much of a hassle to mod, and until I do it would be impossible for me to get free xbox games (not that I would :P).

And how often to the 'end users' need to actually crack the software? No-cd cracks, keygens, and all the other stuff are available and as easy to get as the pirated software itself. GameCopyWorld, Packetnews, Suprnova, and a couple of clients are all you need, my friend.

When I lost my CD to Armed and Dangerous awhile back it really got me looking for a legitamate place where people who bought software and wish to not have to lug out a CD each time they want to play a different game could go. Are there any other place besides gamecopyworld that are like that? I do not want to download any EXE from some random P2P user.

"Since most folks think of no-CD cracks as evil pirate stuff, no "legitimate" board would ever serve them (hey, Transgaming... your product kinda _requires_ 'em, why not chase 'em down and make 'em available to subscribers?) and they seem to be tough to find. Google for a civilization III no-CD crack and most of what you get are forum posts asking where to get one..."

--

Well, I can either buy another $5 version and finish the game, or pay $30 for the full version

Whoohoo! Quoting responses time!
If you say "this box is full of money" so I take it, and it turns out to be a bomb, you're somehow not responsible since I willingly took it after you lied to me about what it is?
Click here for up to date, unbiased news and the final authority on internet/computer law!
if you expected to get something you didn't from that link, sue me. You took something for granted and did not get what you thought it was
Ignorance is no excuse

Cracks aren't necessarily illegal.
True, but why get them from an unknown source when Game Copy World has more trustworthy content?

The theft of services occurs when the program is run. Any system resources used by the program as essentially "stolen."
Then stop pinging me, thief!! Those are MY packets your using!

So it's ok to commit computer crime if you don't agree with the way someone is utilizing their time?
It's not ok at all, finish the original post. I disagree with installing programs/applications on people, period. But a simple pop-up and a quick message to a server saying "This guy just ran this" is not illegal. If it is, then we all can sue the pants off of Microsoft, Valve, Yahoo, Google, phpBB, vBulletin, Mozilla, Red Hat, Gnome.org or whatever else you can think of that uses a form of tracking in their programs.

You: "Yes, your honor, I stole his car, but only after I found out he had a stolen bag of Cheetos in the trunk.."
Judge: "Case dismissed!"
I'm not taking anything, THEY are taking IP Addresses. Downloader's are taking complete software packages. Again, when did collection IP Addresses become immoral and unethical? As I stated before, if these are collected to blackmail someone, then THAT is illegal. But just have someone's IP Address is not illegal.

First, I love my Macs, but they suck for gaming.

Second, I never bother with the original game cds. I head over to GameCopyWorld and download a no-cd hack/patch. I just hate having to dig through my CD case everytime I want to play a damn game.

No, they don't. It says right on that page to "try logging in as an Administrator" before it says to install the fix.

The reason the games need this is because of the CD copy protection; they need to access the drive directly to be able to see whether the bad sectors/whatever hidden data they're looking for are there. You could try cracking the games and seeing if that helps, as I'm pretty sure that's the only they need Admin access - a good site for cracks is GameCopyWorld. I often use them because I'm a lazy bastard who doesn't want to risk ruining his (original!) CDs by switching them around all the time, and I've never had a problem with any of the cracks I've downloaded from there.

One other possible method.. Isn't there a way to have Windows "run as" a different user (ala +s on UNIX)? So you could have it run as some special Admin-priveleged user, while keeping them in the non-Admin account most of the time.

I've had similar problems. I actually buy games (not necessarily the instant they come out, but I pay money for them). I have a DVD drive and a CDRW. I have had games that were a massive pain to install, or that just refused to run if the drive was not a plain vanilla CD-ROM drive.

More than that, I've actually damaged game CDs by accident. But the game manufacturers won't let me back them up. A few offer to exchange broken media for fresh ones, but those are limited-time offers usually, and even then it costs more in postage than in blank media.

So now I get a game, and immediately hit www.gamecopyworld.com and hack the games, so that they (a) work, (b) load faster, and (c) let me keep the fragile CD safely in storage.

I'm damn close to springing for a DVD writer and doing the same to my DVDs. I've already lost a couple to my three-year-old, and I've never heard of anyone willing to exchange damaged media for fresh ones. If I can't do that with audio media, I'll resort to the hacks there too.

Game Copy World

> I can wander and get the no-cd 'fix' for the game, but you end up looking for a fresh crack every time the game does a service pack.

Why not use Daemon-Tools ? Rip the CD to an .ISO, mount the game image, and you're all set. You never have to worry about cracks or no-cd fixes again :)

I use it for D2 and it works great. Most no-cd fixes don't work as the code does a CRC on the executables. Every patch breaks the latest no-cd fix.

And before you start complaing about taking up 640 Megs of diskspace per game ... Answer this, first: How many different games do you usually play in a week? 2 or 3 ? That's only 2 - 3 Gigs of drive space your sacrificing for ease of use !

Cheers

Is Developer X going to spend 5 million making a game that can be pirated with ease because someone can goto lik-sang.com and get a modchip?

Yeah, that would be just like Developer X spending 5 million to develop a PC game that can be pirated with ease because someone can download a crack online. Or a music publishing company spending 5 million to contract a music star to record CDs that can the pirated with ease because some can easily download it online. Or a movie company spending 50 million to make a movie that can be pirated with ease because someone can easily purchase illegal DVD copies throughout the world.

Oh, wait. All of these things happen. Repeatedly. And most of them are far easier and cheaper than purchasing a mod chip online and soldering it into your case.

Dispite the ease of copyright infringement, these industries survive. It's not necessary to completely destroy copyright infringement, it's probably not even possible. (We work even harder at eliminating murder and illegal drugs, and yet both continue to happen.) Only fools think it's possible to perfectly protect content shipped to millions of people. Instead, work to minimize copyright infringment, prosecute the worst offenders of copyright infringment (people selling copied DVDs), and learn to live with the rest. When you have the effort of finding, purchasing, and installing a mod chip as a prerequisite, you're going to keep illegal copies to a bare minimum. The people willing to spend the effort to make the copies generally wouldn't have purchased a copy in the first place. Actual sales lost: minimal.

(Please don't take this as a defense of making illegal copies. I'm against copyright infringment. I'm for purchasing video games. I'm arguing that the problem isn't so bad that publishers should run around screaming that the sky is falling.)

What is the value of hacking a system to use it for purposes of which it isn't intended or designed for...?

What is the value in installing various performance enhancing modifications on my car that it wasn't intended or designed for? The value of overclocking my processor to a speed it wasn't intended or designed for? Answer: it's none of the fscking manufacturer's concern. How I chose to treat the physical things I purchase is my business, not the manufacturers. I obviously find value in the modification, so clearly there is value for me. That's all that matters.

Even though i modded my dreamcast and could play pirated games, i didn't consider this a value add. For one, i couldn't read the japanese games and often times it wasn't worth the effort and for pirated games they were ripped, chunked, slow and missing features.

So it's of no value to you. That's fine. But a modchip in my PlayStation 2 is of value to me. I want access to the editions of Dance Dance Revolution released in Asia, the U.S. releases are inferior. Sure, I can't read the text, but I don't need to (I do just fine at the Korean DDR arcade machine next door). I'm not getting illegally copied games since I want to support the publisher, I'm interested in importing legally produced copies. So I don't need to worry about low quality illegal copies. I'd rather not have a second PS2 occupying space. This adds value for me. A similar set of reasons might create value for someone with an X-Box.

it was the "value add" of the modchips and ripped DC games that ended the life of that console. (and the ps2.. but sega cited the loss of software sales because of rampant piracy and loss of developers because of rampant piracy to be a big factor)

Well, gosh, if Sega said if was piracy, that must be the problem. The fact that they were competing with two very powerful, established competitors (Nintendo and Sony) certainly doesn't have anything to do with it. My many friends who all chose to wait for the PS2 instead of getting a Dreamcast clearly don't represent the typical population. There is certainly no chance that Sega misrepresented the reason they left the market to pin the blame on someone other than themselves. (I'm having problems finding articles were they actually blamed piracy... could you point me to a few?)

I'm a Dreamcast owner. I love the machine and I mourn its passing.uy the argument that illegal copying killed the Dreamcast. The millions of people who said, "well, it looks nice, but I'm waiting for the PS2" killed the Dreamcast. I encouraged all of my friends to buy Dreamcasts. None did. Yet

It certainly won't be profitable in the game biz. Show me a game that can't run without the CD and I'll show you a game no one wants to buy.

I have an 8x DVD drive that takes about 2 years to spin up, there's no way in luserland I'm going to wait for that delay anytime during game play, or application use for that matter.

Bah. I'm still using an old 2x CD-RW drive and it can't copy copyprotected CDs worth shit. I just head on over to gamecopyworld and get a crack. Since most of my games are stored as virtual mounted ISOs anyway, a crack is the *only* way to make it really work. Besides, do you *really* like hunting for the CD every time you load a game? Maybe it was necessary back in the days of floppies and small hard drives, but not anymore.

* Please note, I am not advocating the use of warez'd/pirated copies of games, I'm talking about applying a crack to a legally purchased game so I can use it on MY computer in a way I see fit.

>> If you think I'm wrong, could you tell me what legitimate purpose the DMCA serves?

> It makes it harder to obtain software cracks off the internet, which decreases copyright infringement.

Recent versions of Neverwinter Nights for Windows will not work on my machine because of an overly zealous CD protection scheme.

The only way I can play the game I bought on the machine which which I bought (both legally) is to use one of the noCD cracks.

Use of these noCD cracks incidentally, is not illegal. After all, I bought the game not for the CDs but for the data on the CDs.

I fail to see how the DMCA is allowed to restrict my rights in this regard. (FWIW, it can't, as I don't live in the USA but I expect the EU to toe the party line any time now.)

I personally use www.gamecopyworld.com to download nocd patches. Why would I put a cd in when the game is fully installed? To make the game company happy? Um, no.

BTW, Still have to buy the game to play online, which is really the point. So even if I use nocd patches, I couldnt play-online without a legal serial.

Is why companies even try these days... All "copy protection" even accomplishes these days is to punish the legitimate customers, preventing honest people from making personal backups.

Need to copy a game? GameCopy World to the rescue. Just use a modified executable, and presto, no problems with using a copy.

Those of us that do "pirate" (I want an eye-patch and a cutlass if I get this title) software easily find a way around the protections. Except my mother, who somehow manages to keep damaging her game cds, is unable to make a personal backup because of the crazy restrictions. I honestly want to know if these companies realize that they are only punishing honest customers, and no one else.

You could check out GameCopyWorld and see if your games are listed. While its main purpose may seem to be questionable, it is nice to be able to install your games without having to hunt through your CD wallet each time you want to play.

I've bought or been given several games legitimately that would not work on my system until cracked. (The Wheel of Time was one, don't remember the other offhand) I was able to install them, but then as soon as I attempted to run the game it would crash with some memory error or another. A quick visit to www.gamecopyworld.com to download the latest updates and a cd crack and I was up and fragging in no time.