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UbiSoft Blocks Virtual Drives With Raven Shield Patch
Thanks to EvilAvatar for their story discussing UbiSoft's new patch for PC stealth action title Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield, which "checks PCs for ANY clone or virtual drive programs and then fails to launch the game if such devices or programs are found." The article explains: "What this has, in turn, done is disabled thousands of consumers who use programs like Daemon Tools, CloneCD or Alcohol 120% from playing their UbiSoft games even if they have their own physical CDs in an actual drive." The writer is furious, pointing out: "Irregardless of what the virtual drives or virtual clone programs on your system are for, you will not be able to play Raven Shield with patch 1.5 unless you remove them completely off your system", and wondering whether this action is allowed under the EULA for the product. There are also similar discussions on the official UbiSoft forums for the game, though many sympathize with UbiSoft's anti-piracy efforts "telling you that in order to use the product you have to keep the CD in."
that's what they're for, isn't it?
Safedisc and whatnot have been doing this for sometime now. Daemon Tools will release an update that will bypass the blacklist and all will be merry.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
the users who paid get screwed.
and patching daemon tools won't take that long.
theres shitloads of other programs though as well. like nero(which iirc has nowadays a virtual drive of it's own. and comes pretty fucking standard on all pc's that have a burner).
nice move. you just crapped yourselfs ubi! why do you even except people to have their cd's in the drives? when you know that you can't trust that. most games just have keys for limiting online play to legit customers, much more effective and less annoying for the users.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
FADE system, used by Codemasters (Pro Race Driver, Colin McRae Rally...) does the similar thing, and considers virtual drive software to be a sign of piracy and degrades the game slowly if it detects something fishy.
Or some other 3rd party discovers a way to hide them?
This patch will only be a short term problem, as other virtual drive programs are written or the existing one's modified to avoid the issue.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Ubi's EULA is one of the most restrictive in the industry, which is why I don't buy their games anymore. Unlike other large publishers, such as Infogrames, which routinely include the permission to make a single backup copy, UBI expressly forbids making backup copies, modifying the game, creating and distributing "unauthorized levels and/or scenarios", and many other things. While I am aware that EULAs may not have a legaly-binding power, I personally would feel bad if I didn't follow something I agreed to, which is why you won't find any recent game released by UBI Soft on my computer.
Keeping a CD around is a real pain. They get lost, they get scratched, they require storage in a binder, and as games copy themselves to the HDD now anyway, they are totally unnecessary. I can store maybe 40 retail games on a HDD, and can play any of them at any moment. Feel like a round of Worms? Boot. Feel like a game of Empires? Start it up. It's that kind of instant gratification you get with consoles, and it should be even faster on a computer. But it isn't. Despite checking my valid registration code on their server when connecting, they still require a crack to run without flipping through 40 pages of CD's looking for that safedisk. U.N.N.E.C.E.S.S.A.R.Y. Don't make your paying clients lives a pain, just to protect against a group of people who aren't going to pay anyway.
My impulse game of choice is Typing of the Dead. Why? It copied itself to the hard drive nicely, and has played solidly every since. Except for the fiasco of pressing F4 to quit, it has performed admirably... like something I own, not something I'm borrowing for money.
Come up with a better copy protection scheme, or come up with a better customer.
The ______ Agenda
What developer in their right mind would use a program like Fade?
Fade may stop pirates from playing your game, but if a screen doesn't pop up saying "this game's performance has degraded because..." then the users will assume that your game is BUGGY, or SLOW, and tell their friends, and people online, that the game sucks.
Look at all the bad press Doom 3 has gotten because of the demo that played poorly. And people know that's an unfinished E3 demo never intended for public consumption! I'm sure a lot of people are concerned now that Doom 3 will run poorly on their system and will not rush out to buy it. I know I'm worried.
Now extend that to your ACTUAL game performing poorly on someone's system. They're not going to assume that it runs crappy because it's a pirated copy. They're going to assume it runs crappy because the game is written poorly.
And those same people who pirate the game, may just decide that they want to purchase the full game later on down the road because they want cutscenes and music that the pirated version of the game stripped out. But if the game runs crappy, you'll lose those purchases!
Stuff like Fade will NEVER work FOR you and INCREASE purchases of your game, because of how it works. Only a system which pops up an error window and says the game won't run because it is pirated would have a chance of working.
While I realize it's a proper name, I'm surprised you forgot 'Iraq.'
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Anyway, there will be a NoNoVirtualCD patch out by the end of the day.
IRREGARDLESS is not a word.
Game companies treat everyone that buys their games like thieves, but the real thieves just crack it, never patch the game and then laugh loudly at the poor bastards that had to spend extra money on a product to subsidise the thieves.
Its not the companies fault for the main part because for years the idea of free games have been a part of the gaming world and now they have the ability to fight back they are, its just that their means are insane.
The major strength of PC games is that they install straight to the HDD, making them easier to access, in theory, than console games which require a disk, the fact that I have to give up a few precious gigs for each game (gigs that could be used for important things like porn or mp3s or pornographic mp3s) and the image files that take up even more space os that my CD doesn't get damaged(because even though they protect it so you can't copy it thye won't give you a new one if you do somehow damage it).
Valve and iD have the right idea, you don't need the CD in the drive to play it, just the CD-Key to play over the net.
I wouldn't mind if they made it so that for the first two or three patches they kept the check-cd in but after that got rid of it, because having to have a CD in the drive to play a game over the net becomes annoying and after a while it just gets ejected and eventually forgotten.
Read Errant Story.
I know I'm being redundant, but the more voices crying out in horror, the better right?
Here's my situation, just as an example. I only have 1 optical drive. I don't want to keep my 1 drive filled 24/7 just because I want the game to actually RUN when I start it up. But if I take it out of the drive and put it back in all the time, it's GOING to get scratched up, and you can't make a backup of it. If you crack some games, they won't run online, even with a valid CD key. So, I make an image of the CDs that I use alot.
Ubi, this is a bad idea, because it angers your REAL customers. Virtual drives have uses other than piracy and the convenience factor I mentioned above, and the people who buy the games are the same people who would have a real use for virtual drives.
What also should be obvious is the futility of blocking the software - there will be a way around it soon enough. There always is, for better or for worse.
I can understand the plague of piracy but that affects all creative fields.
Using technological solutions to block piracy will just inconvenience legal users of the software. Those who want to pirate it, will reguardless of what protection is used. There is no copy protection that cannot be broken. Its just that some schemes take longer than others to break.
Although the DMCA outlaws reverse engineering. But like any law its only effective if one chooses to follow it. Those who want to pirate the product, certainly wont.
I would say the best solution is make games cost less then $50-60. Dont adjust prices for piracy. All your doing is making the legit users pay and encouraging more piracy due to high costs. Electrontic diribution can cut costs, but the price should reflect that.
Thats enough for now.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
Of companies that I will NEVER buy a game that they make, but I will do all that I can to download them if they look interesting. They will never get money from me again.
I've had similiar experiences in some games. Civ 3 (granted it's a "wussy" game yes :P) would check for the CD in my drive every 5 minutes and in the process, would freeze all processes in the game up for a few seconds. Quite annoying with how often it checked for the CD. I finally just ripped the ISO with Alcohol and mounted that as a virtual drive. Works fine now (At the time I couldn't find any no-cd cracks, now I see them all over for it).
:-X Hehe. But regardless, it is a more enjoyable game experience. Things load faster, when you play multiple games you don't have to worry about switching CD's all the time. Don't have to worry about getting your cd case stolen at a LAN party, etc.
If it weren't for that, I probably would lit the CD on fire before I was able to discover how buggy Civ 3 actually is.
Irrespective, or regardless. Pick one.
-- "Is this death or is this Ohio?"
Let me be the first to tell you to RTFA: Again, you can't even play when you have the retail cds in a drive unless those programs / virtual drives are removed.
Plus, I understood (and I guess everyone else here too) this fact by reading the /. piece alone. "Got Alcohol 120% on your system? You're a pirate! We don't want you!"
Can't the makes of the virtual drive software sue UBI? Cmon, anyone can sue anyone in this country... let's all have some fun!
the man speaks true
These dumbass companies seem to have forgotten what a CD is all about (same goes for RIAA). They seem to think of a CD as proof of something - ownership, legitimate copy, etc.
It's not. It's just a distribution medium. Like floppies, analog tapes, radio-over-airwaves and other media, it's just a convenient means of getting the game/goods from them (the publishers) to us (the consumers). Once the goods have been delivered, forget about the medium already!
When the medium becomes outdated or cumbersome, people will look to other media. It is stupid (and ultimately their ruin) to try and lock us into their media of choice.
RIAA should accept that ftp/file-sharing and the Internet in general are more convenient media for music delivery. Stop forcing CDs on us. Learn to deal with the new delivery mechanisms.
Equally well, UbiSoft should also accept that the huge hard-disks we have are more convenient to store games and game images. Stop forcing CDs on us.
I personally find it extremely inconvenient to keep swapping CDs in and out (I play many games). I have only one physical CD drive, but I can have many virtual drives! Not to mention that the hard-disk is MUCH faster than a CD drive.
Let me be the first to tell you to RTFA
/. piece alone. "Got Alcohol 120% on your system? You're a pirate! We don't want you!"
Let me be the first to tell you to RTFP. Clearly I've read the entire bullentin board posting.
Again, you can't even play when you have the retail cds in a drive unless those programs / virtual drives are removed.
No, YOU read the FA:
Try again, sport. You agree to specific conditions under which you use the license you purchased when you picked up Raven Shield at your local software r/etailer. You can use Daemon tools and Alcohol 120% all you want. You just are unable to use them in conjunction with Raven Shield running. *shurg*
You don't have to remove anything. Just turn them off. Oh my god my fingers are aching from doing that everytime I play!
Plus, I understood (and I guess everyone else here too) this fact by reading the
And Group Think is always correct. *smirk* Clearly the patch is implicating "Got Alcohol 120% on your system? Turn it off before you run Rainbow Six!"
Can't the makes of the virtual drive software sue UBI? Cmon, anyone can sue anyone in this country... let's all have some fun!
Yeah... Kind of like how a lot of install programs force you to disable anti-virus programs during installation, Symantec must be pretty busy these days suing everyone for everyone's stupid problems.
Sure it's in m-w.com but they recommend that regardless be used instead.
Get the Xbox version.
Straight from the article:
It turns out that Ubisoft implented code into the RVS 1.5 patch which checks PCs for ANY clone or virtual drive programs and then fails to launch the game if such devices or programs are found.
Now both of you be nice.
In Republican America phones tap you.
I thought most EULA's allow a person to make backup copies. It's legal to make/keep back up copies of software you purchased. I would think this control is improper. Granted they uses these imaging products to make illegal copies too, but that shouldn't prevent a user making legit backup copies from playing online.
Call of Duty from Activision/Infinity Ward has this problem as well. You can see on their support site here their recommendation to shut down both Alchohol and Clone CD's virtual drives. This was indeed the necessary fix to get it to run on my machine.
I use CloneCD to create images of any CDs I purchase - and for quite a few reasons.
1) Ease of use: mounting/unmounting CDs via HD is so much easier
2) Asset Protection: CDs are delicate things, double so with 5 kids
3) LAN Parties: I will *not* take my CDs to a LAN Party
4) Price: Game CDs are more expensive than additonal HDs
5) Laptop: I have a laptop - and can choose between 2 batteries or 1 battery and CD
But, these reasons don't mount up to the suits in UBI. Indeed, this sounds like something which some PHB has thought up and pushed through. In all seriousness, the measures used by groups like Valve work - these do not. They've lost (yet another) customer. It's a wealthy market out there people, vote with your cash and walk away.
Robert Anton Wilson
We detected a CD Burner in your system, that _could_ be used for piracy, you can't play our game.
Now where did I put my radar detector detector.
and if anyone happens to have a list of such games, please post!
Seriously, expecting people to hold onto a cheap, easily damaged piece of plastic for over a year without letting them make a copy of it is stupid. Whats even more stupid is that most gamers tend to keep the CD in the CD rom drive when they don't have a reason to change discs. To top it all off, a heavy gamer (more than 2 hours of gaming -a day-) will virtually toast their CD due to the amount of time they spend gaming and having that one disc constantly read. The only reason why you don't hear about most hardcore gamers complaining about this is because they make multiple copies (my friend had SIX copies of Starcraft at one time and has damaged his original copy beyond playability). The more companies try to stop piracy, the more these reports will become common.
This is not true (all you have to do is close it): "Irregardless of what the virtual drives or virtual clone programs on your system are for, you will not be able to play Raven Shield with patch 1.5 unless you remove them completely off your system."
CD's that won't play.. Games that won't run... must be a nightmare not to have pirated versions...
Quite the closed circle you've created for yourself there. So no matter what, you aren't going to buy a game? I have a feeling you never did. What is their incentive to change? Or did you just prove them right, that they need to take steps to combat privacy? Your stance is counter-productive at best. Its posts like this that the industry points to and says, "See, we have to do these things, and we need more laws to protect our IP."
But come clean, you haven't purchased a game since 1998. Be honest.
I hate games that require the original CD to be in the drive. I own all my CD games, but I'm not in a rush to buy new games from the manufacturers who care more about piracy than user satisfaction. My cd-rom drive sounds like a jet engine whenever it has to speed up, and CD's don't last forever. Some games go even further and ask for a serial code to be entered each time they're played, like the voyager elite force holomatch. That's just wrong. They didn't advertise those "features". That's not what I paid for. And I should be able to get the advertised quality out of what I've legally purchased. If they put in unadvertised limits that reduce the program to less than I was promised, I should be within my moral right to overcome them.
I hope they get raped by countersuits if they ever prosecute a paying customer for cracking their "protection".
Your quote was from EvilAvatar's lackey. Mine was from the official Ubisoft forum moderator. Common sense would suggest EvilAvatar messed up.
IANAL, but I don't think a "no backup" clause is enforceable, at least in the US. If you look in Title 17, Chapter 1, Sec. 117 ("Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer Programs"), it says making an archival copy (I assume this must mean backup) is not a violation of copyrights.
In fact, paragraph 1 seems to say the programs UbiSoft is blocking may be allowed.
It depends upon how the courts will interpet the word "essential." Reading the posts, there seems to be plenty of people on Slashdot who think using a hard drive copy is essential so their CD won't get scratched up. I don't know, maybe I'm stretching a bit.
required: 1x jello jigglers mold ingredients: 1x Raven Shield CD 1x Prince of Persia: Sands of Time 1x Shadowbane 1x Uru microwave on high for 3 minutes until desired liquidity is reached. pour into mold let cool. wrap in colored cellophane, place in appropriate packaging material and ship to: 3200 Gateway Centre Blvd Suite 100 Morrisville, NC 27560, USA
Just, y'know, thought you'd like me to say.
This is beyond pointless because we all know this will be cracked and patched before it is even released. Legit users get annoyed, warez d00ds use the crack and nullify the protection entirely.
What really irks me is that they insist on having the CD in the drive, yet it is absolutely not required because they install 3-4 fricken' gigs of uncompressed crap to my hard drive and never read off the disc again. Console games don't need a hard drive and yet they seem to be surviving quite well. So the reasoning is this: run off the hard drive and do away with CD checks, or run off the disc and quit lining Maxtor's coffers with wasted disk space.
There is nothing more aggravating than watching the installer crank for 90 minutes copying several thousand raw 10kb data files, when it could have been done in about 3 minutes had the whole thing been tarred into one big chunk. And then having to futz with cracks and emulation tools when the inbred copy protection goes all false positive on a legit CD. Online keys are the way to go, I'm actually seriously considering the re-purchase of Diablo 2 + expansion because I have my old CD's from 3 years ago, but can't find the original jewel cases with cd keys, and of course you need unique keys to go on BattleNet. That is the power of cd keys. Convenient, simple, powerful!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
cd emulation programs have very good, legitimate uses. for example, i have quite a lot of sample cds (for music production), to swap them in and out every time i wanna grab 1 sample off them would be a real pain in the arse, so i just have them all bin/cued on my hdd and use them through daemon or alcy. for this game to refuse to run on machines with these programs installed is absurd. if you have a lot of games (legit or otherwise) then swapping cds in and out all the time is gunna be a pain, also cds get damaged easily. i'd rather iso all the cds and keep the physical copies in a safe place so they don't get arsed.
It's been used in the United States for nearly 80 years. It's been in use a lot longer than most words we use every day. It's also present in many American dictionaries. American English, International English and British English are not the same language any more than Scots is the same as English.
Further more, language evolves; some people are simply too short sighted to comprehend that the purpose of language is to allow communication. The use of 'irregardless' vrs. 'regardless' does not impede that purpose. You'd have to be particularly dull-witted not be able to infer the meaning even if you had never heard the former before.
This evolution in the language has some about because it's intuitive and logical for many users (given the use of irrespective and regardless) and that's exactly how the English language (the International, British and American variants) has evolved into what it is today. We have gained many words in precisely this manner.
There are many other words in the English language which also use redundant prefixes, even simple words such as 'unravel'. One would assume from the beatings of people like yourself that it should not be considered a word and that we should exclusively only use the original 'ravel' instead; the 'un-' prefix being mysteriously so objectionable to linguistic conservatives like yourself, no matter how much more intuitive it seems.
It's a word mostly used by Americans usually.. so of course they sound like morons when they say it.
shit, they sound like morons when they say Good Morning, Hello, or Weapons of Mass Destruction
bah!*@%!
Common sense is in short supply on /.
I'm not sure what they're trying to achieve with this, really. At the risk of re-stating what's already been covered, all they do is irritate legitimate owners of the game. Anyone with a "pirate" copy will have a no-CD patch thus rendering the whole exercise futile, and it just means that people who bought the damned thing have to run the risk of losing or damaging their CD, or maybe even burning out their CD drive. Will UbiSoft replace damaged or lost CDs free of charge? Will they replace any CD drives burnt out by excessive use? Will they provide external CD drives for laptop users who want to play the game on the road and use an additional battery pack? I suspect the answer to all those questions is "no", so why stop legitimate users from exercising their legal right to use a backup copy of the software? It's not going to sell any more copies -- they've already bought it -- and it may dissuade other people from buying this and future UbiSoft titles. (Me, for one. I was looking forward to Splinter Cell 2, but they can now go smoke my pole...)
This sentence no verb.
Virtual drives do serve purpose, hell I use one at work on the network to pass various install CDs around, installs which we have paid all licensing fees on (granted I shouldn't play games at work anyway). Now the issue as I see it as a gamer is that there is no requirement listed on the box that you not use virtual drives to use this product. Further, there is no statement on these boxes that to continue the advertised online gameplay aspect (very key in these kinds of games being successful) you must patch your game, breaking what is advertised on the box. With All major game retailers repealing their open box return policies, this amounts to customers eating the product.
Flight Simulator 2004 does something similar, right out of the box. If I have CloneCD tray running, FS2004 won't run, even with the CD in the drive.
People will always pirate single-player games. You can reduce the # of single-player game pirates (guys like me, not hardcore pirates) by doing a few things:
1) Pricing a game based on length. Prince of Persia = 8 hours = budget title. KoToR = 30+ hours = full-price title. I bought KoToR at $45. I didn't buy Prince of Persia at $45. Guess what, I'm more likely to pirate your 8 hour game than wait for it to drop $20.
2) Removing copy protection. If I have to download a NoCD crack just to get your game to run, I'm pirating the next game you publish. If I have to get a NoCD crack to avoid CONSTANT 15+ second spinups every time a level or saved game loads, I'm pirating the next game you publish.
Example: Neverwinter Nights, published by Atari. As much as I like Bioware, the NwN copy protection crashed my game on 9 of 10 attempts to start it. As a result, I pirated both Neverwinter Nights expansions. But I did buy KoToR. I gave both Atari and Bioware (NwN was a festering pile of shit before expansions + patches) a second chance. KoToR only checks for my CD at startup (and without a problem), and Bioware redeemed themselves with a fun game. I'll preorder their next collaboration for full retail price.
3) Developers need to stop producing buggy, unprofessional shit. Example: Troika. They fucked me once with Arcanum. They didn't fuck me on ToEE. Glad I pirated that mess, but I pity those who actually paid for it. Do you think I am buying another Troika game? Hell no. Do you think I'm going to download another Troika game to see if they can get their shit together? You know what, I don't think I'd even bother doing that.
As far as multiplayer, if you have a game that people want to play online, remove even the basic CD-Check. Just give it a key. Trust me, 85% of the people who pirate games WILL buy your product if they want to play it online and it has a key. A few reasons:
1) Scamming someone out of their CD Key is time-consuming. Most pirates don't want to waste all that time.
2) Scamming someone out of their CD Key makes pirates feel guilty. I have no problem fucking over UBISOFT (they deserve it now and then), but screwing over Joe Blow is another story. That just ain't right -- and this is coming from someone who dislikes people in general.
3) Stolen CD-Keys get reported. Meaning you need to go find yourself a new CD-Key on a fairly frequent basis.
CD-Keys WORK. See: X2 - The Threat. X2 has no multiplayer component, but you must enter a CD-Key to access their tech-support, gameplay, and patch forums. Seeing as the game is a buggy mess upon release, there are surely quite a few pirates who decided to buy the game rather than hoping that somebody posts a patch + crack on bittorrent.
There is a certain segment of the gaming community that will pirate everything. There is another segment (me), that gets fed up enough to start pirating stuff. You can never stop 1, and 1 will always crack your protection schemes for 2. But if you stop sodomizing 2 with your cd-spinups and poor QA, 2 might stop turning to 1.
I stopped playing this game when Ubi stopped supporting the single player experience. I don't care about multiplayer - just a few thousand moaning, whinging, swearing 15yo's with no decorum. I wanted to see some serious issues fixed in the way your team-mates interact in single player. I haven't seen anything of the kind since the release early this year, hence I don't play it any more.
And when I *did* try and play it on a LAN (with legit copies) I had to keep disconnecting the firewall just to get the server to start up (even though my CD key is fine and legal) and even then, my normal 80fps dropped to 20. 100mbit unbusy LAN too.
Just make the game CD bootable, running a custom Linux distribution, with the game executable replacing /sbin/init, and make the game executable check that its PID is 1, so that you can't take it run it on an ordinary Linux system.
I think the author meant nonundeirregardless.
Can you return the game to ubi soft if you don't like how the EULA and software will not let you run the game with virtual CD software installed on the system?
Do they Give you your money back?
It took a whooping 24 hours but "finally":
1 .5 0.CRACKED-DEViANCE
TOM.CLANCYS.RAINBOW.SIX.3.RAVEN.SHIELD.UPDATE.V
I fail to see how this affects pirates.
You have a guy who:
1- downloads an iso
2- burns it our mounts it using d-tools
3- installs it then copies the included crack over
4- plays
5- downloads cracked patches every few months
So I guess my open letter to ubisoft is:
If I'm not mistaken, crackers have routinely defeated dozens of major protection schemes and thousands of obscure ones for decades now so How exactly is a crappy snoopware feature going to help you?
Oh, and keep the good games coming, you're on a roll!
Pretty much any game worth playing will have a no-cd crack on somewhere like gamecopyworld.com.
Retarted, yes.
However its not a problem when using Virtual Drives through Alchohol 120%
I have everything set up the way I like it, and I am not going to uninstall the software as I need the fast access to do my work.
Does the game box actaully state that you cannot have the game run, when so called 'offending' software is installed?
Its Like having a stereo not playing your disc because you have the SPDIF out plugged into your PC.
This is WRONG. Does anyone possible see the ramifications of this? Games wont running because competitor games are installed? Window's not booting because Linux is detected on another partition??
More and more causal gamers have moved off the PC to consoles. Soon all that remains of PC game players will be the hardcore. Offending hardcore pc gamers will really lead to the demise of PC gaming. *sigh*
The National Guard pulled out of Pennsylvania and left Irregardless. HTH.