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."

Comments

Re:Not a problem

[gl4ss]

afaik they're only been checking the name of the virtual device, not actually checking if the programs are installed and refusing to run if they are.

Funny, I crack all of my games.

[cgenman]

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.

Re:so use a crack

[mystran]

You just need a crack that in addition to going around the virtual drive checking routine, replaces the routine which replies to servers query of the checksum, either returning the correct (original) checksum it it's static, or using the unmodified binary to calculate the checksum.

While this is a bit harder to do than just jmp:ing over the checking routine, there's no fundamental reasons why you would have to return the real checksum of the binary. It's just more work for the cracker.

Actually, even adding something like PunkBuster there to do the checksumming doesn't help. There's no reasons why ANYTHING on your computer could be trusted by the server. It's just a matter of adding yet more things that must be cracked before the game works.

That said, this whole thing is ridiculous. What's the point of playing games on PC if you have to search for the stupid CD. Game makers that try to force one to do this are just trying to kill the PC gaming. Those people that can't use virtual drives have most likely already gone to consoles.