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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."
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.
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.
if you use a crack, you modify the checksum of the .exe...which alot of game servers check when connecting to play online. I don't know anything about this game, but I know that BF1942 does it.
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 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.
Irrespective, or regardless. Pick one.
-- "Is this death or is this Ohio?"
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Software should be free as in speech, but if we also get some free beer, all the better.