Vista Games Cracked to Run on XP

Next Generation is reporting that Vista PC games have been cracked to run under XP. Hacking groups who apparently wanted to play new titles like Shadowrun and Halo 2 with driver support have taken it upon themselves to open up the playing field a bit. "The news is sure to irk Microsoft who may now face an increased delay in some consumers adopting Vista at this early stage. However, it shouldn't come as a surprise. Earlier this month Falling Leaf Systems said in a press release that it believed Microsoft was deceiving consumers by stating that the titles would only work on Vista, and announced its intentions to release compatibility software to disprove the claim. 'Microsoft has, in typical Microsoft fashion, decided to launch their forced migration onslaught in full force with the release of two games that will only run on Windows Vista,' said Falling Leaf Systems CEO Brian Thomason in the press release." Relatedly, Mitch Gitelman of the (now closed) FASA Studios has taken exception to negative reviews of Shadowrun.

Comments

Nothing new under the sun

[seanadams.com]

I once bought a set of OrCad software for $13K, but even after several calls to tech support I could not get the parallel-port security dongles to work properly. I even got a replacement set of dongles from them and it still didn't work reliably. So I downloaded a crack for it, and then everything was fine.

When you have to download a pirated version just to use the software you've legitimately paid for because of artificial limitations like this, it doesn't exactly install a lot of goodwill in the customer. I never purchased anything from Cadence again, and don't intend to.

If enough of us refuse to buy software, music, or movies from companies that deliberately frustrate their paying customers, then they will either change their strategy or they will deservedly go out of business.

Re:Nothing new under the sun

[danbert8]

This angers me as well, especially when the product box is wrong. For example, I bought a Streamzap PC remote which claimed to work with Windows XP (all versions), but somehow that didn't include XP x64 edition. I might add that Streamzap does not reply at all to support questions that involve XP x64.
 
This brings up an interesting question of if this hack works with XP x64.

Re:Nothing new under the sun

[morgan_greywolf]

If enough of us refuse to buy software, music, or movies from companies that deliberately frustrate their paying customers, then they will either change their strategy or they will deservedly go out of business. Well, this doesn't really apply in markets where there is a monopolist running things. MSFT can do things like this and get away with it precisely because they own more than 90% of the desktop OS market. Your only other choice is to run an alternative platform, like Mac OS X or Linux, neither of which are particularly good platforms from a gamer's perspective.

IOW, the fact that Microsoft gets away with 'forced upgrades' and the like is all the proof you need that they should have been broken up following the DOJ anti-trust trial, per the orders of Judge Jackson.

Re:Nothing new under the sun

[bigbigbison]

I can't tell you how many games I've bought that I've put in at least 3 different computers with different brands of dvd drives and none of them could read the disks because of securom copy protection. In every case I've gone p2p and found hacked versions. It is a sign of how good their "copy protection" is when someone who has bought the games can't install them but the pirates have no problem ripping them.

Re:Nothing new under the sun

[Sparr0]

OpenGL is keeping *AHEAD* of Direct3D. We had Shader Model 4.0 (Geometry Shaders, aka "DX10") months before DX10. OpenGL has SM4 on WinXP, and D3D9 doesn't. That alone should provoke developers into switching. For years the argument has been about ease of programming and integration, but now OGL has concrete feature superiority over D3D on the most prevalent gaming platform in the world.

Re:Nothing new under the sun

[mdarksbane]

Vertex shaders can't create new vertices.

With a geometry shader you can pass the video card one copy of a tree, and have the geometry shader turn it into a forest.

Re:Nothing new under the sun

[MightyMartian]

My feeling is that where requiring an upgrade of the operating system is nothing more than if(version="VISTA","Welcome","You're FUcked") then the companies should be charged with false advertising and fined millions.

Re:Nothing new under the sun

[suv4x4]

OpenGL is keeping *AHEAD* of Direct3D. We had Shader Model 4.0 (Geometry Shaders, aka "DX10") months before DX10.

The highlights of DX10 aren't the shaders. The same shaders are avasilable in 9L. It's about the rebuilt lighter API, multithreading and graphics memory swap file.

OpenGL doesn't have the latter two AFAIK.

Re:Nothing new under the sun

[mpe]

This angers me as well, especially when the product box is wrong. For example, I bought a Streamzap PC remote which claimed to work with Windows XP (all versions), but somehow that didn't include XP x64 edition. I might add that Streamzap does not reply at all to support questions that involve XP x64.

Why could you not return it for a refund?

Re:Nothing new under the sun

[robbiethefett]

I'm currently a student of mechanical engineering with a heavy emphasis on CAD. You'd think the big companies like AutoDesk would prefer to make it easy for students to learn the software's ins and outs by offering a nice student discount, or maybe some sort of "student edition" of the program. Have you priced a Pro E solution? it's ridiculous! The thing i find insane about the whole deal is that the heavy anti-piracy measures taken are extremely frustrating to get past--however not impossible, but there is no real logical need for them in the first place. I mean, sure the per-license cost is extremely high, but the price of the software is a drop in the bucket for most shops when compared to the price of just a single machine. My school just purchased a rapid prototype machine (which is really freaking cool, btw) that cost $30k, not including the ABS material needed to use the damn thing. Basically, my point is this: no one is pirating AutoDesk software to use in a production environment. A quick torrent search shows that there are, in fact, many people pirating the software. So the question now is whom? The short answer is: students. When i graduate i plan on working as a draftsman for a while before opening up my own shop, at which point i will purchase a fully-licensed Pro E solution. How many hundreds of dollars more will i be paying for this software to offset the cost of AutoDesk paying software engineers to keep students from using it for doing homework? I'll end this little tirade with a question: if the main purpose of a software suite is to engineer and manufacture parts in a professional environment, is there any real value taken away from the makers of the software if said software is pirated and used for anything other than a production environment? Are teenagers without access to a plotter, let alone a CNC machine really eating away at profits?

Re:Nothing new under the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, but a more common example is letting the GPU hardware tesselate a curved surface or something. Your forest example sounds more like instancing.

Re:Nothing new under the sun

[rhombic]

It is piracy to hoist the Jolly Roger, run out the long 9's, and shipjack another vessel on the high seas for fun and profit. Downloading songs for which you already own the cassette would only be copyright infringement, and then only if a songs owner could convince a judge & jury to come down on you for doing so, as it hasn't been tested in the courts yet.

So no, I wouldn't say that it's clearly piracy to download a modded version of software for which you have a valid license, particularly if you did so for compatibility purposes only, were only using the exact version of the software for which you're licensed, and could document trying to get the vendor to help out & their failure to make a good-faith effort to fix your problem. Would such a defense hold up in court? Dunno, probably not, but no sane vendor would go after you in such a situation, it's not a guaranteed win for them & would be a PR disaster. Wink wink nudge nudge say no more, right?

Re:Nothing new under the sun

[Spudds]

I've fiddled with both.

In terms of usability and ease of use from a programmer's perspective, the two libraries are practically identical. It is fairly trivial to create an abstraction layer that provides common functionality between the two libraries.

However, from my experiences and (limited) knowledge of both libraries, DirectX does have more features and does develop at a quicker pace than OpenGL. DirectX is owned and developed by one single proprietary entity with greed as incentive for a quick development pace (negative tone unintentional), whereas OpenGL is an open standard with an organization body to oversee it's development, which tends to be slower (read: more calculating and cautious about what they add/keep out of the library).

That being said, OpenGL doesn't aim specifically at games (which is DirectX's primary intention), but aims to be a general Graphics Library. It's used for other things besides games, such as medical software.

The performance of the libraries depends on a huge number of different variables; OS, graphics card/driver, aptitude of the programmers to utilize the specifics of each libraries' strenghts, etc.

Re:Nothing new under the sun

[MS-06FZ]

My feeling is that where requiring an upgrade of the operating system is nothing more than if(version="VISTA","Welcome","You're FUcked") then the companies should be charged with false advertising and fined millions. Here's the trick, though...

Saying a piece of software "works" under certain conditions isn't just a statement of technical possibility, it's a statement of confidence in that scenario. As in, how thoroughly was that combination of software tested.

The software companies aren't obligated to broaden their testing platform, or to allow people to run their software on platforms they didn't test for. (Regardless of disclaimers, doing things like that would cost them money, in the form of tech support calls asking how to get it working. The situation sucks from a user standpoint but it's not totally unreasonable...)

Where's The Justice Department?

[bc90021]

Doesn't falsely indicating that games only run on their new OS violate the terms of their agreement with the DOJ?

Re:Where's The Justice Department?

[Cerberus7]

The games don't run on their new OS, by design. Even if it's something as simple as "check if OSVER=Vista" or what have you, that means the game won't run on anything but Vista. It's not illegal, it's just a load of crap, as those who are working against said crap are proving.

Re:Where's The Justice Department?

[dannannan]

I was a developer for one of the cracked games in the article. I would really have enjoyed making this game available for XP and not just Vista. Believe me, it would have taken longer to finish because the test matrix would have been so much bigger, but it's so frustrating to finish a game that none of your friends can even play because they don't have the right OS and won't be getting it anytime soon. That's the thing though, at MSFT you have to drink the koolaid.

I have a hard time believing that using these games to leverage Vista was illegal. Stupid and annoying maybe, but not illegal. Believe me, us devs who actually *cared* about the game argued against this sort of product hobbling on a regular basis. Requirements like this get thrown at you constantly. If it was actually illegal we would have played that card for sure.

Console Emulators

[Joebert]

I can play games from every videogame console I've ever had on a PC through emulation, why wouldn't I be able to play a game that runs on the same hardware ?

this is trivial

[Kuciwalker]

All you do is remove the OS check in the exe. It's no more difficult than a no-cd. And because of that, it won't be possible for any DX10-only games.

(And as I understand it, you can't just port DX10 to XP - its functionality requires the new display driver model in Vista.)

DirectX 9 Only

[IndieKid]

The hacks from the article only work because these games still support DirectX 9 and DirectX 9 is available under XP. I'm guessing it will be an entirely different challenge to get DirectX 10 running under XP, which will obviously be required when games no longer support DirectX 9.
Admittedly, it will be a while before we see games that are DirectX10-only, but I doubt Microsoft will be getting too worried yet.

Re:Way to go Falling Leaf...

[Tridus]

This wasn't Falling Leaf, it was the crack group Razor 1911.

Falling Leaf hasn't released anything.

Re:Way to go Falling Leaf...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a link to their... umm... press release

Re:Way to go Falling Leaf...

[Drachemorder]

Maybe they do, but we as consumers also have the right to call them on the carpet for it. And, for that matter, the right to modify the software to overcome those artificial limitations. (This isn't a matter of piracy --- this sort of hack has nothing to do with whether or not the game or the OS is pirated.) Just because someone has the right to do something does not mean it's right to do it. Microsoft is morally wrong here, even if their actions are legal.

Re:Way to go Falling Leaf...

[Drachemorder]

If you don't want to respect their license, that's fine, but then you shouldn't expect them to respect the GPL either.

There's an inherent difference here. Microsoft's licenses try to restrict you from doing things you would otherwise have the right to do. The GPL gives you rights to do things that you would not otherwise have. If you don't want to respect the GPL, that's fine, but you'd essentially be a software pirate if you distribute GPL software in violation of its terms. On the flip side, if you violate some of Microsoft's license terms, you might not have done anything illegal at all (running Vista in a VM, for instance). So I really do see a huge difference between the two licensing models, and therefore a difference between the nature of respect for them.

It's a question of intent.

[A_Non_Moose]

or possibly lack thereof.

IIRC, NT4 maxed out at DX3 and "could not go any higher" according to the wisdom at the time, but it
was possible to graft DX5 onto it and it worked quite well as I recall.

Look at games such as "Slave Zero" (picture Carmageddon, only giant robot instead of a car) that were
so tied to Win98's directX calls that it usually did not function under other WinOS's.
Some enterprising hacker replaced the 98 DX calls with more generic functions and it worked great.

Vista exclusive games (DX10 Only) will be out sooner or later, and I'm sure that eventually it will overcome
the 5+ year's momentum that XP has, but I think it'll be very slow going.

The intent of game makers is to sell games, and locking out 90% of thier target markets is suicide.
(DX8/9 compatability at the very least will be around for a while, I'd think.)

Same with Microsoft, its intent is to sell Vista anyway it can, but unlike games you want/don't have, you
are likely running a WinOS of some stripe (gaming requirement, almost). The lack of want/need of a new
os, lack of games that won't run on XP (yet), resistance to change and XP "just working" (for the most part)
and/or just the way you like it setup makes for some heavy resistance.

The realy trick/story will be DX10 working under XP, or, DX10 game that have been changed like Slave Zero
to work under DX9 with few, if any problems.

Re:Way to go Falling Leaf...

[ChakatSanddancer]

Virtually no other product on the planet is licensed. My books aren't licensed, my CDs aren't licensed, my shoes sure as hell aren't licensed. There are high costs to create CDs, and there's no license for those. Case law, such as Novell v. Network Trade Center, already suggests that such licensing for software is most likely unconstitutional anyways. The myth that software is somehow special is full of legal holes. Again, why should software be any different?

Just Goes to Show

[Nom du Keyboard]

All this just goes to show that there really is nothing special about Vista, and the only reason to upgrade to it are artificial barriers created to try and force you that way. Your software is fully capable of running just fine on XP into the foreseeable future, but Microsoft wants your money, and Hollywood wants you forced into the worst DRM infested system yet foisted on us.

Why not OpenGL?

[CarpetShark]

Why exactly did Direct3D take off, anyway? Other "standards" of MS's have failed. OpenGL was already a success, in the high-end world. Was it just too high-end 3D for the low-end-3D game devs back when D3D started out? Maybe they've gradually grown up with D3D now, and are more comfortable with it?

D3D used to have a more high-level layer than OpenGL, I think (right?), but no one used it because it was slow. Was that at least a factor in drawing people in, even if they had to move to more low-level stuff to get performance?

Or is it did hardware manufacturers go with D3D for some reason, and everyone else had to follow? It did seem like Quake was the only thing forcing gaming gfx card manufacturers to implement OpenGL for a while there. That might even be more the case now (I'm not sure; haven't used windows in a LONG time).

Is there something about OpenGL implementation that's harder? Does it make it easier to identify cards with crappy performance, or something?

Re:Why not OpenGL?

[PitaBred]

Direct3D focused on games, while OpenGL stayed in the "high-end" world like you said, catering to CAD systems and big-time rendering when gaming was in it's rapid growth stages. Not to mention I'd bet that MS paid a lot of developers to use their API. DirectX also contains a very good interface to, well, interfaces, which may have persuaded some shops to go with DX over OpenGL, which is only a graphics API.

Re:Why not OpenGL?

[GreggBz]

There are pros and cons to both. DirectX is not a bad API, in fact, it's rather good.

I think the integration of DirectDraw, DirectSound, the input, etc.. helped. All in one is good when developing games. It allows you to focus on the game, not any technology or compatibility hurdles. Also, it's now much easier to develop in. Very easy actually. Say what you will about Microsoft, but their development tools, particularly those associated with DirectX have been very good.

Also, while Direct3d and OpenGL accomplish the same things, they are very different. OpenGL is a state machine, with a standard API. Direct3D directly bangs the hardware with a minimal driver, maintained by the manufacturer. You could argue that it's faster, in practice, sometimes it is and sometimes it is not.

OpenGL is more abstract, and has a set of functions that can be used through it's API, and it is then up to the hardware manufacturer to create a layer of communication (the driver) between the hardware and the OpenGL state machine. OpenGL drivers are more portable, but harder to make efficient. I think this is overall a little more robust. Functionality wise, they are both very close. I consider this almost irrelevant, because there are so many features in both, that game programmers have a hard time keeping up, and particularly are weary of using the bleeding edge. I've learned to program in DirectX and only a little in OpenGL. I can't say I have a clear favorite though.

Re:Why not OpenGL?

[Targon]

There is a large difference between supporting an API and having it accelerated by the hardware. This is a big reason why Intel GPUs have been shown to be so bad when it comes to games. Without hardware acceleration, the drivers need to do more to allow the API to talk to the video card(s). At this point, I am not sure how much acceleration there is for OpenGL on the video cards produced by AMD/ATI and NVIDIA.

This issue is why there is a lot of confusion on the part of many people out there. They install DirectX 9 for example, but their video card only handles DirectX 8 in hardware. They don't understand that to get decent performance, you need the video card to be able to handle DirectX 9 in hardware to get the performance and in many cases the features that games have to offer today.

As for why companies went with DirectX, from what I have read, when DirectX first came out, Windows itself was a HORRIBLE platform for games. At that point, you had the option to write DOS apps(and support the video cards yourself, needing different drivers for each one), or you could go for a native Windows application, where DirectX was a HUGE improvement in many ways. As time went on, and Windows native applications became more and more appropriate, programming for Windows performance was more important.

Once a company was working with DirectX, future projects went DirectX as well, just because the API was known. Even when OpenGL started to catch on, for a Windows-only application, why go OpenGL at that point? Linux wasn't really on the radar, and MacOS had more issues than just the graphics API as a reason not to be concerned with the Mac environment.

As a side effect of this, ATI had never come up with a great OpenGL driver for their cards, and there was never much pressure to do so for most of the user base(CAD and a handful of other applications the only exception). So, if your ATI users will encounter lower performance, and there is no serious benefit to making your application multi-platform, then why NOT go DirectX?

To make an application that is multi-platform, aside from the graphics angle, the company needs to consider the following question: Will the number of sales from each additional platform compensate for the additional development costs for that platform?

Linux users, due to the free nature of the operating system, tend to look for other free applications. Paying money for an application would be seen as unusual, and is even frowned on by those who are into the whole "Open Source" movement. This implies that even if there were 10,000,000 Linux users out there(not installed machines worth), there might be only 10,000 of them who might BUY a game. Not everyone enjoys the same types of games, so you now have the problem of how many copies will be sold. This is why the emulators you see for Linux and MacOS have gained the popularity they have, because unless your application is a high end/expensive application, there is very little to be gained from making a multi-platform application. $60/copy just won't cover the cost of development of new ports.

Re:Bah

[Laur]

What this means is that it will always be slower than DX10 on Vista...Another problem is the increased overhead, so you'll need to spend much more on hardware to get a similar experience that a slower system gets in Vista.

You make this assertion with absolutely no proof to back it up. If you haven't noticed, generally speaking Vista is noticeably slower than XP at doing the same tasks (surely you've heard of the differences in their hardware requirements?). Therefore, it is by no means certain that XP + some performance overhead will be slower than Vista with it's already increased performance overhead.

and that it will be dependent on the quality of OpenGL drivers on WinXP.

These are provided by the card manufacturers, and from what I know are excellent.

Then there's the question if OpenGL even has anything comparable to geometry shaders yet

They do.

Even if you wanted to solve this by throwing more powerful hardware in your rig, it would only be possible for a year or so, as NVIDIA/AMD will not be interested in providing driver support for XP in future GPUs.

XP has been around for six years, and has a massive installed base. Furthermore, the shift to Vista is not happening at all quickly. XP support will be around for a good long while. From what I've heard, Vista is the one with driver issues.

Re:No Online Play

[Reapman]

You mean the 7 year old system that until less then a year ago was their newest version of this product line? The one ours and some other straggling companies are just now switching to (literaly)? Obviously this is a gaming related thing but just saying that they should'nt be suprised that even home users still haven't all made the switch yet. Really, if you have a 1 year old computer that runs great, and you want to play one of these games, your adding $100+ to the cost for really no good reason other then to drive their bottom line. Not illegal, but sure as hell not nice.

If we were talking Windows 2000 or 98 I would see your point, but we ain't, so I don't.

Age of Empires III's false XP requirement

[lymeca]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the extremely relevant precedent set by Age of Empires III. Although I exclusively run GNU/Linux now, at the time of Age of Empires III's release in November of 2005 I was running Windows 2000 Pro with no intention of ever using Windows XP. This isn't the time or place to discuss why I refused to use XP, but suffice to say that my experience getting AoE III to work foreshadowed what was to come in any Microsoft published game.

Being a fan of the earlier Age of Empires games, I acquired a copy of the newly released AoE III which turned out to list Windows XP as the only supported operating system. To my extreme (albeit momentary) dismay, running the setup.exe on the first game disc produced an error requiring an upgrade to Windows XP before installing the game. I simply refused to believe it, seeing as how 2000 and XP are extremely similar operating systems and that there's no technical reason this game would require one and not work on the other.

Five minutes of Googling later, I ran the setup.exe from the command prompt, passing the "/n" command line switch to the executable. This switch runs the game setup in network install mode: the setup program believes it is installing the game over a network, so it doesn't check the operating system version! Needless to say I just pointed the installer to a local directory and it installed without a hitch.

Even better is that the main game executable didn't require any patching. Directly after installation, the game ran perfectly under Windows 2000! Only the setup.exe on the game disc had the farse "XP-only" restriction, and a simple trick, built-in to the executable no less, proved that the operating system requirement was merely a shallow marketing decision by Microsoft to force people on to Windows XP.

This anecdote might be interesting for those who haven't played AoE III (or haven't tried getting it to run on another OS besides XP). It has taught me to never trust a game published by Microsoft, and because of my experience, as soon as I heard that Halo 2 PC was going to be Vista-only many months ago I instantly knew that it would be a superficial hack akin to the OS check on the AoE III setup.exe.


Of course there are going to be people who relish in being able to break this superficial and shallow marketing decision, but I'd like to send a big THANK YOU out to those who actually put the time and effort into doing so.