Kiss my Grits, Securom!

[JonnyFive]

Last night I decided to install my recently-purchased PC game "Medal of Honor: Airborne." Install went fine, but when I tried to run the game, it showed the little "disc access" icon for about a minute, then popped up an "unable to authenticate this disc within the time limit" error. No game.

Every time I tried to run the stupid thing, it'd give me the same error. After trying a few different things, I finally tracked down the source of the error - apparently, it's a Securom copyright protection scheme issue that crops up with several games on certain systems.

I sent an email to Securom's support with a copy of the analysis file they wanted, and they sent me a revised copy of the game EXE that actually worked. That's all fine and dandy, but why was I even having this problem in the first place?

This isn't the only Securom-protected game I own, but it's the first to cause any problems. Apparently, some people have been having similar issues with "Bioshock," which runs fine for me.

This is goddamn ridiculous. I understand that piracy is an issue for the PC game market, but isn't there some better solution than crappy, retarded Securom?

 

[moopet]

I have, on more than one occasion, bought software (not necessarily games) and then ended up downloading a pirate cracked copy anyway because the "genuine" one didn't work.

 

[Bikewer]

Regarding Bioshock, it took the crackers nearly two weeks to come up with a workable item.

Or so I'm told.

 

[JonnyFive]

Well, now I got the game running, and it drops down to about 2 FPS for no reason, which isn't affected by dropping the settings or resolution, despite my exceeding the recommended specs by a fair margin. It's weird because the demo ran perfectly, and I suspect Securom may be the cause of this too.

Why the hell does EA Games hate its paying customers so much, anyway? I was nice and didn't pirate your game, can I please play it without BS? Please?

 

[Cuddles]

This is goddamn ridiculous. I understand that piracy is an issue for the PC game market, but isn't there some better solution than crappy, retarded Securom?

I always get the impression that most piracy is actually people who have paid for a game trying to get around crappy copy protection. If people weren't forced to pirate legitimate games they would be perfectly happy staying legal, but since it's impossible to play some things without hacks, the temptation is always there to do it with things that don't need it as well. Just like the music industry, it's not the pirates that create the problem, it's the industry itself. It's all a bit silly really.

 

[JonnyFive]

I always get the impression that most piracy is actually people who have paid for a game trying to get around crappy copy protection. If people weren't forced to pirate legitimate games they would be perfectly happy staying legal, but since it's impossible to play some things without hacks, the temptation is always there to do it with things that don't need it as well. Just like the music industry, it's not the pirates that create the problem, it's the industry itself. It's all a bit silly really.

Which reminds me - it is total bullcrap that iTunes stores everything you buy in its stupid, proprietary Apple format that can't be read on any normal MP3 player (including the one in my goddamn car stereo!). So either I need to circumvent their retarded restriction by re-encoding it with some hack, or I'm seriously limited in how much I can do with the file I bought.

I actually don't mind an online activation system for games/apps, like that used for Half Life 2 or Bioshock, although it blows if you're offline. I just want to register the game once and then leave me the hell alone until it detects some major system change, at which point it can check my system again.

Seriously, it worked fine for HL2. If your stupid copyright protection scheme is going to be cracked in a couple week anyway, you might as well make it something that doesn't annoy the living Hell out of the user as well.

 

[Vorticity]

I've nothing to contribute to this thread, other than to note that when I first glanced at the title I read it as "Kiss my Girl's Scrotum!".

This confused me.

 

[Ryokan]

I've nothing to contribute to this thread, other than to note that when I first glanced at the title I read it as "Kiss my Girl's Scrotum!".

This confused me.

Obviously, you've never been to Thailand.

 

[PogoPedant]

It's sad, but it's usually quicker, cheaper, easier, and safer to engage in piracy than actually buying stuff legally. You tend to get better stuff too, as the illegal stuff won't hassle you with anti-piracy stuff like Securom or the infamous Sony Rootkit. Something is damn wrong when the crooks offer a safer and more reliable product...

 

[JonnyFive]

It's sad, but it's usually quicker, cheaper, easier, and safer to engage in piracy than actually buying stuff legally. You tend to get better stuff too, as the illegal stuff won't hassle you with anti-piracy stuff like Securom or the infamous Sony Rootkit. Something is damn wrong when the crooks offer a safer and more reliable product...

I completely agree with you. It's not like anyone's even asking for anything crazy or anything - we just want to be able to use the software we obtained legally.

Turns out that a lot of the problems for MoH: Airborne are, for some reason, due to my having installed the demo version. Apparently, Securom really hates the demo version of this software, so when I installed the full version alongside the demo, it caused Securom timeout issues and slowed the game to about 1 - 5 FPS when playing.

Took off the demo, reinstalled the game, and magically the problems went away. Yeah.

 

[gbed]

I have 2 kids in my household and my disks take a beating! So, after I purchase a game, I usually head over to wwwgameburnworldcom and download a disk fix. This keeps the game from looking for cd, so it just works and my disks don't have to get scratched anymore. There aren't fixes for everything, and if a patch comes out, the patch usually won't install over the fixed exe, so you have to start over at times, but for the most part it's worth it in convenience over something I've LEGALLY purchased.

As far as Steam goes, for Half life 2 and BioShock, it has an offline mode, so after you initially authenicate, you're good to go. In fact, you can load Steam and your games to multiple computers, as long you don't log in from each one at the same time. So, I have games on my laptop and desktop. I love that sort of easy licensing flexibility. You can even re-download the full game if your PC gets wiped out. I don't know how Valve could make it better.

 

[Alex C]

Copy protection like this makes no sense to me. The game gets cracked anyway and all the protection ends up doing is ennoying the customer. While the pirates get a nice protection free game without even putting a disk in.