09/11/2005
Home computer Battlefront
entry posted by Inquisitor at 19:46
(permalink).
edited on: 09/11/2005 23:24.
categories: Idiots
, Microcode
, Scumbags
I've just had a phone call from one of my brothers, who's just bought Battlefront 2. Having gone through the DVD installation process, he ran the game only to get an error message complaining about "emulation software".
Now, this means stuff like Daemon Tools or Alcohol 120%, software which provides "virtual" CD drives based on hard-drive stored images. This is actually an entirely legitimate use - having lots of CDs on your hard drive means less scratching of your original discs, they're faster, they mean you can keep a centralised "jukebox" so your kids' copies of The Sims or whatever don't need to be replaced at EA prices, that kind of thing. Unfortunately, like all good technologies this can also be used for piracy, and as a result a lot of copy protection systems now refuse to allow the game to be played even if such a program is installed on your system. Doesn't bother checking whether the game itself is mounted on the system, just quits out if it even detects the existence of Daemon Tools or Alcohol.
This, of course, is stupid, but then so are most game copy protection systems - they quite often fail on certain optical drives, to the extent where many software companies actually release patches to remove the publisher-mandated copy "protection" as the very first thing they do (a la Epic on Unreal Tournament 2003 and 2004 - the first patch for both removes the protection check). Valve's Steam system, although much maligned, is a better idea; because it is user-centred rather than disc-centred, it doesn't care whether you installed HL2 from your disc, a copy or your disc or just by installing the Steam client and downloading it off Valve, just that the game itself is registered to your account.
What's worse is that you absolutely cannot copy these discs - meaning that if something goes wrong and you want to play the game again, you're probably screwed. The new SecuROM 7.0 system, which Battlefront 2 is protected with, blocks all kinds of software; worse, it also blocks software that has nothing to do with piracy. A good example is the piece of software that was actually causing my brothers' problem: it wasn't DT or A120, because neither were installed, it wasn't CloneCD or anything like that...
...no, it was SlySoft's AnyDVD. A piece of software that has nothing whatsoever to do with piracy of computer games - it's used to work around region code issues with DVD-Video playback. Now, either SecuROM just crashes out if it finds something unusual has hooked the Windows optical-drive readout mechanism (in which case there's a lot of legitimate stuff it could crash on, like random SATA drivers), or Sony DADC, makers of SecuROM, deliberately blocked this software because... well... uhm... it hurts their movie business? Uhm... get back to you later.