GTA IV confirmed for PC!!!

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Originally Posted by zanzabar

people tried they are Russian though and Russia has no cooperation and its not illegal in Russia so u cant do anything about it unless a country sues them there is no legal action that u can take except for the publishers but they dont code in securom so they arnt liable for it (securom is coded into apps by securom, publishers just pick what level they want)

that also brings that securom has access to your computer not the dev or publisher

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That's where all this filth is coming from. What would be best is to get the Gov't to boycott it and not allow it into this country.

You can still go after the game developers that use it though. Ubi got nailed for Causing damage to people's systems with that StarForce on it. Had I know about it I would've gotten involved in that suit. I've got a dead drive that will only read now because of it.

I will never buy a title with this invasive stuff hacked into it. Not ever. There is a legal firm that has specialized in thse cases. The same one that sued Ubi for the StarForce and won. Those are the guys to get. There is a legal precedent set for it now.

Unfortunately that's what it takes. After Ubi got nailed they pulled StarFoce. They just won't learn any other way. You gotta get an award that really nails them hard. Class action works well becasue we have power in numbers, and it wouldn;t cost a single inndividual a fortune and major organs to afford it.

The hard part has already been done. It's a long drawn out process, but there is precendents set now and they can use those in court. The Sony rootkit stunt was one of them, and the StarForce/Ubi suit was another, and there are myriads of others on the web. It's merely a formality now.

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Originally Posted by T_Flight

That's where all this filth is coming from. What would be best is to get the Gov't to boycott it and not allow it into this country.

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Australia tried, no one cares.

its ecoldwar time, but russia has the piracy market the have the coders for the crack and for the anti piracy

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Originally Posted by krogen

Not it doesn't. DRM buys publishers time to sell the game. A game that is not protected can be found on a torrent website in no time, while a game that has the newest copy protection takes time to crack.[...]

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sorry, but that's just plain wrong. i'm not that much into torrenting and stuff, BUT it really doesn't matter if the game has securom or not. it'll be cracked and offered on the sites as soon as someone gets his hands on a copy of the game.

red alert 2, far cry 2, fallout 3 - afaik all games that sport securom were cracked and downloadable days before the official release.

no matter how you like to turn it, people who pirate will pirate no matter what. there's really only one group that is affected by drm (in a negative way): the faithful customer who buy the game.

i seriously don't mind if there's an activation procedure that one has to active the game once after every installation (like steam or smth). but please don't use securom or such crap that acts in a rootkit manner.
even though steam has quite a few issues it's the best way to sell games right now.

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Originally Posted by RaZz!

sorry, but that's just plain wrong. i'm not that much into torrenting and stuff, BUT it really doesn't matter if the game has securom or not. it'll be cracked and offered on the sites as soon as someone gets his hands on a copy of the game.

red alert 2, far cry 2, fallout 3 - afaik all games that sport securom were cracked and downloadable days before the official release.

no matter how you like to turn it, people who pirate will pirate no matter what. there's really only one group that is affected by drm (in a negative way): the faithful customer who buy the game.

i seriously don't mind if there's an activation procedure that one has to active the game once after every installation (like steam or smth). but please don't use securom or such crap that acts in a rootkit manner.
even though steam has quite a few issues it's the best way to sell games right now.

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Actually, most publishers are trying to stop pre-release leaks/cracks.

The reason for this is that, before a game releases, if it is available via torrent, even honest people who would've otherwise paid for the game get tempted to download the pirated version (because in this case people who get it illegally actually benefit from an "early release" in addition to getting it free).

Publishers are looking to dissuade those honest people from pirating through the use of DRM, hopefully pushing out the crack date at least a few days. They know the game will eventually be cracked and posted everywhere, but if it at least gets them their "honest purchasers" sales, they're happy.

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Originally Posted by Sr7

Actually, most publishers are trying to stop pre-release leaks/cracks.

The reason for this is that, before a game releases, if it is available via torrent, even honest people who would've otherwise paid for the game get tempted to download the pirated version (because in this case people who get it illegally actually benefit from an "early release" in addition to getting it free).

Publishers are looking to dissuade those honest people from pirating through the use of DRM, hopefully pushing out the crack date at least a few days. They know the game will eventually be cracked and posted everywhere, but if it at least gets them their "honest purchasers" sales, they're happy.

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It would be trivial to keep people from leaking the game early without the use of intrusive DRM, simply encrypt the entire game contents and release the encryption key through online activation on the release date, I belive this is how Steam preload works and it's pretty much uncrackable.

you cant stop pre-releases

there are so many people the games go through until theyre released

going from employee over the cd manufacturers and the shops, theres someone bound to post it

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Originally Posted by clonez

you cant stop pre-releases

there are so many people the games go through until theyre released

going from employee over the cd manufacturers and the shops, theres someone bound to post it

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Yes, but if it's encrypted it's useless before the release date anyway.

games usually have to be possible to decrypt without online connection
so thats a no-go

and even when, that key isnt more secure than the disc

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Originally Posted by Gramner

It would be trivial to keep people from leaking the game early without the use of intrusive DRM, simply encrypt the entire game contents and release the encryption key through online activation on the release date, I belive this is how Steam preload works and it's pretty much uncrackable.

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Or more simple: Ship the retail game without a launcher (the .exe) and on release day, when you do the online authentification, you also download the 4MB of missing file(s). I don't see how pirates would be able do code a working .exe by themselves..
And another idea: if your game uses Steam as DRM (like Football Manager 2009, NBA2k9 and all Valve games) simply integrate the exe inside the steam client; then when the game ships steam would get an update containing the launcher. This means it would be even harder to pirate a game, you would basically have to crack the steam client..

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Originally Posted by azraeel101

Or more simple: Ship the retail game without a launcher (the .exe) and on release day, when you do the online authentification, you also download the 4MB of missing file(s). I don't see how pirates would be able do code a working .exe by themselves..
And another idea: if your game uses Steam as DRM (like Football Manager 2009, NBA2k9 and all Valve games) simply integrate the exe inside the steam client; then when the game ships steam would get an update containing the launcher. This means it would be even harder to pirate a game, you would basically have to crack the steam client..

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Encryption would have the advantage of making phone activation possible though.

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Originally Posted by zanzabar

starforce and securom are made by the same team, the only thing that was removed or hasnt appeared yet is flashing firmware. but its got other things like remote root access and it can have heuristicall scanning for virtual devices and pirated software as well as getting cd/validation keys for your os and other software and phone it home

securom also can jump packets to the top of the net stack so they arnt filtered by software and u would need a smart hardware firewall to block it, and how many of us have a $5k enterprise grade network

(all above is for sucurom post but not including 4.6, 4.6 and below uses pings to blank sectors to check latency)



its people who use that argument that keeps the game companies from using the basic securom or just a key and online check that this malware is accepted to be OK and its just the pirates that dont like it, but the pirates dont care securom is easy to break and so is windows live it just makes legitimate people not be able to play

and a last note, if u have securom rom affter 4.6 its always running monitoring it has the potential to keylog track everything u do why would u want that, even if its not doing that now its still using resources watching, if nothing else lowering performance isnt that not the xtreme systems way we wan the most of our systems not to gimp them, so we shouldent back it until its no longer malicious and omnipresent

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Hi Zanzabar

Thanks for the harrowing insight into the dark and murky depths of SecuROM, I honestly never knew, I've got countless games with SecuROM protection...and never have any issues :confused:

Do you have any links to reputed sites (other than Le Fud or Teh Inq) which have information on what games contain "malicious" SecuROM code? that way I will know which games to STEAM and which games to get Retail.

It annoys me when people use a napalm for cooking bacon when a frying pan and a hob will do just nicely :D

John

sorry there are no websites about securom anymore (that ive found) since they pulled from wiki they come back every now and again but they are labeled as slander and pulled. if u can find documents from ubi getting sued over it (also hard to find since they are sealed now) u get alot of info about it

finding ubi lawsuit documents is your best bet unless u can can get in and talk to devs/testers in companies like EA who have some documentation

and what it dose in steam is speculation ive never seen documentation other than its 7.x, and u wont notice what it dose unless u are trying to get benching and u see i should be at this but affter this install i get this and then by removing securom u get the original score. its not like they would make it to do things noticeable if they did then people would complain

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Originally Posted by Zanzibar

sorry there are no websites about securom anymore (that ive found) since they pulled from wiki they come back every now and again but they are labeled as slander and pulled. if u can find documents from ubi getting sued over it (also hard to find since they are sealed now) u get alot of info about it

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Read the rootkit *cough* sorry, SECuROMzz readme file

I'll quote it

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readme.txt

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PLEASE DO NOT DELETE THE FILES IN THIS FOLDER BECAUSE YOU MIGHT LOOSE ESSENTIAL DIGITAL RIGHTS.
READ BELOW
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Technical Information for the PC Administrator:

The files securom_v7_01.dat and securom_v7_01.bak have been created during the installation of a SecuROM protected application.
It guarantees more user convenience because the original disc does not have to be in the local drive at all times anymore.
It is necessary for copy protected CDs, demo versions and protected software downloaded from the Internet.
The file contains your licences for all products which are SecuROM protected, therefore it will not be deleted automatically.

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...yeah

You'll notice that the folder contains many obfuscated files with weird character types and corrupted headers

I'll crack them later

Edit: even after using unlocker you cannot open these files in ANY program.
Not even a hex editor, right clicking properties and looking for the security tab gives a strange display

securom is packed with a customized packer simmilar to thermita, ur not getting into it

and the securom was cracked day0 the win live bypass has an eta of day1, so this dosnt work to do anything but harass and denture legitimate buyers

Apparently it's an historically shoddy port, looks like a console port yet runs worse than unpatched Crysis. Lots of bugs, errors and crashes to go around as well.

Mine is at 60% on Steam, I guess it'll crash all the way to hell here too..

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Originally Posted by azraeel101

Or more simple: Ship the retail game without a launcher (the .exe) and on release day, when you do the online authentification, you also download the 4MB of missing file(s).

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Great idea! This will also eliminate the need for 0-day patches, and allow QA to polish the game for an extra 2-3 weeks! :up:

Just played it a little, now I'm going to work. In a few words, this game on all low settings and 1280*800 runs like Crysis very high (on xp) on 1680*1050. It's that bad, at least for my system. Seems like it's HEAVILY CPU BOUND so Phenom 2 can't come fast enough for me.. :)
Btw, I haven't slept all night, I'll be a zombie at work lol..

My Benchmark results:

Statistics
Average FPS: 44.63
Duration: 37.51 sec
CPU Usage: 49%
System memory usage: 39%
Video memory usage: 75%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1680 x 1050 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: High
Render Quality: Highest
View Distance: 32
Detail Distance: 70

Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista" Ultimate
Service Pack 1
Video Adapter: ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series
Video Driver version: 7.14.10.621
Audio Adapter: Speakers (Creative SB X-Fi)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9650 @ 3.00GHz

Quad is at 4ghz though, the game runs slower than the benchmark shows, theres some places I get like 10 fps.. no option in video settings for AA, guess fps would suffer even more with that on, this game seems to use a lot of video ram :)

For the moment the game only works in offline mode(you can't save ingame progress) since on it crashes for some reason..

edit: here's the graphic options menu, can't push that view distance slider up, not even lowering the others..

http://img384.imageshack.us/img384/8...maxnoaaoz2.jpg

edit2: got AA forced to 4x and restarted the game, it didn't seem to hurt fps at all, more testing needed :)

for now the security stuff is working, no cracks or pirated gta IV running yet...
the funny thing is that the GTA4 for 360 was pirated and running before the release...

but I think rockstar achieve what they wanted with this, I saw a lot of people who was expecting to play right now the pirated game, but they simply can't wait and bought it,

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Originally Posted by azraeel101

Or more simple: Ship the retail game without a launcher (the .exe) and on release day, when you do the online authentification, you also download the 4MB of missing file(s). I don't see how pirates would be able do code a working .exe by themselves.

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Just do a 30sec google search and you'll see it. :up:

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Originally Posted by azraeel

This means it would be even harder to pirate a game, you would basically have to crack the steam client..

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Again, just google it. The steam client was cracked ages ago. If I say to you you can download almost every single steam game for free using what it is, basically, the steam client, would you believe me? ;)

As for GTA 4, I'll do what I've being doing to games with freaking DRM: buy a legit copy and play the cracked version. Thanks again, dear publishers. :shakes:

Edit: Yes, there's a working GTA 4 cracked version. It's a little buggy from what I've read, but it works.

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Originally Posted by Spectrobozo

for now the security stuff is working, no cracks or pirated gta IV running yet...
the funny thing is that the GTA4 for 360 was pirated and running before the release...

but I think rockstar achieve what they wanted with this, I saw a lot of people who was expecting to play right now the pirated game, but they simply can't wait and bought it,

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there are 2 releases one with a cd key crack and one with a patched securom, but the 2nd got nuked becouse there is another team with a full patch that should be out now and the patching securom wont save u when it gets a stealth update in the auto patch

r*******, will have a full game out latter today


on a highlight for anti-piracy ive heard that Shaun White shipped broken and u have to register/activate to get updates

20 Easy Steps to Starting GTA IV on Your PC
....leave me alone, I'm trolling!

how is this game doing with nvidia cards?? i would like to see some nvidia action benchmarks

Allright, Rockstar :banana::banana::banana::banana:ed it up in my books with GTA IV. Definately not buying it until the remove DRM and Securom or it'll hit 10 Euro.

No problem for me, that means more time for my study ;)

I don't want to register to Windows Live or Rockstar Social Club. What are they smoking?

And they will blame piracy, as always :rolleyes: