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The Crew 2 is out now, but unplayable for some on Steam [fixed]
Update: Ubisoft say the Steam problem is now fixed. Affected people may need to restart the Steam client but then it should work. Ubisoft's open-world online drive-o-fly-a-boaty racer The Crew 2 launched in the wee hours and... a great many people cannot play it at all. The Steam version is currently busted (perhaps just for for folks who pre-ordered?), as attempts to launch the game…
It's easy to forget sometimes that games are a legal minefield, and so much of what we take for granted - mods cheekily using repurposed art assets, or fan-games bringing joy to the masses - are often technically illegal, at least under current American copyright law. Recently, several groups including the Museum Of Art & Digital Entertainment (MADE to their friends), put forward the argument to…
Feature: Thank the Emperor - there is an offline mode
There's been slow-burning confusion about whether Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War 3 [official site] (due out mere hours from now) is going to be one of those bothersome always-online sorts of games, even in singleplayer mode. It's reasonably apparent that multiplayer is the main focus of their RTS-meets-MOBA dakka dakka, but there are plenty of boring old bottom-burps like me who are only really interested…
Rise of the Tomb Raider [official site] might finally be cracked six months after its release. A step-by-step video showing a cracked copy of Rise of the Tomb Raider surfaced in Russia last week. It raises the question of whether or not pirates will finally be able to defeat Denuvo's DRM security - protection so tough that some crackers said they were giving up. The crack…
In April the cyberworld rejoiced when cybergoggle enthusiasts created a tool to let HTC Vive cybernauts play games made for Oculus Rift. In May, er, Oculus responded by adding a DRM headset check that stopped software working if it wasn't on a Rift, despite Oculord Palmer Luckey previously saying sunny things like "our goal is not to profit by locking people to only our hardware."…
I'm hearing mostly bad things about Rememdy's Quantum Break [official site], not least of which is that the reliably unreliable Windows Store (in many ways the child of Games For Windows Live) is preventing our reviewer from getting into the damn thing. Remedy's approach to pirated copies of the game makes me want to like it, though. Re-using a technique seen in Alan Wake on…
My eyebrow's raised so high that it's knocking plaster off the ceiling, but it's worth sharing this oddity as a talking point if nothing else. It seems Just Cause 3 [official site]'s DRM is still presenting stiff competition to crackers over a month on from release, prompting one pirate collective to predict that we are in the game piracy end times. "According to current trends…
Last month we reported that Windows 10 wouldn't run games that employ SafeDisc or certain versions of Securom DRM. This decision was made by Microsoft in response to security concerns, but as a side effect rendered hundreds of old games unplayable on the new operating system without players installing no-CD cracks or re-buying the games via modern digital distribution services which don't use the now-abandoned…
Windows 10 won't run games that employ SafeDisc or certain versions of Securom DRM, rendering hundreds of old disc-based games potentially unplayable without complex workarounds. Games which used these forms of DRM range from Crimson Skies to Grand Theft Auto 3, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 to the original The Sims. Yet despite this change coming in Windows 10, blame can't likely be placed at Microsoft's…
Microsoft can disable "counterfeit games" and "unauthorized hardware peripheral devices" according to the recently updated Microsoft Services Agreement. The agreement, which pertains to the Windows store, suggests they can detect pirated first-party XBox and Windows games you have installed.
The ghost of THQ is still with us today as some of the publisher’s greatest hits find new life on GOG. Deep Silver and Nordic Games, who bought the rights after THQ's demise, have released Saints Row 2 + 3, Darksiders 1 + 2 and Metro: Last Light Redux on the digital store, all at a discounted price until May 18th. This is the first…
If a publisher shuts down a game's online bits, current US copyright law says, you're technically not allowed to modify the game to use different servers or work offline. It's gone, that's it, bye-bye. That's a bummer for players, not to mention folks trying to preserve our short but already fading history. American digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation have been trying to change this,…
In a final [humiliating capitulation]/[act of goodwill and community empowerment] Maxis will today release SimCity's offline mode, freeing city builders everywhere from the terrifying fear that a cleaner at the Origin data center will accidentally unplug the servers as he hoovers up the hopes and dreams of the developers. At the time of writing (lunchtime on Tuesday the 18th), the servers are down as the…
When Shadowrun Returns was first conceived, it came with the sparkly promise of pristine freedom - not a speck of diabolical DRM to be found even in its grimiest cybergutters. But then, due to some behind-the-scenes shenanigans, Harebrained Schemes went back on their word, shackling all future updates to Steam, which - while not the end of the world - was absolutely a form of…
So I Thought I’d Play Battlefield 4’s Single Player. About That.
Our coverage of Battlefield 4 got rather interrupted by the arrival of a baby. It happens. So in trying to catch up, I wanted to play through the single player campaign, see how it compared to COD: Ghosts'. Yeah. That would have been nice, wouldn't it. But then EA happened.
Here's some very good news: CD Projekt Red are keeping their promise, and The Witcher 3 is to feature no DRM whatsoever. It's odd, because they feel like the sort of company that never would in the first place - what with their connections to GOG and all. But CDP have stuck their fingers in the icky pot of DRM in the past. And of…
You have about 20 hours left to take advantage of GOG's DRM Free sale, put togeether to celebrate today being the longest day of the year. The games are free of the lumpen, ugly additional code that bootstraps their code to your PC. If for some reason you own a million PCs, you would be allowed, nay encouraged, to install them on each and every…
Feature: Sticking your fingers in your ears helps too.
Why has the SimCity story gone away? It's a good question. And the answer for it reveals much about how both the games industry, and the games journalism industry, work.
Feature: Arguing With Themselves
What Maxis are doing is frankly peculiar. Earlier this week we posted a story revealing that claims that SimCity required online servers to run non-regional computations were not the case. That night we were promised a statement from the studio, but heard nothing. Repeated emails to EA have resulted in no response since, and the whole situation has become more muddy with each day. It's…
In this, our ELEVENTH DAY of the equivalent of PC gaming's Leveson Inquiry, Senior Director of worldwide communications at EA Maxis Erik Reynolds has written a series of 'transparent tweets'. These tweets indicate that a post on the Simcity forum about a hack for offline mode violated their Terms of Service, and the discussion would have to be moved elsewhere.
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