Recent Windows update breaks SafeDisc DRM
September 26, 2015 3:40 PM   Subscribe

What's going on, and how to work around it. If you play some older PC games, you may have noticed that they don't work after a recent Windows update. They don't work because the update broke SafeDisc DRM. Another reason to hate SafeDisc DRM, as if we needed one.
posted by Anne Neville (19 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
No idea why he has people edit the registry when they can use the "sc config" command. Or, for that matter, why he doesn't have them use the mmc snapin for graphically managing services.
posted by sbutler at 4:23 PM on September 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


You could do this, or you could just download a no-CD hack and it will probably work much better. I guess the disadvantage is that the no-CD hack may come from a sketchy source.

For once, this is not Microsoft's fault; they did have an epic imbroglio of their own with Games for Windows Live, but in this case they are absolutely right to patch this out of the OS.
posted by selfnoise at 4:24 PM on September 26, 2015 [7 favorites]


By the way, this is the new shit right here. They apparently lasted 90 days on FIFA 15 before it was cracked. Yippee!
posted by selfnoise at 4:39 PM on September 26, 2015


Microsoft cannot kill that which never had true life.

But stab it in the head again to be sure.
posted by delfin at 4:43 PM on September 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


This is why i don't even try and dig up my old discs of older games before. Either they don't run and require lots of tweaking/fan made patches/etc, or something like this happens. Whereas if i just go "pirate" it(which seriously, if i already own it, who cares?) and i can just install a crack and read the comments of "change this INI to this" or "change bla bla setting in windows" and i'm up and running in 15 minutes including download time.

I really wish GoG or someone had a platform like steam where you could essentially search an old game, and it would either auto-load patches and configuration or at least load a wiki-like page collected from various comments saying "this is how to get this game running, these are the known issues". Because sometimes it feels like it's easier to have an airgapped XP or even 98 machine lying around just to run old games and software(and hey, then i get to use my badass 90s audio interface that still sounds amazing)

By the way, this is the new shit right here. They apparently lasted 90 days on FIFA 15 before it was cracked. Yippee!

The weirdest thing about Denuvo is that no one really understands how it works yet, outside of the company. 3DM managed to bypass it, but their bypass is glitchy. I wish i could find a long explanation of how weird and complicated it is to link.

It has something to do with your CPUs serial number(remember when everyone got mad at intel for that? heh) and the bypass is some kind of emulation layer/hypervisor/virtual machine sort of thing. They basically virtualize your CPU(and possibly motherboard?) as being a greenlit one i believe?

Also, fun times, and speaking of rootkits and VMs and such... it was developed by the same assholes who made SecuROM for sony.
posted by emptythought at 4:48 PM on September 26, 2015


From selfnoise's link: "In fact we have no negative impact on the game's performance at all and don't put the hardware under more strain."

So... you're not running any code at all? Not even a tiny smidgen of CPU time? Because that would be putting the hardware under more strain and impacting the performance of other code that's running. Sure, it may not be hugely significant, it may even be so slight as to be effectively indiscernible, but that statement can only be technically true if they are selling their clients nothing at all.
posted by Dysk at 5:09 PM on September 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


I really wish GoG or someone had a platform like steam where you could essentially search an old game, and it would either auto-load patches and configuration or at least load a wiki-like page collected from various comments saying "this is how to get this game running, these are the known issues". Because sometimes it feels like it's easier to have an airgapped XP or even 98 machine lying around just to run old games and software(and hey, then i get to use my badass 90s audio interface that still sounds amazing)

Uhhhh... That would be GoG Galaxy.
posted by Talez at 6:49 PM on September 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


Speaking of air-gapped Windows 98 machines, I wish it was easier to emulate those machines. It seems like software between 1995-2005 is especially hard to get up and running on modern machines, as it's too late for DosBox, and too early for modern and relatively consistent APIs. I guess it's a bit like how every N64 game needs a bunch of hacks to work, while Gamecube and Wii emulation is surprisingly straightforward.
posted by mccarty.tim at 7:14 PM on September 26, 2015


At least there's a crack for SafeDisc DRM. Modern games that require an online server for parts of the game logic are going to be much harder to preserve.
posted by Nelson at 11:18 PM on September 26, 2015


It's even worse than that. The majority of contemporary mobile games keep all data elsewhere. Download an APK and you'll get a pretty downloader with the right name, but nothing else.
posted by lumensimus at 11:43 PM on September 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


Cite for that, lumensimus? I frequently use my phone and tablet offline and the only games that have presented me problems were the ones that obviously needed online content (eg, my opponent's latest turn). Some throw up nagboxes telling me I'm offline but don't keep me from playing.
posted by ardgedee at 4:21 AM on September 27, 2015


I think lumensius was referring to android installers. So it works now, but if you delete it or get a new phone or whatever and want to reinstall, you're relying on the servers still existing and having the content.
posted by Dysk at 5:10 AM on September 27, 2015


@ardgedee: Many larger Android games only have the core parts (engine, etc) of the game in the application package, and need to separately download and install the data assets. I don't know much about the technical side, but I would guess it's less about malice on the developer's part or desire to lock it down, and more about the limitations of Google Play and Android OS in general. The developers may have simply thought it was better for the user to download and install the game fast and then download the assets when the game is run the first time. There's Android games in Humble Bundle that do this exact same thing and deliberately don't use DRM.
posted by wwwwolf at 6:00 AM on September 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


Companion apps, promo codes, ARGs, and the like are a triumph of marketing and the death of game archiving.
posted by lumensimus at 8:20 AM on September 27, 2015


Speaking of air-gapped Windows 98 machines, I wish it was easier to emulate those machines.

Windows 98 works OK in VirtualBox.
posted by flabdablet at 8:41 AM on September 27, 2015


Speaking of air-gapped Windows 98 machines, I wish it was easier to emulate those machines. It seems like software between 1995-2005 is especially hard to get up and running on modern machines, as it's too late for DosBox, and too early for modern and relatively consistent APIs. I guess it's a bit like how every N64 game needs a bunch of hacks to work, while Gamecube and Wii emulation is surprisingly straightforward.

Yep. And anyone who, like above, suggests just installing virtualbox/vmware/etc probably hasn't actually played around with it too much.

I've had the simplest pieces of software and 1995-era 2d games completely self destruct in a virtual machine somehow. Not really clear on what hardware glitch they were tying in to, or just generally what about the setup blew them up... but stuff like running in a full screen window with a postage stamped size image, or glitching all the buttons outside the window, etc. Graphical corruptions, audio corruptions...
posted by emptythought at 11:38 AM on September 28, 2015


Another issue is that certain games/software required say, a certain patch or something to windows 98 that isn't included on the disc... and the website that would mention that or include a patch to the program itself is long since dead and completely ungoogleable.

This isn't as big of a deal for games that are still well remembered/liked/played/popular like say, total annihilation(which has gotten fan patches since the last official patch) but for weird obscure educational games or something you wanna fire up because you remember them from when you were a kid? You're hosed.
posted by emptythought at 11:40 AM on September 28, 2015


I've had the simplest pieces of software and 1995-era 2d games completely self destruct in a virtual machine somehow.

Got links to any of their installers? I wouldn't mind having a mess about to see if I can get them going in VirtualBox.
posted by flabdablet at 6:40 AM on September 29, 2015


completely ungoogleable

is not the same thing as completely unaskmeable!
posted by flabdablet at 6:41 AM on September 29, 2015


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