SecuROM - The PC CD-ROM DRM that broke games | MVG
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- čas přidán 24. 11. 2019
- In 1997 a sophisticated PC CD-ROM anti tamper software was introduced by Sony DADC known as SecuROM. SecuROM did much to frustrate paying customers but very little to stop piracy. Here is the story of the most pointless and frustrating DRM in the PC world.
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#SecuROM #DRM #Spore - Hry
Ironic, how Spore became the most pirated game in history.
Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis The Wise?
Is it really ironic? Or is it just the expected outcome?
@@robertt9342 no, it is ironic. A game loaded with DRM to prevent piracy becoming the most pirated game is practically a textbook definition of irony, not a misuse
Well, if you bought the game and couldn't install from the disc anymore then there was only one path
@@mspeter97 czcams.com/video/ZXG1HzuNIJk/video.html
imagine buying a game and every 10 days a guy knocks on your door and asks for the receipt
Walmart checking if I paid for my 12 pack of Coke when leaving.. and after every can I drink.
@mPky1 Then game companies shouldn't phrase game sales as SALES. Which they deliberately do to create the misrepresentation of a purchase, then hide behind the EULA (which they know customers don't have the legal expertise to fully interpret on their own) to try to justify imposing on people in ways that no one would tolerate from a company that sold them any other physical good.
Just because you can make people "agree" to something in fine print doesn't mean that you're acting ethically.
@mPky1 Shut up, bitch.
@mPky1 "Definition of sale
(Entry 1 of 2)
1 : the act of selling specifically : the transfer of *ownership* of and title to property from one person to another for a price"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sale
If game companies wanted you to think of their "sales" as rentals, they'd be clear that they're _renting_ their games to you, not offering terminology that (falsely) implies _selling_ them to you.
But they don't want people to think that, because they know that being clear about their rights retention would blunt "sales" because people would realize just what they're (not) actually getting.
It's slimy and dishonest and, again, people would never stand for being "sold" other goods in this way.
DRM guy: knocks on door every 10 days
No-cd hack: answers door with shotgun raised at eye level
GTFO!
Pirates: **downloads the game for free and plays it whenever and wherever they want**
Legitimate customers: **buys the game in a store, only allowed to install the game three times then has to beg customer service to let them keep using the software they already paid for**
Yep, DRM working as intended /s
And all the managers of game publishers be like: "Why do fewer and fewer people buy our games? Why software piracy still on the rise, despite all our great efforts? Me no gets it!"
they allways think they are smarter then the people making the cracks. The developer know whatever they do there are guys out there able to bypass it. But no stupid manigment is like "then just make a better DRM".
It's the priates faults. No one likes to be cheated out of their profits and if there weren't thieves pirating the games there would be no need for all the security measures. Now EA and some other companies implemented simply poor security methods that were costumer unfriendly, but they were ultimately pushed so by pirates.
@@1yasin6 "
Yasin Biyikli
1 week ago
" they allways think they are smarter then the people making the cracks"
Not really, they just hope to make the life harder for pirates to get enough legitimate sales before the security is cracked.
More than a few pirated versions are patched properly from the go. Then there's the fucktards otherwise known Adobe who threatened customers with their older versions to get people sucking on the subscription teet. Oh yeah, and sony with computer crashing malware on their music cd's.
"EA learned their lessson"
Lol, no they didn't.
@Fozzerino
Well, they’ve recently taken their first babystep by returning to Steam.
Still, it’s just *one* babystep of hundreds necessary to fully regain my trust.
@@Operational117 no because the steam versions require linking and don't count as a 2 copy if you own it on orgin it also requires origin open
@@Operational117
Wake me up when Steam version of Mass Effect 3 is playable
They learned the lesson that allows them to get away with even more crap.
Just boycott them. What are you really missing? EA is shit.
Ugh, SUCKurerom. The worst part of revisiting many of my favorite older PC games for far too long now. SafeDisc as well, just pointlessly annoying things to deal with for dozens of games I've bought that would otherwise be pretty simple to run.
Awesome to see a closer look into how it worked and was cracked, nice work!
don't forget about starforce - the drm that literally bricks modern computers
Hey Clint! Happy thanksgiving! I had to run out and get a pizza after watching that ham and pretzel bun vid! Man I got so hungry, that was a serious sandwich!
I regret buying "legal" PC games back in the day . In the end I think that they've shot themselves in the foot because people nowadays think twice before buying a game on physical media. I only buy one if a crack is available.
some developers were nice enough to release non-DRM versions of the games effected by it such as Egosoft (X3) and Nordic (Superpower 2, Spellforce 1, The Guild 2). This DRM made buying games in the early to late 2000s an absolute pain in the ass. Its only really worked at punishing the customer.
Starforce was another DRM that was a pain in the ass (but it was 1,000,000x worse because it ran the DVD drive hot while you played resulting in a bricked DVD drive over time, SecuRom only checked once assuming it worked (it rarely did) and then left you alone).
Honestly I just miss Monkey Island's protection. Every game should have dial-a-pirate.
That insert CD to play thing was so annoying, I used no CD cracks even with games I purchased legit
amorettique nova same gave my rig aids a few times
Same here.....
I have two games in my possession that require the CD to be inserted
Did the same. Was faster to load because it didn't need to spin up the drive and I was of course lazy and didn't want to swap discs all the time to play different games :D
And everything old is new again. Modern DRM is getting so bad that buying the game on Steam and then downloading a pirated version to actually play seems like a totally reasonable option.
This moment when you have to crack your legal coppy of a game just to be able to play it...
Or even for NOT having to insert the CD/DVD, which was a pain.
I have to "pirate" other software I bought and paid for because the licensing and DRM is so obnoxious. I own a legal copy of EZ Drummer 1.X drum machine and one of the "EZX" drum kit expansions. I have to "pirate" cracks off of torrents for both because the DRM is so obnoxious.
@@needsLITHIUM Because the don't 'support' v1.x anymore?
I had this with Bioshock last time I installed it. It wouldn't run because of the shitty SecuROM ptotection. My solution was to uninstall it then download a pirate version. I had to use a pirate version because the legit version that I own and paid for and is now just taking up a space on my shelf won't work.
@spam spamsson at least you finally allowed to Crack the game "Legally"... So you just need to show the judge the proof of the "CS that allow you to Crack the game" and no worry...
Strange world we live in where games are only still playable, and not lost to time, all thanks to Pirates.
My Gameboy Advance library lives to this day thanks to emulation sites, with original hardware, it would rot or break in 10 years from now...
Addendum: I have just checked my list of games I have and what I would like to play next. A LOT of Fire Emblem Games before year 2005 (SNES, GBA) and Original NES Final Fantasy 1 & 2 would be lost to time without emulation sites, and many, many lesser known titles too!
@@KingOskar4 suikoden
@@KingOskar4 Most any GB/GBC game with saves is already unplayable because the batteries are dead by now. Some get Virtual Console releases(don't you want to pay $5 to replay a game you bought 20 years ago?) but will something like the GBC Harry Potter games be on Virtual Console?
Technically, those people that were translating Bible from Latin in illegal printing machine releases were doing the same x), first laws on that topic are about Bible and publisher protection, Bible to this day being the most selling book in history.
I bought Vice City and still used the no cd crack just because it was annoying to need the CD to play.
recently i've bought gta san andreas on steam and i had to pirate it because mta does not work on the steam version (edit: it was not recently, i just said that because i usually say recently at the begining of most of my comments, i bought it like 3 or 4 years ago)
MethPascal
It is piracy lol
It uses a hacked .exe file
@@cunnyman he bought the game and since it's a single player game he is allowed to tamper with it however he wants
@@AnonymousGentooman i think you need to downgrade to 1.0 for mta
Yeah this is the point, DRM only hurts the consumer, people will wait for cracks if they don't want to pay, just like I'm doing for RDR2, R* annoy me so they won't be getting my money, I'll wait a year for the crack if needed.
Funny how it always seems to hurt more legit owners of a game, while pirates actually have a better experience most of the time, specially with single player games.
Keep up the good work.
I really don't get the super heavy harmful DRM strategy
R*: im going to do a thing thats called a pro gamer move (literally just goes full bethesda and releases pc rdr2 a buggy nightmare.)
When these pirates hiddenly put the malware to the pirated game that I once used, it destroyed my PC. ThenI realized that they are full of shit
@@franciscoandrada412 It has something to do with rock-brained executives thinking "piracy's our biggest issue" when there are two major factors to defeat it.
They are people pirating it to demo (as in: the marketing doesn't represent the actual product) and those that have bought at least one copy of the thing already (as in: copy protection is actively stopping normal or desired use).
That’s always how it goes.
Oh man, I remember getting a game called "Earth 2060". I was so damn hyped to play it and got it on my birthday, only to find out it had to be activated via internet (which we didn't have at that time) or via telephone (but you had to use your number pad and our telephone was too old for that to work) and so I had to travel 15km with my bike to my grandmother to activate the damn game. I was so upset at the time. And the game turned out to be not even that good.
At least you got to visit your grandma
lol. So you had no internet AND a rotary phone? 😂
@@TheEgg185 Yeah it was like 2004 :D we got internet about half a year later I believe. My father still uses the same phone to this day.
FFFFF
F
FFFFF
F
F
Scammed
Meanwhile: Witcher 3 sells like a hot cakes to this day, despite not having any DRM at all
Ikr. Its almost like people prefer the easy method of buying things and they will just give you money if you dont make it hard. Who knew?
@External power steal a dollar
Toss a coin to your Witcher O' Valley of Plenty!
Look at minecraft (java), they provide their own server software that even got an option to allow cracked-minecraft players to join the server, like they give a huge f on it, but the game still sells wonderful
definitely something to do with it's playerbase.
if you compare it to something like GTA V then.. it might be different
I used a no-cd patch for all the games I purchased that required me to put the CD in the drive. No thanks, thats why I had a PC and a harddisk. Probably helped Steam gain some traction around that time as well.
Same. I installed a crack on every game on my PC.
So stupid that those who were doing the right thing were punished and forced to get patches.. i even specifically avoided purchasing certain games because of this
Not to mention the much faster launch of the game. I remember i did this to my GTA:SA to play online on sa-mp. I was blown away for how fast the game launched ^^
i like steam because its drm is non-intrusive and isn't a pain in the ass to work with
Yep and that made it hard for us south africans back in the day when steam first launched Half Life 2. Back then most of us were still running 56k dialup internet. I bought a copy of HL2 but it had to be decrypted online. I was fortunate to find a crack that could decrypt the game allowing me to play it.
>SecuROM
>broke games
Ever heard of StarForce? It's even worse.
Omg yes ! I have a few old games with StarForce, I can't even use them without a nocd patch. Even on the actual PC on which I installed them as a kid.
SecuROM was nothing compaired to StarForce...that shitty device driver it installed killed so many windows installations...even after you had uninstalled the game..the driver still remained..it slowed down the system and was a major performance issue for the game itself... i still have a few CDs with that crap on it...but luckly the devs have released new versions without StarForce included... and the games run soo much better than they used to..
When seeing the tag on this title I actually mixed the two up & thought this would be talking about StarForce.
And I Quote SoundsmithTF2(a jojo fan): *Oh God Oh Frick*
I remember a Software called StarF*ck that removed it from certain titles. Or so I think..
0:53 MVG is sus!?!?
ඞ
Sus
"SecuROM was a totally avoidable disaster for SPORE"
"Also let's make Darkspore an always-online preservation nightmare"
Funny you'd mention that...Darkspore is already on its way back up at the hand of the community. The arsenal and editor are already accessible again, though the game as a whole has yet to become "playable" per se.
"Hey people love the big, singleplayer, moddable, offline sandbox that is Sim City. How about we make it small maps, multiplayer, unmoddable, always online, with overrun servers upon release, and have many bugs like citizens working at the closest available workplace instead of a steady job at one place? That will sure appease fans of the series and keep it alive. I mean, what, is some indie developer going to make a succesful city builder that people expected sim city to be? Unlikely, that would involve passion and dedication, and caring about what users want, when money should be the only goal"
Minecraft was once always-online, despite those versions having no multiplayer
and can you play them without having to jump through a ton of hoops? hell no!
@@TorutheRedFox Wasn't it a browser game or something back then?
@@cannedbeverage7687 I'm talking about Indev, which had an "offline" launcher at that point
It seems like everything related to Spore backfired, from the game itself to the anti-piracy measures taken on it.
Aye its mr mario. Thanks you helped me jailbreak my ps3
03:53 "authenicate"
06:42 Oh I didn't know we broke the "10 billion" mark in 2016...
This documentary has its points, but the production quality is utter BS.
the creature-making part of Spore is still good
@@achtsekundenfurz7876 you are reading it wrong i think at 06:42 you have to add them together and it checks out. weird way of showing it but the numbers are probably correct.
@@achtsekundenfurz7876 oh no a minor misspelling in a video. Shut the whole thing down the end is here.
Piss off
" _EA learned their lesson._ "
*HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA*
oh dear, you've killed me xD
then came simcity4
Practice lesson of screwing their customers up the arse perhaps. There's been no shortage of that.
@@cmdraftbrn
Don't you mean Simcity '2013' ?
@@CenarosNL honestly i dont remember. i recall simsocieties on facebook getting closed when the latest simcity rolled out. and it contained the always online drm and the servers were broken for like a month.
"EA learned their lesson"
*Sim City*
EA will never learn their lesson. In a quest for more money, they added loot boxes to the Star Wars Battlefront, and the iconic "It gives players a sense of accomplishment" was the most downvoted comment on Reddit, ever. Then they changed the game and "we've totally learned this time guys."
But they probably haven't, give it a few years.
@@Goabnb94 I mean, doing this actually makes them lose money, so it's not some quest for more money. It's just being dumb.
Why anyone buys an EA game is beyond me.
Why dont Devs learn: Ultrahard DRM will only increase piracy, as all the customer wants is to play the game and not play arround 10 hours with DRM in a vain effort to authenticate and start the game?
The devs did learn, their marketing department and greedy executives on the other hand...
Denuvo?
@@bestledisthe God fucking dammit I hate Denuvo
I had a couple of games back in 2001 that were "protected" by SafeDisc version 2; and my CD-ROM drive wasn't 100% compatible with it. One of those was "The Sims: House Party" (an expansion pack for "The Sims"). I bought that game in March of 2001, and didn't get to play it until November 4 of that year, all because that expansion pack would freeze at the splash screen. It wasn't until I figured out that I had to disable DMA for that CD drive that I could finally play. The other game that was so "protected" was SimCoaster, which I got for my 30th birthday. I found that that game also froze at the splash screen; and yet, when I disabled the DMA on my CD drive, it fired up just fine. I then reinstalled "The Sims: House Party" with my CD drive's DMA disables; and that, too, launched just fine. Yeah... I was denied from playing that expansion pack for literally MONTHS all because of that stupid SafeDisc version 2!
By the way, "The Sims: House Party" is NOT to be confused with the adult game, "House Party". Here's a link to THAT game on Steam, by the way: store.steampowered.com/app/611790/House_Party/
Oh, and don't worry: you're not going to see any spicy content in that game's Steam Store page.
5:50 I used to download those "patches" from gamecopyworld back in the day, so I could rent the games at the video store, make copies and sell them to my friends at school. heh. Cool thing is the site is still up and looks exactly the same as it did back then. Pure nostalgia.
haha lol
LMAO! My Man!
I too conned my parents into buying one of thoes high priced cd burners when they first came out on the market.
Would download 600MB of music pics, movie clips what ever, over a week with my 56k dial up modem.
Yeah, it took a week to download 600MB of shit... Then spend the weekend burning tonns of CD's and sold em at school.
Made a killing :D
SunnyZ
My first cd burner was £116 from scan.co.uk
Uugh the price, lol lol
@@SunnyZ I was able to buy a brand new voodoo3 3000 agp right after release with the money I made selling pirated games at school LOL It was not cheap, but damn it was worth it.
Did you know that doing 1:1 copies of securom was super easy?.. you literally didnt need any crack or shit for securom games... Just a CD writer...
The SecuROM days of Spore and Mass Effect actually prompted me to crack ALL of my legitimate games for a long time, just to avoid any kind of issues altogether. I even went as far as back up my entire physical disc collection to my NAS and include patches, essential mods and no-cd cracks from places like Gamecopyworld.
Just so I could always ensure I could play my games, in case these sites went under later due to lawsuits, or if EA would decide to re-sell them to existing customers (Which they are - Called that one for once) again on Origin and such.
Gamecopyworld....now that's a name I've not heard in a long time...a long time...
Why give them any money if they are actively making it more difficult to enjoy something you buy
Spore was the last cd game I owned for pc back when win7 was big so I'm sure you knew how I fealt in 2015 using a win10 pc and realising I dont need the disc. I found the disc but no cd key inside the box :(
gamecopyworld...man this takes me way back...
You say DRM, I say "consumer rights violations." Same thing.
Don’t forget: GOG is a wholly owned subsidiary of CDPR (hence games like Cyberpunk and The Witcher being there). Super awesome company, love that they own and operate a drm free storefront!
Oh, I learned something new today. Thank you for that. A whole new respect for GOG.
GoG rocks. I could have pirated the Doom games, but I paid the $10 just to support them.
They put effort into making sure games, especially older ones will run, whereas you may be able to find a steam key cheaper, steam provide often poor or no checking that it will run well. GOG get my support for this alone as it saves a lot of hassle often. LP
Kind of hope one day I'll see Gearhead Garage on there. One day. Low hopes, but hopes nonetheless.
can't wait to download a free copy of cyberpunk first day thanks to our gog lords
"Thank God for GoG"
Damn straight. The only game distribution company that actually respects you as a consumer
@Kleiner Helfer is this a genuine question?
@Kleiner Helfer oh you didn't even know it existed... I thought maybe you were being snarky lol
Not the best platform for multiplayer PC gaming, but all their games are completely DRM free (no need for authentication and you can freely make backups) and they also have a lot of oldie games revved up for modern hardware/OS
Even if you don't basically worship them like I do, they're a company worth keeping as an option lol
Fun fact: the GoG guys also made the Witcher Series and the upcoming Cyberpunk game
GoG was created by a Jew-hating nation. Don't buy from them.
@Kleiner Helfer "Witcher sucks but whatever" Why am I not surprised. Your pfp says it all.
@@XYZabcXYZ951 what
God bless the "No CD" cracks.
even if you bought the game, was still anoying having to put the CD everytime you want to play. So god bless "no CD" cracks xD
@@Leon05X I've owned laptops before that had no cd-rom drive so companies forced me to pirate their game by not offering digital download versions through Steam or other sources.
my starcraft cd shattered inside the cd reader of my pc because i play for so long
"Insert disk to play" was a combination of annoying and stupid. You could take the disk out as soon as the game launched... I remember playing a multiplayer game with a friend with one disk (and a null modem cable) by just starting the game, ejecting the disk, and passing it over so the other person could launch the game. Even if a game only did a partial install and needed access to files on disk, once launched, you could usually swap in a copy no problem.
it was to prevent people from making copies and giving them away, or by making a copy for yourself then selling the original CD
That shit was annoying with the sims
As soon as you mentioned “WriteProcessMemory” I’m like waaaaaaait a minute here, self modifying native code is 99% a virus patching its way into your stuff.
Besides, if there’s a bug in the self modifying code, it’s like self administered brain surgery
99% might be a stretch - I can verify from experience that such in-memory code manipulation has since become a godsend for Spore's modding scene. Ironically, the very same APIs that arguably doomed the game are now used to improve it.
Technically windows is a virus.
@BOOZE & METAL There are areas where modifying code on the fly is a common practice even today. Most notably:
intermediate portable languages with Just-In-Time Compilation, like Java, .Net
emulators for platforms with different CPU architecture using dynamic recompilation.
Cheat Engine uses WriteProcessMemory lol
Microsoft agreed and a Windows 10 update disabled secure ROM versions that used that unapproved API hook. Microsoft only aproves DRM if it doesn't act like a root kit.
The root kit mention reminded me of Sony's music CD fiasco.
Same DRM
People should have gone to jail over that!
Ditto
@@GeoNeilUK instead we got the GD DMCA . which got folded into the renewal of the Patriot Act. Which made breaking DRM a terroristic charge. Gitmo for NoCD. Can you imagine ?
@@MessalineApghar Because Americans make laws for the security of corporations, not the People.
Corrections : 2:23 - A table of contents (ToC) contains information about the tracks themselves, not file metadata
11:30 - Its questionable if SecuROM is indeed still around at least their website is still up. If anyone knows, let me know!
Grand Theft Auto 4 has this issue as well, Trying to authenticate the game will automatically fail and the website that you get linked too is picked up as a security risk in most browsers due to the certificate being vastly out of date. I'm usually not one for downloading cracks but... we might see in this case.
@@lumi1934 It should be no harm, no foul to get a crack if the game won't authenticate legitimately.
@@ashleysavoie3202 I mean the Devs themselves made the product harder for us to play even after paying them. While the pirates enjoy a clean and smooth version of a game. Of course it's not fair!
@@Rex-zm7xb That's the part that kills me about a lot of DRM. Most DRM gets taken care of pretty quickly for major releases, so in the end all it does is maybe buy the company a few days and end up making the experience worse for people that legitimately purchased the game.
@@ashleysavoie3202 And the same thing is happening now with Denuvo.
Industry: "But DRM-free games get pirated and hurt sales."
CDPR: "Hold my Gwent cards."
and yet, Gwent is almost never talked about.
@@Dribbleondo Only because it's boring as hell.
I think you're boring as hell.
@@Darxide23 Sorry man. It's literally just adding numbers together to see who gets the higher total. If gwent wasn't so static of a game, its amazing art and user interface would have easily made it a market leader card game, but it enjoys middling popularity at best.
Just adding numbers together to see who gets higher. You just described virtually every form of poker ever and pretty much every other card game. Congrats, I guess.
Good old times, I remember downloading the noCD cracks even with legit owned games, just to save the hassle of inserting the stupid CD ever time.
Oh the long loved SecureROM. I've been victim to it when I tried to install Bioshock for the thousand time, which I am surprised you didn't mention that, so get this, they apparently "turned off" the activation for the game a year or two BEFORE this happened and were giving steam keys as compensation (only for a SINGLE year after) but my installer kept on validating for some reason up until a point even on different machines. Got in contact with 2K and explained the situation, amazing they refused to even give me a steam key, what a dick move. So I pirated the remastered edition for my OWN compensation. Your shitty security isn't going to enjoy games I love to play :^)
Thats why i pirate games. Why buying them? If i can get them free
just kidding. I only pirate old games like wii or old pc games.
@RekoRed_ -
YES , ... only left to say "Viva la (gamers revenge) Revolution" & "revenge is best served cold" czcams.com/video/WCpYqWAIwFA/video.html ( @ 57 sec) & fight back this greedy *user hostile* companies.
haha gg wp
I pirate PC games that you can no longer buy brand new or digitally, as I want to support the developers themselves who worked hard for the game, not some used game store ripping people off by buying the CDs off people for 10 cents
When will these companies ever learn? The customer is always right. Since the pirates are offering free AND something that's not gonna infect my PC, I'm gonna go with that since EA is committed to giving legitimate owners of their products an incredibly terrible experience.
The customer is not always right.
"AND something that's not gonna infect my PC" It's been ages since I came across a cracked game that hadn't had some form of malware. These days I stay away as far as I can from these cracked games.
Pirated software never has malware?
Marco . So it sounds like even if it were DRM free, you'd still pirate it because it's free.... Wow, that says a lot about you.
@@bigmichiel You clearly had the wrong sources...
I was so excited by Spore when it came out, I bought the supreme edition (or whatever it was called). The DRM loops they made you jump through, with the online internet connection, limited installs, and so on were all so frustrating, I swore I would never buy a game published by EA again. Given how often I see people complain about their games...I think I made a good choice.
"EA" might as well stand for "Evil Assholes".
"Games would come on disks, maybe 5 or 6"
- Looks at his GTAV Physical Copy with 7 DVD's
Yeah... We came back to that eventually, lol.
@@geisteskrank8862
That's because the console version is quite a tad different in the bits which greatly change file size.
Todays there are still games out there with 10 DVD's...
@@Janrupf
A DVD holds under 5GB of data (unless two sided or double layered, but I'm talking about a standard one).
When it comes to huge games Final Fantasy XV is th worst offender I can think of, demanding 100GB of free space. Sooner or later "Faulty sector on DVD 17" will be a thing once more.
@@klobiforpresident2254 I don't even want to imagine installing 16 disks just to find out number 17 is damaged. But yeah, one netter buys games online...
@@Janrupf
Well, welcome to the days of floppies. 'Twas far from unheard of back then.
As for buying games online, not with my connection. If I want to leave a reasonable bandwidth, say for watching videos, downloading DEUM (doom 2019) requires of 48h of nonstop downloading. That game's less than 100GB.
It's funny that a game about evolution (Spore), attempting to push the evolution of security beyond it's previous limits, brought about some of the largest leaps in the evolution of Piracy.
getyarn.io/yarn-clip/af8dc8b3-63eb-485c-a6e9-c77c45f01fae
SPORE is about intelligent design.
I'll come back in 10-15 years for the one about denuvo
I'm still curious about the outcry when stream might one day shut down its servers
9:26 "EA had learned their lesson"... Does not compute. Shutting down all logic processes. Terminating consciousness.
And they didn't learn their lesson at all. They tried intrusive/obtrusive DRM yet again with SimCity 2013's always-online authentication bullshit, which broke the game for a lot of people, lol...
@@DeathBringer769
I remember how someone defended it saying it would be impossible to remove, even when a fan showed you can remove it by doing it himself.
Mistakes were made.
hahahaha
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Helen G. Pitts Don't advertise things that have nothing to do with the video. No one cares.
@@HP-pg5vg I don't know what is taking Google so long to remove it. I reported it hours ago.
@Michael O Callaghan Lmao. It's so true. All hail our algorithmic overlords.
If it's more of a hassle to play your game legitamently, then maybe your game deserves to be pirated.
Yup, I had a legit copy of Gothic 3 back in the day, and apparently my the DRM on it decided that my DVD drive wasn't reading the disc fast enough, so it force-quit the game and told me I must have a "Pirated disc". I ended up having to download a crack, for my legit copy.
T
hat was the exact moment I realized just how bullshit most DRM is, and how Pirating in certain cases is morally justified.
@@The_Keeper Yea. I don't mind DRM if it's harmless to legit players like Spyro 3 or Steam. The moment where it starts interfering with legitament games however is when piracy is a better solution than buying the actual game.
Every EA game deserves to be pirated.
I would not even want them pirated. €A would have to give me money in order to making me playing most of their games.
I would say that it deserves a piracy measure only if developers or any publisher company are too slow to respond to the DRM problem. But since DRMs always have a problem and keep getting implemented as they are, that says how much they'd care to fix unplayable legit versions of the games.
Informative as always!
The update that broke every SecuROM and SafeDisk game out there: Windows 10 MS15-097 Update.
Microsoft's Windows 10 doesn't support the SafeDisc and SecuROM DRM schemes that were used to protect certain older games. These copy protection systems date back to when most games were distributed on CDs/DVDs, especially in the mid noughties. Now Microsoft has started to distribute an update to Windows 8, 7, and Vista systems which disables compatibility with these DRM systems in its older OSes.
The update comes as part of a "security update for the graphics component in Windows", called MS15-097. Microsoft says the update "addresses a defence-in-depth update for the secdrv.sys driver, a third-party driver. The update turns off the service for the secdrv.sys driver." The update information page notes that "This may affect the ability to run some older games."
Microsoft only disabled safedisc, securom has nothing to do with anything and still works.
I still think that StarForce was much worse, because it was installing it's own device driver (so you couldn't run the game under newer versions of Windows)...
Oh man, StarForce is shit!
I would love to see an episode about it though
Oh my goodness, yes that was such a mess haha
And sometimes even under the supported OS due to later updates that broke said driver.
I have Pac-Man world 2 on PC and it has Starforce DRM on it.... Ugh, what a finicky DRM system.
SecuLauncher: Failed To Start Application. [2000]
*that's burned to my brain thanks to them.*
6:35 - What the hell is this graph? The world population was not 10 billion in 2014, and the percentages don't even match up with the blue bars!
It's a stacked bar graph so you don't add them together, it's not really 10b. The green is the world population and the blue is the number of greens that have internet. It states 40% so 7.2b+40%=10.08b.
@@tr1p1ea that's the most retarded type of graph I've ever seen
I recently installed Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood on Windows 10 and felt the wrath of StarForce DRM when I restarted my computer. When installing old PC games, make sure to verify if it uses any type of DRM because most if not all of the older DRM software is not compatible with newer versions of Windows. PCGamingWiki is a good website to look the game up on to verify if it uses DRM.
@@Mertanian Luckily by doing some research online I was able to boot into the Windows recover console and removed that evil StarForce DLL from starting.
this reminds me of how i got into the idea of pirating games
back in like 2013, i got a copy of the pc release of spore from goodwill. i expected it to work like every other fucking game that we got before it, but i was horribly wrong - the stupid drm that was in place made it impossible to play the game unless we activated it. so instead, i looked online to see if there was a version that bypassed that shit and lord and behold, a torrent of it was available for download. downloaded it and ran it, worked like a charm. not only does pc drm like safedisc harm the consumer, it also harms the used games market because now there is a fucking limit for how many times a certain copy can be used.
Remember developers hate to use game market well more like the Publishers and CEOs
Back then I used to pirate almost all games, either because it is unavailable or it is just hard to get my boomer parents to buy me games (GAMES ARE FOR KIDS!). I didn't understand at all the EA hate my housemate has. Only when I start buying some legit copies that I know why.
In my case, back in the days before internet, I bought a magazine that came with a legal copy of a game. The serial number was printed on a paper label inside the CD case and unfortunately it was scratched and unreadable. I was never able to play the game that a bought, despite having sent a couple e-mails to the editors that were never answered. From that time on, I started looking into pirated games.
The expression is actually "lo and behold"
SecuROM was far more widely used and well known, but the absolute worst one back them was IMO StarForce.
It actually messed with the way Windows accessed the disk drive by installing it's OWN driver in place of Windows's default one for ALL optical drive access, installed a freaking *ROOTKIT* , refused to run the game if any SCSI drives were found on the system even if the game was not running it from said drive (Many Virtual Disk programs emulated a SCSI disk... but there was many legitimate reasons to have a virtual drive... not to mention some people had an actual SCSI based optical drive), and in some cases could DAMAGE BURNERS (which actually happened to me) due to their mucking about and interrupting access to optical drives with their own drivers and rootkits.
It if course does not uninstall itself when you uninstall the game either.
For me, StarForce always rendered my Windows installation useless because it would just endlessly loop into a blue screen, citing that the so called driver didn't function properly.
Im pretty sure you could have filed a class-action lawsuit against the makers of StarForce, and easily won.
Assholes.through and through. Anybody remember macrovision?
If i remember correctly starforce has never been cracked so.... i guess it worked?
IIRC, yes it was. No DRM has been uncrackable.
SecuROM : I'm the most intrusive DRM in the world
Denuvo/VMProtect : hold my source codes
Most aaa games with denuvo have patches within hours of release
@@SuperRandykid I don't believe you when a lot of AAA games that are over 2 years old still have DRM on it. Few is more believable than most.
@@emperorfaiz suss this out. Most aaa games have day 0 (cracked before official release) or day 1 drm patches
As far as I can tell, the only unpatched games are the ones that require active internet connections to play as they have proper server side file validation checks. Tarkov, d2, pubg, etc
crackwatch.com/games?cracked=true&ordertype=crackDate&orderdown=true
Sonic Gather Battle: Hold My Rings!
Denuvo was formed from the ashes of SecuROM. Like some kind of fecal phoenix.
The spiritual successor to securom is called "Denuvo". Man, the headaches it gave me when i tried to launch doom eternal was unreal. Different names, same bullshit. Not to mention the bethesda launcher, which is buggy as hell and the fact that you need to stay always online so the game can run...
What headaches did you have? I bought the game, "pre-loaded" (fucking "pre" in everything is annoying nowdays!) it, it unlocked upon release, downloaded a patch and off to slay demons I went. I'm not saying denuvo isn't shit and cancerous - it absolutely is! But what problems did it give you, as I've had zero...?
@@TheUltimateBlooper pre ordered it in late february. In the meantime i did a fresh installation of my pc. When doom eternal came out, i installed it over that fucking launcher, was exited to play it, but it wouldnt start. It said constantly that i didnt had an internet connection to vertify the game with the denuvo servers. I needed to vertify it manually with a strage site of theirs, where you have to copy a token from the drm and paste it on the site, which in return it would give you the right token to paste in that drm window, so it would launch. Even that didnt work, i havent gotten any token back, instead, it redirected me to a site where i could write an email to bethesda stating my problems. Games like doom 2016 or one of the later tomb raider series used also denuvo as a drm and had similar problems. To make it shorter, i tried every solution which i could find on google and none of them worked (on a fresh installation of windows, with stock settings...). After 2 weeks of release and not to be able to play it, it suddently started without problems. I searched that and found out, that denuvo can have some issues with some simple internet connection settings, even though if you havent applied any custom settings. Basically denuvo sometimes "likes" and "dosent likes" certain connection settings, since its developers are way too dumb to code it to work with certain preferences. Not to mention the performance issues it can have while playing and that you have to stay always online for it. Today, if you want to play a new game on pc, you need to watch out what kind of bullshit they have for you as a buyer that comes with the game. There is a reason why pirating exists...
The steam version only included there anti cheat for about a month before they patched it out now Microsoft owns it so there likely to move it to the windows anti cheat API.
Self-modifying code reminds me of a drm used in early gameboy games. They'd modify one byte in the program memory. But because this byte was already loaded into the instruction queue by the cpu, it didn't change how the code ran. This was to stop emulators from working without sufficient prefetching of code into the instruction queue.
I still haven't played Spore, despite the fact i had it on preorder and received it on day one...
The activations got locked out in an hour, (two on main PC, third on my laptop when trying to troubleshoot)
Their support was overwhelmed at the time and the reviews weren't brilliant so i eventually gave up.
Still haven't bothered trying again to this day :/
I bought it on steam and it was amazing. Have hundreds of hours on it and even bought all the DLCs
I never bought Spore and played the crack.
I'm glad I didn't pay, the ending was stupid. Made the whole game pointless.
@@freedustin if you mean reaching the center of the universe, it isn't really an ending, just a late game goal
The game has no ending
if you want to try again, look at the modding community for help. they're quite active and would help you with vanilla or modded spore, whether it be something simple or not. i wouldn't advise re-installing it on your PC, just go on origin and ask for a copy with your keys you have.
Spore is a childhood favorite. While its by no means the best game in the world it still has charm and is fun. If theres one game that deserves a 2nd chance (remake) its definitely this one
...and now with licenses expiring you can't even get certain games to run like the Tron game... unless you had it installed and launched at least once prior to the expiration, you can no longer install and play it.
Crysis had some DRM with a limited activation, I own the game on steam and decided to play it again to see how well my new pc would run it but I had used all activations up and so Needed to contact support which I did but it took so long so got a no CD crack. Told steam forums about it and then got banned for piracy even though I owned the game.
Also some of these older DRM do not work on 64 bit operating systems
There is also some games, that are 32-bit, that won't work on a 64-bit version of Windows because the INSTALLER is still 16-bit, even though if the installer was 32-bit, they would work fine.
@@lmcgregoruk ugh, don't remind me of that 16-bit nonsense...
Spore: The only time I've had to install a crack for a game that I already own.
I have downloaded countless of no dvd cracks for games I own just because of convenience.
Happened to me plenty of times. Like modding or simply convenience or more efficient repacks.
The Spore thing happened to me. Used up all my activations cause reinstalling windows or adding a new part counts as a different computer. I got the message and it said I have to buy a new key. Also my computer having 2 DVD drives (It was some old Dell server with extra drive bays) makes Securom think that I must be a pirate who copies games. They both stopped working completely and wouldn't read discs anymore.
oof size = *L A R G E*
Happened with my flight sim. Never bothered to do anything though...mostly because I have no good internet. I actually had to call to activate as I had no internet at the time. Now I have 56KBS. Yay. Dialup.
@@user-nf9xc7ww7m My childhood was some shitty 60/kbps modem for years. It didn't bother me much back then, but if I had to use internet at that speed again now, I would rather jump out of the window
@@user-nf9xc7ww7m
Why do you have dialup still??? Isn't DSL available?
Even back then, EA was the blight of the gaming industry
I'm so thankful for Modern Vintage Gaming and the amazing videos that can be found on this channel. What makes this channel stand above many others here on CZcams is that it teaches while it entertains. At current, I'm sick as a dog and MVG is keeping me totally engaged (stomach virus). I have been so enthralled with what I have been watching that I didn't notice 4 hours zip right by! Thank you MVG for making such awesome content.
Ah yes, DRM:
Draconian
Revenue
Management
Well, I mean, dragons gotta amass their wealth _somehow._ Can't have one that doesn't have a comfy pile of gold; all the other dragons will make fun of him or her, and that's just not cool.
@@ChozoSR388 As a Dragon(ite), this amuses me.
Disable Ruin Monetize
Yeah dragons are a symobl of wealth. I have no idea if that is true but it just feels right so im stickin to it
Spore: The most pirated game due to securom lolol.
I can play only because it wasn't tagged to steam. Beware of Steam.
You should totally consider doing a video covering the starforce DRM. The only DRM I know that could potentially damage your hardware, specifically the optical drive. And for quite interesting reasons. I investigated it many years ago and determined the damage was caused by the combined mistakes of many parties.
As I recall, the starforce drm installed its own cd driver which hooked the read calls and introduced errors. Those errors caused windows to drop the drive speed down, eventually to PIO mode. And it turned out some drives could be damaged by being used in PIO mode.
Interesting stuff IMO.
I’ve discovered your channel yesterday and I maybe watched already ten of them !
Really good work and interesting topics !! Thanks for your videos !
Ah yes. I remember how SecuROM can be defeated easily with cracks. It frustrated people who actually bought the game but it did nothing against them pirates
Frustrated before and still frustrates now. Games I legally bought CANNOT RUN ON UPDATED WINDOWS 7 OR ANY WINDOWS 10 AT ALL!
@@vlc-cosplayer That's why I ended up archiving cracks for the games in my own archive (archiveception). If Steam wasn't constantly having games update you can bet I'd also be getting cracks for them as well. I can't trust a game to last forever in third party hands anymore.
@Samuel Giam I think you're missing the point
The DRM shouldn't have that vulnerability in the first place. SecuROM was a cancerous mistake.
*congratulations, you played yourself*
"The DRM that broke games"
So every DRM then?
DRM is cancer
@@madmax2069 and just like cancer in real life, DRM is an incurable disease. Thank god there are people out there that can crack even the strongest DRM's like Denuvo.
@@Sharpless2 I'm glad for GOG
Most DRM doesn't break the game. It's stuff like SecureROM and limited times you can install the game that breaks it.
The God Emperor has spoken. purge the DRM
Remember guys: a pirated copy is not a missed sale
Sometimes it is. Pirate anyway though.
I just bought them when price is 15-20€.
When the DRM screw up so bad that you still have to pirate the game after buying
I buy an official version and pirate all other versions. Example : I have Super Mario World. I pirated this game on PC, PSP, DS, 3DS,Switch,Wii,WiiU and Vita.
@@alinepiroutek8932 absolutely. A license is a license no matter which platform
Most CZcams content creators doesn't bother to sync perfectly their subtitles to their actual words, and that can be confused for disabled people; that's never the case in this channel. Keep the good work!
Even now most don’t even bother to add subtitles. I definitely respect, modern vintage gamer for this.
Spore wasn't just cracked. It was cracked before it's official release date.
Sounds like Ys VIII, Disgaea 3 (which it's release was later retracted due to people just combining files from the PC and Switch demos) and Final Fantasy XV.
"Thank god for GoG." too true
7:25
Note that Brian Eno also composed the Windows 95 Startup Sound :)
you probably get enough comments on your videos, but I would add a big thank you for making them. They are excellently made and bring back a lot of memories to those from this generation.
2020: How games were ripped from the server of Cloud Gaming services :3
Stadia: Mistakes were made
@@Farowa45 Yeah, you could say that...mistakes like forgetting that not everyone has a google CDN within literal pissing distance of their house and that tends to have a negative effect on ping, or forgetting that a good lineup of games is generally how you attract gamers.
@@TheDemocrab Exactly. At this point I don't even know what is the target market for Stadia and who would rather chose Stadia over a PS4/XBOX1
@@Farowa45 as folks say: people who have money to pay fastest internet, but can't afford superior PC
@@mytiliss682 Even then, considering the lag, the overheating of the Chromecast, the poor lineup, the pricing and the fact that many features are missing at launch, would people really bother with Stadia when they can get a PS4/XBOX1 where the games are cheaper? Plus, if you have fast internet, it's no problem to just download the games from PSN/XBL
Crysis had this too, I got so fed up with having to keep my disc around (I still have Crysis installed 11 years later) that I just used a no CD crack.
I think most savvy users have done the same with games they actually own on disc, it's pure nonsense.
Thanks for making such awesome content sir MVG. It's always a pleasure to see a new video from you in my notifications' panel !
Another excellent, technical video. Awesome job MVG!
I remember buying a legitimate re-release copy of Mass Effect only to get the game-crashing glitch at the beginning and no patches available, but thankfully someone on Bioware forum said that it can be easily solved... by applying a crack.
I remember 900mb blank disks getting sold at some point.
Me too - you could burn essentially any Dreamcast GD-ROM to one of these without having to modify the game because almost all GD-ROM games didn't use the entire disc. Many needed 800+ MB, but I think only one or two needed >900MB. So it fit fine on one of these. Too bad they don't make them anymore.
@@ZiggyTheHamster You can still get 900mb cdrs. Very few cd writers could handle them back in the day.
Not sure if you're gonna read this, but thanks to your video I was able to finally find a game I've been looking for Over 20 years, I'm talking about heart of darkness, it brings so many memories BACK! so all i Have to say is THANKS!
0:54 The CD revolution was what?!?!?!
amogus
We do a little trolling
The good old days of deamon tools.
I don´t remember the game that had that new securom protection that you could only trick by opening a pdf file while it was initializing the cd. Putting 100% load on your cpu seemed to overrun securom.
Woah. If that's true, then that's incredibly clever.
I think SecuROM was removed from the Steam/GOG releases of Spore, as it loads much faster than the original DVD-ROM version (which I still have after all these years), but I'm not too sure if that's true or not.
RobowilOFFICIAL This is true, however the Steam version was found to have a different DRM system by modders (it interferes with mods). The Origin version seems to not have SecuROM either
0:52 When the CD-ROM drive is sus
Huh I've ever really thought about how all the no-CD cracks I downloaded for games I owned and didn't own alike actually worked.
That's certainly one thing on the "stuff I didn't know I wanted to know more about" list, nice video!
MVG : [..]That something that provided a poor users experience[..]
Me : Wow, what will he say when he'll do the vid about StarForce ? Probably a "Apocalyptic users experience"
Now, i'm Hyped for vid about StarForce.
You have no choice MVG, everyone will wait for this one !
It's not "users experience" in case of StarForce - it's "users suffering".
you ever heard of StarForce,the McAfee of anti-piracy?
Puh-lease...
McAfee was never even *close* to being as shitty as StarForce was. 😁
@@The_Keeper idk about that. Dos era McA sucked. It was its own rootkit and broke more things than it protected. Back then we had PcTools and Norton himself not symantec, and spinrite... Not to mention the CopyIIPC board
Amazing, all the memories that surfaced from watching this. Nero 7 was my best btw. I used CDRWIN also, Disc Juggler for the CDI images for burning Dreamcast games. NO CD patches ruled, made my life much easier for even playing games I bought that required the CD.
10:51 Missed opportunity to say "thank GOG"
1:24 Heart of Darkness!! What an amazing game that was! Yearning for a rematser!
I was looking through the comments to see if someone would point it out. I loved that game as a kid! It was the first PC game that I completed. I rememeber that some of the levels were really tough.
@@tibor29 Exactly, was the first game i ever really played and understood. I had it on the PS1 and used to play it with my dad. Also looked really good for the time.
Ah there it is! Scrolling through the comments to see if somebody mentioned the name, this game came with my ps1 when I bought it and I could never get passed the first couple of levels but I played it over and over again.
ah the spore, i remember i didnt have internet when it came out and i wanted to buy it, the store clerk flat out refused to sell it because i wouldnt be able to run it. and then ea blamed low sales. i eventually pirated spore when i got internet
Shoutout to the salesperson for saving you 60 dollars.
i was so happy to see you with the game Heart of Darkness in your hand it made me smile i loved that game along with Grim Fandango in the 90s.
thank you for helping me remember some of my early chidhood
Your videos are so calming, insane voice!
I've always read it in my head as "sec-you-rom" where sec is pronouced like the shorthand of second. You're the first time I've heard it pronouced "secure-rom" lol
Same.
I loved playing spore, my dad actually had a pirated version of it (which I didn't know as a kid) and would explain why I didn't know about all this at first. I thought I'd play it again when my husband found his legitimate copy...which can no longer be played...its so wasteful. I think with games like this that have always on line drm they should release and update at the end of its life (when they stop selling it) that ends the drm so at least it can be preserved.
Unrelated but it's weird seeing how I can also say I was a kid when it came out and that I'm an adult now. I'm not even 20 and damn, do I feel old.
No CD cracks - the best way to play a game since 1995.
Watching your videos after discovering you from the Heart of Darkness Engine port. Love your CRT HoD footage here. You love to see it.
Back in 2000s I'd just use universal keygen (these would automatically detect the game you installed and would automatically enter the key) and cracks on each end every game I bought at store because inserting the disc every time I wanted to play and entering the cd key during installation was just too bothersome :P
I remember when Spore came out. I heard a bunch of horror stories about it's DRM and how it could easily brick your computer. Some of then were probably hyperbole but the feeling was in the community that the legitimate version was poison.
This is super high quality content coming from a 0.5M subscriber channel. Keep it up!
SUBSCRIBED.... I spent a good part of the day watching your hack videos and how they failed for many consoles.. and I was wondering if you couldn't make a video of the PS4 hack and its security flaws and another one to explain somehow why isn't there an xbox one hack somehow even after 6 years.... Sorry for my english.. Cheers from Mozambique!