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Previous in Rants: That Explains a Lot | Next in Rants: Mike vs. BJ Shea |
Just yesterday I said that while SecuROM is an insult to customers, it had never personally caused me any difficulty. This morning I got to enjoy its shortcomings first-hand. With CD in the drive, I click to launch my game and…
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Hm. Laying aside the immorality of forbidding your customers from making Fair Use backups of stuff they own, I want to point out that the legit disk was, in fact, in the drive.
I clicked the link in the dialog for help, where I was told the following:
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Yes. Definitely direct the user to go mucking about with the low-level functionality of their fully operational computer. I can’t imagine how that could go wrong. Cynic that I am, I suspected that these directions were no more than dangerous busywork, so before messing around with my drives I tried rebooting my computer. That fixed it.
Oh, the Bad Breath / Leukemia thing? It might be a false positive. Still, better safe than sorry, right?
Previous in Rants: That Explains a Lot | Next in Rants: Mike vs. BJ Shea |
26 comments. Sweet.
I heard SecuROM is linked to cancer.
True story.
I heard SecurROM likes tickling soldier’s backs while they sleep.
and its a leading cause of ugliness and stupidity amongst males age 14-22.
On the topic of SecuRom though, I had many months of not being able to play BF2142 as I had the wrong type of DVD-RW.
Love the way it assumes you are using a back-up rather than assume its a software failure
Oh, god, that’s a familiar error. Damn you Oblivion Expansion! (The only disc I’ve ever had that problem with was that one)
So… you can make a backup, but it won’t do you any good because you can’t use a backup to play the game? I… guess that’s one way around the whole pesky “letting people play their games” problem.
I also note that whoever proofreads their messages doesn’t have a terribly solid grasp of grammar or the basics of clear writing. *twitch*
Oh yeah, SecuROM will eat your babies, torture your cats, and drink the last of the coffee without making a fresh pot.
It will reply to spam messages on your behalf, post naked photographs of you on youtube, and declare war on a random oil-producing country.
It will sign you up to Reader’s Digest.
It will convert all your MP3s to Britney Spears albums, and then inform the RIAA that you’re filesharing them.
It will cause Ragnarok.
Every instance of SecuROM increases the effects of global warming. By a lot.
Millions of SecuROM instances have secretly taken over large arrays of radio telescopes and are busy beaming taunting messages to highly advanced hostile aliens.
And if you tell the punters all that – they won’t believe you.
SecuROM told Bill Brasky the true name of Hastur; Brasky then proceeded to summon him, eat him, steal his powers, and go on a rampage through the city of Ankara, Turkey. The Turks suspect Greek involvement and are currently mobilizing.
SecuROM became self aware, waged war on humanity and sent a governor back in time to kill John Conner.
Chuck Norris is able to use SecuROM without any problem.
I love that step 1 is “Open the Device Manager”. How many non-Windows-geeks know what the sequence is to get there?
At least they give you benefit of the doubt and call the copied disc a “backup.” I halfway expected the message to read “Please insert the original disc instead of an illegal copy, you dirty pirate criminal scumbag.”
So, Shamus… You need help finding a cracked version so you can play the game you paid for?
*flees*
Aw, Sam and Max has SecuROM? I was even thinking of buying it.
Which is pretty ironic if you think about it. :D
My first thought was to call customer support and report the store you purchased the game from for selling pirated copies. After all, the disk you purchased is a copy, not an original – your software says so! Look at all those copies on the shelves – practically a black market here at EB games! :)
(But then, that’s my personal sense of humor. Yours may vary)
I got a similar error message playing Episode 1 of Sam & Max Season One. A reboot fixed it for me the first time, but on subsequent attempts I would see the same error over and over again. As much as 80% of the time. It was a crapshoot just to try and play my legit, legal copy of the game. This made my blood burn, because I knew pirates everywhere were merrily enjoying their cracked version, hassle-free. Meanwhile, I was sitting there being accused of using “backups”.
I emailed SecuROM customer support and they gave me a new executable for Episode 1, which fixed the problem, thankfully. (Cause if it hadn’t, I was ready to go postal on their behinds.) Strangely, none of the other episodes have given me any trouble.
Eric, are you sure your “new” executable wasn’t just a renamed no-cd patch?
if you have daemon tools or some other iso mounting program, it may be detecting that and spazzing out. to correct this, burn your pc to the ground.
@Eric C
if your situation was resolved by customer support, why is there backlash against SecuROM now?
@scarbunny
aw, come on, SecuROM isn’t Ubisoft; they won’t do such a thing.
The thing Eric C’s talking about is what I had to do to be able to play both my Knights of the Old Republic games. Both the games have the old version of SecuRom on them, until you patch them, when they get the newest, “Evilest Evil in the Evil Evilness Evil world… EVIL” version of SecuRom. You will have to contact them to get a new executable, or reboot every time you want to play.
SecuROM once tried that with Mr. T. He folded his arms, shook his head and opened his mouth to speak. SecuROM straightened right the heck up so Mr. T wouldn’t pity it.
SecuROM runs the Matrix and Keanu Reeves is our only hope for escaping it.
Also, I heard a rumour that SecuROM was recruiting for the CIA, injected all the meat with hormones before throwing it out the window, and wears brown shoes with a blue blazer. I mean, can you believe it? How hideous!
Personally, I’m thinking what we need is a a lot of torches and pitchforks and other farm implements so that we can lay siege to Sony and burn it with fire.
“SecureROM”
Are you sure you’re not doing it on purpose?
We can’t burn Sony; the PS3 install base will be with them. And they demand Additional Games.
EDIT: cruddlesticks, you corrected them before I posted my comment!
SecuROM hides your pencil erasers when you need them, and replaces them when you don’t.
SecuROM gives colds to kids in oxygen tents.
SecuROM makes you drink too much at office parties and finances movies like Beaches, My Girl, and The Piano.
I have to admit, if I got a message like that while trying to play a game, I would have taken it right back to the store on principle, and possibly even written a letter to the manufacturer. That is absolutely ridiculous. I mean, really.
Securom is responsible for Sinbad. Securom started pirating, to give it’s self a job.
I got a message like that playing solitaire.
That… Is very disheartening. I like Telltale Games, and their games. But I don’t care at all for the dangers of SecuROM. And I’m very annoyed that the stupid thing didn’t suggest rebooting. That’s the panacea of computer problems! Bah! Grumble grumble…
Aha! SecuROM is a plot between Sony and Microsoft to erode the PC userbase and inflate their console base! Probably just paranoria, but it makes sense, and works in their favor.
@Loneduck – You know, you may be dangerously close to the truth. What if SecuROM is actually a plot from Microsoft (we all know they’re evil corporate overlords, right? ;-) ). Maybe Microsoft implanted the idea at Sony in order to drive up their own sales and improve their image while trashing the competition’s image (because until recently Sony was a benign corporate deity.)
It also explains the iPhone. Microsoft is sabotaging the 3G network to make iPhones not live up to Jobs’ promises of “twice the performance at half the cost” to similarly turn public perception of Apple from benign corporate deity to evil corporate overlord.
Good lord! Somebody better drop a line to Linus Torvalds quick before his PR drops into the gutter as well!
And if I disappear, you’ll know that Microsoft has managed to find and silence me. Look to Redmond The truth is out there.
P.S. Folo – It kind of almost was on purpose. My fingers move faster than my brain to correct improper useage and spelling, even when it’s actually a made-up word that’s quite proper but looks improper. Force of habit.
As bad as Securom is, I’ve also never had a major problem with it. It sometimes doesn’t play nice with Daemon Tools or other CD virtualization suites, but it’s pretty easy to just disable those temporarily, or unmount the offending disc image.
Starforce on the other hand…well I think the market has spoken on that one. I haven’t seen a mainstream retail title released with Starforce on it ever since the whole GalCivII debacle.
Starforce was known to literally destroy DVD burners. It had a driver that tried to determine if you were burning a protected disc, right? Well in that process it often had to arbitrarily force your DVD drive to slow down in order to watchdog its every move. Some DVD drives were never meant to operate below a certain RPM, and by doing so it could cause mechanical problems, physically ruining the drive.
It might not be able to give YOU Leukemia…but it’s certainly able to give it to your DVD Burner.
SecuROM is causing poverty and hunger around the world by transforming random objects into useless data chunks.
If I remember correctly, you got with FlatOut 2 an LEGAL securom or starforce removal tool (i’m not sure which one of them…)
SecuROM sold Charles Freck a batch of hallucinogens disguised as downers.
SecuROM spent a lot of time loitering around the girl’s bathrooms in grade school.
SecuROM nailed Vince Snetterton-Lewis’s head to the floor every Sunday.
Also, LOL@Sesoron.
SecuROM logs into your account on your MMO of choice, deletes all your characters, and replaces them with level 1 bardomancers.
SecuROM prevents you from deleting 16-bit executables, crippling anti-virus software.
o wait that one’s real
I really, really, hate that. That prompt only fails to be the bane of my video gaming existance because of the fact that it eventually goes away. and most of my favorite games don’t use SecuRom
It’s True!
SecuRom stole my girlfriend.
SecuRom drives in the HOV lane illegally.
SecuRom votes for nanny laws.
SecuRom is why we only have State Run Liqueur Stores in WA.
SecuRom caused global warming to wipe out polar bears (they are clearly software pirates too.)
SecuRom lied about the cake.
SecuRom made 54% of all known Lolcat images.
SecuRom crank called my grandma at 3am.
SecuRom accused Chuck Norris of piracy.
SecuRom wrote a law allowing gay marriage just so he could vote against it.
SecuRom started the Great Chicago Fire and total framed that cow.
SecuRom runs secret mind control opps for the CIA.
SecuRom is why Hon Shot Last!
SecuRom invaded Georgia.
SecuRom made me do it!
W@hat a clever, funny bunch of readers you have.
SecurRom touched me in a spot my bathing suit covers :(
Securom pisses off paying customers and shows them the wonders of TPB to get around its assininity. Also real, sry.
May also cause headache, sweats, agitta, blinding rage and explosive profanity usage.
When used as directed, Securom is completely harmless to pirates.
Huh. I think I actually had this sort of problem with a UT-engine game called Rune ages and ages ago (like, ca. 2002). Seemed to be caused by a failing CD-ROM drive in my case. Windows had detected some exceeded failure threshold in DMA mode and switched over to a legacy mode as fallback. It seemed work fine on reinstall (drive still in old-school mode), but failed to authenticate the disk when switched back to DMA after that (another reinstall cleared that up, IIRC).
Why the mode your CD drive is in should matter to these CD authentication algorithms I don’t know.
@Alleyoop: you’re supposed to be exaggerating, not telling the plain, unvarnished truth!
SecuROM ate my hamster! Oh, wait, that was Freddie Starr…
As much as I hate to say that, Shamus, there’s one thing you have to do. “Upgrade” to piracy. Stop buying games legally, because goddamn not only are they crackable even with the most umpassable security system, but also make “good” costumer’s life more diffucult.
Keep in mind that, even if it seems so wrong to you, they fucking deserved it.
Well, Shamus, R could be onto something there.
Buy games legally. Don’t ever bother installing them, just pirate the cracked version from The Pirate Bay. You’ve paid for the game – use it on your terms.
Had the same problem once, or rather twice with some games, at least I can remember those.
Both refused to run after I patched them to the newest version.
The solution, a cracked exe file.
Surprisingly did I ahve to use the 1.10 Cracked exe for one of the games although I only had the 1.09 patch isntalled.
Anyone else who wouldn’t ahve been able to do that, or know what to do, would ahve wasted their money.
I had a similar problem with my legit copy of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. The Starforce copy protection wouldn’t run on 64-bit Windows, so I had to install a no-CD patch in order to get my game to work. MY game, that I PAID real USD for, wouldn’t run on my system. But the pirated version ran flawlessly, and removed the irritating CD check and delays Starforce caused to boot. All because I had the gall to want to be able to use all 4 GB of my RAM.
SecuROM turned me into a newt!
“A newt?”
. . . I got better.
(C’mon, am I really the only person who thought of it?)
Oh god, you don’t know how many times I got that message while booting up my Sims 2 Freetime disk. That’s just a minor annoyance, but it’s still annoying as heck. I had to keep pulling the CD out and putting it back in to ensure that it was working properly.
I hate SecuROM.
Jeremiah:
SecureROM isn’t linked to cancer; it IS a cancer. A clear case of the cure (copy protection) being worse than the disease (pirated software).
lowlymarine:
I understand entirely. I have a system with an Athelon 64, Windows XP Pro x64 Edition OS, and a whole lot of games that are gathering dust because they are not compatible with either this or the crappy Vista Home Premium 32 OS that came with the system.
I have recently begun torrenting the fixes for those games that have fixes.
If these mega million dollar/year companies want my further business, they had better stop punishing me for being a paying customer.
I am only a hair’s distance away from switching to some form of Linux. I already have my Ubuntu 64 disk standing by; along with a new friend who knows how to program a Linux box. Ergo, I may just put my money where it will do some good, and support his efforts to make drivers for all the legacy games we all love to play. I’d rather support him in the development of Linux open source programs, than pay the blackmail that the big companies want to hit us with in their paranoid attempts to ‘protect’ themselves. So far, the Ubuntu community is thriving, and it is totally free! Free to d/l, free to use, free to modify and redistribute freely. They make their money on producing quality custom software for businesses.
It used to be that I thought people who complained about this stuff were just over reacting, but since I stopped pirating, I’ve actually had more trouble getting games to work.
Except for System Shock 2, but apparently, that was even harder on paying customers, because their copies didn’t come with links to the 92 different possible problems that could be causing their particular trouble. I never did get the cut scenes to display right side up…
I digress, but really, this problem has gotten a lot worse in the last couple of years. There’s so few quality games and so few of them will run on a reasonable machine, already; the last thing we need is for half of them to be unplayable due to Copy protection insanity.
My solution? Play indie games. The good ones tend to actually get fixed when they’re broken, and when they sell their game on a service model, you can expect actual services.
Finding good indies is a challenge, but it was the thrill of the hunt that really made me pirate in the first place. Shutting down the torrent searches I used just gave we a reason, to find smaller harder to find ones. It was like a competition, where I tried to find the filez, before the ESA.
Plus, many independent games are free to play, guilt free. That’s freer than pirate free.
Yeah, I was so thrilled about my totally awesome new computer with totally awesome Windows XP Pro 64-bit OS. And then I tried to install pretty much anything entertainment oriented that I actually own on it. Four things worked: original Zoo Tycoon, Cats 5, Baldur’s Gate and Guild Wars. I nearly cried. No Dungeon Keeper 2, no Majesty, no Bejeweled 2, for the love of all things right and holy. At this point, I’m shocked that Solitaire worked.
Political scandal edition:
SecuROM lied about WMDs and al-Qaeda connections to get congress to invade Iraq.
SecuROM exposed Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA agent, endangering her and everyone that could be connected to her.
SecuROM was arrested for soliciting in an airport bathroom.
SecuROM fired from the grassy knoll.
SecuROM made business calls in the Oval Office while an intern half its age gave it sexual favors.
SecuROM had an affair with its media advisor while its spouse was trying to survive cancer.
Mad props to Mari for making the PCU reference before I got to.
Interesting; I use Win XP Pro 64-bit at home, and I’ve never once had a DRM-induced problem caused by the 64-bitness of the OS. (I have had far too many “ooh, you’re running Process Explorer, you must be a pirate!” moments, though. It also occasionally complains about Daemon Tools [which I use for legitimate reasons, not piracy], but an upgrade usually fixes that.)
Maybe I’ve just been lucky?
(I have heard that there’s a DRM-related problem with one of the games I have on Vista 64-bit, though. But it doesn’t affect me.)
In fact thus far the only games I haven’t been able to play are the ones with 16-bit Windows components. (16-bit DOS games I can play via DOSBox.)
Fair enough Hal@42: Monty Python Edition!
SecuROM is not the messiah – it’s just a very naughty boy.
SecuROM is an ex-parrot.
SecuROM owns Spiney Norman.
SecuROM is not afraid to talk to Doug.