Buy the game, its own DRM kills it – pirate the game, it works fine
By Paul Biba
That’s the story as reported by Ars Technica today. The game, Gears of War, came with a hard coded shut-off date of January 29,2008. All those gamers who bought it had their game shut down yesterday. Epic is supposedly working with Microsoft, the publisher, to fix the problem but has released no news.
Now, if you pirated the game the problem doesn’t exist and you could continue to play normally. It’s only if you are an honest person that you get punished. Am I missing something here? I guess honesty is not the best policy. DRM does it again!!
Thanks to reader Jim Lester for the link.
January 30th, 2009 at 10:18 am
Aw man, I was gonna post this story with a clever headline like “DRM strips ‘Gears of War’”. But I couldn’t get to TeleRead from work until just now.
January 30th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Hey, Chris, I’ve reported the problem to our tech guy. Sorry about the hassles, and keep us posted. Thanks. David
January 30th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Wouldn’t that be January 29, 2009?
January 30th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Reminds me of a Time Warner audiobook I bought on Martin Luther King, Jr. I tried to load it onto my iPod, but it wouldn’t work, no matter what I tried. Then I discovered that the discs had been so thoroughly copy protected that my CD player couldn’t even play them. I e-mailed Time Warner and they shipped me an updated version of the product. iTunes imported the tracks, but I haven’t had a chance to listen to them.