Solutions to CD Nagging

Readers sound off about CD requirements; legally play copied games.

Andrew Brandt, PC World

Have a question or comment? Drop a line to Andrew Brandt.

I really hit a nerve with my last column, in which I wrote about how much I dislike being forced to keep the CD in the drive while playing certain games.

Jose Salce from Brooklyn was one of the first to let me know he concurred with my annoyance about this requirement. "I was in the same predicament when I was playing Battlefield 1942 and Desert Combat," Salce writes. "Besides the noise, CD scratches, and longer loading times, my system temperature was increasing."

"Thankfully, I discovered a feature in Elby CloneCD that lets you create virtual CDs (music, software, or games) that work just fine with titles like BF1942 or MVP Baseball," he continues.

Well, someone must have let the cat out of the bag: A new Swiss law just took effect that prohibits Elby from selling this software. That's a bummer, because I wasn't able to get a copy from the company before it stopped selling the program! But if you've already got one, you're home free.

Copy Tools Abound

Reader Glen Minklein was nice enough to let me know he'd tried Games X Copy, "and found the interface very easy to use." Unfortunately, he says, "I also found it would not copy some types of copy-protected CDs, especially CDs that use the latest SecuROM stuff," Minklein writes.

But all hope is not lost: "Blind did a much better job there," he adds.

What he's referring to is BlindWrite 5, from French software company VSO. BlindWrite is another of these CD imaging products that copies the entire disc to your hard drive then emulates a CD-ROM drive, so you don't have to keep the disc in the drive.

Best of all, you can download a 15-day free demo of BlindWrite to give it a try before you buy.

Cracked Games Get Past CD Protection

Several folks also wrote in to let me know about another way gamers defeat the mandatory CD-in-the-drive requirements of some games. They use cracked versions of the executable that have been modified so they don't "ask" the CD-ROM if it's there.

One of these readers was Phil Paxton, who pointed me to GameCopyWorld, one of the sites that hosts downloads of cracked executables. (The people who run the site don't crack the programs themselves.) Sure enough, the site had a cracked version of the Battlefield: Vietnam.exe file, and it did work as advertised.

I'm not trying to be a pirate, and neither are the other gamers who download these "no CD" versions of the game executable. We just want to play the games we legally own, free of the disc-in-the-drive burden imposed on us by mistrustful game publishers.

I'm not worried that I'll end up swept into the current crackdown on pirated software, or warez, for using these cracked executables. After all, as Paxton writes, the site doesn't promote warez. GameCopyWorld hosts "*ONLY* the.exe file (or whatever has to be used to start up); the remainder of the game files are neither available nor supported," he writes.

And, he adds, the cracked executables still require you "to enter a serial number (or worse, go through product activation) during installation---but that's a one-time operation."

Cracks in Civility

The idea of using a cracked version of a game gives me pause, especially when I already own a legal copy of the game. For one thing, the name of the site is GameCopyWorld, which implies that its purpose is a lot more nefarious than what it actually delivers.

The other thing that concerns me about cracked executables is the security of the cracked application. In my extremely limited experience using GameCopyWorld, I haven't downloaded anything infected with a virus or Trojan horse. And I'm not saying you're likely to download any infected files from that site in particular.

But there's a long history of virus writers taking advantage of gamers by touting their malware installers as various game cracks, patches, serial number generators, and full versions of games. I really don't feel comfortable trusting game crackers.

And trust is the real issue here: Game companies need to trust their customers, to treat them out of the gate like honest, decent people. Piracy is evil; but should every gamer be punished for the stupid, greedy acts of a few people? Because of this lack of trust, I and many other gamers are forced to make furtive downloads from sites we wouldn't otherwise want to visit, just to get around a problem we shouldn't have in the first place.

New Copy Protection Schemes Emerge

Macrovision, the copy protection company that's best known for its code that prevents you from making a VHS copy of a DVD movie, and UK-based game developer Codemasters, are working together to develop a game copy-protection mechanism that doesn't impose the kinds of draconian restrictions we see in many new games today.

The new scheme is called Fade, and games that use Fade will let you make playable copies you can pass around to your friends. (Right now, the only Fade-enabled game on the market is Operation Flashpoint.) Sound too good to be true? Well, it is and it isn't.

Here's how Fade works: When you burn a copy of a Fade-enabled game, minor errors on the original CD (actually, little bits of hidden code) aren't transferred to the burned CD. When you play the burned copy of the game, which lacks the extra code, it works perfectly--for a while.

But as you progress through the copied game, you discover pretty quickly that your gun can't aim as well and your clips run out of bullets faster. You move slower and your avatar becomes an easier target for enemies. These kinds of in-game nuisances continually increase until they prevent you from progressing any further past a certain point in the game.

Eventually, Codemasters and Macrovision hope, either you'll decide that you don't really like the game enough to buy it, or you'll run to the store to pick up a legal copy. Codemasters sees Fade not so much as copy protection as a marketing tool, one in which it isn't required to develop and release a separate, feature-limited demo of the game. The game itself becomes its own form of viral marketing as friends pass copies around.

Now that's a copy-protection scheme with some innovative thinking behind it. I'll have to keep my eye out for more Fade-enabled games.