this week, I have been mostly playing...Command and Conquer 3 from EA Games. Whilst its a good game, in true EA style after only 5 days of being on general release there have already been three patches one of which is to fix the patch updater.
However, this is not the most annoying aspect, oh no. This comes from actually installing the patches because once you do, then it can stuff the odious copy protection system (SecuRom) so that when you try and start the game you get an error message: A required security module could not be activated. This program cannot be executed (5024). Well, ladies and gents, it seems that the patch does something which makes SecuRom not work with even more systems than normal (it has a habit of arbitrarily not working with some devices anyway and interestingly it is made by none other than DRM uber-weenies Sony, who have a less than sterling track record with this kind of stuff - they ended up in court).
So what's the problem? Well, it seems that the common link in all this (and my own empiric observations support this) is that if you run SysInternals Process Explorer (a much more feature rich replacement for Windows task manager which is now owned and distributed by Microsoft themselves) BEFORE you try and start the game, then this causes SucuRom to fail and thus the game to fail. The only solution is to reboot your system.
Yes, that's right, EA have managed to stop a huge number of legitimate gamers who have paid hard earned cash for their fully legal copy of the game from playing if they use a perfectly legal and freely available piece of software from the biggest software house in the world before firing up the game. Genius.
Talk about alienating your customers...
However, this is not the most annoying aspect, oh no. This comes from actually installing the patches because once you do, then it can stuff the odious copy protection system (SecuRom) so that when you try and start the game you get an error message: A required security module could not be activated. This program cannot be executed (5024). Well, ladies and gents, it seems that the patch does something which makes SecuRom not work with even more systems than normal (it has a habit of arbitrarily not working with some devices anyway and interestingly it is made by none other than DRM uber-weenies Sony, who have a less than sterling track record with this kind of stuff - they ended up in court).
So what's the problem? Well, it seems that the common link in all this (and my own empiric observations support this) is that if you run SysInternals Process Explorer (a much more feature rich replacement for Windows task manager which is now owned and distributed by Microsoft themselves) BEFORE you try and start the game, then this causes SucuRom to fail and thus the game to fail. The only solution is to reboot your system.
Yes, that's right, EA have managed to stop a huge number of legitimate gamers who have paid hard earned cash for their fully legal copy of the game from playing if they use a perfectly legal and freely available piece of software from the biggest software house in the world before firing up the game. Genius.
Talk about alienating your customers...