Probably the most unbelievable (not in literal terms) piece of gaming industry news you’ve heard. Ubisoft stole the Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 crack from the famed group RELOADED and allegedly released it as a No-CD fix for their D2D customers. Examining the .exe file revealed the “RELOADED” tag.

Bravo Ubisoft, you’ve outdone yourself in douchebaggery.

Obsidian has released a fact sheet as well as six new screenshots for their exciting RPG; Alpha Protocol. Check them out below:

Factsheet: 

OVERVIEW:

In the world of espionage, nothing is as it seems in Obsidian Entertainment’s blockbuster RPG thriller, Alpha Protocol™. Players will assume the role of Michael Thorton, a highly skilled government operative trained to eliminate threats to national security. When a mission goes horribly wrong, Thorton is the only one with the information, skills, and audacity to stop an impending international catastrophe. To do so, he will utilize the very government directive that the enemy sought to use against him - Alpha Protocol.

Set in the modern day, Alpha Protocol gives players complete control not only of Thorton’s actions but his personality and attitude as well, all of which will determine the future of the world as we know it. Blending fast-paced modern combat, significant character advancement and innovative RPG features, Alpha Protocol brings a fresh new perspective to the genre. Read the rest of this entry »

According to EA Store, Crysis: Warhead will also contain Crysis Wars. A new multiplayer component that comes with new vehicles/weapons and gameplay modes. Would Crysis Wars/Warhead suffer the same piss-poor after-sales support that Crysis did? Only time will tell.

Atari has released system requirements as well as DRM info regarding upcoming title; Alone in the Dark. The game, like so many other nowadays, will require online activation.

Press Release:

Atari and Eden Games’ Alone in the Dark for PC is certified Games for Windows and is compatible with Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems.

DRM:

The PC version of Alone in the Dark is protected using SecuROM™ online activation. This requires that in addition to the content on the game disk, players download an additional component via an internet connection in order to install and run the game. Once the game has been correctly installed and activated, it can be played whilst offline. Read the rest of this entry »

The SecuROM DRM is finally taking it’s toll it seems, as users are reporting activation problems. riftguy from BioWare forums has reported the activation problems he encountered:

By this time it was after midnight so I registered my game on the forums and posted for help. (See topic=631894, forum=127) The feedback I got was that my card was either going bad or ancient, and Mass Effect was just pushing it over the edge. So I went out and bought a new 8800GT on June 2nd and the game worked beautifully! I was so happy that I got it and couldn’t put it down – by the night of the 3rd I’d finished my first run through. Then I put the game down hoping the DLC would come out to give me even more new stuff to explore.

That was ten days ago. Today I decided to do another run through while waiting in order to try playing a renegade on a higher difficulty level. That’s when I got it. “The game can not start. For security reasons, only a limited number of machines can ever be licensed by a single purchase. This limit has been reached. Please purchase another registration code, reinstall, and then try again.”

All the lousy pirates can now get ready to walk the plank as hardware based encryption will soon make PC games piracy impossible. Speaking at Wedbush Morgan Securities annual Management Access Conference; Nolan Bushwell, founder of Atari, revealed details about the hardware based anti-piracy measure:

There is a stealth encryption chip called a TPM that is going on the motherboards of most of the computers that are coming out now,” he pointed out

“What that says is that in the games business we will be able to encrypt with an absolutely verifiable private key in the encryption world - which is uncrackable by people on the internet and by giving away passwords - which will allow for a huge market to develop in some of the areas where piracy has been a real problem.

Har har!

Shacknews had a chance to chat up Valve’s Doug Lombardi, and Lombardi had tons of things to say regarding PC gaming:

Shack: Do you guys ever get tired of the same old “PC Gaming Is Dying” stories?

Doug Lombardi: I mean, I think, we sort of laugh at it. Because we’ve been wildly successful–we’re very fortunate, you know. Our games have all done really, really well, Steam has taken off and become this whole other business for us, Valve has never been in better shape–and yet everybody is talking about how in the PC world, the sky is falling. And we’re like, we’ve been doing this for 10 years now–actually 12 years since the company started, 10 years since the first game came out–and we’ve never been in better shape, financially or otherwise. The company is over 160 people now–it was 20 people when we shipped Half-Life. We’ve got multiple projects going–we were always a one-project-at-a-time group.

After enraging pretty much every PC gamer with the 10 day re- activation feature for Mass Effect, BioWare has pulled the feature from the final product. According to the official statement:

There has been a lot of discussion in the past few days on how the security requirements for Mass Effect for PC will work. BioWare, a division of EA, wants to let fans know that Mass Effect will not require 10- day periodic re-authentication.

BioWare has always listened very closely to its fans and we made this decision to ensure we are delivering the best possible experience to them. To all the fans including our many friends in the armed services and internationally who expressed concerns that they would not be able re-authenticate as often as required, EA and BioWare want you to know that your feedback is important to us.

The solution being implemented for Mass Effect for the PC changes copy protection from being key disc based, which requires authentication every time you play the game by requiring a disc in the drive, to a one time online authentication.

This system has an added benefit of allowing players to seamlessly play the game without needing the DVD in the drive.

Key points -

•This solution allows gamers to authenticate their game on three different computers with the purchase of one disc. EA Customer Service is on hand to supply any additional authorizations that are warranted. This will be done on a case-by-case basis by contacting customer support.

• Games are authorized to the machine when the player installs and launches the software for the first time.

• We’ve all had those times when the discs get lost or scratched and you can’t play a game you’ve bought because you need a working disc in the drive. With the new system players will no longer need the disc to play the game, but can instead simply retain the disc as back up for re-installation.

For more info regarding the DRM controversy, check the official thread.

Mass Effect official forum has details of copy protection being used in upcoming PC port of Mass Effect. According to the Technical Producer Derek French, Mass Effect will use SecuROM and require online activation in order to play.

Mass Effect uses SecuROM and requires an online activation for the first time that you play it. Each copy of Mass Effect comes with a CD Key which is used for this activation and for registration here at the BioWare Community. Mass Effect does not require the DVD to be in the drive in order to play, it is only for installation.

After the first activation, SecuROM requires that it re-check with the server within ten days (in case the CD Key has become public/warez’d and gets banned). Just so that the 10 day thing doesn’t become abrupt, SecuROM tries its first re-check with 5 days remaining in the 10 day window. If it can’t contact the server before the 10 days are up, nothing bad happens and the game still runs. After 10 days a re-check is required before the game can run.

For more info, check out the official BioWare forum thread.

Here’s something interesting: According to Mark Rein, CEO of Epic Games, 40million pirates have tried to play UT3 online using an invalid key.

If those 40 million players actually paid the full price, it would have been nearly $2 billion more in Epic’s pocket book. That is more than the quarterly sales results from Nvidia or AMD. To add another perspective, the government lost out as well, because no sales tax is earned on pirated copies.

Whether this number is actual or made-up just to spark interest? (due to poor sales) We’d reckon it’s the latter one. Piracy is too easy of a escapegoat nowadays.

Update: Mark Rein confirmed he never said anything about the 40mil number. Rein has no idea how TGDaily got this info.