Windows Poll: Do You No-CD-Fix Your Games?

I recently reinstalled Dawn of War. Then the Winter Assault expansion pack. And you know what? DoW won't run with the WA disc inserted, but neither will WA run with the DoW disc inserted. Relic's contribution to the global blood pressure average, I suppose.

Besides the fact that it's a ridiculous farce, it got me wondering: isn't all this "insert disc" crap obsolete? Piracy prevention has moved to the installation stage, where CD keys and online activation rule supreme. Disc-in-drive was what we used before we had these methods. Why do virtually all games require it? I mean all games. Far Cry 2 and Bioshock, even with their epic amounts of DRM and anti-piracy measures, require you to insert the disc every time you want to play!

Personally, I fix every game to run without the disc, if I can (certain titles make it impossible to - Oblivion, for example). I figure since the developer already has my money and I've already passed the "HALT! IS THIS A GENUINE COPY?!" stage on installation, I should be able to play the game without swapping discs constantly. I know a lot of people who feel similarly and fix their games too - and who wouldn't, once they've overcome their Good Citizen fear of sites like megagames?

It serves no purpose. It neither prevents nor facilitates anything; it's just an annoyance.

 

(slight aside) That seems strange - I got the platinum pack (DOW + Winter Assault and Dark Crusade), and none of them require the disk to start...

 

You cannot be Serious.

Moved to Gaming.

 

I agree, for a long time a disk in the drive has been nothing but another method of DRM. The problem is though, with a simple CD check, what is to stop me lending the disk and code to a friend? The thing that annoys me though, is with all this DRM that EA and others load on to their games now, what is the point in keeping the disk in drive check?

I know some companies allow you to play without a disk, the original CoH did, the expansion pack allowed you to log in with an account linked to your CD key if you wanted to play without the disk. Steam and other download services obviously do not require the non-existent disk.

 

i have 250GB of games installed on my 1TB drive, and NONE of them use disks, i ALWAYS go find a no-disk-fix.

it's just a silly extra step that PC games had to do, but once you found a no-disk-fix, it's pure enjoyment from there on.

 

yeah, nocd cracks Cheesecake.

also. digital distribution Cheesecake.

 

Good point. Then again, if you happen to find yourself w/o internet for a few days and you want to use steam, you're a bit stuck

 

not really. it lets you play in offline mode.

 

NoCD crack, or powerISO to mount the a disc iso, little hassle, but at least im not over using the DVD drive. Hate openning and closing it as one day it will cease to work and tbh i dont really want that hassle just yet. lol!

 

besides, there's a door blocking the disk drive.

what i really want to understand is that why the game developers give game pirates such a easy time. most ISO downloaded actually HAVE a crack in the ISO. whereas us hard-working, games-buying folks, have to search online through perverted adverts for such privileges.

 

lol, so true

most the time i will use utorrent to pick out the crack file from a download just so i can get a decent crack without resorting to crap websites google drags up! lol!

I also believe if you have the tools, you can open the .exe in a script view and remove the line which tells it to check for a disc, then just re-compile it.

I remember at one point i could get BF:1942 to open with an audio cd, thats how crap it was.

 

I agree in concept, but the majority of time I'm without internet is because the power is out. Not that I do much PC gaming these days anyways - but of those not on Steam, I always get a nocd crack if it's one of the many games that wants the disc in the drive.

 

And as Fod said, if you have no internet connection you can go to offline mode, you'll still be able to play all the games you have installed.

 

How better to conclude my part in this rant than with a mention of SecuROM? Yes! The magical, the timeless. I just encountered this wonderment of DRM:

"Please insert the original disc instead of a backup."

That was Legacy of Kain: Defiance. Thanks, Eidos! Cracked.

Far Cry 2 was another - as well as requiring disc in drive, it also checked for updates every time you ran it. Cracked that s***, yo

 

Not to mention Starforce and its system-crippling drivers.
(not that Securom is that far behind.)

 

Me too, if it requires a disk in drive, i no-cd crack it after buying it, always.

Regarding Oblivion: i've played oblivion several times over, but there is definitely no-cd cracks for it, i've never had to insert the CD since buying it a week after release :S

 

I know blizzard has changed it finally with patches, but in order to run wc3 or d2 without cd's you need to re-download and install the game via the blizzard store which means purchasing them, OR copying a certain file off the cd's into the main directory... Still a hastle for those people who are pc illiterate. I agree 100% and I just love steam for how effortless it really is to install games that I own after activating them... I prefer steam because if I reformat, it dl's the game and the patches all at once, not install game, go to play only to realize you need to patch... These days the CD in drive is fairly pointless, and I find it a hastle as the way my pc is, I need to either get up to open my cd drive, or drag my case along the floor 90 degrees to open it... Maybe I'm just a bit lazy...

 

I hated Steam when I was in Iraq, bought HL2 and couldn't play because it required an internet connection.

I loved steam after I finally got a connection, activated it, and after 3 years my computer broke... a quick download on the new computer and I was back to playing my old games again. There's too many good things about Steam (especially not needing to worry about CDs and keys)

The only games I buy for PC now are ones that don't require CDs (Steam, Stardock, etc.)

If I had the option and a bigger harddrive for the 360, I'd do the same thing there.

 

There are, but there are complications if you use mods. For example, I had tons of texture and weather mods installed (most of the Beauty Pack) and when I cracked the game, it wiped the ability to select the mod files, so they all deactivated themselves and the game went back to default graphics. So it looked really really ugly

I'll try working it out when I get my copy back. But whereas most games are easy to fix, fixing Oblivion is as intricate a process as installing another mod if you've already got it customised and such.

 

call of duty WaW also has this problem coop is in single player EXE, which requires a disk, so us 3 people in the house cannot play custom Zombie maps because only one of us have the game.