This was too juicy not to share. Ubisoft used a pirate crack so that they could properly serve legitimate customers who couldn't update Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 due to copy protection measures.

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/07/18/ubisoft_pirates_fix_from_pirates/

Ubisoft pirates game fix from pirates

1 comment

By Austin Modine [More by this author]

18th July 2008 19:46 GMT

Companies that take an iron fist approach to fighting software piracy are generally best served by not lifting a pirate group's code themselves to fix their own product.

Ubisoft, the French video game developer and publisher, was recently caught with its pants down, releasing a pirated hack as an official fix.

Ubisoft sells the PC version of its game Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 (RSV2) in a boxed copy format and through the online store, Direct2Drive.

When the publisher released a new patch for the RSV2 this month which added play modes and other goodies, customers were eager to update. Unfortunately the patch also added a check to confirm that a CD was in the PC before the game could play. This was obviously a problem for customers who downloaded the game through Direct2Drive and lacked physical media to validate.

Naturally, this theft prevention tool was meanwhile no problem for software pirates. A hacked executable removing the CD-check was soon readily available — although Ubisoft understandably forbade and punished discussion of the crack on its website forums when Direct2Drive customers came for help and advice.

Complaints about the physical media snafu kept coming, so a zip file was eventually uploaded by an Ubisoft employee to the help/support site, named "R6Vegas2_fix.zip."

But then Fileforums.com user Twingo discovered Ubisoft's little secret. The fix was, in fact, a cracked version of the .exe file modified by the pirate group 'Reloaded.'

Users on Ubisoft's official forums have provided proof, the "official" fix was Reloaded's crack by running the executable through a hex editor.

Posted by neilthecellist on Ubisoft forums

The file has since been removed from the website, so we are unable to verify the claims. The initial response from Ubisoft via a forum post by a "UK Community Manager" was disbelief:

We're looking into this further as this was not the UK Support team that posted this, however if it is an executable that does not need the disc I doubt it has come from an external source. There'd be very little point doing so when we already own the original unprotected executable.

As soon as we find out more about this we'll let you know.

That was followed up later today with:

The file was removed from the site over a week ago now and the matter is being thoroughly investigated by senior tech support managers here at Ubisoft.

Needless to say we do not support or condone copy protection circumvention methods like this and this particular incident is in direct conflict with Ubisoft's policies.

Given that Reloaded is an illegal piracy group that regularly strips copy protection from video games and distributes them on the internet, it's unlikely any of them will be crying foul.

But at least it's an opportunity to laugh at yet another company that loads its software with so many copy-protection hoops to jump though that it ultimately encourages piracy.

A dirty company like no other.

Ubi never ceases to amaze me... in both good and bad ways, hah...

Well, maybe now Ubi will use sensible DRM in the future to avoid further snafus like this...

I won't hold my breath though.

I've always wondered how well Obivion sold on the PC, since it won all kinds of awards and compelled a lot of people to buy new video cards, yet the disc had absolutely no DRM or copy protection whatsoever.

Is DRM really protecting profits, or is it just causing headaches?

In my opinion it just causes headaches. For example Sins of the Solar Empire didnt have any copy protection besides the serial and the developer was happy to announce that the game far exceeded their expectations in terms of profit

The biggest misconception that developers have is that people who pirate their game are the people who would have bought it otherwise as if those are the only two options. There are a lot of games out there that i would have never bought but played just because I could do it for free. Just like Crysis developers claiming that they lost millions due to piracy just because if they would take every pirated copy and get profit from it but considering that most people who played the game, found it boring and generic and used it mainly for benchmarking their systems.

Crappy games will sell like crap, big games will sell well and smaller games can actually benefit from piracy. A small game that you would have not bought otherwise gets downloaded and people realize that it is a great game and they will go out and purchase the copy. Not everyone will do it of course but piracy will provide that small boost in publicity. If it wasnt for piracy PSP would never sell as well as it did. In anime business American licensing companies rarely touch fansubbers who translate and distribute the series for free because it gives them so much free publicity. I think of piracy as a means for gamers to get demoes when they are not available, at least that's what I use piracy for.

lol, this is a funny story.

Mwahahahahaha!

Ahahahahaha!

Heeheeheeheehee!

Oh man, this is the most hilarious thing, ever!

lol @ Ubisoft...