Gears of War DRM screwup makes PC version unplayable

It seems that the DRM on Gears of War came with a built-in shut off date: the digital certificate for the game was only good until January 28, 2009. Now that the game fails to work unless you adjust your system's clock, what's Epic's response? "We're working on it."

Unfortunately, DRM can sometimes feel like a rug that can be yanked out from under our feet at any moment.

Epic Games is aware of the issue, but don't expect much hard news about what to do about the inability to play the game. "We have been notified of the issue and are working with Microsoft to get it resolved," a super moderator posted on the forum. "Sorry for any problems related to this. I'll post more once we have a resolution." (Microsoft is the publisher, and GoW is a Games for Windows release.)

Until then? You can either fiddle with your computer's clock or not play. Neither choice is much fun.

Did Epic assume no one would be playing the title once 2009 came around? It's hard to understand why there would be an end-date hard-coded into the title's DRM, especially one that came less than three years after the game was released. Many PC gamers are leery of any kind of DRM that must dial into a central server to authenticate, wondering what happens if those servers are shut down. Now we know—in this case, the game shipped with DRM that was essentially counting down until the game would cease to work.

While it's not rare for games to ship with bugs every now and again, it's pretty shocking when one ships with an issue that causes the title to stop working for everyone who paid. Those who pirated the game, as usual, continue to play with no issues.