Fallout 3 over Securom

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"Nothing more frustrating than doing the right thing and being punished for it" - Broken wisdom.

I'm going to post about my experiences with installing and playing the new Bethesda title Fallout 3, not because it's new and not to give any review of the game. I'm going to jot down how I have found myself on the sharp, pointy and ugly end of Securom. Yes that's right, I have found myself in a "I'm that guy" moment where something that normally happens to the other guy, is happening to me. After some surfing around it appears that my particular problem isn't commented on, so here goes.

The story starts a few months ago when I pre-ordered my collectors edition of Fallout 3 at a local EB Games. Yes that is right, I purchased the game, and have the receipt to prove it! Now I also own other Bethesda games and apart from needing the odd patch, I have always had a good experience with their products. On the strength of that, and the promise of a platform saving game, I ponied up the cash and took possession of my new timewaster.

I'm a busy family man, so I finally got some time to install the game at 9:30 last night. After opening and organising the cool goodies in the collectors tin, I threw in the disc and sat back to read the booklet. After the drive spun up, I was shown a Securom message telling me that I had "Disc Imaging Software" and that I wasn't going to be able to install the game.

I started to get a sick feeling. Here I was, $120AUD out of pocket, really keen to play this game that I have been waiting for, and had stayed up past my bedtime to play, and I was being called a pirate.

A bit of background on the computer I was installing on. It is my wife's home/work computer, and happens to be the only Windows based machine good enough to run Fallout 3 in the house. I can pretty much count the number of programs installed on the machine on my hands, and most of them are productivity tools. There is no burning software on it, apart from what is in XP, and as the computer is mainly used for work and a couple of games (WOW, Oblivion and Steam) so it is a pretty fresh machine.

I was at a bit of a loss as to what was causing the problem. The message I got had a link to the Securom website, which told of a magical patch that would solve my problems, but upon clicking on the link for the patch it asked for the Securom Username and password. Did anyone else get this? Is there a Username and password somewhere I should have? (update: Was able to download the patch onto my Mac, after this post was written, Go Apple! Not game to try it though)

So after a glimmer of hope, I was back to that sick feeling. I checked the Bethesda Forums and found out that I could install the game by launching the install differently, bypassing the initial disc check. There was also a link to the Securom patch, which I could not get because I needed a username and password.

With the game installed and nearing 11pm, I was feeling a little better, but the frustration continued as I tried to run the game and received the Securom message again. I tried the various .exe and Launchers, as suggested in the forums, but no joy.

I have been away from the piracy scene for some time, as mentioned in previous posts I have grown up and decided to support my favourite platform, to try and set an example for my girls. But as I read through the forum posts of others like me having problems, and the "This is why I don't pay for games" posts from those laughing at us, I realised the whole piracy/DRM debate is what is killing PC gaming.

So faced with 11:30pm and a real desire to play the game I purchased and legally owned, I downloaded a "no-cd crack" and started to play Fallout 3.

I'm not proud of myself, but I guess I can say that I did everything I could to do the right thing, but in the end the stupidity of not being able to use the software I purchased (over-purchased?) got to me and I went back to the dark side.

It may sound as though I'm against anti-piracy on software, well, I'm not. Unfortunately it is a necessary evil. But does it really need to be so evil? Here is a couple of interesting links on Securom problems and while looking for a blacklist of programs Securom looks for, I found that it could be a hard-drive or maybe a cd-rom drive that could be the problem.

In the end, I got about 30 minutes play in before the game crashed out on me, but that could be a number of things, and it looks like there is a patch in the works. I'm happy I got a taste of the game, but now I'm going to have to re-crack the game after each patch, so I might as well have just downloaded the game.

Or maybe I should have just bought it for the Xbox 360 and moved over to the "lite" side.

Jason Remnant

...if it's Broken, it's Securom.

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Comments

[Tim]

Just like you, I stopped pirating (mostly) when I could afford to pay 4 play. I've only once had a game complain about Daemon Tools but shutting down DT fixed the problem (it was a legit game btw). Native Steam games are a future I dream of since there's no disk and autopatching. If only more games were on there and pricing didn't go to the $120 for a game I saw last time I was going to buy something.