Wouldn't it be a good idea for UBI to release a you-know-what that only works with legal versions?
The benefits of these types files have been expressed enough here, maybe the dev team can come up with a magic pill like a nocd file that inspects your hard drive for legit SH IV files...
1) works only with legal SH IV, so copy protection intact
2) customers (at least some of the crying hordes) satisfied...

I am really scared what my SH IV DVD will look like in a couple of weeks, because the wife, kids etc...all use my comp, and change cd's/dvd's....
My SH III dvd still looks pristine.......I would prefer to have the SH IV dvd look like this too, two years from now.

Maybe next time UBI might want to use something like this for their games:

http://www.cmbbswe.dataphone.se/images/SBsmall2.jpg

Yup, copy protection will stump the crackers for about two weeks. But might give legit users problems for a long long time...

Yep, u can tell ubi didnt learn from thier last mistakes IE sh3 and a certain copy protection known as starforce, was cracked less then a week after its release.... sad why hurt the paying consumers .....

Hi All I have only read the first page of this thread as i'm just wakeing up so sorry if this has been brought up but when i installed game i didn't have to use key code . Anyone else?

It doesn't ask until you try to play online.

SH4 uses Shader Model 2.0, to work on all recent video cards (including Ati X800).
HDR can't be supported since it requires Shader Model 3.0.

No graphics option is disabled, no matter the installed video card.

The 1.2 patch will feature FSAA and superior texture filtering if forced from the video card driver.

Spaxpore your sig is a SHIV screenshot I'm assuming? It looks like a freakin picture, SHIV has some sweeeeet graphics. :up:

yes its directly takin from the game, no photoediting, i took teh screen shot, all i did was crop it and resize. Thats the uss drum , gato class,off the tokyo coast. 1942

Copy protection is dumb to the extreme.
Star Force was a borderline illegal terrible system - it caused havoc for legitimate users everywhere. The only people it didn't affect were pirates who had a No-CD within hours or days of a patch. So in SH3 case, buy the game, use it legally, get bits of system broken or be not allowed to install other legal software but download it illegally and none of the problems.

SH4 could be the same, they've already identified one case of it affecting legit users. Somehow i doubt thats the only one. Given the number of other bugs in the game its not a stretch to assume that the fade type system is flawed too. If you could GUARANTEE it would be 100% working for ALL legal users then fine, however you cant and it isnt. Therefore you're potentially ripping off legal people by deliberately degrading their game by insisting on a pathetic copy protection scheme that doesn't work and the pirates will have their working version soon anyway.
Again, penalises nobody but legitimate users.

The best way to make people buy your game is to make it worth it. Back in the old days where a sim came with a 300 page manual, large maps and so on. It was worth the price alone for something like that. Im thinking of Falcon 4 (which incidentally had NO copy protection but was very succesful), Formula One Grand Prix series (again no protection), back even further to Tornado and so on.

Make it worthwhile and people interested WILL buy the game. Giving them little value for money in the form of a tiny summary leaflet of a game and treating them like children with ridiclous and flawed protection schemes is only going to encourage fewer people to spend money on the game and create more of a market for pirates.

Rant over bit devs treating legal people like children really annoys me.

It didn't ask for a key code.

The key code is only for online play.

Did SH III actually ask for the cd-code? I can't recall. I do remember that the code was placed on the DVD itself of all places..

Placing the code on the booklet like they did this time is much smarter for sure

yes it did , when u first attempted to run the game, it was part of the starforce copy protection scyeme

So SHIV dosn't use HDR lighting? Some of the graphics do look very HDRish but I guess it could be something else. Do you have a thingy that sese it only uses PS 2.0?

At one time. I had 14 games installed that all needed the disk.

Since then, I don't buy games until there is a nodisk crack for it.

It is unreasonable, and borderline unethical, to expect me to put that much wear-and-tear on my computer and disks for a massively over-hyped 'piracy' problem (the vast majority of those who use pirated or 'borrowed' copies weren't going to buy a copy anyway--that's just common sense).

If this game isn't successfully cracked (or the disk requirement isn't officially removed like it was for OFP), I won't buy it. That's the developer's loss, not mine.

Really? My bad. But why would I get banned from an open forum for mentioning you-know? Esp when about 10 posts before me did also?

I didn't think it was supposed to be a state secret that I don't load my discs in my disc drive every time I play a game. That would SUCK, since they are all stored in the next room with my work stuff. And who cares, since I do not share or download them anyway. Woooo, look out! He left the dvd in its case! There's going to be a tragedy! LOL :rotfl:

I hadn't thought to look for a nocd for 2142 until after the last post, but glad I did because now I can use the drive for music and other things and not have it running all the time when I play... at least until the nextversion of 2142 is released.

So don't go thinking I support people ripping off the game. Ubi needs to make some money so they keep the devs patching and hopefully future versions of the game coming out. But for my own purposes, yes, I look forward to not having to run back and forth in here swapping discs every time I change games. For that matter, I look forward to not having ONE program conflict with all my OTHER programs which I've gone to great lengths to set up as a centralized system for the house with instant access (for movies and music) at any outlet. Spent quite a bit of time and money on that home-made system. For now I have to play SH4 on my old FX-53 rig with the X850xt video because of the conflict. And while it "runs", I imagine it is nothing like it could achieve on my C2D with 4g ram and x1900x card.... :roll:

Actually it's a double loss:

1)their profit
2)your gaming pleasure

And that's that. The crack conversation always snowballs into bad things. It's best left undiscussed.

there isnt any gaming pleasure for him if he cant game the way he wants to

It's common for games to support more than one shader model. There is no technical reason SH4 cannot support both SM2.0 and SM3.0/HDR right now.

You are not in a position to know that for sure.