NCSoft Drops GameGuard From Western Launch of Aion 104
chalkyj writes "NCSoft has announced that they will be dropping GameGuard from the western launch of their upcoming MMORPG, Aion. The flawed Korean anti-cheat software has been heavily criticized for employing root-kit like techniques and conflicting with many hardware configurations. The final straw is thought to have been the stability issues experienced by players during open beta and the community outcry it caused. The decision makes Aion, which recently announced over 400,000 western pre-orders, a real contender in the western MMO market."
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Informative)
No, they basically say the exact opposite.
The entirety of the relevant text from The Full Article:
After analyzing our open beta test results Aion will not feature GameGuard at launch. We will however continue to pursue ways to effectively utilize GameGuard within Aion in the future. Right now we're focused on providing players with the best possible Aion experience.
Essentially, they're saying that the implementation is flawed, not the concept.
-- 77IM
Re:examples (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Informative)
Except that Blizzard has made their own DRM/antihack software invisible to almost all of their players, and that's the important difference. Anecdotally, I've never met anyone who was unable to play because of it. I've met several unwilling to play because of a healthy paranoia about spyware, but even as spyware it's quite technically competent.
GameGuard thinks battery backups are for cheaters (Score:2, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Informative)
Now if they promise not to 'include it' in future patches that would be swell. I might actually considering trying it.
Yeah, that really stopped people from buying World of Warcraft.
Notice that the WoW Warden is much less intrusive than GameGuard (it even allows for playing WoW on Linux using wine, which means it is very much standards compliant). Big difference here.
This is Korea after all (Score:1, Informative)
In Korea this is perfectly acceptible. Their idea of "security" online is that the site or app needs a special Windows application installed to provide that security. This has caused a culture where just clicking on "accept" whenever an ActiveX control wants to install itself. No wonder they are the number one nation when it comes to botnet participants.
As an example: Here is the main web page of one of the larger banks in Korea: http://www.kdb.co.kr/
Please do try to even see their front page without installing that ActiveX control.
gameguard circumvention is easy (Score:3, Informative)
As Auxis alluded to below, you can simply write a hack to tell the game that gameguard is running when it's not. These hacks are readily available for Lineage II (and I suspect almost every other game popular enough to warrant them), so all gameguard does is treat the gamer like a criminal while doing little to actually prevent unauthorized use.