Ubisoft steals crack from pirates

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Ubisoft-Cracks-Own-...


Probably all PC users know what a No-CD crack is - that small file which allows you to play a game you bought without having the CD or DVD inserted in the drive. However, such files are considered illegal and game developers go as far as stating that they promote piracy. And we must admit that it is indeed true: the No-CD fixes are generally used for piracy purposes.

The funny story comes from Ubisoft and their Rainbow Six Vegas 2 game released via Direct2Drive - the 1.02 version of the game was having some problems with the install process, so the developers hurried to release another patch, version 1.03.

In order to solve all the problems, the company used a No-CD crack - and indeed things were solved, the game is running fine, end of story. Apparently. Somebody from FileForums (a user named Twingo, to be more specific) found out that Ubisoft were in such a hurry to solve the problem that they "borrowed" the crack from cracking group Reloaded (the proof can be seen in the picture in the upper left corner). Reloaded, on the other hand, is an independent group that offers pirated software to users all over the world, thus hampering sales of PC games (or, at least that's what game developers keep telling us).

This further means that, somehow, Ubisoft managed to break their own anti-piracy rules and, at the same time, commit piracy by stealing the crack (because, honestly, I doubt that the two groups worked together on this). A very, very funny situation which will probably be remembered for a long time by the gamers' community - and we must admit we're really curious to see how Reloaded will respond to the whole deal. Just imagine how hilarious the following headline would look in the newspapers: "Cracking group sues developers for stealing crack".

The funniest thing is that Ubisoft has not tried to deny the news. In the official forums, community manager Ubi.Vigil said, "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".