HiGame

Two new bits of information have surfaced regarding Windows 10 and its various DRM and phone-home strategies. First, there’s news that looks great at first glance — Windows 10 no longer supports the much-hated SecuROM and SafeDisc. The downside of this news is that Windows 10 can no longer play those titles if the DRM hasn’t been patched out by the original developer.
This revelation comes from Microsoft’s Enthusiast Marketing Manager for Windows, Boris Schneider-John, who told German publication Rocket Beans the following:

“Everything that ran in Windows 7 should also run in Windows 10. There are just two silly exceptions: antivirus software and stuff that’s deeply embedded into the system. And then there are old games on CD-ROM that have DRM. This DRM stuff is also deeply embedded in your system, and that’s where Windows 10 says ‘sorry, we cannot allow that,’ because that would be a possible loophole for computer viruses.

That’s why there are a couple of games from 2003-2008 with SecuROM, etc. that simply don’t run without a no-CD patch or some such. We can just not support that if it’s a possible danger for our users. There are a couple of patches from developers already, and there is stuff like GOG where you’ll find versions of those games that work.”

Mixed blessings

On the one hand, good on Microsoft for patching potentially dangerous loopholes in system security. While these programs weren’t actually rootkits, they embedded themselves in a manner similar to rootkits, and existed at a very low level within the system itself. Security researchers, as a result, are anything but fans of the technology. Gamers uniformly loathed them, as illustrated by this Penny Arcade comic.



No more of this? Hurrah! But can we get backwards compatibility?

On the other hand, however, this means a number of games, some released quite recently, will no longer work without new patches or game cracks. While SafeDisc hasn’t been used for several years, a number of games shipped with SecuROM, including titles like Fallout 3, Dragon Age II (EA attempted to camouflage this by calling it Sony Release Control), Oblivion, BioShock, the released version of Final Fantasy for PC in 2012, and dozens more over the years.

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