Risen DRM, hackers to the rescue

Uriziel

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I hope PB and DS read this and learn. Short version: Stop screwing the honest guy with DRM or it will cost you more in the end.

Long version: I bought Risen and when my copy arrived(quite early) I immediately popped the DVD into a freshly defrag'd, de-bloated, and updated XP gaming only PC I had been preparing all day. Up came the installer with a smooth install, then down came my hopes as I pressed play for the first time and got......."Insert original DVD of Risen!" with the DVD still in the drive :-/ After two hours, four installs on two separate partitions and two different operating systems, I had achieved......"Insert original DVD of Risen!" :(

So I called the customer service number listed in the manual and spoke to some retard that wanted me to remove any virtual disk software and anti-virus on the PC. I explained that all VD software had already been removed, but I would try disabling the AV and call back. Two more hours later I still saw the quite familiar "Insert original DVD of Risen!" and tried to call the tech back. Voicemail was full and I'm disconnected without ceremony...for a solid hour of trying. Apparently I was not the only person having problems.

I came back to the PC and tried manually removing Alcohol, PowerISO, and VirtualCD in case some drivers had been left behind during uninstall. I also scrutinized, at length, the info from running KMdiag that the tech had requested I run. Grand result after 3 more hours....you guessed it...."Insert original DVD of Risen!" :mad: Luckily I had gone to a torrent site and started downloading a hacked english copy when I started this manual uninstall tedium. The download finished about the same time my patience ran out. >:O

At this point I installed DTpro, mounted the hacked image, and installed without problems. Hit the Risen desktop icon and got.....the load screen. I only got to play a few minutes since all MY time had been wasted by some stupid DRM that only prevents the HONEST person from using the software. Nice thinking Koch/DS/PB! And by that I mean I will not bother buying your software ever again....and my guess is I am not the only one.
 
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Strange. Official word is that Risen only uses the Tagès copy protection without its DRM component. This means at least one disk check at start up.
Is it possible that there is an incompatibility between Tagès and your DVD drive?
 
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I came back to the PC and tried manually removing Alcohol, PowerISO, and VirtualCD in case some drivers had been left behind during uninstall.
I don't no about Tages but other DRM systems have screamed bloody murder if they detected Alcohol or Deamon Tools or similar murky software on the PC.

It might also be a matter of drive incompatibility as Gorath mentioned, either directly (hardware issue) or indirectly (the remnants of your virtual drive tools may still be confusing the OS which in turn screws up the Tages test). However, one would think that if this was the case it would have manifested itself in other instances as well.

Of course a third option could be that the Tages implementation is simply screwed up (it wouldn't be the first time that a DRM system would have to be removed/fixed after launch).

*Edit*
Paraphrased certain areas to due unnecessary confrontational choice of words.
 
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Let's be careful about calling pirate ... we always want to avoid personal attacks. Personally I have Daemon Tools on my netbook to be able to play games with a CD requirement ... but not without some consternation - I don't like what those things are usually used for.
 
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When I called support, it was the tech that told me virtual software would interfere and had to be removed. I told him my work needs VD software(we use VirtualCD quite a lot in the testing of various computer hardware). I told him it was not going to make people happy having to remove software they need and paid for. He told me that is just how it is with DRM implementation and I'd have to remove it if I wanted to play Risen or most Koch Media products. Since this was my home PC, I had already removed it anyway. But that is not really the point. If DRM is interfering with other legal software INTENTIONALLY, that should be illegal.

Gorath, If you have a link to compatible drives I'll give it a look, but this is a fairly new DVD burner w/lightscribe with up to date drivers. I've had no compat probs with it with ANY brand of media. Besides, if it can see the drive well enough to install, it should be able to see the dam drive for a DVD simple check........assuming that is really all it checks for, which I seriously doubt at this point.

BTW, I emailed the KMdiag text to them and haven't gotten a response. But I went through it line by line looking for any virtual drivers loading and found none. It just pisses me off that the bother with the stupid DRM crap in the first place. It was hacked before it reached retail stores...what WHO did they stop from playing the game hassle free??? Me! I know it has been hashed about for years, but I believe that if you make a good product, people will pay for it. I they can't afford it, they will pirate it.(and hopeful buy it later.) But pirated software is not a monetary loss to the maker. The sale was never gonna happen. Those pirates were not going to pay for it anyway. ut from my experience outright pirates are not as common as many people think. I know many of them and they used torrents to "test" software. If they like it, they buy it. If they don't, they uninstall. An unofficial demo if you will. The only people I know that simply won't pay for software are those in countries that simply can't afford it at any price. And if some kid in a third world country is lucky enough to save up for some computer time in a cafe...and he plays a hacked version of some game he could never afford...then god bless him. I hope it brought a lil joy to his bleak existence. And trust me, when I travel to SE Asia, I see people living in worse conditions than those in Gothic. Gothic's world would be a paradise to them. Available housing and jobs, low crime..........they would flock to the Gothic world.
 
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Gorath, If you have a link to compatible drives I'll give it a look, but this is a fairly new DVD burner w/lightscribe with up to date drivers. I've had no compat probs with it with ANY brand of media. Besides, if it can see the drive well enough to install, it should be able to see the dam drive for a DVD simple check……..assuming that is really all it checks for, which I seriously doubt at this point.
No, I don't have a list. But I had such a problem with Drakensang. My old Toshiba DVD drive (1402? Something like that) failed the DVD check. It was many years old, so I simply exchanged it for a DVD writer and everything was fine.

In Germany you would be allowed to return the game if it doesn't run at all. No idea how that is in your country.
 
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Let's be careful about calling pirate … we always want to avoid personal attacks. Personally I have Daemon Tools on my netbook to be able to play games with a CD requirement … but not without some consternation - I don't like what those things are usually used for.
You're right. I apologize. My choice of words could have been chosen better.

I guess in my mind I had more a less ruled out any legitimate use of these tools since we're talking about a gaming rig and not a work computer (I wasn't counting netbooks as gaming platforms so I didn't factor in a gaming PC without a DVD drive). As such I couldn't really picture any legitimate reason for having 3 different brands of virtual drive software ... but that's no excuse.
 
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Uriziel I think you admitted that you tried a pirated version of the game before you got the DVD in another thread? perhaps that screwed things up?
 
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I didn't say I tried a pirated version. I said I installed another language version. but regardless, that was on another PC at work. And I'd hate to think installing one version of Risen would prevent any future version from working. :O
 
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Perhaps its just a faulty dvd. If possible try it on other PCs and if it doesnt work return the disk as faulty. If its the dvd-drive return/sell it instead and buy/loan a new one. Dvd drives dont cost more than 20 bucks.

So far Ive had one game dvd with faulty DRM. It refused to work so I just used a nocd crack. It was from cheap rerelease print if that had anything to do with it.

BTW this is yet another good reason to have multiboot PC. You can try the game on different OS (xp32/vista64/w7) on your computer to see if its just a software/driver issue.
 
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I tried on both Win7 x64 7600 and XP on the same machine. Just for shits and grins I took my copy to work and experimented. On 6 different tests machine it ran on one. Five of them had had a virtual drive program installed(or had one at some point in it's history), the other was a fresh install of Vista 32bit. The Vista box was the only one that ran. I took the DVD drive out of it an put it in the other boxes since I knew it worked with the Risen DVD…….none of them worked.

I was just checking a torrent site and if Koch/DS/PB are watching this thread, you might find this post interesting….especially the last line. It is not an exception, but rather a general attitude of the torrenting community.

"Great game!
Been playing russian release with english patch, bout 10 hours in, lovin it. If you are fan of the Gothic games then you will enjoy this.

Gameplay is quite slow but still very entertaining.
Fighting is hard but gets easier.
Graphics are… well… low poly meshes & low res textures, but still quite nice.
Runs smooth as, no stuttering at all (2.6ghz duel core, 6gb ram, Radeon 2900XT).
No bugs so far.
Loads & saves fast (Gothic 3 was painstakingly slow).
I had to tweak brightness controls a bit as it seemed a bit dark for me, but i suppose that was intended to set ambiance.
View distance is a bit low.
It starts off a little slow, so be sure to give it atleast a few hours of playtime.

Well worth a download, worth my money infact, ima purchase this one."

Your customers are speaking but you are not listening.
 
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Related:

I have a friend who torrented Gothic I after playing the demo. He fell in love with the game and after finishing most of the game, chapter 5 or so, he decided to buy the game. He then went on to buy GII and then even the Gold version. He insta-bought GIII.
 
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I just installed my copy of Risen, Vista 32 ultimate. Having the same problem as the original poster. However, I DON'T have any virtual disk emulators on my computer, and I have never had one installed in the past. I keep getting the 'insert original Risen disc' error just like the Original Poster. Not sure what else I can do at this point.

I have a WinXp 32 machine here. I installed Risen on this machine. I am able to launch and play the game.

EDIT: After successfully launching Risen on my WinXp machine and playing it for a bit, I quit the game. Later I came back to play it again and Wolla! 'Please Insert Original DVD "Risen"' - I never rebooted this machine or turned it off. Just quit playing the game, came back an hour later tried to play it again and I am now getting stuck at the disc check - very strange.

My Vista machine is a much newer machine, about a year old. I haven't had any problems running any other games from this machine. Apparently, Risen for some reason does not like my Blu-Ray DVD player.
 
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-to install Tages drivers you need full administrator rights!

-the newest Tages version can be found here: Tages Homepage

-sometimes it helps to re-insert the dvd and starting the game with the dvd-autostart
 
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I manged to find a firmware update for my DVD drive. Installed the firmware update successfully, but still I get the same error message 'Please Insert Original DVD "Risen"'

-sometimes it helps to re-insert the dvd and starting the game with the dvd-autostart

I tried this, but I still get the same result, 'Please Insert Original DVD "Risen"'

I downloaded the Tages drivers as suggested by HiddenX. When I ran the setup program 'TagesSetup.exe' It told me the drivers are already installed and asked if I wanted to uninstall them. I answered yes to this and uninstalled the drivers.

Then I ran 'TagesSetup.exe' a second time. The setup program then reported that the drivers are installed and running.

I tried launching Risen again, same result, 'Please Insert Original DVD "Risen"'
 
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If you have more than one dvd-drive it could be that Tages works only with the lowest in alphabetical order.

for example:
dvd-drives H: I:
works only with H:

other things you can try:
slow down your drive to 2x or 4x speed (Nero has a tool for this)

If all this don't work your dvd-drive may be incompatible with Tages. I have heard of old Toshiba drives and some LiteOn drives that are incompatible with Tages.
 
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If you have more than one dvd-drive it could be that Tages works only with the lowest in alphabetical order.

I only have one DVD drive in my machine.

I checked out Nero's webstie for any tools to slow down my drive but I couldn't seem to find anything.

I'm starting to think my drive is incompatible... I have this same problem with Gothic 2 now that I think of it... ended up buying G2 from GoG to resolve that problem.

I've now noticed on my windows XP machine that I get the 'Please Insert Original DVD "Risen"' error message. However, on that machine, if I quickly double-click the risen icon a SECOND time after getting the error message the game will start. Unfortunatley, this doesn't work on my Vista rig.
 
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They advertice being immune to 1:1 copies, so that might suggest certain DVD or Bluray drives might get trouble with the copy protection.
 
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