A PC version of the upcoming Crysis 2, which was scheduled for release on March 22nd, has allegedly been leaked online according to reports from RPS and Facepunch.
Forum reports confirm that torrents of Crysis 2 are now 'all over pirate bay'.
We haven't downloaded files to check for ourselves because, as readers have already pointed out, that would only damage the future prospects of the game, especially on the PC platform. Besides; a demo is on the way.
The illegal build of Crysis 2 allegedly contains the full PC game, as well as full multiplayer functionality and has been leaked a full 49 days ahead of release.
Most worrying of all, the leak apparently contains the SolidShield master key for online authentication, potentially creating an even larger security problem for Crytek and Electronic Arts.
The leak is also said to contain the CryEngine 3 editor and is being labelled as a developer build, rather than review or final gold code.
In the light of this news, it's likely worth restating bit-gamer's position on discussion of piracy, namely that linking to or asking for illegal downloads will result in bans from the forum. Similarly, anyone offering advice on how to pirate games or seen to be inciting or encouraging piracy will be banned from the bit-gamer forums.
You can read our Crysis 2 preview for more information on the game, as well as let us know your thoughts in the forums.
Oh dear... I'm not a believer in making a big deal of torrents or stuff getting leaked, but that really isn't going to do their sales figures much good.
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin
Yet again, the people who are going to pirate this aren't the ones who were going to buy it anyway. At least not initially, when they give a shit about sales. Remember, if it's not #1in the charts in the first week then its a failure. GAMES PRESS YAY1!!1!!!
Might be interesting to see how honest the system reqs are though.
Well, this is an interesting twist. This is one reason Arcanum flubbed, which is a shame because it was an awesome game.
OTOH, this? If this is a developer build, I imagine they're going to be doing everything short of sodomizing the dev team with red-hot pokers to figure out who's responsible for this. That kind of a leak was either an inside job, or the days of Shadowrun have started to come alive.
I wonder what they're going to do. They're in a bind now; if the pirated version has the master codes to their precious online identification scheme, it's basically useless. They'd have to strip it out and implement something completely new, and that'll take time - time during which frustrated gamers will turn to piracy. If they just release it, they're basically saying "Okay, yeah. Pirates won this round; buy our junk anyway."
Honestly, the latter is probably the best course of action at this point. Delaying when a pirate copy is out there is the kiss of death.
CaptainChewbacca wrote:Dude...
Way to overwork a metaphor Shadow. I feel really creeped out now.
I am an artist, metaphorical mind-fucks are my medium.
weemadando wrote:Yet again, the people who are going to pirate this aren't the ones who were going to buy it anyway. At least not initially, when they give a shit about sales. Remember, if it's not #1in the charts in the first week then its a failure. GAMES PRESS YAY1!!1!!!
Might be interesting to see how honest the system reqs are though.
If this was a late-stage beta version still full of bugs and placeholder resources that'd be one thing, but this isn't just the full version of the game, it's probably an improvement over what they were going to release. The only people who are going to hand over actual money for the retail version this time round are those who have deep ideological convictions against piracy.
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin
Anyone remember when Arkham Asylum got "leaked" all over the web before its initial release on PC two years ago? Remember how some of the features were disabled in order to discourage piracy? Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if this was the same thing.
"It's you Americans. There's something about nipples you hate. If this were Germany, we'd be romping around naked on the stage here."
General Schatten wrote:Apparently the download includes the DRM Master Keys, so getting rid of the people who did pirate it is going to be difficult at best.
I'm inclined to wait for Crytek to make a statement in response before jumping to any conclusions here.
"It's you Americans. There's something about nipples you hate. If this were Germany, we'd be romping around naked on the stage here."
I've watched some stuff on youtube before it got pulled. It's an internal beta with non-finalized assets, and is capped at Medium setting w/ Direct X 9. Even on that setting it looked damn fine (albeit I was only watching 360p on YT, but...). The showed bits of the first level, about 6 minutes worth. Looked pretty good. I doubt this will cut into sales since you're getting a very incomplete package with this. It's like getting a workprint version of a movie with unfinished special effects.
A scientist once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.
At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: 'What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.
The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, 'What is the tortoise standing on?'
'You're very clever, young man, very clever,' said the old lady. 'But it's turtles all the way down.'
I've heard about this. I recall that it was only a beta, although the bit where they cracked the copy protection before the release of the game is new and I find it rather funny. Talk about one step ahead of the copy protection code writers.
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Crytek has been pretty critical of the PC market in the past for things like this. I fail to see how it's the fault of PC gamers for Crytek having shitty security.
Oh look, the thread has turned into another round of console bashing! Why don't we just skip all the foreplay and rename G & C "PCs vs. Consoles" already?
This beta is totally buggy and barely playable without a lot of work. I don't think there are going to be many cases of someone downloading it and actually playing through it all the way.
Especially since much of the draw for Crysis is the full visual experience, which isn't complete in this build. No one gets a GTX580 so they can play a game like this filled with missing effects and glitches.
Seggybop wrote:This beta is totally buggy and barely playable without a lot of work. I don't think there are going to be many cases of someone downloading it and actually playing through it all the way.
Especially since much of the draw for Crysis is the full visual experience, which isn't complete in this build. No one gets a GTX580 so they can play a game like this filled with missing effects and glitches.
I'd absolutely love to get my hands on the dev tools. I wonder.. between including the dev tools so there might be some functional or workable with minimal effort mods near day 0 and giving a tease without the graphical draw, if it weren't for the DRM thing I'd be thinking it'd likely benefit them. Is anyone familiar enough with DRM systems to say how easily codes can be come up with? Whether, say it'd be doable on not much effort to release a version with different codes, or is it still revealing too much to give the DRM out?
Oh, and I'm another vote for Crysis being an awesome game. So many options, I don't think I've played a level the same way twice and I've played it a good few times.
xthetenth wrote:Is anyone familiar enough with DRM systems to say how easily codes can be come up with? Whether, say it'd be doable on not much effort to release a version with different codes, or is it still revealing too much to give the DRM out?
Since they haven't finalized anything yet, it's basically meaningless. They can generate a new master key no problem. Well, it's kind of a problem that their actual method of key generation is exposed, but there's nothing about it that's actually surprising.
There would have been a keygen/crack for the game on day -1 regardless (unless Ubisoft-style psycho DRM is added), decreasing the significance of this even further.
Crytek has been pretty critical of the PC market in the past for things like this. I fail to see how it's the fault of PC gamers for Crytek having shitty security.
The irony is, despite being pirated to a retardedly high degree, Crytek still made money on Crysis. That's why they're releasing Cysis 2 on the PC in the first place. I hear rumours that they didn't want to, but EA forced the issue because the first game was profitable enough to make the PC an attractive platform. In any case, IMO, piracy on the PC doesn't have a significantly greater effect than second hand games do on consoles, and possibly less of one. It's not PC games, after all, that fail if they don't turn a profit within the first week.
Seggybop wrote:Since they haven't finalized anything yet, it's basically meaningless. They can generate a new master key no problem. Well, it's kind of a problem that their actual method of key generation is exposed, but there's nothing about it that's actually surprising.
I was right even if I didn't have the guts to say it if the DRM key isn't hard to come up with. It smells like a leak that's perfect to help the studio. It gets the modders going, it gets the pirate crowd interested without actually satisfying, and it gives them an opportunity to show off in a way that if there are actual bugs they get blamed on the version. Plus, if Crytek wants to whine, they have a scapegoat. It just smells too perfect for them for me to not want to say that it's not the publisher's doing. Might not have been, but it just feels too good to be true. Why disable better than medium anyway? Either your testers don't know discipline or you're trying to keep something a big awesome surprise.
There would have been a keygen/crack for the game on day -1 regardless (unless Ubisoft-style psycho DRM is added), decreasing the significance of this even further.
There's always the borderline endearing industry stupid where they keep trying the same thing thinking it'll work. One of these days they'll figure it out, or they'll just come out and tell us it makes them feel good despite them knowing it barely helps.
This is pre-WWII. You can sort of tell from the sketch style, from thee way it refers to Japan (Japan in the 1950s was still rebuilding from WWII), the spelling of Tokyo, lots of details. Nothing obvious... except that the upper right hand corner of the page reads "November 1931." --- Simon_Jester
No, but I wanted to point this out, since its the point upon wich the whole "they will just generate new keys" hinges. Also, your statement was simply flat out wrong.
This is pre-WWII. You can sort of tell from the sketch style, from thee way it refers to Japan (Japan in the 1950s was still rebuilding from WWII), the spelling of Tokyo, lots of details. Nothing obvious... except that the upper right hand corner of the page reads "November 1931." --- Simon_Jester
Skgoa wrote:No, but I wanted to point this out, since its the point upon wich the whole "they will just generate new keys" hinges. Also, your statement was simply flat out wrong.
I clearly said it doesn't make any difference to its ultimate crackability; if you disagree that having it already exposed makes it even easier (though pointlessly so), that's not quite the same as "flat out wrong" ...
I read somewhere this leaked copy is extremely limited. Such as only supporting DX9. I would not be surprised if it was intentionally leaked. This is completely unplayable compared to the real deal - on the other hand the outrage + the downloads grant Crytek tremendous free publicity.
I have to tell you something everything I wrote above is a lie.
Sarevok wrote:I read somewhere this leaked copy is extremely limited. Such as only supporting DX9. I would not be surprised if it was intentionally leaked. This is completely unplayable compared to the real deal - on the other hand the outrage + the downloads grant Crytek tremendous free publicity.
Yep, the potential for the sources of that info could include higher up in this thread. It's a huge win for them. Free publicity, get people a demo early, get the modders tools early, and get an even better way to wail that piracy is killing their game sales to their overlords. That last one seems to fit especially well in crytek's thought processes.
