Usage Restrictions--Nasty EULA Terms--Intrusive Software
A report on the computer game site Evil Avatar claims that a patch issued for one of Ubisoft's games, Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield, is searching the computer on which it's installed for virtual drive programs, and if one is found refusing to run the game. Virtual drive programs such as Alcohol 120% or CloneCD are used to copy the contents of a CD onto a hard disk, which allows the user to bypass the copy protection schemes that rely on having the original CD in the drive to play. Ubisoft claims that their copy protection scheme is covered under their EULA, but observers see nothing in the EULA that seems to indicate this. Suggestions that the problem may be due to a bug in Macrovision's SafeDisc 2, the copy protection scheme that Raven shield uses also seem doubtful, as the software was able to work on computers with virtual drvie programs prior to the latest patch.
Sources: Published Reports
Update [2003-12-26 20:20:11 by Jeff Foster]:It appears that Ubisoft has backed down and released a patch to fix the problem for Raven Shield. No word on whether they will do the same for other games with the same problem that are mentioned in the comments below.
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