Probably the "noobest" question ever regarding pc games.......

......When you buy a pc game thats on a DVD/CD disc, do you have to put the disc in the DVD drive every single time you play it or do the games do a one-off install that requires you not to enter the disc every time you want to play it?

Thx for ur time

 

u have to put it in when booting the game, then u can take it out and play without. but yes, u need a disc to boot, unless if you get a no cd crack, but that's illegal and I strongly advise not doing that

 

you know there is something called no cd/dvd's if u havent heard of them

gamecopyworld.com
gameburnworld.com

are among the few big

ITS NOT illegal ffs

 

Yeah I was gonna say it's definitely NOT illegal to crack a game you already own.

 

No, it's genuinely NOT illegal, as long as your not personally cracking into the source code, or pirating it in any way, then it's legal..

 

dude, yeah, u got to, but just go to the above sites, and u'll find whatever u want.. and yeah, i'm with mcs6 - i don't think it's illegal to do if u already own the game...but a lot of people on here will probably be against it... hope not

 

It depends on the game. Many games now don't require the DVD actually in the drive whilst playing them, which is convenient, as swapping CDs around used to end up making many a loss or scratch...

 

It's actually best to use a crack when the game requires a disk. Protecting your investment should be above the developer/publisher's first line of defense against piracy. It's their problem, why should you be forced to swap disks into and out of your cdrom drive when you're not a pirate?

It may seem a bit odd using a resource crackers use to pirate games but I don't believe that consumers should suffer because big corporations want to protect their investment. Consumer rights is the reason gamecopyworld isn't a illegal site.

 

I agree. Cracks are not illegal if you own the game (or they shouldn't be). Problem is, the developers/publisher's don't think so. And also, you'll need the disc if you wanta to play Multiplayer games.

 

It depends on the game. Many require the disk to be present in the drive, but there are plenty that don't, too.

 

plenty that don't...i think mainly older games

 

Whether you need the disc inserted depends on the game, and whether it's illegal to crack it or not also depends on the game. Often the cracking is specifically against the EULA of the game, which essentially makes it illegal in the current post-DMCA nation we live in.

 

To OP: That's actually a very good question. There are plenty of modern games that don't require the CD to be in the drive. Any game on Steam (Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, etc.) do not require a CD (even if you bought it retail), and Doom 3 doesn't require a CD, nor Unreal Tournament 2004.

Also, frequently the multiplayer parts of the game don't require the CD (i.e., FEAR multiplayer or Call of Duty 2 multiplayer), but the single-player does.

Although most games do require the CD to be in the drive when you launch it, it's not a hard-and-fast rule or anything.

 

Most of the "No-CD" or "No-DVD" patches will allow for single player play. But be warned of using any of these with online games, as it may be caught by the online server and will either just bump you out of the game or worse yet, can be banned.

For the multiplayer games I use most frequently, I use Alcohol 120% to rip my CD to my hard drive, then use Daemon Tools to mount a false CD/DVD drive. Works great for Battlefield 2.

 

Also note that EULA themselves can be illegal in certain countries. For instance, blizzard doesn't like it that you sell your character in WoW and forbids it in the EULA. But forbidding it is illegal in sweden and you can, in fact, sell the char here.

 

What a shady site that game copy one is...haha. I know some of you are probably experts on that site, but my anti-virus was going crazy with messages. The links are questionable as are the advertisement materials.


Usually you can just keep one game that you play often inside your PC and just keep using it. I mean most people only play with one game at a given time anyway, say if they love the multiplayer or if they are trying to beat the single player missions. So there isn't really a need to take the DVD out in that case.

Some of the older games can now be downloaded, and then as mentioned, Steam for newer stuff. I'm not sure I buy into Steam though, but it's refreshing to see a download option so you can avoid discs. I still like the idea of owning the material and having a physical copy with no limits. Does Steam allow you to download all your purchases forever?

 

I use www.Megagames.com. It's under the Game Fixes menu.

 

I own many, many games on Steam, and I've never had any problems with it. There's an option to back up all of your games, and Valve has stated before that if they were to go out of business, they would "unlock" all of the games so they wouldn't require authentication to play.

 

man, game prices are ridiculous... my friend paid almost 40 bux for ms flight simulator and the game did not impress me a bit...well, guess every game got its users...just a thought

 

Personly wether or not the CD-less crack is illegal. If XYZ company see's your using it somehow...
A. How'd they know (Some illegal activity there?)
B. Do you think there going to sue you, legally owning it and having the CD at home or wherever?
It would put a bad rep on that company. I use gameburnworld.com only had my AV go off on them once, file was gone in like 2 days when I checked back. (NOD32(AV), McAfee(AV), Outpost OSS(FW, AV)) Also I from what I ushaly use never have seen any unsolicited traffic, OLE or otherwise.

 

use kaspersky and be happy. i know, i am

 

There's an alternative, in most cases, to cracking the game. There is legal software available to make an image of a CD or DVD, which is essentially a perfect replica of the data of the disk and how it is stored. This image you can store on the hdd, and the software fools your computer into thinking that this image is in fact the original CD or DVD.

Although this is not perfect, for example you can no longer seem to do that with Command and Conquer 3 patch 1.08 (thanks a lot there ), for a lot of games this works. It is my preferred way, because it's just completely unreasonable IMO to have to take pouches full of disks with you everywhere you go if you just want to boot up a game or two wherever you go. That system works with desktops, but it's obsolete with laptops. Instead you can have multiple games installed, and all you need to do to play them is get the software to emulate an optical drive and tell it that the image data is on there.

The one I use is Alcohol 120%, but there's also Daemontools and others.

 

That "fooling" is, in many cases and countries, itself illegal.

 

There's also Mini images. Theye are very small images that bypass cd-check.

 

this discussion is getting more interesting now!