If At First You Don't Succeed...

...try, try again. Or in Sega of Japan's case, try, try, try again.

Folks over at PSO-World are reporting that Sega has attempted to push the much-maligned Windows-breaking GameGuard update for a third time. Not surprisingly, people that have received the patch are reporting unexpected crashes and operating system lockups.

I can only report on what other people are saying because, although I am still playing PSO2, I did not get this patch and never will. If this is actually true, then I can do nothing but sit back and marvel at Sega's unwavering commitment to achieving new levels of incompetence. Truly unbelievable.

What Are These Morons Smoking?

Last week the Phantasy Star Online 2 community was in an uproar after Sega of Japan pushed a GameGuard update that caused all kinds of nasty side effects on players' PCs. The update was pulled back shortly after.

So what do you do if you're Sega of Japan and you have this broken GameGuard patch sitting around? Try to push it out again, of course! The update reappeared earlier today and is now wreaking havoc on user PCs for a second time.

The effects of the patch were immediately visible on my PC:



After that, pretty much everything stopped working. I had to do a hard shutdown of my PC because I couldn't even get Windows to reboot!

What the hell is going on here?

There is absolutely no excuse for this level of incompetence. NO EXCUSE. Hell, there is no excuse for this piece of shit GameGuard software to even be allowed to shut down processes without the user's knowledge or permission, especially when those processes are critical to the proper function of the operating system!

So this is the bottom line: until Sega of Japan gets their shit together and fixes this problem, I am done with PSO2. Since I'm an American, I realize they probably don't care about what I do, but I'm confident that there are plenty of Japanese players saying the same thing.

In the meantime, I will spend my time looking for a way to play PSO2 without running GameGuard. I am tired of putting up with this shit and I will not tolerate it fucking up my PC anymore.

Also, I sincerely hope that Sega of America is watching this debacle and taking notes. If this situation is allowed to repeat itself on the US/EU version, then fuck it – I won't play. And I'm probably not the only one saying this, either. GameGuard is a renegade piece of shit malware program and should be wiped off the face of the earth forever.

Rant over. I'm out of here.

GameGuard Rollback

After the PSO2 GameGuard update earlier this week, I posted a small rant about GameGuard's incredible ability to protect users from their own PCs.

It turns out that not being able to open Volume Mixer was the least of my worries. Other PSO2 players reported BSODs and frozen computers. The update apparently even caused Windows to report itself as "not genuine" in some cases.

Thankfully, Sega noticed the problem. A GameGuard update was issued today that appears to roll back this week's Windows-breaking change. Sega is encouraging players that experience problems with GameGuard to send a report; details can be found by clicking the link above.

I'd like to hope that this is the first step in getting GameGuard removed entirely, but I'm not holding my breath.

Yes, GameGuard Still Sucks

Last night I decided that I would listen to other music while playing PSO2 for a change. Unfortunately, I was having a hard time hearing the game's sound effects over my music, even after cranking the sound effects up to 100% in-game. So I thought I'd go into the Windows Volume Mixer and turn up the game's master volume. Easy enough, right?

Nope. A recent GameGuard update now blocks access to the Volume Mixer while PSO2 is running. Attempting to open it generates the nifty window you see above instead.

It is still a mystery to me as to why online games continue to use the piece of shit that is nProtect GameGuard. It's well documented that GameGuard is useless, and the recent NPC incident is further evidence of that. In fact, GameGuard seems to do a better job of blocking innocuous programs (like Volume Mixer) than malicious ones.

Companies like Sega that produce multiplayer online games need to wake up and find a solution that is better than GameGuard. An in-house developed anti-cheat system that is integrated into the game software would probably do a much better job. In fact, anything would.

Alternatively, I implore developers of antivirus software to take notice of GameGuard and do something about it. It has all the characteristics of a common computer virus, so why not label it as such? Maybe then companies that use GameGuard will think twice about using it in their next game.

First PSO2 Complaint: It Uses GameGuard

Yes, it was only a matter of time. After all of the cool screenshots and gameplay videos we've seen you just knew something would come up.

The PSO2 Alpha Test client download site is now up and running (you need an account authorized for the alpha test to log in and download the client, though.) Participants that have downloaded and installed the client are apparently reporting that the game does, in fact, use nProtect GameGuard. Though this is truly a sad discovery, it's not cause for concern yet. GameGuard could be an extra layer of security on top of vastly improved server code. We probably won't be able to make that determination until the game goes live to the general public.

Of course, this could just be temporary. Other online games have ditched GameGuard in their retail releases after using it in beta tests. Maybe Sega will come around.

GameGuard Not Fixed for Windows 7 RTM

That's right. The GameGuard errors that first appeared in the Windows 7 Beta nearly ten months ago have still not been fixed.



Back in January I didn't really have a problem with this. Most companies generally don't develop software fixes to work with beta versions of operating systems. However, now that Windows 7 is released and available to the general public, there is simply no excuse for this. An official fix for this error should have been in production prior to the release of the RTM build, but it doesn't look like that happened.

That doesn't mean you can't play PSU on Windows 7, though. A special Windows 7-compatible version of the GameGuard executable is available for download at this site. Once it's downloaded, extract the GameGuard.des file to your PHANTASY STAR UNIVERSE Illuminus program files folder (not the GameGuard folder) and start the game. Or, if you're running Windows 7 x64, you could try the workaround we posted back in January.

In any case, GameGuard's continued lack of official Windows 7 support is a little bit irritating. INCA Internet, Sega, and anyone else responsible for making PSU work in Windows 7 should get working on it.

Of course, Sega could also do the smart thing and drop GameGuard altogether...

GameGuard and Common Sense: Sega, Read This

Since the spring of 2005, PSO Blue Burst and PSU players have been plagued with the cancer that is INCA Internet's nProtect GameGuard. The so-called "anti-hacking" software has been bundled with each game, despite player complaints that it doesn't play nice with other software, or even other operating systems.

To make things worse, the software often fails to do its job correctly, as many of us have undoubtedly seen on more than one occasion.

While Sega doesn't seem to be ditching GameGuard anytime soon, it looks like one company has seen the light (at least for now).

NCsoft West has announced that they will be dropping GameGuard from their newest MMORPG, Aion. The game had apparently employed the "services" of GameGuard in seven prior beta tests in the United States and Europe, and it seems that enough players had problems with the intrusive anti-cheating software to convince NCsoft to get rid of it for the final release (again, at least for now):

After analyzing our open beta test results Aion will not feature GameGuard at launch. We will however continue to pursue ways to effectively utilize GameGuard within Aion in the future. Right now we're focused on providing players with the best possible Aion experience.

If only Sega thought like this! Instead, the company remains committed to GameGuard, even after 4+ years of duping, glitching, hacking, and other general GameGuard frustrations. A little bit of effective in-game monitoring would go a long way to keep hackers out -- not to mention taking action when hacking or glitching issues do arise.

Decisions like these go a long way in proving the ineffective nature of GameGuard. Though Sega may not want to get rid of it, hopefully more companies running online games will.

Windows 7 and PSU (RC2 Edition)

In January, I blogged a little about my attempts to run PSU in Windows 7. The game did not run properly with the Windows 7 Beta, mostly due to the fact that GameGuard would not start. Fortunately, that problem was solved by tweaking the GameGuard configuration, but it only worked on x64 (64-bit) versions of Windows 7.

Earlier this week, there was a rumor floating around on the official PSU forums that INCA Internet, the company that manages nProtect GameGuard, had released a patch that added support for Windows 7. Players were reporting that this new patch allowed them to play PSU without problems on Windows 7 Release Candidate 2 build 7201.

To test this rumor, I installed a clean copy of PSU on my copy of Windows 7 RC2. Unlike the players in the forum thread, though, I'm running build 7229 on my system. I managed to get GameGuard and PSU to run on the first attempt. I thought I was in the clear after that, but once GameGuard patched itself to the "Windows 7 supported" version, I was unable to get PSU to run anymore. Instead, this error message appeared:



Reverting to the previous workaround allowed me to run the game normally.

As far as running the game on build 7201 is concerned, I have no idea if that works or not. If you're running a build newer than 7201, beware.

PSU in 64-bit Windows 7

On Saturday, I blogged about my results testing PSU in Windows 7. All of my attempts to run the game were foiled by GameGuard's inability to want to run in the new OS.

However, those tests were run in the x86 (32-bit) version of Windows 7. Yesterday, I tried the game on an x64 (64-bit) version of the OS, and for whatever reason, GameGuard actually runs. This means that you can play PSU in Windows 7, if you're lucky enough to have a 64-bit processor in your computer.

You do have to slightly tweak GameGuard to run the game, however. The instructions to do so have been provided by another player on the PSU official forums. It seems that the problem is caused by a new version of the GameGuard updater that isn't compatible with the current beta build of Windows 7 (yet an old version is? How the hell does that happen?).

Note that you must have a fresh, unpatched copy of the game on your computer to make this work. If you've already tried to run PSU before doing this, you'll probably have to uninstall and reinstall the game.

Once the game is installed, open up the PSU folder and look for a GameGuard.des file in the directory. Right-click it, then select Properties. In the window that appears, look for a Security tab. Click that, then select the Edit button under the "Group or User Names" box. The following window should appear (without the little red markups, of course):



For each user in the "Group or User Names" box, set Write permissions to Deny. Once you've finished, click OK to save your changes. Doing this tells Windows that the GameGuard updater is permitted to run, but that it is not allowed to modify itself, meaning that the updater can never update to the new, game-breaking version.

This fix is within the Terms of Service -- GameGuard is still allowed to patch itself and run -- so you don't have to worry about getting banned if you do this.

Note that the game may still not run perfectly after you apply this fix. Some players, after downloading the game patches and restarting, complained that there was no sound in Network Mode. I did not have this problem, however, so if you have trouble with the game it may be a hardware-specific issue.

Finally: this fix applies only for the 64-bit (x64) version of Windows 7. You'll continue to get the same old "initialization failed" error if you try it in x86 Windows 7.

Windows 7 and PSU

Earlier this evening, I decided to take the brand new Windows 7 Beta for a test drive. Just for the hell of it, I thought it would be interesting to see how well PSU ran in the new version of Windows.

After installing the game and messing around with options for a half hour or so, I came to a conclusion: PSU doesn't run at all.

The problem doesn't seem to be the game itself, though. Instead (and this probably shouldn't be a shock to anyone), it's GameGuard that's causing the issue. Immediately after starting the game up, the following error message appears:



And there doesn't seem to be any way to fix the problem. No combination of compatibility mode or privilege changes kills the error. I guess the only thing to do is to wait until INCA decides to make GameGuard compatible with Windows 7.

Gameguard update

When I finally got around to load up PSU today there was a gameguard update. Initially it downloaded 8 files and then it downloaded another file when I loaded up the game again.

I'm not sure what the update did but it probably did nothing just like how gameguard does nothing to stop cheating.

Update: Seems that this update actually did do something. On the official forums someone has posted that in Vista 32bit and 64bit it has caused some programs to crash and problems with Windows dialog boxes such as open and save file. So far no issues with XP have been reported.

I really wish Sega would replace this crap program with something that actually works and doesn't mess up your computer.