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.