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Y2K9 Bug Strikes: Gears of War PC Disabled by Date
by Nick Breckon, Jan 29, 2009 12:01pm PST
Many users are reporting that the PC version of Gears of War was entirely disabled yesterday when the game's digital certificate expired.
The expiration date on the certificate was apparently set for yesterday, January 28. When the date switched over, the game became unplayable.
"This was a surprise to us too," said Epic programmer Joe Graf on the company's official forum. "We have been notified of the issue and are working with Microsoft to get it resolved."
A similar issue recently disabled Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online. As in that situation, users have found a simple workaround for the Gears problem: setting the system clock back to a date prior to the expiration.
Comments
Are people who bought the game secretly agreeing to a term stating how long they are allowed to play their purchased copy? I am so sick of all the hidden spyware shit.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 18 replies.
They're set to expire to make sure the developer doesn't use the same key forever, which would be less secure. However, this requires someone at the developer keeping track of when these certificates expire.
Much like other examples of new technology, nothing gets fixed until it gets horribly, horribly FUBAR.
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