If you are to lazy (or just don't care about background information) feel free to jump to the bottom of the post where my question(s) will be located.

I've been playing Dragon Age Origins (DAO) a lot recently. This made me a little nostalgic for an old style strategic/tactical rpg with more depth than is in DAO. Ones similar to Balder's Gate (BG), Balder's Gate 2 (BG2), and Temple of Elemental Evil (ToEE). All of which I already own on disk. I decided to start with ToEE. I found the disks easily (I'm a bit of a neat freak - I know where every thing is). Before the first disk was inserted I noticed the text on the second disk; "Play Disk". I searched and found "fixed" executables on multiple web sites. I also remembers GoG.com. But that got me thinking. Troika Games, the makers of ToEE, have been out of business for around a decade. So...

Who removes the drm from games on GoG.com? How is the drm removed? There isn't some one who installs the game, applies a "No CD" fix, and then repackages the software sale; is there?


------edit------

what an ordeal! I couldn't post using firefox or opera. I've been trying to post for more than an hour; guess stars finally aligned. I'd better run to the store for some lottery tickets - brb

It depends. For DOS games it is as simple as including an image of the CD with the install and pointing DOSBox to the image. Sometimes the publisher actually has a master without copy-protection. Sometimes the copy-protection has even been removed via patch (Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, The Witcher on disc, older Blizzard games, Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization). And sometimes GOG just uses the same "fixed" executables.

Sid Meiers CIV IV; Colonization is on GOG? Really?

No and neither are any Blizzard games. :P
I guess that HiPhish wanted to give examples of how DRM can be removed.

You need to have some rep (5, maybe?) before you can start posting links. We had some issues with a lot of nonsense Korean text and loads of links in the past, you see.

No, I was just listing a few games that had their copy protection removed without (or prior to) being on GOG. If you have the disc version of those games you can download the latest patch and play without the disc.

Hmmm... Maybe some context for DRM... I love referencing LGR's History of DRM video...

As for how it's removed... Officially it would be by patches... But i know for games like Diablo 2, i want version 1.09d with a nocd crack, and not their most current 1.13d.

Unofficially patches or pre-patched executables. Usually these involve work sifting through the code or pausing near the code point and then stepping until we find the offending function/code, then just jump around it or have it return 'ALL IS WELL'.

Others simply involve having a key and username that is attached and entering them saying it's registered... Not disabling but more just ignoring it entirely.

They use this.

many games back in the day had functionality where you could copy stuff from the CD to the game's root directory for increased speed. the disc junk/bad sector checks were still there at startup and possibly at points in the game. but as far as the files and accessing and loading them were concerned, that stuff already had provisions for being off the disc. so it would be a simple enough matter for gog to break the copy protection on these old games especially since it has already been done and they even have access to the publisher (though in a lot of cases they probably aren't help there). in any case, they can do it. if a game couldn't read stuff off hdd and instead only looked in the disc, then that might pose a problem, but still I'm sure there's wrappers and things they could employ to fake out an optical disc just for that one program's environment.

Depends on the game. Sometimes, that's probably exactly the case (and, if I remember correctly -which seems to be rather less common as time goes by- GOG even got into "trouble" with a cracking group as they had used the group's fix for a game). In other cases, GOG get a fixed version directly from the publisher, or perhaps even build a fix themselves.

This thread is over a year old. I seriously doubt he is still waiting for a reply. :P

Thank you for showing me that I made an ass out of myself, as if I wasn't enough of one already. How the hell did it sit among the recent threads? I'm thinking it should be counted as the most recent visible post if any necropost have been removed.

Put it on the list of forum problems (if you can find any space left in this universe.

Probably Tauto necroed it and the script kiddies immediately killed his post.