(The Title should say "Multiplayer" but it won't let me fix it.)

I'm extremely irritated right now. I had clicked the Multiplayer button on the original FEAR and just found out it installed SecuROM on my computer! I've attached a screenshot. The Registry won't allow me to delete this key at all! I had checked my Registry prior to installing FEAR and there was no SecuROM before. How do I uninstall this DRM? SecuROM is a particularly nasty form of DRM since it's very difficult to remove. Why does FEAR have SecuROM?

FEAR installed SecuROM under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SecuROM and it installed it under HKEY_USERS as well. How do I get rid of this?

I also found the SecuROM in my Application Data folder. Here is the screenshot. How do I get rid of this DRM? Why was this in GOG's version of FEAR?

Have you sent a support ticket?

Yeah, but I still haven't heard a reply back.

The SecuROM registry keys contain characters that prevent them from being deleted normally. In order to remove them you will need the SecuROM removal tool. If you Google for it you should be able to find it. I had to use it one time myself as something (and I'm still not sure what it was) installed SecuROM on my machine.

EDIT: Found it. Here's the link: https://support.securom.com/removaltool.html
Just run the tool, click to confirm and it removes all files and registry entries related to SecuROM.

I tried that tool, but it didn't work. There were still undeleteable SecuROM entries all over my Registry and AppData. I've been spending all morning trying to manually delete this crap. It's just very stressful. :-/

That doesn't sound good. I've only had to use the tool twice and it worked fine both times.

First time was from a retail disc installation of FarCry 2 (it came with my graphics card when I built my PC) and was from before I learned about DRM and how awful SecuROM was. The second time was when I randomly found SecuROM registry entries on my machine (and I still don't know what put them there).

Both times it cleared them all out. If I remember rightly the tool does a scan first to locate the files and registry entries, and then you can choose whether or not to proceed with the removal. It should at least list all the registry entries so that you can see them all. Do the entries that you can't remove manually show up in the tool's list of SecuROM traces? Just wondering if the tool recognises them as being part of SecuROM.

I think FEAR installed some weird version of SecuROM because the tool couldn't "detect" anything, but the undeleteable entries in the Registry and AppData were clearly there. (I have screenshots in the first post.) So I just wish there was some other tool I could use to remove all of this at once.

Does GOG know about this issue? I want them to fix this problem in FEAR so no other person will have to deal with this DRM. It's basically FEAR Multiplayer that installed this crap.

The only other reason I could think the tool wouldn't pick up those entries and files is if it is to do with the version of SecuROM, if it were too new or too old, but even so, this is a game from 2005 so I'd hope the tool could handle it.

I bought the game here on GOG myself, last night, but haven't yet downloaded it. I'll be watching this thread closely to see if you can get any progress with the matter from your support ticket to GOG.

Out of interest, how do you trigger the multiplayer in FEAR? Is it an in-game menu item that you select, or started from a launcher or separate shortcut/executable? I thought FEAR multiplayer had been disabled, but maybe it is just the server side that is gone.

All I did was click the "Multiplayer" button on the Main Menu and then found out it installed SecuROM. This really is a major issue that GOG should fix. There is no reason why any game on GOG should install DRM. I've been spending multiple hours trying to get rid of this.

Both. When you select MP in the main menu, it opens the MP executable and closes the SP one. You can do the opposite as well. And the matchmaking server is gone, but LAN is supported (and the community has also made a patch for MP).

Have you tried trashreg http://registry-trash-keys-finder.software.informer.com/3.9/
How to remove it http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=203200
Hope this helps.

I finally got rid of the SecuROM entries with help from this thread here. From what I have learned, it was the FEARMP.exe file that installed the undeletable entries onto my computer. Luckily the singleplayer mode of FEAR is fine.

As far as I know, we are still waiting on the GOG workaround to fix this. It's been over a month now, which isn't great.