Last night I was really angry with EA’s Battlefield 2 because
1. My PC wouldn’t recognize the PLAY CD because of the copy protection on CD !
… So I couldn’t officially play the game without a NO CD crack!
A PLAY CD is a CD that has to be in the computer for the game to play. It is designed to stop people from copying the CD.
A similar scheme exists for music CD’s.
The main reason I purchased the game was for the serial number which lets me play online. A cracked version of the game does not give you a valid CD Key. So the best protection for the game is the fact that you can’t play online without a valid cd key. The only way you can get a valid CD key is to buy the game!
So this begs the question, why put copy protection on the CD ?
2. Worse still when I could run the game it would crash on me particularly after it had loaded a new level.
Status: Problems solved. I love the game.
How ? … Download the 1.01 update
Result: the No CD crack does not work, can’t even open the game
Downloaded a mini CD image to use with Daemon tools from http://www.gameburnworld.com/gp/gamefixes/battlefield2.htm
Result: This circumvents the copy protection. This combined with the patch has meant I can play more games then I should!
It just works.
So I think the key here is the CD mini image, not the patch.
So if I had to rely on EA for a solution I would still have a legal game which does not work.
Now I have a legal game but I have ‘broken’ the copy protection by using the Mini Image and it only took me six hours to get to this point.
Very frustrating!