GOG will remove the password protected RARs

Updated:12:00 PM CEST Sep,21

NEWS / RSS
CHEATS

REVIEWS

ARTICLES

HARDWARE

DEMOS

FORUMS

LINKS (new)

66 lottery login

91 club

okwin

bdg game

55 club

CONTACT

Please e-mail us if you have news.

Gameguru Mania News - Jan,08 2015 -

GOG will remove the password protected RARs - briefly
(hx) 07:44 AM CET - Jan,08 2015 - Post a comment / read (2)
Last week, I posted an article about the appearance of some password protected archives in GOG's game installers for Windows. These protected archives sparked a lot of accusations as a number of PC gamers believed that GOG was implementing a sort of DRM in a specific number of games. Well, good news everyone as GOG decided to remove the archive protection from the select Windows installers found on its digital platform As the topic of password protected archives included inside some of our Windows game installers sparked some heated discussions, we’d like to address some misunderstandings around this topic and let you know that changes will be made.

Password protection appeared in selected multi-part Windows installers, about 30 games from our catalogue that had large install files, over 6 months ago. We implemented it for various other reasons as well, many of which have been mentioned in previous posts. One of them was streamlining installation for the less tech-savvy users to avoid the issue of "broken" games after not using the installer to install them (you more proficient tinkerers have proven that it was a trivial barrier against the more advanced users).

We've heard your concerns regarding this solution and we do agree it could have been better. Although the same could probably be said about many other answers to this problem, it doesn't mean we shouldn't try to do better for our community. To that end we will be removing the mentioned archive protection from the select Windows installers that had it until a better solution, both technically and philosophically, is ready. Please continue sharing your suggestions regarding such a solution in this topic - your feedback is very appreciated.

On a side note, we'd also like to invite Captain Obvious here for a moment to remind that GOG offers and supports games compatible with specific operating systems and prepared to be installed on a given system using our included installer for a reason. This is, from the very first day, our way of offering a hassle-free, user-friendly and welcoming experience for millions of our users, no matter what their technical skill level may be.

That is why we cannot guarantee that our installers will never change and will forever remain compatible with each of such unsupported tools. However, it never was and our goal to purposely break compatibility with some third-party extraction tools or emulators used by some of our customers - and, rest assured, it never will be.

GOG.com Team

last 10 comments:

heretic

(07:46 AM CET - Jan,08 2015 )

quote:

Here's the technical story if you want it --

1.- GOG has, for the longest time, used a program called Inno Setup for its windows installations. The bulk of their installations come as a single .exe which contains the packed game and which unpacks it, and installs it alongside the appropriate registry hooks, compatibility fixes ect. So far, so good.

2- Recently, the GoG team began experimenting with separating the packed game data from Inno Setup for a few large titles for downloading purposes. The installer .exe became an Inno Setup stub and the packed game data came in .rar files, which they used for a number of production process advantages. Because the material within these .rar files was pretty much going to be near useless unless it was unpacked by the Inno Setup they made the fact that they were using standard RAR files opaque by labeling them as .bin files and giving them a password based on the md5 of the game ID.

So what's the problem? - You simply get all .rar data in the game installer simply by running the .exe file right? Well yes, if you're on Windows.

4. - Although not technically FOR Linux, traditional GoG Windows Inno Installer files were unpackable via specialized tools like innoextract and innoup and made to work (to some degree or another) on Linux via tools like WINE. An unintended consequence of the GoG team's usage of the new multifile format is that it broke the ability of Linux users to extract data using innoextract/innoup. This caused a degree of anger and resentment among the Linux gaming community. Then someone discovered that the .bin files were actually just .rar files - and that these had been password protected - and the collective presumption was made by a segment of the community that GoG had purposely put a password in place to keep them from the juicy usable data they needed.

5. - It's at this point that the "story" as you've seen it reported here comes into the fore. Accusations of GoG "locking down" their installers with a password are made - the password is cracked and the information within found not all that useful for hopeful Linux gamers - GoG staff react by stating that the Rar passwords weren't going to change, explaining why the passwords were used in the first place, and explaining that their primary raison d'etre in designing a Windows installers was to provide the best installation experience on Windows.

6. As of now they've removed the passwords on the RAR files of their multipart Windows installers, which resolved the philosophic issues many have felt, but doesn't (immediately) do much to help those Linux users affected. Everyone is happy except those Linux gamers for whom the problem created by the switch to multipart files hasn't been resolved yet. The bright side of THAT portion of the story though is that a version of innoextract which can handle GoG multipart .rar files seems to be on the horizon.

Csimbi	(10:58 PM CET - Jan,08 2015 )
I guess the real question is: Would a game work if you simply unpacked it (from those RARs)? I mean, GOG's installers set some registry keys, created shortcuts (containing command-line parameters) too. Without those the game might not work and these script kids would come banging on GOG's door yet again.