A DVD image of highly anticipated Fallout 3 has leaked to internet about a day before the game’s official North American release date. The image, which weighs around 5.5GB, has already made its way to an extremely popular semi-private BitTorrent tracker and will most likely spread to other trackers as well as to one click hosting sites across the world. As with most Clone DVDs, this release does not include a modified exe with copy protection removed (aka crack) but does include a seemingly untouched image of the game DVD.
Although Bethseda hinted that the game will be DRM free, it does not appear that way. SecuROM DRM seems to be bundled with the install process of the game (which is similar to that of Oblivion’s) but in a much less intrusive scale than other DRM enabled games such as Spore or Mass Effect. Perhaps Bethseda had a change of heart when the XBOX360 version of Fallout 3 leaked around two weeks before the release date :p
The inclusion of DRM however means that pirates who download the Clone DVD will not be able to play the game unless a scene group such as RZR, RLD, VTY or an individual such as DarkC0der releases a fix that removes the protection.
