Full DVD images (aka Clone DVD) of EA’s upcoming Real Time Strategy (RTS) game Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 have leaked to several BitTorrent trackers. The leaked image (which is around 6.6GB in size) seem to have support for two languages; English and Chinese. There are several other versions floating around in a well known warez forum as well. As we said before these images seem to be untouched copies of the game and no modified exe (aka crack) is provided. Pirates who download the clone will not be able to play the game as it is protected by SecuROM DRM.
The SecuROM DRM however will not hold off pirates forever. EA has embedded SecuROM 7.1 in all of their recent PC titles and every single one of them was cracked either by a group from the warez scene such as RELOADED or by non scene individuals such as Darkc0der. As it stands now it will only be a matter of time a modified exe (that has the SecuROM protection removed) will be released for the game.
According to comments on most gaming forums, it was not only pirates who used these fixed exes for previous EA titles such as Spore. Even those who owned legitimate copies of the game seemed to prefer cracked exes over SecuROM protected files. EA’s decision to embed restrictive DRM into their PC titles perhaps caused more bad than good and it will be interesting to see their next move..
