Some claim Valve’s Steam as the best anti piracy solution to date. However, the increasing number of Steam protected games that have got cracked or leaked in the past few months cast serious doubts on this claim. After the leak of FEAR 2 : Project Origin earlier this month, another steam protected title Warhammer 40000 : Dawn Of War 2 (W40K : DoW2) has again been leaked by pirates before the game’s official Steam release date on most countries.
UPDATE: Group ViTALiTY has cracked Dawn of War 2. Read all about it in this article.
Although we called it a ‘crack’ in the title of this article, the method is basically a workaround similar to the one that was used for FEAR 2. Leaked encryption keys are seemingly used to unpack Dawn of War 2 game files while a hacked steam client dll is used to bypass protection. EDIT: Leaked release looks like a review copy of the game. No major features seem to be missing, however.
Initially, there were two versions of the game leaked on BitTorrent -first a 3.66GB version by GTI (Game-Torrents.Info – a Russian torrent tracker) and then another p2p release by WiCKED. These releases were basically Steam rips and required manual editing of configuration files as well as manual injection of steam encryption keys – a process some pirated found complicated. However the latest release by group rForce (Russian Force – non scene group) seems to have made thing relatively simple. rForce’s release which is around 6.75GB in file size contains all games files, a batch (.bat) file to automate part of the cracking process as well as a loader & a cracked dll file that bypasses/circumvents steam protection. Users however still need to edit the rev.ini file as per instructions on release NFO. Note that both the 3.66GB and 6.75 GB leaked releases are known to work properly without any missing features – huge difference on file sizes seems to be due to different compression mechanisms used.
GTI, WiCKED and rFORCE releases have all made it into private and public BitTorrent trackers across the world. Judging by peer activity on these torrents, most popular leaked version seems to be the rFORCE release.
If you run into any problems with the game (non crack related), please refer to this article.
Note: Please do not post or request download links to cracks, key generators, hacked or cracked steam clients or other tools here. We are a news blog only – not a warez site. Do not ask for step by step instructions on how to crack the game– if you find the instructions in release NFO too complex, wait for a scene release which probably will have a one click installer. Also keep in mind that if you have a legitimate Steam account, using a hacked client or playing ripped games may result in unpredictable scenarios. Proceed at your own risk.
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