We’ve been seeing a lot of ‘Games for Windows Live (GFWL)’ titles lately and by the look of things this trend is not going to subside anytime soon. Microsoft yesterday launched a brand new version of Games for Windows Live 3.0 and this component is now freely downloadable from Microsoft download center. Included in the new version is a new theme, an in-game marketplace, improved account management tools and of course two new anti piracy measures. I found the new anti piracy measures to be particularly interesting – one of them involves server side authentication.
Following bit about piracy protection is quoted from release notes:
Starting with new title releases this fall, publishers can optionally take advantage of two new methods to ensure everyone's playing with a legitimate copy of their games.
Server Side Authentication links the game license to your Gamertag. The advantage of this method is that it allows installation of the game onto any PC, anywhere — only you can access the LIVE service from the game. Server Side Authentication has no affect on offline play.
Zero Day Piracy Protection keeps games from launching before the street date the publisher has set for the game.
If you are a pirate, server side authentication can never mean any good. Although not much is revealed about how this works in GFWL 3.0, this type of protection is always harder to break. On the positive side, Microsoft uses similar methods to validate copies of Windows and people still manage to emulate the authentication servers and hoodwink them so hope is not lost for pirates. Either way something tells me that this would just be one extra step for those who legally purchase games.
Download
[Click Here] to download Games for Windows Live 3.0 Standalone/Offline installer from official server
