no-cd patches: legal?

[Force Flow]

Are these no-cd patches legal when you own the CD?

[ssahl]

That's a good question, I have often wondered that myself. You would think that it should be, but I kind of dont think so, because most of the time the way they do that is to change or replace the program application. Plus if you havent noticed yet, when/if you burn a CD copy of most any game, it will not play, but it will usually install. that being true I would guess that they are not, but I'm just making a guess.

[Spyda]

if you own the game i would think the same rules apply that do to roms, only if you own an original copy of the game

[ssahl]

Even if it is, I can for sure tell you that any tech support you would normally get will be gone, they will not help you out in anyway that they would otherwise normally.

[Iman74]

We are all the tech support you need. As the patches go, if you own the game and are only using the patch so you do not have to insert the CD for each game I would think it's legal.

[Favre]

Its not illegal if you own the game, my cd is scratched and it wont play, but if i have a no-cd patch it will play, if you own the disk and you play with your OWN cd-key its i think its legal.

[Strider]

I wouldn't think it's illegal, I been playing Diablo II lately, I'm getting tired of having to put the CD into a cd-drive, so I went on the net and downloaded a no-cd patch. I bought the game and I'm not going to copy the game, so I don't see any problems. While I can understand that Blizzard wants to stop pirating software, it irks me that they don't have faith in consumers.

[Tiretool]

Only illegal if using it for "warez" purposes: like borrowing it from your buddy and installing it and then using the no-cd patch and giving your buddy his copy back would be illegal.

Using it to keep from using the cd would be legal... but would likely go against your EULA (End User License Agreement) as most no-cd cracks circumvent the CD Key requirement.

[sleepypost]

how big a file are no-cd patches?

[Iman74]

Usually they are less than a megabyte but sometimes they are larger than that.

[i3OSS]

sleepy, under 1mb. and there are steps on how to apply it, basically its moving the required files you need on the CD to your computer directory.

[Spyda]

they are usually around the 200kb file
and you usually just paste them into the game file and then select yes when it asks you if you want to overwrite the original game start icon

[Spyda]

Originally posted by Tiretool Using it to keep from using the cd would be legal... but would likely go against your EULA (End User License Agreement) as most no-cd cracks circumvent the CD Key requirement.

how so?
all games i know of that require a CD key require them on install, when you have to use the CD, so you would have to have the CD to install so you can play it in the first place

[ssahl]

It all depends on who makes the crack. Some are only 100k little exe, others you are required to replace the main exe file of the program you want to not use the cd for, you know the one that would be in your programs folder, and that can be up to 4 or 5MB as for the tech support thing, just making a point, I havent needed tech support for quite a long time now, actually thats what I do for a living part of the year, tech support for a tax software, and although this is my last week and I will miss the money, I will not miss talking to some of these idiot's that should not be aloud to touch a computer. The later in the season it gets, the fewer calls I have to deal with, but they also get more and more lame

[Tiretool]

I inserted the word "Key" where I shouldn't have... What I actually was eluding to was that some no-cd cracks that replace your game executable can disable your ability to play online. Some games check to see what version of a game you're using, and if/when they detect a different .exe version, they will not let you join a game.

Also... they can cause you to have to re-install a game from scratch. For instance, if you install a game and update it, then use a no-cd crack life seems good for a month or two. Then a new update becomes available for the game in question and everyone is updating their version to the newly released version. Sometimes when you try updating your game, it will report that it didn't find the version of the game that it was looking for and therefore will not update. Then you have to re-install the game from scratch to get rid of the no-cd version to get the latest patch to install properly. Very time consuming and irritating to say the least.

[whargoul]

And after that you learn from your mistake and rename the original .exe.

[BearEater]

simply back up your orignal exe...

[Force Flow]

Very simple.

Thanks for all the input everybody!