Image Courtesy of Joystiq.com

Oh DRM - How we loathe thee.  Let me count the ways.  One - You don't really do anything to stop pirates.  Two - You only end up hurting the real customers.  Three - You are a royal PITA.  Four - You do nothing to stop pirates. 

The latest game to suffer some crippling DRM is Gears of War for Windows.  If you had planned on playing a little co-op with your friends this weekend, try something else.  You see the digital certificate for the game expired on January 28th.  Apparently Microsoft and Epic didn't think people would still be playing this game after 2 years.

Users attempting to play the game will be created with a lovely message stating - "Your certificate has expired or is invalid."  Solutions?  Set your system date back before January 28th.  Epic is aware of the issue and is working on a fix - but this is another shining example of why DRM is just dumb.

Source: Link

The PC version of Sacred 2 may have a 16 player co-op mode, and a 4 player co-op story mode - but that doesn't necessarily mean at your next LAN party you'll need 16 copies.

The game's publisher, CDV, has announced that Sacred 2's DRM features a "Try before you Buy" feature that allows your copy of the game to be installed and fully playable for one day on any PC.  At the end of that day the user has the option to purchase the game, or simply uninstall it.  This is the perfect solution at LAN parties for use during the mad scramble to see if there's enough copies and keys of a game available.

Sacred 2 hits Windows PCs on November 11th and comes out for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in February.

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Welcome to the initial post of a column we like to call Beyond Co-Op. This is a column where we talk about other news around the industry that isn’t necessarily tied to co-operative gaming. Each week will see the subjects of the column listed on the front page with more in-depth discussion after the break.  Lets face it, we are all gamers that simply love games, co-op or not.  There's plenty of stuff going on around the industry that we can cover; so why not do it?

We’d also like to open this up for any suggestions on topics you may like us to cover. Please contact us at tips@co-optimus.com and please write in the subject something pertaining to “Beyond Co-Op” since it is our general tip e-mail. Onto the stories:

- Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe Lineup Accidentally Unveiled

- Gamerscore Blog Starts Weekly “New Xbox Experience” Information Blowout

- The Spore Files (DRM and Single EA Account Per Physical Copy)

- Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Comes Out This Week, Motorstorm 2 Gets a Date

- Crysis and Crysis Warhead Coming to Steam: More Coming from EA?

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DRM, for all sorts of media, is a bit of a mess right now, and that's putting it delicately.  How many times can you move that song to a new Ipod?  Your 360 died; now you can't play XBLA games unless you're connected to the internet?  These are worst case scenarios, but the problem is there, for many legitimate consumers.  The most recent flaming has taken place over Spore, and it's Amazon reviews. 

How does this affect you, dear Co-Optimus reader?  Well, over at the Red Alert 3 support forums, the copy protection scheme for the game has been revealed.  They are using SecuROM, which is also what was used for Spore.  Don't panic, though, as the requirements for RA3 seem quite a bit more forgiving than Spore's, at least as far as I can tell.  Hopefully the only pirates you'll have to deal with when firing up a co-op game are like those in the boats in the screenshot above.  On the other hand, let's hope all paying users can enjoy the action without much trouble.  At least the game won't ask us what the 84th word on page 18 of the manual is...