Gears of War PC crashes on certificate expiration

Those who own the PC edition of Epic Games' blockbuster hit Gears of War received an unwelcome surprise if they attempted to load the game up today. As related by a number of posters on Epic's official forums, attempting to open the game results in an error message prompting them to reinstall the...

Those who own the PC edition of Epic Games' blockbuster hit Gears of War received an unwelcome surprise if they attempted to load the game up today. As related by a number of posters on Epic's official forums, attempting to open the game results in an error message prompting them to reinstall the game, claiming it cannot be run with "modified executable code."

The issue stems from the fact that as of January 28, Gears of War's digital certificate is expired. Those who attempt to play the game after that time will be prompted with the aforementioned error message, and a number of forum posters claimed that they were exited out of the game when the clock flipped over to a new day.

The good news is that Epic Games is aware of the problem and is currently working with Microsoft on a fix. "We have been notified of the issue and are working with Microsoft to get it resolved," an Epic Games community manager said in a post on the company's forums. "This was a surprise to us too. We aren't casting blame or chewing anyone out. We're trying to figure out how and why it happened so we can get it fixed."

While Epic is working on a more permanent solution, resourceful forum posters quickly arrived at an easy fix to the problem. The certificate apparently checks itself against an individual user's internal system clock. By simply setting the clock to a time before the expiration date, that is, before January 29, the game will reportedly function as intended.

196 Comments

  • dacco80

    Posted May 28, 2009 9:40 am PT

    if i buy these days gears it will still crashed???

  • dacco80

    Posted May 28, 2009 9:39 am PT

    wtf i wanted to buy gears now this!!!!???

  • RENEGADEleader

    Posted Mar 10, 2009 4:55 am PT

    So there I was thinking my new PC was completely knackered, when all along it was this damn game. Hope they get this sorted

  • ZeroVincent

    Posted Feb 20, 2009 8:00 pm PT

    Wow! I spent $30 for Gearsand i Didn't even F-ing get it

  • bluefishhead

    Posted Feb 8, 2009 1:48 pm PT

    should change their name from epic games to epic fail

  • jlee14

    Posted Feb 3, 2009 7:11 pm PT

    Well damn, all I want to do at nights when I come home from a long day of school is play some gears with my friends and this happens.... Cant wait for this freaking patch to come out, hopefully soon.

  • eric_neo3

    Posted Feb 2, 2009 10:55 pm PT

    "As part of the game's protection, it checks a digital certificate each time the game launches."-sorry KBABZ and nikefreak you should check other sources and learn what DRM is before you claim what it isn't.
    A game's digital protection isn't a form of DRM don't make us laugh.

    Ref: http://www.megagames.com/news

    1q3er5 said it "Meanwhile the "free" non DRM version runs just fine. Punishing the people who actually buy the game"

    This is a another case of the who owns "the right to use" software laws and those who illegally prevent users from accessing their legally bought software. In this case the digital certificate was set to expire at some point in time while the users are unaware and uninformed of this time period. Meaning that the persons responsible intended for people not to be able to use the software after the certificate has expired. This is the sort of thing they *Have* to disclose to the customer before they buy the product.

    And on a side note DRM does note mean Securom
    Securom is a form of DRM.

  • NearlyPrescient

    Posted Feb 2, 2009 6:51 pm PT

    this isn't a microsoft device issue.
    epic's programming was flawed in that they used certificates that would expire in a way that would effectively break the game.
    maybe this sort of thing happens in the tech industry occasionally, but it's not microsoft's fault.
    i'm not pro anybody, but sure isn't the place for an anti-M$ rant.

  • BloodMist

    Posted Feb 2, 2009 5:47 pm PT

    it's called controls.Look it up.

  • staranise

    Posted Feb 2, 2009 5:23 pm PT

    I second the motion RonTorque....PC is heaven for shooters like GoW why not? why? just why...

  • necronaux

    Posted Feb 2, 2009 10:27 am PT

    Figure they would have checked something as simple as a date code.

  • RonTorque

    Posted Feb 2, 2009 2:17 am PT

    That's just F***ing great unaccessable Gears Of War and No Gears Of War 2 For PC that;s just amazingly EPIC. *FAILS*

  • world69star69

    Posted Feb 1, 2009 5:31 pm PT

    this also happened with MS devices, Zune users couldn't even start their zunes up the night before new years as M$ didn't take into account leap years. I got my zune as a gift, a year ago, and all my music and podcasts were on it, I was really upset when the loading screen just hung there while I was driving to work, apparently so was the other people trying to use it too. This is why closed systems can be bad. My dad tried to get a starz movie pack from verizon, but it couldn't work due to not having the right drm from media player 11, no fix for that. Then there are things like this M$ has really been dropping the ball....and this happens right after they kill their only pc game devs. I hope m$ looses a lot this year as they really know how to screw customers over!

  • beardo87

    Posted Feb 1, 2009 4:43 am PT

    "We're trying to figure out how and why it happened so we can get it fixed."

    ive got a surjestion....DROP DRM!! it achieves nothing.

  • Ellifort

    Posted Jan 31, 2009 4:44 pm PT

    Almost got crazy when trying to play :O
    Reinstalled the game 3 times, unpatched, repatched, patched with 1.1, patched with 1.2 and nothing worked :/
    Then someone told me to put the clock to a past day and i'm playing fine -.-
    Epic almost got me crazy!

  • EmeraldViper

    Posted Jan 31, 2009 11:30 am PT

    This happen to Lord of the Rings online to. Seems like it may happen alot more before its done. Another great glitch with MS, thanks you idiots.

  • Gruff-182 posted Jan 31, 2009 10:16 am PT (does not meet display criteria. sign in to show)

    Gruff-182

    Posted Jan 31, 2009 10:16 am PT (hide)

    There are PC gamers that want to play Gears of War?

  • Megavideogamer

    Posted Jan 31, 2009 10:09 am PT

    Even though playing videogames on a PC is better and more expensive, It does have some drawbacks.

  • DarkFadi

    Posted Jan 31, 2009 5:11 am PT

    what? this is odd.

  • Valen_Ca

    Posted Jan 31, 2009 5:10 am PT

    I know who to blame, how about the person in charge of making sure the certificates don't expire in the first place? I mean come on, do you honestly expect me to believe that not only does Epic not have paperwork anywhere listing when their certificates expire but that noone checks it? This is just pure and utter laziness on their part, made even worse by the fact that certificate validity was linked to their DRM scheme.

  • DeadlySpartanII

    Posted Jan 31, 2009 4:26 am PT

    DRM fails in so many ways....... SO WHY BOTHER?!

  • 0678

    Posted Jan 31, 2009 4:04 am PT

    i blame drm.

  • 1q3er5

    Posted Jan 31, 2009 12:52 am PT

    Meanwhile the "free" non DRM version runs just fine. Punishing the people who actually buy the game LOL. Epic Fail.

  • KBABZ

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 11:03 pm PT

    It's amazing to see the variety of clueless people who post on the comments of News Articles. It's like they don't even read the second paragraph anymore. READ PEOPLE.

    And then to further weaken my faith in humanity, people start going "OMG im not bying this gaem" when CLEARLY there is a fix RIGHT ABOVE WHERE YOU TYPE YOUR COMMENT. Temporary yes (unless you set it to like, 1885), but if it works it works.

    And to anyone who says that Gears shouldn't be on PC don't understand that Microsoft generally owns the PC market as well generally speaking, so it's no surprise that a hit title like Gears (and Halo of course) made it on there. PC gaming was vital for the gaming industry. Without it there'd be no Doom, no Commander Keen or Jazz Jackrabbit, no Age of Empires, no Command and Conquer, no Prince of Persia (SoT was developed mainly for PC) no Half-Life. Saying Gears doesn't belong on PC is like complaining that Half-Life 2 shouldn't be ported to consoles.

    EDIT: Right under my post, ninjafreak explained for the SECOND time that it's not DRM, it's the coding in the game itself, which is why Epic is working on a patch. Pull your heads out of your asses and READ people. C'mon, you learnt it in Primary, didn't you?!

  • nikefreak

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 9:57 pm PT

    Again, people, you are pointing fingers in the wrong direction and it is pointless, you prove nothing when you complain about something that isn't even an issue in this case. DRM has nothing to do with this... Here is a repost of my previous post since people cant seem to scroll down a few comments before posting again.

    "Before people all run around spewing vitriol about it being a DRM issue, do some research. It is a certificate expiration, granted it shouldn't have happened, but certificates are what they sign code with to show it is authentic and made by xxx company and not some virus laden POS by some 12 year old with a chip on his shoulder. That means, it had nothing to do with DRM, and everything to do with authenticity certificates."

    19 posts, 5 of which complain about DRM, since I last posted this. That means 1 out of 4 people aren't reading before commenting, nor do they understand the problem at hand and are just assuming it is related to DRM and spouting off... Makes me sad about what things have come to on message boards/comment sections.

  • BloodMist

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 8:17 pm PT

    Yeah, Humorguy, i hope you were being sarcastic, since the amount of truly high quality games that come out, and don't come out on the PC, is really tiny.Mostly the Nintendo made games.You can blame the homogenization of the gaming industry in general on that.Exclusives are pretty rare on any platform these days really.Especially ones that have any actual real quality to them, my god.

  • Thorpe89 Site moderator

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 6:28 pm PT

    I just ordered Gears of War for Windows earlier this week. Glad it's not arrived yet!

  • NeoNavarro

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 5:23 pm PT

    I got that error when I tried to play too. I hope this doesn't happen again.

  • Humorguy_basic

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 5:14 pm PT

    Fed up hearing if one company is going to survive PC gaming will. PC gaming is a gaming format, you think console gamers would be saying their console would still be surviving with one publisher left releasing one game every 18 months?! I find it amazing what PC gamers say on subjects like this! Without a PC games INDUSTRY, there will not be a PC games MARKET, if that PC games MARKET disappears, PC gaming is dead, even if there is the odd small publisher releasing indie shareware games, and a thriving secondhand market on ebay and even a Valve releasing a PC game (much smaller and not AAA) every year or so!

    Is their a thriving horse market like in the 17th century? Of course not, we don't have horse drawn carriages, we drive cars! But aren't there still horse riders and stables? yes. But the market is so small now, it's not an INDUSTRY like it was! So that's what you mean by PC gaming dying? It is still around in a small way, but not the all pervasive way it used to be? Yes. That's right - you got it!

  • Darth_Slayer

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 5:09 pm PT

    Anyone knows what certificates does? I checked the executable files of several games I installed, and came up with the following expiration dates:

    Call of Duty: World at War: 7 March 2009
    Crysis Warhead: 13 March 2011
    Far Cry 2: 17 May 2009
    Fallout 3: 18 September 2010
    Gears of War: 29 January 2009
    Grand Theft Auto IV: 23 September 2009
    Rainbow Six Vegas 2: 14 July 2008
    Unreal Tournament 3: 29 January 2009

    So far, the other games with expired certificates seem to run with no problems

  • Bhinder94 posted Jan 30, 2009 2:28 pm PT (does not meet display criteria. sign in to show)

    Bhinder94

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 2:28 pm PT (hide)

    well what do you expect its microsoft!!!!!

  • bluefishhead

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 2:18 pm PT

    there goes me sessioning it through insane difficulty tonite.
    grrrrrrrrr

  • biggy887766

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 2:16 pm PT

    PC gaming is not going to die as long as valve is still around. Valve still cares about their customers and won't pull something as nasty as DRM.

  • Damnation_6

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 2:02 pm PT

    ....Can't they forget about this copy protection?
    I mean....not a single one of them has stopped people from downloading and playing the illegal version of games.
    It's a sport to people to hack these kinda thing and they always succeed.
    The people who buy games with this kinda protection suffer more then the downloaders of illegal copies.
    Think of a different tactic to get more people to buy games guys.

  • Humorguy_basic

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 2:01 pm PT

    Yet one more sign of how PC gaming/PC gamers are becoming 2nd class citizens! I can hear a chorus of suit voices in a multitude of PC games houses: "Why put too much thought/too much money into it - it's only on PC goddamnit!'

    Between the above, and G.O.G. com having Arx Fatalis, a 6 year old RPG on it's site for $9.99, which they say is patched to the latest 'official 1.19 patch', and then finding out the 1.19 patch has not been made available to the public, meaning original owners of the game have to play it buggy or spend another $10 for it at G.O.G., I am feeling preety pissed off at how I am being treated as a long time PC game player!

  • gamerkiduri

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 1:30 pm PT

    no wonder it microsoft!

  • gamerkiduri posted Jan 30, 2009 1:28 pm PT (does not meet display criteria. sign in to show)

    gamerkiduri

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 1:28 pm PT (hide)

    killzone 2 is MUCH better!

  • gamerkiduri

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 1:27 pm PT

    it has a great story and gameplay but online is crap

  • Merl57

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 1:13 pm PT

    I think the strongest thing about Gears of War is the Art. Functionality online is poor, and balanced issues, but if they fixed lag and host, on 360 this would be my favorite online game

  • Hvac0120

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 1:11 pm PT

    Although I agree about DRM causing more issues than fixing, you guys are complaining about the wrong thing here. This is not a DRM issue.

    Read nikefreak's comment below. This issue is about the application Certificate.

  • dr_jashugan

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 1:00 pm PT

    Good thing I didn't buy this game. DRM totally LAME.

  • dbrinto

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 12:28 pm PT

    That's absurd, I was actually thinking of buying this game, not a chance now

  • koospetoors

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 11:32 am PT

    In times like this,instead of complaining about DRM, I just play an old classic (working) game to cool myself down,like System Shock 2 or Half Life 1 etc.

  • Armaan8014

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 10:43 am PT

    ha ha...

  • nikefreak

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 10:29 am PT

    Before people all run around spewing vitriol about it being a DRM issue, do some research. It is a certificate expiration, granted it shouldn't have happened, but certificates are what they sign code with to show it is authentic and made by xxx company and not some virus laden POS by some 12 year old with a chip on his shoulder. That means, it had nothing to do with DRM, and everything to do with authenticity certificates.

  • Jedilink109

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 10:19 am PT

    Wow and WHO thought this stuff was a good idea again?????

  • DemannameD

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 10:07 am PT

    DRM encourages piracy.

  • TerryMock posted Jan 30, 2009 10:04 am PT (does not meet display criteria. sign in to show)

    TerryMock

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 10:04 am PT (hide)

    I am so glad that Game Spot gave Gears a such a high rating. It is a crappy port to the PC and this is just one more nail in its coffin.

  • Phazevariance posted Jan 30, 2009 9:59 am PT (does not meet display criteria. sign in to show)

    Phazevariance

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 9:59 am PT (hide)

    Oh, another stupid DRM problem preventing legit copies from working... wow. When will they learn that DRM is not a solution, it is a problem.

  • dchan01

    Posted Jan 30, 2009 9:49 am PT

    Yay DRM!

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