Vista-only Shadowrun cracked, playable on XP

by Ross Miller { Jun 26th 2007 at 5:55PM }

Beating Falling Leaf to the punch, members of the hacking group Razor1911 have managed to hack the Vista-only Shadowrun to work on Windows XP, the Inquirer reports. The crack, weighing in at less than 5 MB, reportedly removes the need for DirectX 10. (No, we're not linking to it -- you can find it yourself.)

With the crack, you can only play single-player against bots or multiplayer LAN games. Falling Leaf, who has stated they will be providing free code for those who purchase the game on Amazon via their pre-order page, still estimates cracks for Vista-only Shadowrun and Halo 2 by "late July."

Tags: bungie, halo, halo 2, Halo2, microsoft, shadow run, ShadowRun, vista, windows, windows xp, WindowsXp, xp

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

shrgnatlas @ Jun 26th 2007 6:06PM

and online.

Keeko_ca @ Jun 26th 2007 6:28PM

Besides the obvious (money), is there any other reason why Microsoft locks these games out as Vista only? I know DirectX 10 is Vista only, or is it? Is there a reason why it's Vista only as well?

Such a stupid marketing plan IMO.

Jonathan Tran @ Jun 26th 2007 6:40PM

MS is trying to push Vista by artificially require it on games. It is LAME.

X_Arre @ Jun 26th 2007 7:37PM

what's the point of finally being able to pla an online multilayer game if you can't go online?

Shawn @ Jun 26th 2007 7:59PM

In fact its less than 200Kb and called Wowloader. From the discussions at h2vista and filefront, it doesn't sound like its illegal. Hehe.

http://thinkabdul.com/2007/06/27/download-wowloader-03-free-patch-to-play-windows-vista-only-game-halo-2-on-windows-xp-sp2/

jay @ Jun 26th 2007 8:08PM

This whole Vista/DX10 issue is one of the reasons I'm glad my gaming is fed by a DS, Wii, 360 and a PC with only Half Life 2 on it.

Steve @ Jun 26th 2007 10:26PM

*sigh* It doesn't remove the need for DirectX 10; the game doesn't use DirectX 10 to begin with! Just like Halo 2 for Vista, Shadowrun is a DirectX 9 game. About the only thing that makes it Vista only is a little check in the installer program that determines what version OS your on.

Chainblast @ Jun 26th 2007 10:52PM

The whole Vista/DX10/Games for Windows sham was the final straw for myself. I'm not exactly a fan of MS.

SeriousKriss @ Jun 27th 2007 4:46AM

Why would anyone care about such a sub-par FPS on PC? There are so many better alternatives...

Sagan @ Jun 27th 2007 5:02AM

@ SeriousKriss(9): Because now you can get it for free and not feel guilty about it. Because they won't sell it to me on XP, so I pirate it for XP.

Mikeo @ Jun 27th 2007 6:05AM

Hey Joystiq, get your facts right.

Shadowrun requires only DirectX 9.0B to run (PixelShader 2.0b and Vertexshader 2.0a). No DirectX 10 support at all.

Irony in the hypocritical comments are fun though.

Hoffer @ Jun 27th 2007 7:14AM

I have both Halo 2 and Shadowrun for Vista. There is no way Halo 2 requires anything going on in Vista. It looks like a 5 year old game.

I've read they say it requires Vista because it does the Windows Live or Xbox Live type thing. The thing is that only activates once you start the game. So, it is fully dependent on the game. It isn't built into the OS at all.

Both of these games could easily run on XP. MS is just shooting themselves in the foot by requiring Vista. They could have got many times the sales if they were XP.

KirbyMeister @ Jun 27th 2007 11:55AM

From what I've heard, Shadowrun and Halo 2 PC don't even use DX10.

Dave Silva @ Jun 27th 2007 2:37PM

I wonder if MS will ban all the people on that have a Live account and use this "crack"...

QuEsTioN MaRk JoNEs @ Jun 27th 2007 6:18PM

sooo what would you guys do if you ran a business?

Andir3.0 @ Jun 27th 2007 9:40PM

"sooo what would you guys do if you ran a business?"

Provide standards based software for a reasonable price...

Coyote @ Jun 28th 2007 9:03AM

"15. sooo what would you guys do if you ran a business?"

Show an absolute reason to update. Be that faster processing, notable upgrades and features, or a substantial change from the previous versions.

Vista does little of the above. No more than any other software vendor would market as a major update. Not a whole new version. It wouldnt be so bad if they had waited and got the new file system working, true 64bit support, and integrated Live into the OS (which I think is a horrible idea anyways).

Seeing how easy it is for these cames to be cracked only supports the idea that Vista is nothing more than a "theme" for XP. Something I can go to any number of sites and get for free.