Illegal Fable III copies left unplayable.
The 1st November launch of the new Kinect-capable dash brought about an unwelcome surprise for Xbox 360 pirates: new copy protection tech is included that looks set to lock out “backup” games from Xbox Live and – for the first time – stop copied games from loading.
Hackers refer to the new checks as “AP 2.5” and while details are scarce about how it actually works, the current thinking is that specific challenges to the DVD drive’s firmware are embedded into the security sectors on the game disc. If the correct responses don’t come back from the firmware, the console is flagged for banning on Xbox Live and the game refuses to load with a “dirty disc” error. Original copies of the game continue to work fine, even once the console is flagged.
Xbox 360 firmware hacker “Commodore4Eva” claims to have already isolated the AP 2.5 checks embedded within Fable III, but in theory any number of challenges could be embedded onto new game discs, and connection to Xbox Live could see randomised changes to the codes used. Should this be the case, in a best-case scenario, his could mean an effective end to Xbox 360 piracy but in the worst case it may restrict “backups” to running offline only.