FILEnetworks Blog: Pirates crack Empire : Total War steam protection

Year 2008 could be termed as an year when SecuROM DRM got pwned at the hands of scene and p2p groups. It looks as if year 2009 will be the year that Steam got raped. One of the most anticipated games of this year, Creative Assembly’s Empire : Total War has been cracked by veteran scene group Razor1911 and leaked on the internet right on the game’s North American release date. It looks as if the leaked version is the Special Force Edition of the game which has some additional elite units not present in the regular Empire : Total War.
Update: Those having sound, crashing, missing textures and other problems with the game, read this article.

Empire : Total War is distributed exclusively via Steam, the digital content distribution platform which was once thought ‘uncrackable’ by many. Razor1911’s release includes a full DVD Image of the game (2 DVDs – 11.8GB), a custom installer as well as a cracked exe which either bypasses or removes the Steam protection altogether.

Razor1911’s release was leaked from scene topsites into private torrent trackers just a few minutes after it was pre’d:

[ Empire_Total_War_Special_Forces_Edition-Razor1911 15 ] [ Uploaded first @ ScT 13m 21s after pre, followed by RBy, ScR, ScL, TV, PTM, TD, TGB, ACE, ST] ]

Source: Torrent-Racers IRC Channel

The release has now spread to public BitTorrent trackers, one click hosting sites such as RapidShare, public FTP servers and so on.

Personally, I’ve been dying to get my hands on this game ever since it was announced several months ago. If you think turn based strategy games are not your thing, just give this one a go – chances are that you’ll get addicted to it. Highly recommended title for any PC gamer folks (watch the trailers here)!

Minimum System Requirements

OS: Windows XP/Vista
Processor: Pentium 4 @ 2.4 GHz
Memory: 1 GB
Hard Drive: 15 GB Free
Video Memory: 256 MB (Shader Model 2.0)
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
DirectX: 9.0c
Keyboard & Mouse
DVD Rom Drive

An article addressing various problems and errors you may encounter with the game (non crack related) will also be published. Keep checking the homepage.

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