I should buy a space boat.

Back in March of 2014 EA offered 2008's Sci-Fi survival horror game Dead Space for free to anyone who wanted it through their Origin "On the House" promotion.

The official reason being that EA wanted to give back to gamers, though the cynic in me thinks it's just to get people hooked into a series. Especially so, when the last game in the series has a boat-load of DLC and microtransactions.

I've only recently started playing it and I'm really feeling it. So much so, that I ordered the boxed retail copies of Dead Space 2 and 3 after only playing around 3 hours of the first one. I was even considering the DLC, I do like the witness rig...

Oh, how that was a mistake...

The physical retail edition of Dead Space 2, somewhat understandably, includes a secuROM release date check provided by Sony DADC. The disks are probably still the same ones that were created when the game went gold. [That means "ready to release" ]

You need to make sure the game isn't leaked before release, I get that. It makes sense.

HOWEVER.

Dead Space 2 was released on January 28th 2011. About 4 and a half years ago. Not only does the authentication server appear to be offline, though it's impossible to actually check, there is no way to bypass it without piracy. The exact thing it was implemented to prevent. [Good job breaking it, EA]

In addition, it doesn't just apply to the disk version. The Origin download version ALSO does the date check. Yeah, I tried the download. No, it doesn't make sense.

All over the internet, people are talking about this. You can download the game and install it. But the second you try to run it? Date check, s'il vous plaît.

The .exe itself has been modified to run the date check the first time you run it, if it's successful it will download the key and decrypt the game. Which sounds a lot like a certain piece of malware when you think about it...

The "fix" varies from place to place, everything from using safe mode with networking to disabling WMI and praying. They all don't work. You can't authenticate from a server that don't real or done borked.

However, this nerd. This nerd found a way.

You gotta use this right here.

That's the .exe.

No, not just any old .exe, this is THE .exe.

The non-date-checking .exe. Direct from an EA server.

Download, pop it in the Dead Space 2 folder [back up the old one for posterity's sake], play the game that you bought.

The .exe is patched to a certain extent and includes all the DLC [it was given for free to everyone], but more importantly... it works.

Why the Origin download uses the date checking version when they have one that runs fine is beyond me, but at least I got it working without piracy. Huzzah.

As as aside, I may try reaching out to EA and Sony DADC to get this sorted one way or another. Things like this are the reason I was hesitant to get into PC gaming.