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Microsoft denies Vista 'breaks' games

31 January 2007 15:01 by James "Dela" Delahunty | 15 comments

WindTangent, a gaming company has been reporting that the parental controls on Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system are so strict they are disrupting gameplay. The company said that across RealArcade, Yahoo Games, AOL Games, and even on its own site, the security restrictions are effectively "breaking games". The reason for this is that the source games have no ESRB rating.

As a result, the system apparently find that the game is inappropriate for children and blocks them on any computer that has Parent Control running. "We worked with nearly every major casual game developer to get their games tested and compatible with Vista in our network in anticipation of these problems," founder Alex St. John, one of the creators of Microsoft's DirectX technology, said.

Microsoft however, is not impressed with the media's reporting of the issue and sent a statement to betanews..

"The recent claims made about Windows Vista online game compatibility issues have been grossly overstated and in actuality, a fraction of casual games are encountering temporary upgrade issues � a situation we have largely corrected and are committed to fixing within days," a spokesperson said.

"For context, of the more than 100 web-based games currently available on MSN Games, only five do not run on Windows Vista as of January 30 and nearly 100% will be fully compatible by week�s end with an update to the Windows Vista installer."

"The online compatibility issue was primarily with the Windows Vista installer, which has been updated. The updated installer has fixed the majority of the issues surrounding casual games� compatibility with Windows Vista," the spokesperson added. "With regards to unrated games not appearing in Parental Controls, the first thing to note is that Parental Controls is turned off by default. To change this, parents would need to turn on Parental Controls."

Source:
Betanews

Permalink to this article

Steve Ballmer blames piracy for slow Vista sales (20 February 2007)

iTunes has problems with Vista (3 February 2007)

Vista DRM broken? (31 January 2007)

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Discuss this article!
tabletpc (Inactive) 31 January 2007 15:09
i told you DRM on vista was a problem [ + quote]
Gidgid (Newbie) 31 January 2007 16:03
Technically that's parental controls, not DRM, but yeah, I agree. [ + quote]
PeaInAPod (AfterDawn Addict) 31 January 2007 17:04
Quote: For context, of the more than 100 web-based games currently available on MSN Games, only five do not run on Windows Vista Well gee, I wonder why Microsoft=MSN so why I would believe all of a companies game titles should work with their system period. Vista is garbage and I do not plan to upgrade anytime soon. Long Live XP!! [ + quote]
tabletpc (Inactive) 1 February 2007 1:35
no it has to do with DRM because parrental controls in vista are controlled by DRM [ + quote]
Mr-Movies (Member) 1 February 2007 7:38
Absolutely it�s DRM and it�s not just on Vista either. It is integrated into the new Internet Explore 7 so if you have XP and upgrade to that you may have problems. I've had to tell customers to re-install there OS because of this. Once it�s on your system you can remove it, but it doesn't fully remove of course, no going back to IE6 without extra DRM. You got to love MS! [ + quote]
vegeta66 (Inactive) 1 February 2007 8:24
long live xp, yeah right, windows 2000 is probably the only good os microsoft ever made, as soon as it gets to old to use, I'm permanently switching to Fedora core linux. and why would anyone want to use ie7, firefox2 and Opera are better, and are DRM free. =) [ + quote]
PeaInAPod (AfterDawn Addict) 1 February 2007 12:02
I know this is off topic but how does IE 7 use DRM? I've never heard of this and I can't figure out what/how it does it. [ + quote]
solarf (Member) 1 February 2007 13:12
well DRM seems to be a pain. [ + quote]
tabletpc (Inactive) 1 February 2007 13:32
ie 7 uses DRM to block certain web pages i.e the ones that allow us to download hacks and cracks and some bittorrents as well [ + quote]
mark5hs (Senior Member) 1 February 2007 15:27
if parental control is screwing with the game, turn off parental control [ + quote]
geerichy (Newbie) 1 February 2007 15:57
i recently upgraded to IE7 as an attempt to fix a corrupted IE6. I ended up using Firefox and don't use the IE7. will there still be a DRM problem? i heard that Vista has made data reporting either mandatory or hidden... is there any truth to that? [ + quote]
Rikoshay (Member) 2 February 2007 0:23
I don't see what the fuss is about. Every company name that is in that list all one way or the other has some form of malware or spyware in it, so they shouldn't even be recognized anyway. I'm also glad that I haven't gotten IE7 at all with the tidbit of it having embedded DRM in it, I'm trying to avoid as many of those types of products as I can. [ + quote]
polarbear (Inactive) 2 February 2007 5:35
as a (greyhaired)newbie (with teenage children "helping" me) and trying to understand the effects of DRM on this sort of problem. how the devil do i get rid of ie7 now that my "helpers have already installed it? also does the DRM hassle effect sharezza cheers all Bear [ + quote]
PeaInAPod (AfterDawn Addict) 2 February 2007 12:36
Unfortunately I upgraded to IE7 before even seeing the news post. But since I primarily use Opera does this even effect me? I don't think it would, as I assume the DRM is built into the IE7 program not integrated into my actual windows install. [ + quote]
FXEF (Newbie) 4 February 2007 13:36
Polarbear, The best way to remove IE is to install Ubuntu Linux! FXEF [ + quote]