The date 29th of January, 2009 - seems inconspicuous enough, right? No dramatic events are usually scheduled for that day, correct? It would seem not - unless of course you would like to play your PC version of Gears of War. Users on Epic's official forums have discovered that the game has ceased working as of that date - instead giving the error "You cannot run the game with modified executable code."

Moments later, several more reports had come in - with others unable to run the game, without having modified their executable files. Puzzled, some crafty gamers set to some detective work, in a bid to discover the issue. As it turns out, the PC version of Gears of War has a security certificate assigned to it - one which expires on the 29th of January, 2009. Epic Games were taken by surprise, and are currently working with their publisher, Microsoft, in an attempt to fix the issue.


Over at the official forums, an Epic moderator by the name of joeGraf acknowledged the issue:

We have been notified of the issue and are working with Microsoft to get it resolved. Sorry for any problems related to this. I'll post more once we have a resolution.

In response to another user - it was confirmed that the issue was being dealt with - "We're trying to figure out how and why it happened so we can get it fixed."

While Epic are currently working on a fix - users experiencing the issue and wanting to actually play the game are able to set their system clocks back a day to circumvent the expiry of the certificate.

While the fury surrounding DRM wasn't a large issue upon the PC release of Gears of War - now is the time that has come to light, much like a time bomb. It is fair enough that Epic are working on a fix - but what if they had ceased to exist? Turning back one's PC clock should not be required to play a game that uses a simple CD check, and CD key authorisation.