Vista and security practices
By Fjodor on Feb. 13, 2007.
Extremetech has tested 25 games on Vista, and though I am not a gamer, I thought I’d take look. It does have some interesting tidbits, considering normal security practices.
In the section about Battlefield 2, it is noted, that to connect to servers employing Punkbuster protection, you need to run the game with Administrator privileges, seeing this as being somewhat of a non-issue (“That little fix allowed me to jump on any server with Punkbuster enabled…”).
This procedure is referred to a number of times, either as not needed or as a normal procedure (“This is starting to look like a pretty common cure-all for Vista games compatibility issues.”, “…and only a handful needed just a minor tweak or two, like running the game as Administrator”). Now, how is that for security, running large, networked, closed-source, cracker-luring programs with full privileges on the system?
Another little thing, concerning Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth II, Rise of Legends, is seen as a feature. I am oblivious to the actual procedure of adding anything to the Windows Firewall, but even assuming a dialog window, many users would undoubtedly be compelled to just click on “Yes” and be done with it: “As it does with Windows XP, the game can add itself to the Windows Firewall exception list to make sure online play isn’t blocked.”. Now that just makes me feel warm and fuzzy all over…
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Category: Microsoft