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Beware

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 601 / 672
Date: August 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I would love to be able to buy this game. But the pain outweighs the benefits. First they put such powerful copy protection on this, that many or most CD-RW/DVD-RW drives will NOT work to install or play the game from.

This is because they have DISABLED them. Well, gosh, thanks a lot! My laptop ONLY COMES with a CDRW drive! PLUS, even if I could install the game, I have to have the game CD in the drive at all times. Which means it will be spinning my CD all the time, sucking down my battery in far less than an hour.

Thanks guys.

So I want to buy this so I can play it while I'm out and about, waiting for meetings or just at the park....and I can't. AND even if I COULD, the CD will have to be up and spinning?

This is unacceptable! Tell me, how many laptops come with only straight CD or JUST strait DVD drives now? I don't know of any.

I say tell them to KEEP thier stupid program. This company doesn't own every single good chess programmer in the world. There are plenty of other companies that make good products. Buy one from any of them.

If you can't play the game you purchased where and whenever you want--Then Tell Chessmaster to shove thier product. They are not serving you. So don't serve THEM.

Don't buy if you have clone software installed on your pc

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 497 / 534
Date: September 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game refused to start on my pc. It stated that I had a CD\DVD emulation software on my pc and it had to be removed. Ubisoft copy protection is to blame. It looks for any clone software such as CloneCD, Alcohol 120%, Daemon Tools, etc., that use CD\DVD emulation. If it finds any it will not start the program even though you have the original Ubisoft cd in the drive. What they are doing is telling you what you can and cannot have on your own computer. After I found this out, I brought my Chessmaster 10 back to Best Buy. The computer tech geek there was so upset when I explained and showed him why there was a problem that he gave me a full refund despite a store policy of no refunds on open software. He said he had some of this same clone software on his own pc. As for me, Ubisoft has lost a customer. Never again will I buy their software.

Avoid this copy protected game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 42 / 47
Date: October 21, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If you buy this game legally you will be treated like a pirate. UbiSoft has no respect for their customers. You must play the game with CD1 in the CD player even though it installed everything onto the hard drive during installation. The purpose for this I guess is to annoy customers. Why don't they check that you are using a legal CD at install time and let it go at that? No - you need the original CD every time you play. What happens if the original CD gets scratched or lost? I guess you're out of luck. Like I'd ever buy this game again.

And UbiSoft also prevents you from making backup copies of the CDs - in direct violation of US Copyright law which allows the customer to make backup copies for safekeeping.

To top it off - if UbiSoft discovers that you even have installed certain programs such as CloneCD or Alcohol 120 - it won't run even if you have the original CD in the drive! Can you imagine if Microsoft wouldn't run MS Word or Excel if they detected that you had installed Word Perfect or Open Office? Even if you had paid for a legal copy of the software? And it won't run even if the banned software is turned off and is not being used!

What a way to treat customers. Buy the software legally and then lose your rights as protected under US Copyright law, and be told what else you may install on your own computer! Even if you are not using the other software - just it's presence is a no-no in UbiSoft's eyes.

Any software pirate will get a cracked version of this program off the Net and play it happily. Its only the law abiding customers who are being screwed.

UbiSoft should take a look at the backlash that TurboTax had last year when they went to copy protection. Turbo Tax is abandoning copy protection from now on.

I will never buy any more UbiSoft software again until they get rid of this junk in their products. And its not like its even all that great anyway when you play it. The engine is not top of the line and as others have said - it frequently locks up and acts weird. Well worth copy protecting, right!

It dosen't work on CD/Writer or Burner

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 35 / 39
Date: September 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

After I loaded the game on my Laptop, it never could start with the CD constantly spinning in my CD rom. According to their tech support at NC, it won't work on CD burner for the sake of illegal duplication. His suggestion was that I need to buy an external plain CD rom to play this game. This info should have been printed on their product box!!!!!

Software that dictates what's on your system!!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 35 / 37
Date: November 28, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If you buy this game legally you will be treated like a pirate. UbiSoft has no respect for their customers. You must play the game with CD1 in the CD player even though it installed everything onto the hard drive during installation. The purpose for this I guess is to annoy customers. Why don't they check that you are using a legal CD at install time and let it go at that? No - you need the original CD every time you play. What happens if the original CD gets scratched or lost? I guess you're out of luck. Like I'd ever buy this game again.

And UbiSoft also prevents you from making backup copies of the CDs - in direct violation of US Copyright law which allows the customer to make backup copies for safekeeping.

To top it off - if UbiSoft discovers that you even have installed certain programs such as CloneCD or Alcohol 120 - it won't run even if you have the original CD in the drive! Can you imagine if Microsoft wouldn't run MS Word or Excel if they detected that you had installed Word Perfect or Open Office? Even if you had paid for a legal copy of the software? And it won't run even if the banned software is turned off and is not being used!

What a way to treat customers. Buy the software legally and then lose your rights as protected under US Copyright law, and be told what else you may install on your own computer! Even if you are not using the other software - just it's presence is a no-no in UbiSoft's eyes.

Any software pirate will get a cracked version of this program off the Net and play it happily. Its only the law abiding customers who are being screwed.

UbiSoft should take a look at the backlash that TurboTax had last year when they went to copy protection. Turbo Tax is abandoning copy protection from now on.

I will never buy any more UbiSoft software again until they get rid of this junk in their products. And its not like its even all that great anyway when you play it. The engine is not top of the line and as others have said - it frequently locks up and acts weird. Well worth copy protecting, right!

I should have read the reviews

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 31 / 35
Date: April 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I paid good money for this game and I can't play it. Every time I try to play it I just get a black screen and no game. I tried installing and re-installing it with no luck. I am so upset I can't see straight. So now I have to go thru the hassle of sending the thing back. UBISOFT sucks!

Full of bugs, not supported on Win2K & requires CD in drive

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 28 / 31
Date: September 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The chess play of this game is fairly good, but I would not recommend it for several reasons.

1) The first thing is that, even though you perform a full install, the software requires the CD to be in the drive to run. If you only have one CD drive and you want to do something else while playing the game (such as listening to a music CD, etc), you can forget about it. The system requirements for this game should say that it needs its own, dedicated CD drive.

2) The computer takes ages to make a move, but never loses due to time. The more time you give it, the more it takes. When it does get low on time, however, the clock mysteriously stops. For example, if you set the time requirement to 30 minutes per game then the computer will take several minutes to make a move. Once the computer's time gets down to about 40 seconds or less, it will continue to take a long time to make a move, but its clock will not run. You, on the other hand, do not have this "infinite time" benefit and your clock will definitely run out on you, causing you to lose the game. Speaking of infinite time, if you do set the time constraints to this then you can forget about ever seeing the computer move; it simply will not.

3) This is the biggest issue for me, it is the "Can not initialize 3D engine" error. This happens regularly and can only be remedied by resetting your computer. Lets say you play a game and then close Chessmaster. Ninety-percent of the time you will get this error when you trying to open it again which will require you to reboot. If you switch between options in the game too often, this error will come up. For example, if you go the chess academy and then back to the training play, you'll likely get this error. The software seems to be "one shot only". After you play it, reboot your machine; after you go into one part of it, reboot before going into another, etc.

Do not waste your money on this piece of crap.

UBISoft messed up on this one

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 24 / 30
Date: June 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have owned every version of this product since Chessmaster 5000. Sure Fritz is stronger and has a better reputation but for ease of use and flexibility, you couldn't do better than Chessmaster. At least that's what I thought until I laid my mitts on the piece of #&$@# that is the 10th edition.
Boy, did UBISoft miss the boat. First they stop you from playing the game without the CD. Come on! What's up with that? The old mode of refreshing your installation every 10 games or so was inconvenient enough. And now I absolutely must have the CD in my drive to enjoy a game of chess? UBISoft should pay attention to the competition. The makers of Fritz know better.
But the major annoyance is that this program is as buggy as hell. It crashes all the time and there is no consistency in gameplay. One minute the program is absolutely slaughtering you, the next minute it makes the dumbest move possible. After a couple of months fiddling with the damn thing, I uninstalled it and went back to playing the 9000 version and Fritz.
I'm giving UBISoft one more chance. If the next version they turn out is as crappy as this one, then they have lost me as a customer permanently.

DO NOT BUY! THIS IS JUNK!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 31 / 34
Date: January 20, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Rarely am I compelled to stop what I am doing and write a review about a product. However, this product is such garbage, that I felt that need.In fact, it should receive no stars.

First, the game can only be used with certain video cards, which is something I did not learn until after I received the product. Specifically, it can only be used with a GeForce 1/2/3/4/FX or an ATI 7500-9000 series graphics processor. Now keep in nind, I meet those specs anway.

Second, you need the 1st CD (of 3) to play the game. Although not normally a problem, if you have an ultraportable or tablet PC, forget about this product.

Third, the installation is over 540mb minimum install. Thats if you do not install anything but just the pure game files.

After installing, I rebooted my Dell 8300 (2gb Ram P4 3.0, 400gb hard drive, ATI Graphics card with 256mb RAM on board). I started the program, and it locked up my computer. Tried again, no luck. Rebooted and tried opening the program, it finally opened. However, all the graphics were off.

Long story short, this game should be taken off the market and the development team put out on the street.

ALL I WANT TO DO IS PLAY CHESS!!!!!! DO NOT BUY! SAVE YOURSELF THE AGGRAVATION!

Ubisoft gets Checkmated by their own Chess Program

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 21 / 29
Date: April 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

It seems to me that Ubisoft has made a classic blunder in the software industry: They assumed that without air-tight copy protection they would lose great gobs of money to rampant software pirates in such countries as Russia and China. (perhaps this is akin to the classic blunder of getting involved in a land war in Asia? Hmmmm....)

This assumption lacks foresight in two areas:
1) Many people in these countries would never actually BUY a Chessmaster program in the first place. Just because someone obtains an illegal copy for free doesn't mean that Ubisoft has "lost" money. One cannot lose something one never had and never will obtain.
2) By building an Iron Curtain of copy protection on their software, they have angered their most important market of all: The US. As a result, I believe they have actually lost more earnings potential than if there were no copy protection at all.

Way to go Ubisoft. Check and Mate, Holmes.
You might want to re-think things for the next version...

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