A digital certificate that expired on Wednesday borked the original Gears of War for PC players; Epic is working up a fix. Meantime, VP Mark Rein has given an explanation and an apology.
Note: Folks, I broke the headline and it's taking a while to flush out of our system cache; the correction's been made. This refers to original Gears of War only. My error.
Rein said online cheat detection features in Gears of War for Windows are based on digital signatures. "We made an embarassing mistake," he said. "We signed the executable with a certificate that expired in a way that broke the game."
Rein said Epic is working with Microsoft to re-sign the binaries properly, and they "hope to have this fixed very soon.
"We know how much this situation sucks, and we apologize for the inconvenience," he said.
I just like hearing an executive speaking in my language, for once. This isn't merely inconvenient - leaving the remote control in the kitchen is inconvenient. This sucks. Woo-hoo for calling it like it is, although he still calls it inconvenient, I guess because it's not a matter of personal safety.
Meantime, Rein suggests backdating your computer's clock to a date before today in order to play Gears of War.
Again, before you go apeshit in the comments: I put in an erroneous headline and immediately corrected it. If your front page says Gears 2, it's in error. This concerns original Gears of War only.