Questions and Answers:

To complete this review off I submitted a few questions to the developers of Game Jackal regarding some of the operations of the program and future developments of the program.

Below are the questions I asked along with their responses.

Why did SlySoft decide to purchase Game Jackal?

There are numerous reasons, however the stand out ones were that it was a product with a lot of potential, in addition to being a perfect fit with the existing SlySoft product line up. It’s also worth noting that given the changes to the Australian laws with regards to circumvention, Game Jackal may have well disappeared altogether had we not taken it onboard.

Can you give a simply overview of how the program works regarding creating the profile for games?

Essentially Game Jackal captures certain information required by a game at start-up, and then returns that data when called upon. This is similar to how a virtual drive would work with a CD or DVD image. However Game Jackal sits over the top of real hardware and only stores a minimal amount of information.

Tages and StarForce. These two protections seem to be the bane of most copying/ emulating programs. Can we hope for anything from Game Jackal regarding these two?

Yes, both these protections are far more complex than either SafeDisc and SecuROM (the most common forms of protection current used). However, we are currently working on Tages and are expecting to support this in coming versions. We had actually started the development on Tages support in v2.9, however it soon became apparent that some major driver work would be required, so this was done for v3. With regards to StarForce, we will be looking at it after Tages is supported all sorted.

What can we expect in the future from Game Jackal?

Well in the short term it will be all about getting the product as polished as possible, while also improving game support with features such as Tages compatibility. Long term there are a number of areas we are looking into. One of these is being able to create a profile by simply scanning the CD or DVD (i.e. no game start-up would be required).

Before Game Jackal was acquired the team was planning “to develop an integrated solution for PC Gamers during the coming months” with the GameShadow team. Is this something that is still going to happen and if so what can we expect?

At this stage we have enough on our plate and there are no plans with regards to integrating with any other third-party products.

SlySoft once again seems to be on a winner with Game Jackal, what else can we expect from you?

SlySoft have for many years been the leaders in the development of CD and DVD tools. And in recent years have expanded that range to include products such as AnyDVD HD, our flagship HD-DVD and BluRay product. Our plan is to continue leading the market in these areas, and to research new and evolving segments of product development.

Is there anything else that you would like to pass on to the CDFreaks readers?

I guess the main thing to pass on would be that we have a great support team in place to help with any issues that may arise. In addition we also have a forum where there are a vast number of SlySoft forum members willing to help.

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