Compatibility issues with Digital Rights Management (DRM) software and Intel's 12th Gen Alder Lake processors are not allowing some games to be played on new Intel hardware.
DRM already has a poor record in the world of gaming, forcing people to have an internet connection to play games, many performance issues and even running software in the background that hogs system resources.
The list of games effected includes some big titles such as Assassins Creed Valhalla, Mortal Kombat 11, Star Wars Jedi: The Fallen Order, Assassins Creed Odyssey, Assassins Creed Origins and Wolfenstein: Youngblood. For the full list of titles, head here.
Intel has built a new architecture for its Alder Lake CPUs that splits cores into performance and efficiency cores, similar to SoC's on mobile devices.
The problem is the DRM software, in some cases, recognises the efficiency cores as another system and causes the game to crash.
The company has released a list of games that have been affected by the problem and said a fix in mid-November should fix compatibility issues with some games, while it continues to work with developers to resolve problems with other games.
Intel has also given users a workaround while they wait for a fix. Head into your system BIOS setup (keep pressing Del or F1 during boot), then look for Legacy Game Compatibility in the settings menu and toggle it on. Now save changes and exit.
Before playing an affected game, press the scroll lock key once to enable legacy mode and play. Disable scroll lock after you are done with the game.
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