Solved Is it REALLY necessary to 'mount' a game ISO?

[teckneeculler]

Seems to me that almost every hint\tutorial\how-to about handling ISO files says you must use apps like Daemon Tools or Alcohol 120% to 'mount' a game ISO file.

I don't understand why. I mean, any number of apps will open and extract an ISO to reveal the contained files. Even WinRar can do it.

So why the dependence on Daemon Tools or Alcohol 120%?

I await a succinct explanation with interest

 

[rvcjew]

Most games had or still do to an extent a DRM in place that looks for a physical disk or image of that disc at least for genuinity purposes's. In fact daemon tools and alcohol have things in place that when they mount certain .iso types they fool that protection as just mounting a image is sometimes not enough. Most games are all on some kind of Digital Media platform now (steam, ect.)

EDIT: If your just wanting to install a game you could extract the files but the image is a single file that is much cleaner for archiving purposes and a mounted image has very a minimal difference in performance to that of the extracted files.

 

[RoasterMen]

Extracting the contents of the image file takes a bit more time. Some games have a copy right protection that stops the game from launching if the protection detects a mounted image file (Guitar Hero III is an example).

 

[teckneeculler]

Thanks, guys. I was forgetting about copy protection