Game Key Revealer retrieves PC game keys

Game Key Revealer's interface is simple.

(Credit: CNET)

Lifehacker pointed us to a handy PC gaming tool this morning. Game Key Revealer is a free download that can tell you the security key for any PC games (of roughly 500 titles, according to its unspecified, presumably Turkish creator) you may have installed on your system. This could obviously be useful if you've lost your documentation. We were curious if it would help piracy as well, so we took Game Key Revealer for a quick spin this afternoon.

We successfully installed and ran Game Key Revealer on a Windows XP Pro-based Lenovo laptop, and an eMachines desktop using Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit. We ran into trouble on a Velocity Micro desktop running 64-bit Vista Home Premium. It wanted an MSSTDFMT.DLL file that system didn't have. The Game Key Revealer Web site provides a download to that same file in relation to a problem with Windows XP, but it makes no mention of 64-bit Vista having the issue, and the download provided no instructions on what to do with the file once we extracted it. We spent a minute or two trying to register the DLL with that system, but had no luck (if anyone knows how to register a .DLL file in 64-bit Vista, feel free to drop us a line).

On the systems where Game Key Revealer did work, we tried three games: Crysis, which requires you to enter the key before the game will install, and Unreal Tournament 3 and World in Conflict, both of which let you enter a key post-installation. Would-be PC game pirates would obviously salivate at retrieving product keys for games that let you install first.

We're happy to report that the Game Key Revealer properly retrieved the key for Crysis. It also did not let us cheat the installers for Unreal Tournament 3 or World in Conflict. We can't speak for the other 497 or so games on the compatibility list, but at least in our brief hands-on, the Game Key Revealer worked as advertised, and responsibly.