As per NProtect Customer Support, SEGA has enabled a "Virtual PC Environment Blocking Policy" within the GameGuard configuration. With this policy enabled, GameGuard will throw Error NP1013 (i.e. "conflicting software"), or other errors, when attempting to play the game.
As there is no indication of this policy on the Windows Store, or known issues listed by SEGA here on pso2.com, do not try to install this game if you are running Windows inside a virtual machine. This includes macOS, and Linux users wishing to play this game on other platforms, and covers known VM technologies (Hyper-V, Parallels Desktop, VMWare, Virtual Box).
Here is a copy of the message text, per NProtect Support:
Note the final sentence "If you have any questions or inquiries regarding the Virtual PC Environment Blocking Policy, please contact the game company.", as well as the use of the term policy throughout the email, indicating that this is a policy enforced by the game developer, and not something enabled by NProtect themselves.
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I[1], and others[2], have experienced issues with NP1013, and there is nothing indicating this policy being enabled on any front officially. Only through contacting the developer of NProtect, by sending them a blank email attached with only the ERL error logs, was I able to understand that this policy had been made/configured by SEGA.
I have filed a ticket via support.pso2.com, and urge others with this issue to do so as well, asking SEGA to remove the Virtual PC Environment Blocking Policy.
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Can a mod pin this so people can see it? I feel like this is important to know before someone goes through hours downloading 80+ GB for a game