ironically, the movie is actually been self-censored by the studio producing it, the religious themes has been toned down;;
that didn't stop christians still loosing their shit at the movie for existing and dare suggesting blindly following authority figures is bad actually-

honestly i don't see why you'd even bother trying to appease them their going to hate it no matter what given the source material;

the game was treated worse by reviewers than the movie was; which honestly i think is sad, since i really liked the game,
but anyway, despite the poor reviews, i actually liked it quite alot, and generally disagree with alot of the points made by most reviews at the time;

from what i understand, the game follows the events of "The Northen Lights" from His Dark Materials a bit closer than the film does.

.. but i will admit it is kind of hard to access these days- which is what this post is ACTUALLY about;
 

lets go over your various options for playing the game today:

• The PS3 version
• Disc-only; there is no digital version (have to track down a copy)
• The disc has been dumped and can be found online in a few places, so you could use ManaGunZ or mmCM; though doing this always sucks
• No trophies, as this predates the trophy system entirely, and it being required by TRC.
• has a few extra areas that aren't present on PS2.
• Can technically use an emulator (rpcs3, though this requires beefy computer)
• The PS2 Version
• Also disc only, but thats not surprising.
• Has been dumped too, could use OPL, ESR, etc; but kinda sucks.
• Needs analog output on tv, and all the other shit playing ps2 entails
• Could use an emulator (rpcs2, though this kinda sucks)
• Missing some areas and cutscenes present in ps3 version
• The PSP Version
• This is also UMD only, (have to track down a copy)
• Unlike the ps3 and ps2; loading ISOs on psp doesn't suck
• Could easily be converted to digital game and played on unmodified  (with e.g sign_np)
• Can run on unmodified PlayStation Vita (with e.g chovy-sign)
• Can run on CFW PS3, using mmCM, (but at that point use the ps3 version)
• Probably missing stuff like the PS2 verison is, but not sure i haven't played it fully.
• Fairly easy to emulate (PPSSPP)
• The Wii Version
• Also Also disc only, but that's not surprising the wii never had full digital games, only WiiWare;
• Could load an ISO/WBFS file using Usb Loader GX or simular (but, as i mentioned for ps3, and ps2 consoles, this totally sucks)
• HAVE to use Numchuck to control, no other controller is supported.
• Can play on Wii U Via vWii!
• Can probably play using emulator, like dolphin, not as easy as PSP, but not as bad as PS3 or PS2 either;
• The Xbox 360 Version
• Also disc only, no digital version XBLA or GOD version exists as far as i know,
• Only version to have achievements !!!
• Loading ISOs on Xbox 360 sucks alot less, as the dashboard/ISO loader is opened at startup
• .. but hacking an Xbox 360 sucks alot more than every other console mentioned
• could use Xenia emulator maybe, i haven't tried it, but honestly its probably easier to emulate anything else.
• The Nintendo DS Version
• The Nintendo DS Version is actually a completely different game.
• It might still be good or not, i didn't play much of it,

So that leaves naturally, The PC Version which should be extremely accessible; since it should be fairly accessible;
however in practice; there are actually two PC versions;

there is a PC DVD-ROM version, and a now delisted verison on Steam

unfortunately you would think this would be perfect as that's very accessible and works even on linux and macos via WINE;
but you would be wrong .. the PC DVD-ROM version is using the SafeDisc DRM Scheme;

which notoriously used a kernel driver to function, so you can forget about WINE;
and even if you have the disc and a windows PC it still wont work, because Microsoft killed it in modern versions of windows!
 

i was not able to find any dedicated crack for the game on windows anywhere, but i was able to get it to work via SafeDiscLoader2
it didn't work initally, however after creating an issue with the developer which they answered very quickly, we were able to get it working in a new version!

however even if you use this, it wont run on older versions of windows, like Vista or XP, and it also won't work on WINE; this merely bypasses the DRM,
its not a full unpack/removal of it!

.. .. now to get to the main reason i made this post:
what about the Steam version? the game was released on steam back in 2007, lasted until 2009, then was removed;
in theory the Steam version wouldn't have SafeDisc, as there is no Disc, and that only works for disc copies

well yes, it should, and that would be *really easy* to break, however unfortunately-
i have been completely unable to find a copy of the Steam version anywhere online at all

none of the steamunlocked or torrent sites or anything had it, only the PC ISO version without even any crack for it

That was until fairly recently, when i on a whim decided to search directly on Internet Archive, instead of on the usual torrent or download sites;
and something came up, a copy of one of the Steam Depots for The Golden Compass;

if you don't know, games on steam contain multiple "Depots" which contain a manifest that point to where to download each file;
the manifest is encrypted with a Depot Key, which is obtained when you buy the game on Steam;
 

not only had i found an archive of the steam version, but it wasn't even just someone uploading the game files, it was explicitly a copy of the games actual Depot,
with the Manifest and everything!!!

unfortunately as nice as this is to have, the files in here are the raw unmodified files, which is nice, but that also means their still encrypted with Steam DRM;

Thankfully though i know how to break that, its fairly easy, there are two main things Steam DRM can comprise of

the first one is Steamworks, this is an api to do RPC with steam that does things like matchmaking, acheivements, etc;
this is that "steam_api.dll" that ships with everything .. this isn't really a DRM scheme to be honest.
 .. however some games will use this to check if steam api initalizes and if it doesn't then the game closes,

the second thing is SteamStub, this is actually intended as a DRM, its an executable packer that encrypts your executable in some way;
it wraps the Steam_API stuff into the main executable, and ensures steam is running and whatnot;

looking at the Golden Compass Steam version, it became apparent its using SteamStub DRM, and doesn't seem to make use of steamworks (steam_api.dll) at all

this is where i would tell you i reverse engineered the format, searched through x86 assembly and manually unpacked the game;
but no, i did not, i downloaded the off-the-shelf steamstub unpacker, called "steamless" that is just sitting on github
and has been around for ages, and i pointed it to the golden compass EXE.

i clicked unpack, and right after that, i now had a cracked version of The Golden Compass on steam;

.. checking and yep, this works flawlessly, it also works in WINE, it also works on older versions of windows,

you can get the steam version along with the crack on an internet archive page we made
i could upload the version.dll, safediscloader crack too, but i would like to wait until i can dump the DVD myself;
its also just very simple, you download the version.dll, copy it into the game folder and it works ..
 though .. its probably better to use the Steam version anyway, more reliable, easy to reverse engineer, etc

we also have physical copies of the ps3, wii, and ps2 versions, which we also uploaded to archive.org

• PS3
• Wii
• PS2
• Steam (PC)