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StarForce Copy Protection Causing User Ire
Ant writes "According to a thread on the Rage3D boards, and another on The Adventure Company's site, the copy protection system StarForce, as used in PC videogames including Toca Race Driver 2, Traitor's Gate 2 and Broken Sword 3, is installed on a user's PC without proper explanation, and doesn't get removed on many uninstalls - some users report difficulty in keeping their systems stable due to conflicts, and think they've tracked it down to the StarForce protection."
I read through much of the threads on the forums mentioned in the abstract, and what is terrible about this thing is that even after installing the game, the "driver" remains. Remove it manually and it returns later like spyware! And what is most disturbing is that one user received an uninstaller after he complained to the company--only the uninstaller didn't uninstall the thing either!
"The television is the retina of the mind's eye" - Videodrome
1) Don't buy the game. Pirate it once a warez group comes up with a cracked copy with all the annoying copy protection removed.
2) Send a personal check to the development company for what the game would have cost you. In some cases, dev houses have copy protection forced on them by the developer. Most dev houses will have contact information listed on their website. Include, with your check, a letter saying that you are sending them this check because you are unwilling to buy the game with copy protection included. This is very important, to ensure that they get the message -- this is an unhappy customer who is honest enough to pay for their game -- the copy protection not only was unnecessary for you, but made you unhappy.
You shouldn't have any ethical problems, as you're paying the developers for their time and effort. As for legality -- technically, what you're doing is illegal, but prosecutions for pirating software for personal use are nonexistent, and the possiblity of such lawsuits is openly ignored en masse.
May we never see th
when I buy a game, there are a couple things i do while installing it: 1. look for and download a patch. 2. look for and download a crack. to me, being able to play a game on the pc without needing the cd is important, and i consider cracks just another patch I have to install to make my games function the way I want. i have a large colletion of games, which means a large collection of discs, and its easy to temporarily misplace one disc (its on my shelf or in my binder somewhere, but it can take longer to find the disc than it does to play the game in some cases!) that said, I do not pirate games for myself, ever. i consider paying for games (to have the official disc and the manual) to be important, and I have to give big props to developers that either don't include copy protection in their games, or 'crack' the game themselves upon release of a patch (games like quake3 and unreal tournament 2k4 make me happy.)
Burning pirated games is not the thing to do nowadays. Pirates instead download a CD image and mount it. With Linux it's no problem, and for Windows you can use something like Daemon Tools.
We've gone over this countless times. You are 100% correct, pirates will pirate, regardless of protection. I remember my pirated copy of 3DStudio MAX, which was cracked despite requiring a bunch of serials and an actual hardware dongle.
The end 'legitimate' user will always pay the price of hacked-up protection schemes. I still install my warezed copy of starcraft instead of the copy I bought. Searching for the CD for a game that completely installs on my drive is just annoying.
Companies don't understand this, and for some reason it seems they never will. Or perhaps they just don't care. Either way, we should just let the subject die, or come up with a better way for users to benefit from protection.
-- I have fans? Wow.
My friend purchased Painkiller immediately after it was released. He liked the demo so much, why not? Well, there were some issues with Safedisc. Certain CD and DVD prevented the game from running. AAnother one of our friends also ran into the same problem -- it wasn't an isolated case. After several weeks of him trying to get it to work with official patches I finally suggested he try a no-cd crack. Guess what, it worked. Personally, I think the game industry is in serious trouble when warez groups have better releases the the game developers themselves.
Of course, to be fair for the developers of Painkiller, as it was a Safedisc problem it is Macrovision's fault. Developers really need to be aware of this stuff. I won't even get into the pain in the ass of constantly swapping CDs just to play a different game. Maybe they just need to remember that the people paying for the games are thier customers -- not their enemies. Of course, that wouldn't make Macrovision very much money. What really has me worried is the new download-only systems like Steam. There is going to be a day when Steam is dead. How will I play those games then? (Yes, I enjoy old games)
That doesn't work anymore, at least with Toca Race Driver 2 it didn't. I am about finished buying games, movie DVD's and Music CDs because of this. I am SICK of the troubles and junk they install these days. Copy Potection has back fired on them as far as I'm concerned. I hope more of you will feel the same way and one day these companies will just lay off the junk when they aren't selling anymore products because of it.