Controversial StarForce Copy Protection Creators Quizzed

Thanks to FiringSquad for its interview with the creators of the StarForce copy protection scheme for PC videogames. The author explains: "In recent months there's been an increasing awareness and alarm over StarForce copy protection. It's actually a driver that installs itself with the [Windows] games that come shipped with it, and originally it didn't uninstall when the game was uninstalled." StarForce's Abbie Sommer argues the advantages of "driver-level copy protection", explaining: "The drivers are what prevents the use of kernel debugger utilities such as SoftICE, Cool Debugger, Soft Snoop etc. Also the drivers prevent emulators from spoofing a drive, and thwart burning tools such as Alcohol 120%." The author concludes by injecting a little personal opinion into the mix, arguing: "PC games will never go away, but if the market keeps shrinking due to the increasing ease of piracy... then the number and quality of games will almost certainly decrease."

Comments

And punish legitimate users?

[Devar]

Thanks for nothing! If I want to use these tools then I shouldn't have to put up with this kind of crap from software companies. It's almost like them installing a virus. They wouldn't like it if I installed software on their machines that denied access to certain things, would they.

Re:And punish legitimate users?

[Rick the Red]

Do all copy-protected games have a warning on the box so you can easily avoid them? No? Then how can I "simply [not] buy their product"?I'll gladly not buy their product, if I can avoid it.

Re:And punish legitimate users?

[halowolf]

The only problem that I have with copy protection schemes at the moment is that I have to put CD's into my DVD/CD drive to play the games that I purchase. I find it very annoying. Having 2 drives, one burner and one DVD/CD drive aleviates this problem somewhat, but still its annoying.

I look after my disks so I don't need to make backups of them. Some of the people complaining about how this software disables their burning applications and such, should probably read the end of the article where it states that those types of applications are only disabled when the game is being played.

Personally I buy all my games, whether I have the ability to copy them or not, because I want to reward those publishes that make good games. The reason because "we" the consumers are being treated as criminals, is because some of the "we" are acting like criminals, so the fact that I have to put up with these ridiculous methods is because of those that are pirating this software. As ineffective as it is, I cant find fault with PC games publishers wanting to do something to protect their investments.

However publishers and consumers alike should both get off of their soap boxes and do something constructive about the problem instead of both sides making ridiculous arguments and counterclaims.

Re:And punish legitimate users?

[Bert64]

Being unable to copy the games wouldn't be so bad if the publishers would provide a free media replacement service, So that anyone with a proof of purchase of the original game can get replacement media if the original becomes damaged...
But no, they would rather try and force you to buy another copy

Re:And punish legitimate users?

[marcovje]

Indeed. I hate this, and not even out of privacy/control grounds. The main problems are simple practicality.

Such schemes means you can throw away your games when you move to a new (Major) windows version, are far more likely to cause problems in Windows etc etc.

Forget about running your legitimately bought games running on an emulator in 10 years.

It is the same problem I have with DRM and mangled CDs. The copyright enforcing stuff limits the time that it can be used (because of equipment being only in vogue for a few years) and practical use too much.

Tying in media with the OS is a no-no.

Re:And punish legitimate users?

[KDR_11k]

They own the copyright to the software and can do to it what they wish, true, but in this case they're doing something to MY computer without my consent. I.e. you don't get told that unlike other copy protection mechanisms this one alters the way your PC works in general. The box only tells you "this software uses copy protection". Before you're infected it's impossible to tell whether the software contains viral copy protection or not.
To use an analogy: Sure food producers are allowed to poison their food, as long as they put a big warning label "poisonous" on the packaging.
After all, we got coffee cups that say "Warning! Hot!", why shouldn't we have software boxes that say "Warning! Contains copy-protection driver, may cause system malfunction!"?

Re:And punish legitimate users?

[SillyNickName4me]

> LOL! It's not a virus.

Strictly spoken you are right, its a trojan, not a virus. It poses to be a game, in fact it is a program that limits what you can use your computer for.

> You bought it. What you charge people for is irrelevant. You bought a game. If you don't like it, don't play it. No-one's going to pay you anything.

How you obtained it is completely irrelevant for it being a virus or a trojan or whatnot. That depends entirely on the purpose and functions of the program.

When such a game installs this driver onto a machine without very clear and explicit warning about this effect of the copy protection, that game should be considered a trojan, nothign more and nothign less.

Re:And punish legitimate users?

[quacking duck]

If they try to spin it as "sales lost due to piracy", it would mean Starforce's anti-piracy system isn't working.

Re:And punish legitimate users?

[illumin8]

That is really a pain. I image all my game CD's and use daemon tools to mount them.

Me too. Load times are much faster and there's no worrying about scratching your original CDs. Just copy them to the hard drive when you buy the game and put the original CDs back in the box. This article is written by some major shills for the game industry... Check out this quote:

Now copy protection is disabling games if you have utilities that simply might help pirate a game - like Alcohol 120%, Nero or CloneCD... Of course, if we honestly ask ourselves how many purely legitimate users of those utilities there are, odds are probably that deep down inside we have to admit "not many".

Wha????? Not many legitimate users of Nero? Nero is one of the best CD/DVD burning software out there. This article is clearly written by a BSA shill. Not every utility that can copy a CD is used for infringing purposes. In fact, most of us use these utilities for non-infringing fair-use purposes like backing up the games we purchased.

Re:And punish legitimate users?

[harrkev]

My favorite quote:

Of course, if we honestly ask ourselves how many purely legitimate users of those utilities (Alcohol, etc.) there are, odds are probably that deep down inside we have to admit "not many"

This is a complete load of bull. Here is my story:

I have a "server" case with a LOCKED DOOR in front of the drive bays. I have two toddlers running around the house, so I HAVE to have my computer locked down from little hands. So it is a PAIN to swap discs. So I use Alcohol 120%. This also allows me to keep all discs locked away in the garage so that I do not have to have a stack of discs (or a disc case) sitting on my desk. It helps keep the clutter down.

I also have my old computer set aside for running educational games. So, I use Alcohol 120% on that one so that my three-year-old son does not have to come to mommy asking to change a disc or (even worse) try to change the disc himself.

Anot note that I am NOT into warez at all. If I want a game, I buy it. I still have not even played all of the games that came bundled with my sound and video cards (quite a lot of games, too).

I would also like to throw out one more secnario: A traveler who wants to play games on the go. First, carrying discs means more weight, and second, spinning up a disc uses more battery power than reading an ISO off of a hard drive.

I have absolutely NO problems with copy protection which checks the disc upon install, but why does it have to check EVERY TIME the game loads. As a legitimate user, I find it annoying that these companies are almost begging me to go to warez sites so that I can play the game that I PAID FOR the way that I want to.

As for me, I will NEVER buy a StarForce game. Yup, that's right. I hope that the game producers are reading this. I am a professional engineer -- the type of guy with enough money to buy the games that tickle my fancy -- and I am incredibly honest. And in your quest to stop the people who probably would not buy your games in the first place, you are driving legitimate customers away. Smart business plan.

Note that it is one thing to design a game that will not work with Alcohol. I can accept that. But to have your game cripple Alcohol even when your game is not even running is unacceptable. Have fun in the wellfare lines, boys...

Keep treating me like a criminal ..

[Anonymous Coward]

and you can be sure that I'll start to behave like one.

Re:Keep treating me like a criminal ..

[yoshi_mon]

People so easily turned into criminals *should* be watched carefully.

Indeed, if it's so easy to become a criminal there must be something very wrong with the law.

missed something

[prockcore]

The guy is missing something. They're trying so hard to beat softice.. but they forget that pros don't need to use breakpoints, thus they don't need to actually run the app to disassemble it.

http://hte.sf.net would work just peachy.

Right.

[Anonymous Coward]

"if the market keeps shrinking due to the increasing ease of piracy... then the number and quality of games will almost certainly decrease."

Yeah, I've been hearing that since my Amiga gaming days, back when I had to travel to the capital city just to find a place that sold legitimate game copies, back when piracy was as just a blank floppy away. Look how much the number and quality has shrunk in the gaming market since then...

Re:Right.

[VeryProfessional]

Look how much the number and quality has shrunk in the gaming market since then...

Well actually, the quality at least probably has shrunk since those days. I really do think it's more than just nostalgia that makes so many people prefer old games to the lastest cookie-cutter FPS/RTS/racing sim. I know this is going to make me sound old, but so many of those old games had an element of utter originality that is totally absent from the current crop of games.

It's not piracy-induced poverty that has stifled originality of games, however; rather the opposite. As the maket has grown and game studio budgets have grown commensurately, the opportunity to take risks has been shrinking. Studios simply can't afford to release a total flop anymore. Thus, gaming has followed the track of Hollywood. Sequels sequels sequels.

A lot of the problem is also brought on by consumer expectations and the distribution format. People pay a lot of money for games, and thus they want 20-50 hours of non-repetitive gameplay and the latest super-whizz-bang graphics or they complain. How can you fit a game like Tetris into a market like that? Better just make it another FPS...

People can struggle with the copy-protection on their copy of Doom 14... or they can play Frozen-Bubble and Micro Machines 2 (my current favourites). Gaming companies better face up to the stiff competition they face from their own past and start treating consumers with some respect.

The age-old rule

[Anonymous Coward]

The stronger you make the copy protection, the more you inconvenience your legitimate users, and the more attractive the "cracked" product becomes. Making the w4rz3d version a more useful product than your original is a bad marketing ploy.

Somehow it's not quite piracy..

[bishiraver]

PC games will never go away, but if the market keeps shrinking due to the increasing ease of piracy... then the number and quality of games will almost certainly decrease.

Not being able to play a game because my CD drive isn't on the "approved" list, and then being thwarted when I try to mount an ISO of the game... that drives me away from buying computer games. More and more people are turning to piracy because copy-protection schemes turn them off to buying a legitimate copy of the game.

For gamers with CD-ROMs that are incompatible with SecuROM (and other copy protection measures), it is currently more convenient to download and crack pirated versions, than to buy a legitimate copy.

This is a dangerous discrepancy, and is running the game industry into the ground.

What?

[John Courtland]

First off, you most can certainly debug driver modules. SoftICE runs Ring 0. Even if their driver runs Ring 0, you can still see it. It's also on your hard disk. Even if it somehow disables the machine if SoftICE is detected, you have the data. It will be disassembled and it will be cracked.

And this brings up a point about copy protection. It really only fucks with the people who actually buy the CD. I bought The Sims after, admittedly, not paying for it for a while. But I did go out and buy it after about a month, and lo and behold my CD Key was already registered. Ah well, an email took care of that. But, next I buy Neverwinter Nights. Damn CD Protection goes so far as to not work in my DVD drive. This happens with a TON of protected games. Flight Simulator 2002 would continuously corrupt on install, SimCity 4, Baldurs Gates both 1 AND 2... Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the SecuROM/SafeDisc methods do *not* produce valid Redbook CDROM standard CD's. Doesn't happen on non-secured discs like Streets and Trips, Windows XP, etc... Either way, I paid for these games and they don't work. Yet I can steal them and they work, no hassle. Hmm, not too hard of a debate. I actually sometimes will buy the game then download the crack because I'm tired of dealing with shitty copy protection. /rant

and now, for some infamous quotes

[2TecTom]

"copy protection is a necessary part of the publishing process"

Yah, and remember the dark ages, when only the church could copy? Well if corporations get their way, it'll be dark again soon. Thanks Abbie!

"We have to live with it, and I don't think it is going away."

No Abbie, I don't have to live with it because I never buy copy protected software. Period. Sorry, but it's a religious thing with me.

"but let's face it, publishers aren't stupid"

Yes, yes they are, and evil and greedy too. First off, they corrupt copyright so that it no longer does what the founding fathers intended. Then they use it to abuse the market in order to force consumers to pay excessive prices for poor quality games.

In my humble opinion, piracy is a direct and inevitable outcome strictly due to the lack of fairness in the intellectual property issue.

Corporations have perverted the process and most people are simply taking the most economical route to get what they want

From where I sit, all of this is because companies will not produce products as inexpensively as possible. Indeed, these companies would earn more if they simply lowered the price to a point were far more people could easily afford to buy their products. As it is, most software is simply not affordable unless you are fairly affluent. So yes, they, the software publishers, are stupid, and what's worse, they're incompetent and abusive.

Re:Brad Wardell's thoughts

[Oddly_Drac]

"people who have money and don't have time to be jerked around with nonsense."

High five, low five, catch it on the rebound.

This is one of the first times that someone 'in the industry' has hit the nail on the head with regards to my personal experience of gaming; it's not that I'm short of the cash, I just really don't want to prop up a copy protection industry that has slimed into place based on the fact that piracy is happening, but the protestations have hit fever pitch because they can be tracked. It's like the figures that get promoted that X activity costs X dollars per year in lost revenues. Figures like that are fictional guesstimates that are intended to cause round-eyed disbelief in people that don't normally deal with _really big numbers_, especially connected with the idea that a downloaded game is a lost sale. It's horribly arrogant to assume that downloaded copy will survive a quick review or that the person downloading it would have bought the game if the download wasn't possible.

It's the PR spin that annoys me the most, both from the perspective of holding demos until after the release rush (early adopters get raped every which way, and it's mostly a peer issue), releasing buggy software to match a given release date, or buying advertising space and calling it 'reviews'.

It's gratifying to see someone _actually_ mention these things in relation to their own business, and while I have little use for the object desktop, the sheer display of Mr Wardell's ethics is enough for me to consider supporting his company.

Have you tried to get an OLD replacement cd?

[superultra]

Try that in 10 years, or when Blizzard has passed through 5 different companies (it could happen). Or, if you want the fun and excitement now, try to get a replacement copy of Pirates! or, if you lost the code wheel, Starflight. It won't happen, even if you paid for the copy legit.

Re:DEMOS?

[Minna Kirai]

It is completely unacceptable that a demo could install this dubious software

A game demo is supposed to allow a potential customer to learn how well the software will run on her computer. If the game includes obstructive copy-protection, the demo should too; otherwise it's false advertising!

By using the weird driver in the demo, at least buyers get a warning before PAYING for the thing.