Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
It's a Bagel.
I hope the big publishers all get run off of the computer game industry, and all the people who like "gaming" instead of computer games go with them.
Then those of us who prefer good games to good graphics will have computer games to ourselves again.
Bring back the games on floppies in little plastic bags!
and you can be sure that I'll start to behave like one.
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.
"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...
.... cause we all know how much damage piracy does to the music industry. Ba-zing!
That's right. All your base.
I see the piracy of games being the lesser threat to the game industry. Sure, it's an issue, but they should be more afraid of people waking up and realizing that they're getting crapped on by game companies.
People won't be so computer-illiterate in about ten years when computers will be as common as any other appliance, and people know how to maintain their common appliances. (IE: Don't shove a fork in a toaster, proper oven cleaning protocol, etc), and they won't really like bullshit drivers installing themselves without much notice (People don't read EULAs.).
Another though: What if the anti-virus companies decide that this is bullshit and we find that Norton Anti-Virus starts complaining about this crap. The game companies will sure as hell think twice before they restict people's computer useage without telling them.
The Yasashii Syndicate ||
First of all, because I don't trust device manufacturers to write drivers, let alone game coders. How to destabilize your system lesson 1: install this shite.
Secondly, a VMWare instance will cure all this.
And what is StarForce anyway? The publicity from this is going to make its sales tank no matter how good its copy protection is. Hopefully this will teach the lesson better than a few lawsuits over data loss.
I thought everytime a new device was installed or driver, windows would ask you if you want to have it installed regardless of the fact it is WHQL signed. Please, is there a group policy I can change to not alow ANY drivers be it real or virtual to be installed without my explicit permission?
Life is not for the lazy.
Brad Wardell (Galactic Civilizations, etc) has some thoughts on piracy and the problems with PC games:
google groups link here
http://www.balorn.net/
?
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.
Gee, do you think this attitude might force a lot of people to conclude that PC games are such a pain they might as well buy a console and play there?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
In my opinion, such things should be categorized as malware, and should only be allowed if adequate warning is given to the user before installation.
Anyway, even when installed as a driver, it can't be fully crack-proof --- the driver can be removed, and the game code can be changed to skip the accesses to the driver. If the game is popular enough, a crack will soon be produced (probably unusable for Internet games though), and even legit users may use them so that they can get rid of the driver that is possibly destabilizing the system.
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.
This is such an apologist piece. From author's viewpoint, this is a done deal, copy protection is a necessity, and he doesn't address the issue of fair use at all. When I buy my videogames, I rarely install them, instead preferring to find a cracked version first, so I don't have to deal with all of the crap, like unwanted driver installations, that I don't know if I'm getting. The guys at Penny Arcade have said the same as well.
I don't play games without purchasing them (though I did as a student, because I was poor then. If I hadn't then, I probably wouldn't have the gaming drive now that causes me to purchase all of the games I do.), and I'm starting to buy less and less PC games because of the crap I have to deal with. Do you hear that, developers? That is the sound of lost sales.
I bought XIII, which had some protection that caused the graphics and performance to slowly degrade if the CD is not in the drive. Normally, I would have kept that game to play again in the future, but instead I found someone who was looking to buy it, and gave it to them instead. One more lost sale.
Could you imagine if a PS2 game you bought installed updated CD/DVD drivers on the memory card, and it caused problems with reading other discs? How about if you couldn't play games on your PS2 just becaused you owned an Action Replay disc? They can be used to play copied games too, you know. This sort of crap is unacceptable, and developers who realize that are in a unique position to capture extra market share. Sure, writing a crappy game won't get you sales, but with two equally good games, there are definitely people who will choose the one that doesn't treat them like a criminal if they know there is a difference.
... this is a pretty interesting point. Cedega (formerly WineX) does not have support for most of the new copy protection mechanisms around, and mentions as much in their documentation. This means that you can install and run pirated games in Linux that you wouldn't be able to in Windows.
I mention this not to promote piracy, but because it raises an interesting legal point - Transgaming are technically selling a product that allows you to circumvent copy protection - granted, in a very broad sense. But I wonder how long they'll be allowed to proceed before getting smacked down under the new US laws designed to prevent this sort of thing.
"By Grabthar's Hammer, what a savings."
I seem to recall some software a few years back which came with a dongle, I also seem to recall that someone managed to fake that dongle so you can pirate the software anyway. Take a lesson here people, if you can't stop piracy with hardware you sure as hell can't do it will software, in all reality Paladium(assuming it ever shows up) probably won't stop piracy. This is for a simple reason, for every guy out there trying to come up with ways to prevent piracy there are at least 100 attempting to circumvent it, and these guys are really really good. There's a lesson here, a lesson we should all have learned a long, long, long time ago, because it's been true since the first copy protection ever implemented. ALL COPY PROTECTION DOES IS INCONVENIENCE THE LEGITIMATE USER. Sorry to have shouted that, but I wouldn't want someone to miss that one. No method of copy protection every created has stopped people from pirating software and the only way I can see that changing any time in the forseeable future.
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.
/rant
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.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
"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."
:-P
Almost a perfect quote from computer mags 10 years ago, yet World of Warcraft, Neverwinter Nights 2, Half-Life 2, etc are under development. How can that be? Games constantly rise in technical quality and complexity, and it's not uncommon these days to have games in development for 4 years or more. It's BIG business.
In contrast, if predictions like that were true, we'd probably play something like Alien Invaders 2000 by now.
Personally, I think -- yes, piracy is bad if you don't buy the games you actually like. In other cases, I find it to be very useful. That games have demo versions isn't a given, especially not demo versions you can try out before a game hits the store to decide if you should get it. A perfect way to boycott junk game publishers very conveniently without having to go back to stores and returning games.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Nobody wants DRM or Malware type software destroying their freedom to use PC's.
No software company wants to invest 30 million into a (small?) project where sales are predicted by a declining history and diminishing market, or perhaps could disappear given the alarming ability to download gigs of data in a day.
In a perfect world, they would produce X, you want X, you buy X.
In a semi-perfect world. People Copy X, like it, Buy X
In todays world, a bit more perfect: People who copy and don't buy X, wouldn't have bought it anyway. (so does this mean copying impacts software?)
What does happen. People want games, if copying didnt exist, they would buy them, prices would drop. However, peope who say they wouldn't have bought the game anyway, shouldn't have needed to copy it.
OK, that bit over: If you purchase games, do you put up with measures that, in the end, are there for your benefit, as a games consumer (i.e., if they did stop copying)
Perhaps the issue is not so clear cut as music (which has always been way overpriced and overcontrolled)
Computer games used to be 1.99 casettes, 4.99 etc... not they are 49.99 at tops. Considering lower costs of marketting, vast market size, limitless and cheap distribution (electronically) and cheaper CD/DVD case distribution, the companies hsould be able to create games which sell for less, and meets a price that brings more consumers.
Sometimes it is easier to copy a game than physically walk out and buy it. This is the mentality they are dealing with.
At the end of the day - don't steal from people, no matter how rich they are.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
"I'm posting anonymously for obvious reasons."
When someone starts off with this, I'm expecting something appropriately juicy. Your post was kind of a let down.
"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."
I can see the the logic of this, but couldn't a capitalist argue that Piracy creates a new market force vaguely resembling competition. One could argue if that statement is true, that Piracy actually forces the Games makers not to put out wasteful crap like they all to often do (come on more than 50% are crap with no audience) and force them to make stuff live up to competition. IE, if the game sucks I'd probably pirate it, if its good then I'll drive to Software Etc and pick it up.
Of course one can urge that now the companies have to waste time and money on anti piracy software in the process and that there are games that would appear to have no audience but they create one. (Pokemon, Conker, etc, etc)
I hope the above is coherent, too late in the night to post, I just wanted to see what my thoughts would crop up.
forget it.
"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.
Words to men, as air to birds.
if the market keeps shrinking due to the increasing ease of piracy ... then the number and quality of games will almost certainly decrease. Without a big market there can be no big budgets. No Doom 4, no Far Cry 2 and no Half-Life 3.
Ironically, auther was not able to come up with even one example wich is not sequel. Indsutry really have problem with creativity, piracy notwithstanding.
Either way, it'll be cracked and available for immediate download faster than they can get it to stores. The only protection worth having is online key checking for online play.
Does everything include nothing?
Yeah - I'll correct that.
Safedisk is a PAIN to implement.
It works by changing the geometry of the disc - the tracks are actally spread out more (it makes it look a bit like the gaps between songs on old vinyl disks)
Then it measures the TIME it takes the drive to seek across these areas compared to the time it takes to seek across normal areas.
Their driver is very flaky, due to the large numbers of strange drives it has to cope with. This in turn makes it very difficult to build a drive which co-operates with it reliably.
Most disks produced with safedisk are within the spec - the spec just says that the track density must lie within such and such limits (I'd have to look them up) - they are expected to vary due to quality of disk and so forth. They AREN'T expected to vary on a single disk (much) - but nothing says that they can't. So they are in the CD/DVD spec.
The audio protections usually used fall into two camps. The polite camp simply has an audio session and a data session, and relies upon windows preferring to show the user the data session. These are within the redbook spec, and easy to break.
The slightly dodgier protection issues the same track number to tracks in both sessions, and relies upon data drives mounting the last session first and audio drives mounting the first session first. This DOES break the redbook spec. Quite horribly.
Man at Computer: Hey...what the hell?
Dork Behind Him: What is the matter with you?
Chick: Looks like he ran afoul of Star Force's copyright protection!
Dork: Ha ha!
Chick: *snicker*
Man: Shut the hell up you two!
Dork: OMG YOUR MEGAHURTZ HAS BEEN STOL3D!!
Chick: All your CD-ROM belong to Star Force.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Games need copy protection so developers can get paid to write them. I'm no fan of copy protection, but I am a fan of developers earning enough to feed their family while working on the next big release. I hate disc protection as much as the next guy, but if it's really such hard work to put a disc in your CD drive then maybe you need to lose some weight and take some exercise because you are clearly a lazy bastard.
As for a copy protection scheme I would be happy to use...I propose they lock the game to your PGP key and that to play you either require a PGP or GPG key. These are free to obtain and provide excellent security. An independant organisation tracks the keys and your licences. You are entitled to move the game from PC to PC as desired, but it needs your private key to play. A local keysafe utility can remember the key, so you punch it in once at the start of a night, like you do for your email and stuff. The keys can be revoked if they are obviously being shared so lamers can't just buy one copy and hand the key to everyone. This could be made no more onerous than iTunes.
This model would enable online downloading of games too, possibly saving the distribution costs and lowering the cost of the game. Best of all, no more 20 character serial numbers to punch in as you install the game - you simply auhorise it over the internet. Non internet users could authorise via phone/letter if needed.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
1.make the games better so people are more inclined to pay for them
2.stop charging a fortune, the cheaper they are the more likely someone will buy them
3.include better stuff in the box (e.g. a printed manual, mabie a poster of the main character or something)
4.use CD keys for online access to play multiplayer games
5.make valid CD keys a requirement to access extra stuff (like how you need a vaid CD key to get onto the official Neverwinter Nights forums or how you need a valid CD key to install patches for some versions of Borland Delphi)
6.make it easier to get replacement disks if yours are damaged/scratched/unreadable (i.e. send us the broken disks and some small amount to cover postage and we will send you a new copy of the game). Obviously it wouldnt apply for older stuff that they dont have anymore...
7.in addition to a paper manual, how about a PDF manual straight on the CD so that when the paper manual goes missing, you have a replacement.
if the market keeps shrinking due to the increasing ease of piracy ... then the number and quality of games will almost certainly decrease. Without a big market there can be no big budgets. No Doom 4, no Far Cry 2 and no Half-Life 3.
Ironically, auther was not able to come up with even one example wich is not sequel. Indsutry really have problem with creativity, piracy notwithstanding.
Well, duh... you won't recongnize any of them games he mentions if they're not sequels and not almost released (insert DNF joke here). Imagine if he'd said,
"Without a big market, there'd be no Binge, Future Sky, or Rungy"
Two notes:
1. Do you know how hard it is to come up with a few random names?
2. Yes, I know someone will post a reply with links to all of these games that already exist. So don't bother.
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
Here's one... Though I believe some of those have it only in certain versions, ie. EU or US version only. Also beware of the demos of those games, they install starforce too.
I used to have Sim City on the Amiga, it was a great game which had its own form of copy protection. It was a dark red/brown peice of paper with a series of numbers (in black) in a chart. It was designed this way so you couldn't photocopy it and there were too many numbers on the chart to practically write them all down. (Thank god i'm not colour blind)
My friend also had Sim City for the Amiga, but he got a copied/cracked version without the 'code check' process. Now I ended up getting a copy of his game since it didn't mean I had to deal with the annoying hard to read chart just to get into the game I had bought.
Summary: Pirate user no problems, Paying customer annoyed.
I reguraly crack the games I buy simply to save the CDs getting scratched, or even having to bother finding them, when I first heard of this type of copy protection I knew it was a vary bad thing.
It was a Raven Sheild patch that introduced a CD emulation check and stopped the game loading if it found anything.
Now imo that's very bad, software being designed pourposely to not work if other software is present. Imagine if MS added in a 'function' to stop Office working if you installed Mozilla for example, a lot of people would be pissed.
Acidentaly incompatability is one thing, but when it's by design, it is wrong on so man levels.
In the end people will be forced to pirate if they want to play a game regardless of their intentions to buy it or not.
Boy, you haven't been around long, have you? Still in high school, right?
10 years ago, the average computer user understood at least 5 times as much about what was going on in his/her computer as today's user.
If appliances being common led to people understanding them, then every American over 17 would be able would be able to diagnose and fix a fuel-pump airlock in his/her automobile. From observation, however, I'd say that over half of them don't even know how to check the oil level.
Since drivers run at Ring 0, the driver could crash the OS kernel. And this could open the door for malicious code that crashes machines with games that have that driver.
Seems like a good first pass at reverse-engineering this driver would be to do the windows equivalent of strace/truss/tusc on it and see how the game communicates with the driver and what the driver says back.
I'm sure it wouldn't be as simple as that, they probably aren't "well-behaved" (which should me no WHQL for them). But if it were that simple, writing your own dummy driver that spoofs the game into thinking everything is hunky-dory would be trivial.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Thanks for the list. According to the interviewee, no StarForce games are cracked.
According to google, cracks appear to exist for:
Breed
Cycling Manager 3
Dead to Rights
Fire Department
Gangland
Korea Fogotten Conflict
Prince of Persia Sands of Time
Rally Championship Xtreme
Restaurant Empire
Runaway A Road Adventure
Soldiers Heroes of World War 2
Track Mania
XIII
X2 The Threat
Now, being that I don't want to get my system all infected with virus laden garbage, I'm not going to download any of the cracks I found. I wonder how many work? Perhaps none of them. Or perhaps they all do. In that case, We have a 58% success record. That's not worthy of saying your protection is crack proof, IMHO.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Worth pointing out (Disclaimer: I work as a game programmer) that it is often PUBLISHERS who add this sort of shit once the game is finished and has left the developers' control.
Game dev and music blog
I'm sick and tired of the continued assault on the public's right to fair use. It started with requiring the CD to play the game, and has progressed into preventing someone who purchased the game from even making a back-up copy of the software they purchased a license for.
What do we do when our CD's are scratched beyond repair, or worse yet, stolen? Go out and pay another $50?
When will our politicians stop looking out for the greedy few over the rights of the masses?
So what if instead of some software one uses a USB based hardwarekey. If I don`t own a valid USB Key the game does not run... IANADeveloper...
Persistent rumours in the copy protection industry tells that the technology used in StarForce3 is actually reverse engineered from CD-Cops http://www.linkdata.com/index.htm#cdcops, by StarForce's russian team.
This is supposed to be one of the reasons the pricing of the StarForce3 systems does not reflect the perceived development costs for the technology.
The PC game market is growing, not shrinking. Many companies are losing money, I don't doubt that and I don't question the rest of his assertions, but nevertheless, this doesn't change the fact that the PC market of legitimately purchased PC games is growing, not shrinking.
My attitude is very simple. If some moronic game company is going to install drivers on my PC without even asking, and then try to tell me that I can't use their game on my PC because I have unusual hardware or unusual software running, then they can go fsck themselves. I'm one of the people who do actually buy games, but I'm damned if I'm going to bend over for these morons.
Seriously, almost every game I own I've ended up downloading a CD crack for because either it's far too much of a pain to have to find a particular CD just to play a game that's already on my hard drive, or their appallingly bad 'copy protection' crap doesn't work with my SCSI DVD drive. These people are fscking over their customers who actually pay for the games, and wondering why we stop buying them.
No game should ever, ever, ever install a driver on a PC without asking and without making clear on the box that they will be doing so. Some of us use our PCs for real work as well as games, and the last thing I want is some stupid 'copy protection' driver screwing up my system.
http://www.boycottstarforce.org/
I think its also worth nothing that starforce drivers CAN mess up your system, and can only be safely removed with the starforce removal tool. (which they dont go out the way to advertise).
This program is, essentially, a virus. So why is it ok for corporations to spread virii that stop me legally using my own game, but crackers who create trojans and the like are hunted to the ends of the earth?
Copy/paste from www.theisonews.com
... Also kind of a cheap trick, it leaves me no doubt the creators themselves were/are hella good crackers.
.exe file - but that would take more work again.
Im by no means a l33t hax0r but I know my way around icing/dumping procedures and messed around with SF3 a bit.
First of all, whenever someone writes SF3 uses physical fingerprints, STOP READING - it DOES NOT, and yes a lot of wannabe experts will say that. If you wanna know how the SF3 discs are produced I can write another post here, but for now I'll tell you about the protection itself;
The Devil (=StarForce3) is INSANELY coded to avoid debugging, and by INSANELY I mean NOTHING COMES CLOSE : you can find over 200 RDTSCs on a SINGLE procedure. WTF is a RDTSC? Its an instruction to read the time stamp on the CPU, that is, they use it to MEASURE the amount of time some routine takes to complete: if you debug+trace the operations, stopping them before they are complete, the reply from the CPU will tell the app they are taking a long time to finish - and you get rebooted while the SF3 creators laugh at you.
The most low-level interrupts cant be traced as well since the SF3 driver replaces them with their own evil, custom, devilish, encrypted drivers - and thats where the problems for LEGIT buyers start, drivers messing around with system resources = always dangerous. Theres even a INT 2E routine used into SF3, thats an undocumented but widely known backdoor to run COMMAND.COM-based programs!!
What happens then is, one would actually need to recreate the drivers removing all those ( hundreds of ) evil anti-debugging checks - that would take a *LOT* of time/work already, considering the drivers are encrypted as and when executing - to ONLY THEN start working on breaking the games' protection itself. And for every new SF3 version/update/whatever ( = another game) , you would have to do everything again. Of course after ending up with a working crack, you can remove the "custom driver" thing and just emulate everything with an
Truth is, it becomes much more of a challenge than a way to play the game for free, since its much (much much) easier - even cheaper considering the hours a cracker would spend starforcing - to simply buy the damn original.
Yeah because since the days of my Sinclair Spectrum when we copied software from audio tape to tape the computer games industry has really shrunk.
FFS, How the hell do these people get away with nodding, looking thoughtful and saying these things in an erudite fashion?
Back in the day, in the UK you sold ONE copy of a game per school, that's it (yeah we were all funding terrorism back then too). Since then no industries have shrunken as a result... not the aerospace industry, not the catering industry and sure as hell not the software industry.
We could get all melodramatic and start considering papers by Gerring on propoganda and the manipulation of the masses... lets just consider one thing.
The cornerstone of all propoganda is a kernel of fear. If X is allowed to continue Y will happen.
If software piracy continues then the quality of computer games will suffer.... I'm 35 and I've been told that exact same line since I was 13. The exact same line. In 22 years I've come to the conclusion it's not true. It's propoganda, it's tapping into an unfounded fear in the audience.
I was told the same about tape recorders and the music industry. I was told the same about video tape and the movie/cinema industry... all in over 2 decades, untrue. Propoganda.
If somebody tells you the sky is falling in, don't just take their word for it, look up yourself at the sky and ask yourself if it looks as if the sky is falling in.
ALL COPY PROTECTION DOES IS INCONVENIENCE THE LEGITIMATE USER This is untrue. If you read this article by a developer for Spyro, Year of the dragon, their copy and crack protection schemes were able to prevent a crack from being released for over 2 months after the game came out. Such protection did not inconvinience legitimate users AT ALL. http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20011017/dodd_01 .htm
I am not an avid gamer but I play once in a while, and probably buy 3-4 games per year. I'd probably buy a couple more if the price was lower - $50+ is too much I think for most games (very few are worth that much money). I don't mind CD-keys, and some copy-protection, but if I cannot make bakup copies of my own cds or make cd images out of them, that will turn me off buying games. And as others have pointed out it should clearly state on the box what protections are in place so I can make an informed decision about whether to buy that game or not. I do download the occasional game, but if it is something I really like and keep playing then I pay for it.
"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."
Howabout, make good games and people will be less likely to copy them because they will actually want to support good games. I mean, you can't just throw in a few palm trees and call it "Battlefield Vietnam" as opposed to "1942". What next, paint everything beige and call it "Battlefield Desert Storm." Howabout "Battlefield: We'e running out of ideas." There are countless games like this, no new ideas no innovation. Just one recycled idea after another. The differences between Unreal 2K4 and Unreal 2K3 involved just making a bunch of new maps adding more trite phrases like, "Ownage!" Or howabout another Tom Clancy based Spy game. There's only so many ways you can make killing terrorists interesting. Oh, here's one last good idea. Let's take the most successful console FPS since Goldeneye, deley it's PC release for years. And, once everybody is sick of it, try to sell it on PC. My advice to game companies, get a fucking clue, people aren't buying your shit because it is shit. They'd rather play shit for free.
--
Adobe's anti-counterfeiting softw
"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."
... It goes something like this ... "If people couldn't setal our stuff, everyone would run out and pay cold hard cash; even if they had to sell their own plasma."
... they just don't have the money.
Hey All,
It seems to me that there is this myth in every market around the world
I pay for everything I use/enjoy. And I don't have a problem w/ ppl trying to secure their assets. I just think it's a bit naive to think that markets will explode in size as a result. Cause, if the youth doesn't have the money
Cheers,
--The Dude
I noticed on that list that there are several demos. It is completely unacceptable that a demo could install this dubious software, when it's distribution does not constitute piracy in anyone's terms. I hope these games give users a warning about what they are going to install.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
Rally Championship Xtreme no-cd crack works nice. and Breed demo does not install StarForce (at least their remove tool found nothing).
Already installed. What's next? Booting directly from the game CD into a custom anti-piracy OS and disabling any access to Windows?
here is list with some games and protections used.
Actually, not the first time it's happened either. Some game I bought in the last few months, don't remember which one, has some elaborate copy-protection scheme that seems to think I'm running CD emulation software. I'm not, but couldn't play my brand new game without googling for a crack first. That's not right, I shouldn't be forced to resort to such things.
It's not "back to the future", it's "forward to the past".
Back in the early '80s I bought a game for the Apple ][ called "Wizardry". This game had an extremely delicate copy protection mechanism that depended on matching the speed of the disk to a timer. I used to play it on three or four different Apples at different times, and there were slight variations in the speed of the disks. After a while, I could no longer play the game except on one particular machine... the drive speed on that machine had apparently been changing slightly over time and the copy protection had adapted the floppy to it.
Eventually I went to one of the local pirates and did something I'd never done before... begged a cracked game off him. I actually had him copy a cracked version of Wizardry on top of my original diskette. It was the only way I could depend on being able to run it.
Seriously, in the not-too-distant future, I imagine the first thing I do after I buy a new game is to go download the pirated version.
"You're safe and sound now, back in good old 1982."
..just check your windows\system32\drivers for secdrv.sys, set to auto-load and -execute on bootup.
Does any one know if the new SecuROM also uses kernelmode drivers?
Capitalization is the difference between "Helping your uncle jack off a horse" and "Helping your uncle Jack off a horse"
The message boards were filled with people complaining that Doom wouldnt load, or it always hung, some people were seeing video problems. The solution? Download the cracked version that removes the copy protection that was ruining peoples configurations. Many of these people claimed to not have Nero, Alcohol, or any other sort of burning utilities installed. Not only does this force people to run unsupported pirated copies, it also pisses off your fans. Carmack should be personally ashamed that his publishers put any sort of protection on his games. There are Doom fans all over the world who wont buy any future id projects. Hows that for future business? Bleagh.
the only way to stop piracy is divine intervention from God... btw God has an easynews account
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
"PERMITTED USES
1. If the Software is configured for loading on a hard drive, you may
install and use the Software on a single
computer.
2. You may make and maintain one copy of the Software for backup and
archival purposes, provided that the
original and copy of the Software are kept in your possession.
3. You may permanently transfer all your rights under this EULA, provided
you retain no copies, you transfer
all of the Software (including all component parts, the media and printed
materials and any upgrades) and the
recipient reads and accepts this EULA."
#2 maybe difficult
That was just unacceptable, so I did the only thing I could do to play the game I purchased: pirate it.
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.
if the aim is to stop the shrinking of the market... and the market is 60%+ made of programers... how exactly instaling a driver that keeps them from running debuggers on they very own machine will make they more likely to buy the crap game?
When windows 2000 came out I was like "thank god, now it's multi user". So I went to install everything as guest, so as to not hose the main machine. Needless to say it didn't work, as most things wouldn't install as guest, assuming that you'd install them as root.
When something is being installed little popup boxes should come up like "This application is trying to install something into the kernel, this is needed when installing hardware, as it needs to install a driver for the hardware, but if you are installing something other then the CD that came with a piece of hardware, then whatever this is that your installing has easy access to screwing up your machine.
Would you like to install it? "
The same goes for write acccess to all the differnt areas that they could be playing with libraries or whatever. Areas including who gets to write to the network! (say goodbye to addware).
Of course, this only works to notifiy people what they bought after they bought it. How do we people from buying stuff they refuse to use? Well if the copy protections working, these things should allow returns.
Not true that requiring a reboot means the installer is doing something dodgy - at least, not true when you're upgrading already installed software.
Windows (EXPLORER.EXE) regularly holds application program files open for no reason at all (I suspect it's something to do with displaying icons), so a reboot is the only way to replace an out-of-date file.
FYI, this list is misleading. I believe they are refering only to Starforce 3 when they claim the games aren't cracked. Most of those games use an earlier version of Starforce which was not nearly as tough, or only the European version uses Starforce 3. I own Trackmania, which was cracked for version 1.0. However, the US release is 1.25 and it is yet to be cracked. It's extremely annoying because even with the CD, sometimes Starforce takes upwards of 5 minutes to validate the CD on startup. In addition, the article is correct that the cracks are much more involved. The Trackmania 1.0 crack included 100+ files that had to be replaced. What's the incentive for a cracker to crack subsequent versions when they're so involved. Personally, I think the copy protection has hurt the game's sales in the US.
Not playing games is a sign of being an adult? I guess that's going to be some crushing news to my grandparents who still play bridge and scrabble on a near-daily basis.
Seriously, I can't stand self-righteous pricks who equate game-playing with immaturity. If you want to take life so seriously as to not allow yourself a bit of liesure time, go right ahead, but don't make the foolish mistake of taking a holier-than-thou attitude simply because you have some sort of bullshit hangup derived from Corithians 13:11 or some misguided belief that creative and imaginitve play is not as important for an adult as it is for a child.
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
Hi, I'm the author. Please calm yourself and read this post with a clear mind.
First, to clear up some confusion regarding the interview:
I simply provided StarForce with an opportunity to voice their own opinions. I don't take their side, I do ask them tougher questions about how legitimate PC gamers feel it's unfair to not only to have to pay for the copy protection indirectly by purchasing the game, but to put up with the hassles. They gave their answers, that's all.
Then I look at this thread and I realize to my disappointment that most of you just don't you get it. It's all the same panicked, self-entitled, I'm-my-own-little-god-don't-step-in-my-universe whining. God forbid a publisher protect his investment on your PC. How dare he?
I'm sure most of you are conveniently forgetting the number of times you've pirated games - whether it's downloading warez, copying from a friend or copying FOR a friend.
Any arguments I've seen "for" the right to crack/warez games fall apart. Simple fact: you benefited from the hard work of the developer and publisher without due compensation. Price too high? Game sucked? Misleading system requirements? Too bad: caveat emptor.
How hypocritical Slashdotters are. When stories are posted of stupid lawsuits because someone was careless in purchasing or using a product and did themselves/their family harm, you jump all over them. High and mighty. Superior, intelligent, all-knowing.
Where are those attitudes when it comes to bragging to your friends about how you pirated a game because it was too expensive for what you'd get, or because it was buggy and you don't "feel" like paying for it. Then you complain when copy protection gets more intrusive and controlling. You made your bed, you sleep in it.
Fact is, we have this copy protection because we don't stop ourselves from pirating. Pure and simple. The culture of the PC gamer is disgustingly self-indulgent. Worse, it's spreading to console games.
Piracy has been accepted on the PC much longer because it's been around much longer. The first games weren't even commercial, they were sent across networks and transferred with disks. This acceptance of piracy has persisted through the years, every new gamer learning from the ones before him. "Oh everyone else does it." Well it's WRONG.
It's not like publishers are making billions off you by overcharing - and if they were, you could simply say "no, I'm not going to buy this." Yes, you want it, but that doesn't mean you deserve it for free.
I've gotten some of the most ridiculous pro-piracy arguments ever in email over the last day.
"Sometimes cracking copy protection is the only way to get it to run on Windows emulators on Linux"... er... just where did the publisher state that they support Linux? And how does this give you the right to steal their game?
"Game companies run out of CDs, so if you break/lose yours, you can't get new ones. Plus, you have to pay for shipping!" Right, and if I lose my car or smash it around the tree, the car manufacturer owes me one for free. No, I get it through insurance, which usually costs me more over the lifetime of the car than the car did itself.
"Game companies *GO OUT OF BUSINESS* sometimes. Try getting your original System Shock 2 CD's replaced." Right, this sucks. Part of the reason game companies go out of business is piracy. But moreover, I still fail to see how this entitles you to a new copy of System Shock 2 if YOU lost or broke your own. It's your property, be responsible for it. Your kid lost it or dog chewed it? I can't quite understand how this is the publisher's fault.
"When games get really old, usually one is forced to turn to emulation. However, *COPY PROTECTION MAKES EMULATION DIFFICULT*. This can lead to games being lost forever; this is happening to arcade machine games already." This is called obsolescence. Things become so old it's not worth supporting them. You don't see IBM supporting
I'm a little segfault, short and stout.
Ok so one thing stuck out at me the second I read it.
""Games are crap so often I don't want to get ripped off" - try reading reviews and playing demos. Besides, good luck getting a car dealership to refund you your money after you so much as signed the contract, never mind drove the car. Not all that many goods can be used and returned for your money back."
Actually I do believe Saturn, at least here in Canada, offers a no questions asked 30 day period where you can return the car. I remember a commercial where a lady had lost her job and could no longer afford the car so she returned it to the dealership, but in the end wound up buying a Saturn again because of their great customer service.
Anyways, that's beside the point. Frankly, reviews and demos aren't always the best indicator of how "buy-worthy" a game is. There's several factors you cannot determine from a demo. You cannot tell the length of the game for example, or if it would have any replay value whatsoever. You also can't really tell, through a short demo, whether the game is overly repetitive for the entire length of the game or not. Reviews also are not a great indicator. There have been games entirely trashed by the industry for having less than stellar graphics and poor sound, but even though the gameplay was absolutely stellar, it still got a crappy review. It's very hard to find a review(er) that will exactly match your personal tastes.
I'm not condoning piracy, or stealing money from the developers, but frankly, the prices of games are too ridiculously high for a casual gamer, which is a vast majority of the market. Maybe publishers need to take a back seat to the developers and let the developers actually have a good chunk of the profit earned from game sales. After all, it is their work, and maybe if the publishers weren't so damn greedy, they'd earn a bit more money from it.
I have about 20 games that I'm always swapping between and playing (don't ask), stuff like C&C Red Alert 2, C&C Generals, Max Payne2, Doom3, etc.. and I use Alcohol 120% to handle it all. And to this day I have never had a CD complain about Alcohol 120% being installed. I know some others haven't been as lucky. I have not played any games with this new StarForce protection (I was considering buying Prince of Persia, but forget it now) so I don't know what it will do exactly in regards to Alcohol 120% -- but if it does cause problems, you can be sure the usual channels (gamecopyworld.com, etc.) will be right there with no CD patches, and people will use them, even on their legit copies. Because game companies don't get it.
I won't even get into how SafeDisc/etc. slows down game performance, that's semi common knowledge by now.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
Beyond Divinity Desert Rats vs. Afrika Corps XIII Dead to Rights Prince of Persia Sands of Time These were all games I might have bought out of the bargain bin at some point, but I won't touch them now. One piece of software has no right to prevent other software with legitimate uses from operating correctly on my computer. I don't even use Alcohol 120%, but when I had a notebook, I did use virtual CD software so I didn't have to carry a bunch of game CDs around with me wherever I went.
Though it doesn't use StarForce, this same issue befell me with System Shock 2. Ever try to get this running on a Win2K/WinXP system? I'll give you a hint, the -lgntforce parameter is NOT the end-all be-all of running this game on an NT system. 3 days of playing musical OSs later, and I finally get the thing running using a cracked EXE on a pure install of XP-no patches, no DX9, no SP1, just the core OS. Of course, I can't install any of my other utilities because I'm paranoid they're going to screw up SS2's delicate copy protection scheme. And yes, I did buy the game.
Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
http://www.tsanewsblog.com
I thought the whole point of a demo was to get wide distribution and a positive impression of your product.
Uh, no. Demos ideally shouldn't be trying for a "positive impression". First you should have a good product, and then a demo to give an accurate impression of the product- including how hard it is to get installed right on a PC.
By including the copy protection in the demos, the game publisher is upholding honesty; potential customers who dislike intrusive copy-protection are warned off from buying by their demo experience.
(Other motivations to include this kind of code in demos includes the abililty to turn off the demo after a year or so. If the demo is so much fun that people play it and don't even bother paying for the game, a publisher might want that ability)
Folks, it is only a matter of time before StarForce disappear off the face of the planet.
Right off from the first question they start spewing garbage from a technical persepctive.
Drivers cannot stop SoftICE from working, at best they can try to be aware of it and try to malfunction when they detect its presence.
Drivers can be uninstalled (the easiest method being to simply delete the file). Furthermore any activity of their driver can be spoofed by a replacement driver that just says everything is ok.
Their driver is a simple Windows IFS driver that filters filesystem calls (so called IRPs), probably based on hardware/process name. The reason they mess up people's USB drives is because they mis-detect them.
On the surface, it appears it would take only a couple hours for an experienced IFS driver writer to completely bypass their driver (probably along the lines of letting the driver run but ensuring it never gets to see any of the file system calls).
I'm willing to bet the only reason none of the games shipped with their product have been cracked has to do more with the lack of popularity of the games then with the copy protection.
Are you sure about that with Call of Duty? I'm running it from an image of the original disc I made in Alcohol 120% (ie, a virtual drive). I've always run it like this.
CoD is supposed to using SafeDisc 3 for it's copy protection.
(I have Nero installed, as well).
"but if the market keeps shrinking due to the increasing ease of piracy..."
Since when has the computer game market EVER shrunk, for ANY reason? What kind of drugs do they think we're on to try a line like that, and where can I get some?
The only way piracy hurts the industry is in killing of some individual games that were poorly marketed, or poor enough quality that nobody was willing to fork over $50 to get a new coaster. In just about every other way, piracy serves as free advertising... people who can afford to buy it, will hear about it and go buy it. People who can't, won't anyways.
I buy games and then download no-cd cracks for them, since I already lost one cdrom drive due to Diablo II's copy protection thrashing (it eventually blew the alignment to the point where it wouldn't read anything without multiple retries). I consider this trend of copy protection to be invasive and childish... a CD isn't a game, it's a delivery mechanism.
The company I work for is currently looking into selling console games to the masses and we've been in contact with various distribution channels recently. From what I'm hearing from the distributors, the above statement isn't true.
The weird thing is, no matter who we talk to, the best price we can get for something like, say, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow is $1.00 below the suggested retail price. I've been told by our contacts that everybody gets roughly the same price breaks and that the best we'll ever be able to do is two or three dollars below MSRP.
I have no idea where Best Buy, CompUSA, Walmart and all the others who sell games are getting their product. I've been told in various contacts that there is no dealing with publishers unless you're a game distributor, so it appears that a direct deal between Best Buy and, say, Activision isn't what's at play here.
If the large-chain retailers can get price breaks of only $3.00 per copy from these guys, I have to wonder if they're keeping games as a loss leader.
Of course, I've got to wonder if somebody's blowing smoke up my ass regarding the whole supply chain for video games.
The math is mostly sound, but you're a little low in estimation of the production cost. You have to figure overhead into the cost of goods sold. Office rent, utilities, hardware costs, Worker's Comp insurance, company-paid portions of Social Security and other stuff like that inflates your cost to a company a bit. Based on my department, a $70,000 per year employee without health benefits costs the company an additional $20,000 in overhead expenses.
You also need to factor in things like lawyers and licensing. Neither is cheap, and licensing hits in funky places. Look at video formats, for example. You're going to need a lawyer just to work out the contract details for including BIK video codec stuff. BIK wants prominent placement in your product, via a splash video, and the laywers have to argue about the order in the start up animations, if it uses sound, whether or not the user can click through it, etc.
It's clear from the price that somebody's making a killing off of video games, but I'm not really sure where it's going.
There's so little difference between politics and jihad lately...