Ubisoft Officially Drops Starforce

totalbasscase writes "Starforce, the copy protection scheme hated by most who've had reason to use it, has lost a customer. Ubisoft has confirmed that not only will Heroes of Might and Magic V ship without Starforce copy protection, the publisher is discontinuing its use in all its games." From the article: "We'd venture it has something to do with the lawsuit raised against Ubisoft for using Starforce as copy protection software. When we asked why they were dropping the company Ubisoft representatives said, 'Ubisoft takes its customer concerns very seriously and is investigating the complaints about alleged problems with Starforce's software. Ubisoft's goal is to find solutions for its customers if there are problems with Ubisoft products.'"

Comments

Huh.

[SatanicPuppy]

*Scratches Ubisoft off the "Completely Evil" list, and puts them on the "Evil, but I'm not so pissed off I won't buy their stuff" list.*

Since game companies absolutely depend on the goodwill of the consumers of their product, I'm glad to see they made the right choice, and I hope other companies *coughSONYcoughcough* will see that the right choice can also be the smart choice.

Re:Huh.

[aichpvee]

I'd scratch them off in pencil until whatever they replace starforce with starts showing up on shipped games. They could go with something just as bad but without the reputation that starforce has already built up.

Out F'ing Standing!

[BulletMagnet]

Or maybe it has to do with the forum fiasco where StarForce goon handed out links to warez and whatnot.

Starforce is of the same level of ilk as adware/ransomware vendors.

Behold a toast to hoping these Russians are looking for jobs in Siberia within the next 3 months.

You know there's a problem...

[ShinSugoi]

... when the first thing you do when you are thinking about buying a game is check what sort of copy protection it uses before even considering the purchase itself. And what if the game happens to have one of the more offensive copy protection schemes? (Safedisc, Starforce) Well, you're forced to download cracks from questionable websites if you want to avoid dealing with them. This is coming from someone who wants to buy their products. This is a good first step for Ubisoft, but they should realize that all restrictive copy protection schemes do nothing but hurt their business in the long run.

Re:What they should do

[PhrostyMcByte]

I had to return Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (which I was looking forward to quite a bit!) when Starforce wouldn't let me run it. Fun times trying to return an opened game, especially when the returns people don't know what copy protection is much less Starforce.

It would be awesome if they patched their old games to remove it. I just hope whatever new "protection" scheme they use in their new games will be less retarded.

Won't use but won't recall?

[GrumblyStuff]

What about the poor saps who bought the games already? What about the games unsold on the shelves? Somehow I just can't see Ubisoft doing a recall or releasing anti-Starforce patches.

Not quite the list

[edremy]

You can basically put Oblivion on that list. It does do a DVD check on boot, but that's it, and we all know how easy that is to bypass. Most MMOs should be there too, since you're locked to an account- Guild Wars has no checks at all.

1.7 million sales for Oblivion says that limited or no copy protection works.

This makes me happy.

[ScaryFroMan]

I've been having trouble finding torrents of Ubisoft games. Now there'll be no problem!