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CDV Officially Drops Starforce Copy Protection
simoniker writes "Publisher CDV has officially announced that it is dropping the controversial StarForce game copy protection scheme from its games, and is using the TAGES protection scheme instead, in what it calls 'response to consumer demand'. This follows Ubisoft's dropping of the scheme in April, as controversy continues about StarForce's allegedly negative effect on PCs. However, it's notable that the StarForce drivers have just passed Microsoft's 'Designed for Windows XP' certification programme, according to the company's official website."
Publisher CDV [...] is using the TAGES protection scheme instead, in what it calls 'response to consumer demand'
Funny, I would have assumed 'consumer demand' would demand no copy protection at all!
This is just substituting horse shit with cow shit then having a PR hack spray it with perfume to make it smell like the company is doing you a favour.
Trolling is a art,
Despite the forth coming commecnts about the desire for the absense of copy-protection this is a big step forward.
I hope many more companies see fit to follow suit.
It's funny - usually when PR types talk about "consumer demand" it's a bunch of unimportant hyperbolic nonsense.
"Due to consumer demand, we've brought back those yummy red M&Ms!"
"We now make our stylish womens' sweatpants that say 'juicy' across the bottom in sizes up to 40, thanks to overwhelming market demand!"
"Disney is releasing Lion King 8: Simba Mauls a Wildebeest because the fans demand more Hakuna Matata!"
This is one of those rare occasions when the consumers, as a whole, demand something of an industry and get it.
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Microsoft's 'Designed for Windows XP' just means that the software meets certain criteria, and does not mean well designed, well written or bug free.
One would assume that Microsoft Internet Explorer and Office Word are 'Designed for Windows XP'. I also suspect that some spyware, viruses and trojans could pass if the authors paid to have it cerified as 'Designed for Windows XP'.
A quick Google brought me to their site. It's mostly corporate PR-speak fluff, but there are some hints there:
I don't buy the whole "physical impossibility" part. If you can read the data off of the disk with their special APIs and drivers, then those drivers can be reverse-engineered and someone else peel the data off and distribute a hacked version. The data is there, on the disk, they're just storing it in a way that the system can't normally access, without special code that they license out and allow software developers to integrate into their protected application. It's the same thing that game developers have done for years -- there were some old Apple II titles that did strange things with the floppy drive in order to pull off similar tricks.
*yawn* At any rate, just more security through obscurity. Not that I care, particularly, as I don't run Windows (or, for that matter, play games), but I find the whole area interesting enough to keep an eye on.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Condumers would LIKE no copy protection at all, but they appear to be contented with copy protection that's unbotrusive and unproblematic. However they do demand that their games work, something Starforce isn't very good at.
So no they aren't giving consumers what they want, but they are giving them what they require. I won't boycott all copyprotected games, I can live with Safedisc and such. I did, however, boycott all Starforce games because they are problematic.
Then again, ALL of them have been defeated so is there any point in being the one that took the most time?
Is TAGES however friendlier to the paying customer? Since none of the copy protections systems work the only thing that can be hoped for is that they inconvenience the paying customer as little as possible.
Offcourse no copy protection at all would be the easiest way not to upset paying customers but lets not get silly shall we? The paying customers must be hurt to pay for the pirates!
I say we whip all airline passengers to punish them for drug smugglers, you know it makes sense.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Can anyone do better?
Man, you really need that seminar!
Copy protection has been (and will always be) an idiotic race between the tortoise (legions of hackers) and the hare (copy protectionists)
Tortoise wins every time.
Man, you really need that seminar!
The fact that several game companies, including a major studio like UbiSoft, has dropped StarForce due to CD drive problems, is a major sign that the company is in trouble.
At this point, even if they could prove beyond a shadow of doubt that their protection methods don't cause any harm, their reputation is effectively ruined. Enough game players are savvy enough to find out if the StarForce protection is on a desired game, and avoid that title if it is present. And game publishers are figuring this out.
The industry may be a multi-billion dollar one, but these guys aren't about to kiss off customers over a single protection scheme, when there are so many others out there. They will lose more revenue from potential paying customers than they will lose to customers that are soley interested in a pirated copy.
Besides, just about all games are released with enough bugs that a patch is pretty much a necessity. Look at how Stardock handled Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords. No copy protection, but if you want to update that game, you better enter a serial #. Any pirated CD is basically a demo, and once you patch it, it is the full version.
At this point, I'm just happy with any game that doesn't want the CD/DVD in the drive. I switch games too often.
Score one for the good guys.
I'm really hoping games publishers like valve with their steam system really take off and find a great deal of success! Because this archaic method of forcing you to have a physical object present at all times to run the software is just rediculous in this day and age.
We should, by now, be able to authorise our software through an online system and not have to worry at all about physical media to ensure we have paid for it. (Hopefully online purchasing will reduce prices too, but I wont hold my breath for that)
There are several starforce games I would have liked to play but couldnt due to my boycott of their software. I never experienced any catastrophic problems before I found out about this malware, but the way it constantly knocked my optical drives into the protected safe mode was more than frustrating enough for me to rid myself of it forever!
I bought a student copy of Matlab, and somehow the CD got cracked. Since the copy-protection for that particular release depended on the CD being in the drive during use, I was able to convince MathWorks customer service to replace the CD, although I had to pay their standard shipping/handling charge. I would expect any software publisher that cared about its customers to so the same thing.
Bleem for Dreamcast did the same thing, where they placed bogus subcodes and synchronization information on the disk such that a normal linear read won't work correctly. Reading forward, the sector data would be different than if you seeked to that sector.
A certain type of raw write can fix this, but it is rather painful to do.
anonymous
That's the same lame argument MS used with Windows XP. It's *never* a problem for me because everytime I install at a lan party or anything, it's from a cracked version of XP Pro. Pity the poor sods who have to do it legitimately. Limited installs, locked to similar hardware, etc. I've swapped video cards, HDs, NICs, and such at lan parties, built new machines from impromptu shopping trips. This "should only change once a year, tops" is for the CEO's computer at the game companies, everyone who works in the industries changes them around daily.
Sure, a person *should* never hit the 'new computer' thing, upgrading only a few parts at a time. But it happens. Forums abound with someone coming home with a new nic and video card and all of a sudden, getting told they're on a different machine. "Just call and ask for more" is the same stupid line MS spins. Like anyone should have to sit on the phone with some company to prove they have the right to install software. That sounds like a lot of fun at a lan party!
Besides, my friends and I usually break out OLD games (Test Drive 3, Loderunner on the Apple 2) in emulators for a break at lan parties. We certainly aren't going to settle for a system where we can't play old games, such as the one Steam offers. Nor, I'll point out, for any OSes that we can't do this with.
No sir, anything I buy I'm going to control, or I won't buy it.
Besides, there's the Oblivion/Morrowind argument against Steam and consoles, the best (all!) mods came out for the PC. Completely downloadable, completely sharable, completely compatible, and yet because of the "protection" on Steam and consoles, neither set of users got to use mods. Enjoy your little plastic gaming world, it's all you'll ever get if you allow it to be locked down under you.
Lets see, what were my last major gaming purchases: 1) Civilization 4. Bought this from direct2drive, which nigh-totally eliminates my copy proctection hassles (although I had to log into their website through Internet explorer to actually validate the game -- oh noes!). 2) Oblivion. Same deal. 3) Half-Life 2. Snagged it via Steam. I heard a lot of sound and fury about how obtrusive that was going to be but the process was very seamless for me. 4) WoW. Ever wonder why MMORPGs are so big in China? Because you can't pirate a service (well, OK, you can't pirate a service nearly so easily as you can pirate anything else in China). 5) Galactic Civilization II. Got this from their download manager (do we detect a trend?) and their first bullet-pointed feature is "This game has no DRM scheme.") From my perspective, CD protection is a regretful necessity which is non-regretfully no longer necessary for me to play games. The only time I need a physical object any more is when I play console games. And I'll probably have to get that WoW expansion later, at least long enough to install it once. I think companies are going to realize that digital distribution solves their copy-protection woes AND cuts the retailer out of the equation and continue to increase the availability of it.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Well, I'm a slow learner. After going through hell with several StarForce protected games, I'm now on the StarForce boycott. The StarForce paradox is that you have to buy the software to find out if you'll have any problems with it. Then if you do have problems, the software has been opened and you can't return it. You lose and they still get paid.
I also abhor the idea of a game installation stashing ring 0 drivers on my system without my knowledge or permission. My computer and operating system are *my* property and game makers don't have the right to take liberties with it. They somehow justify this trespass with some small print in the license agreement. I'd really like to see some legislation protecting me in that regard.
I'm glad to see publishers dropping StarForce. It's not like StarForce is the only game in town (no pun intended) nor is it the only one that installs low level drivers. SafeDisk does as well, but I believe they use one ring 3 driver and it's much less invasive (as opposed to SF which uses 3 drivers one of which is ring 0). At least I've never had any problems with SafeDisk. SecuROM seems to be the least invasive and doesn't install any drivers as near as I can tell. This is all stuff I've had to spend time making myself aware of since the problems I've had with StarForce. I've had two games that wouldn't authenticate and problems with my DVD drive. After removing all StarForce related files and registry entries, I've had no problems since. The StarForce protected games ended up in the circular file. I've lost some money and lots of time because of StarForce.
StarForce is evil and needs to go down in a spiraling conflagration. It will please me greatly to see that happen.
- Craig