Slashdot Mirror
Pirates Vs. Publishers
1up is running a piece looking at the fight between pirates and publishers in the games industry. They use StarForce, and their frustrating copy protection scheme, as a basis for their discussion of both sides of the issue. From the article: "The goal isn't to encourage people to be honest, or to drive innovation in the hacker community, or to be an irritant because you've lost your CD and want to play. The goal of a publisher in picking a copy protection service is to make more money by selling more copies. The logic is that if it's impossible to pirate the game, then people have to buy it if they want it. Why doesn't that work? If your copy protection is StarForce, then it doesn't work because people are boycotting your copy protection. StarForce, which installs a hard-to-remove driver onto your computer, has an unproven but generally accepted track record of causing computers to slow down -- at best. Some reports have complained of permanently damaged physical drives or hard drives."
I would pretty much agree -- NoCDs and kracks are often useful even for legitamately purchased games. Having the CD constantly in the drive is really annoying, especially when on a laptop or wanting to switch back and forth between several games.
Omnes stulti sunt.
I used to use NoCD cracks all of the time, but I've started using Game Jackal. http://www.gamejackal.com/home.asp/
It doesn't support Starforce, but I refuse to install any of those games on my PC anyways. They offer a free trial so you can make sure the games you want to play are supported as well.