[Fairygdmther]

Today in Gamasutra, I came across this listing of games with Starforce. many times people come and ask us this so here's a link.

Starforce

Lynsie

[samIamsad]

Anstoss 4 (German)

Cool.

I'm going to move this to general.

Oops.

[Tanukitsune]

I'm pretty sure Pac-Man World 2 also uses it as well...

I'm pretty sure I have at least one Starforce game installed and I have no problems at all...

[Naveed]

I don't know why there is so much fuss about Starforce. I have played quite a few games with Starforce, currently playing Prince of Persia : T2T, and never had any porblem. Ubisoft uses it, and the good thing is that the new version of Starforce is very difficult to crack, for example, you will not see any no cd fix for T2T, new Splinter Cell, or King Kong etc. I think it should be adopted in all PC Games.

[insane_cobra]

I've had no problems with some, but others plainly refused to work on my PC so I had to get cracked versions.
I think it should be condemned to eternity of infernal suffering, together with its programmers.

And by the way, you can get cracked PoP: TTT for some time now.

[Reptil3]

But you must admit that releasing demos with copy protection is stupid.

[Tanukitsune]

Originally Posted by Reptil3

But you must admit that releasing demos with copy protection is stupid.

Maybe some hackers can crack the full game if they have an unprotected demo?

[Martin Gantefoehr]

Maybe some hackers can crack the full game if they have an unprotected demo?

Exactly.


(On a side note, the mention of Moment of Silence is incorrect in this form, as the North American version [published by The Adventure Company] does certainly NOT use Starforce)

[Fairygdmther]

Martin - go to the site and email them - let them know, they can make the correction on the site - they do ask for info.

Lynsie

[Martin Gantefoehr]

Martin - go to the site and email them - let them know, they can make the correction on the site - they do ask for info.

I've already done that, of course.

[Kurufinwe]

Originally Posted by insane_cobra

I think it should be condemned to eternity of infernal suffering, together with its programmers.

Yes! Just give me a hot poker and I'll take part in the torturing. And add the programmers of Windows to the list of the condemned, for allowing things such as Starforce to exist and take away from the users control over their own computers.

[Aurebesh]

Originally Posted by Martin Gantefoehr

On a side note, the mention of Moment of Silence is incorrect in this form, as the North American version [published by The Adventure Company] does certainly NOT use Starforce

The TAC release of Wanted is also erroneously on that list. And I'm almost sure that the Still Life demo wasn't protected by starforce (perhaps there was more than one demo).

[insane_cobra]

Originally Posted by Aurebesh

And I'm almost sure that the Still Life demo wasn't protected by starforce (perhaps there was more than one demo).

The one I played certainly was.

[Aurebesh]

I never played the demo, but I read somewhere that you can use the demo files to bypass starforce in the game. Oh well, perhaps that was wrong.

As for Wanted, I'm sure, because I have the TAC release and it isn't protected at all.

[Legolas813]

Runaway had Starforce? I don't remember that.

[AFGNCAAP]

This is interesting: "Prove it!" and receive $3000 from StarForce!

Nobody has applied yet. Then again, how could they expect that anyone will risk their own PC breakdown just to prove the point? Not to mention that the "problem (...) must exist and be reproduced in any other configuration" rule kinda makes it unwinnable. I mean, of course it would screw things up only on certain configurations!

[Tramboi]

Originally Posted by AFGNCAAP

This is interesting: "Prove it!" and receive $3000 from StarForce!

Nobody has applied yet. Then again, how could they expect that anyone will risk their own PC breakdown just to prove the point? Not to mention that the "problem (...) must exist and be reproduced in any other configuration" rule kinda makes it unwinnable. I mean, of course it would screw things up only on certain configurations!

Yes this is basically unprovable.
Anyway I encourage everybody to boycott games protected by Starforce, because of the sheer level of OS meddling it relies on.
It's not much better than the Sony's rootkit

"Thou shall not install device drivers behind the user's back, especially for protecting a game from piracy"
"Thou shall not prevent other applications from workign because they might be used for piracy"

http://www.tgdaily.com/2005/10/01/th...tes/index.html

[nikoniko]

Originally Posted by AFGNCAAP

This is interesting: "Prove it!" and receive $3000 from StarForce!

Those b--tards... You know, I could never get my store-purchased Still Life working on my PC because of StarForce, and finally had to crack it to play the game. My Sony DVD+/-R stopped working for doing burns the same time I installed Still Life. Half a dozen discs were wasted while troubleshooting, my weekly backup habit was interrupted, and the only thing which got the drive working again was a full reinstall of Windows XP.

If they didn't have the ridiculous requirement of being able to reproduce the problem on other machines, I would gladly take them up on this.

I will never buy a product with StarForce protection again. It is one thing to release a game that is not fully compatible with all systems - with all the variety of systems out there, it's impossible to guarantee that any complex software will run on all of them - but when the offending software is a protection mechanism that installs low-level drivers in the system software, without making it abundantly clear that it is doing so, that is abhorrent behavior which should be criminal.

These protection mechanisms only inconvenience legitimate buyers of software, since copyright law allows me to make one backup of any software I purchase. The pirates are not stopped at all: fully-cracked games are available on all the P2P networks within a day or two of release, regardless of the complexity of the protection.

Cheers (but jeers to StarForce),
doroposo

[rtrooney]

Originally Posted by Fairygdmther

I came across this listing of games with Starforce. Lynsie

As a matter of principle, I'm not opposed to copy protection. But I truly dislike this form of protection.

While I seem to come back to one of my favorite games, over and over again, Freddy Pharkus, Frontier Pharmacist built copy protection into the game itself, as did Dagger of Aman Rah (sp?).

Unfortunately, in this day and age, while those copy protections would be exposed on countless newsgroups, they did the job at the time.

If Starforce isn't the answer, game designers, a la FPFP and DoAR, need to find a way to integrate copy protection into the game itself. That way most of us will feel safe playing a game without worrying about having our systems hijacked.

[AFGNCAAP]

Originally Posted by rtrooney

Freddy Pharkus, Frontier Pharmacist built copy protection into the game itself, as did Dagger of Aman Rah (sp?).

"Amon Ra". And "Pharkas", while we're at it.