Starforce starts dishing out threats
It seems Boing Boing have been threatened with legal action by Starforce.
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This type of malicious legal scare mongering is becoming widespread on the internet. To the point that even me, a nobody, gets threatened with it just for posting opinion on a forum. People are paying the RIAA because of the way the system is stacked against them although they're innocent. Companies like Infinium Labs threaten sites which post criticisms. A lot of sites don't have the will or money to seek out legal advice, this tactic seems to work directly against free speech. Corporations seem to hold far more rights than the individual. Ubisoft posts Starforce has stopped Chaos Theory from being cracked, and the only people that are angry about Starforce are the crackers. On both accounts this is absolutely false, and the sad thing is people buy this crap they're being fed. Generally I don't think boycotting works, is a good idea, but it's becoming more and more appealing as I see PC gaming ruined and stripped of its advantages by these idiot suits. |
While I agree that copy protection systems are, in the end, only really harming the legitimate buyer I also recognise that the developers and publishers have few options left.
I happen to be strongly against the idea of software piracy, and I just think it's a shame that people increasingly aren't prepared to pay for their entertainment. If only that were so none of these systems would ever be necessary. To return directly to StarForce, though, I'd be pretty pissed off if I was running their company. I happen to fall into the camp that genuinely believes that StarForce gets far more negative publicity than it deserves (note that I am not saying that it doesn't have any problems, merely that people have entirely overreacted to them)... |
The latest games from ubisoft(King Kong, Prince of Persia) ask you nicely if you would like to uninstall the protection when you uninstall their games, so it's really not as bad as it was when they kept it lurking around.
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They just need to work out how to enforce anti theft without removing a customers legal rights.
I read on another messageboard about a guy who edits the EULA text file that comes with software before pressing accept. Removing the onerous parts that take away legal rights. It struck me as a rather clever turnabout of those rediculous EULA click screens. |
Various thoughts from an anti-DRM indie developer.
Anyhoo. I don't have any major problems with *non*-software-based CP. But even setting aside questions about "fair-use" and whatnot, why on earth would you want to let CP software that could stop *tech-saavy* folks from cracking the base program anywhere near your system? Just stop and think about it for a while. Presumably these folks have a good grip on the inner workings of software stuff, so you'd think that anything that prevented *their* systems from working around the CP would have to be doing some wacko stuff to *your* system, wouldn't it? Peace & Luv, Liz |
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Lets take this from the Ubisoft line, say it does work, it harms the legitimate customer. Publishers are completely illogical with their maths, money isn't "lost" to piracy, hardly anyone would say they pirate games they would have bought. It's about control, the games that made Missing say they had a big piracy problem in Poland, where they don't sell the game. Sony claims they lose millions and millions in South America, where they don't sell the Playstation. In the end it's about control of content, and publishers want control, and they are completely blind of the benefit. As someone who understands tech, Starforce is a bad idea, it is made in such a way that causes problems, not always critical problems, but it will definitely have an affect on your machine. Adding unneccesary things like this to a machine is hated in general, you're bloating a system, and creating a chance for problems. People are harsh on the problems that do occur because it's unwanted, unneeded, and badly designed. |
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The fact of the matter is, though, that the publishers are entitled to use StarForce, and that by installing the game you're agreeing to them doing so. Does that make it good? No. Does that mean that people shouldn't ever say anything against StarForce? No. But does that mean that people should wildly overreact? No. Personally, I wish that people would stop using StarForce, but predominantly because of the hassle it generates. If a company I owned was being persistently attacked by people, though - including a large group of individuals who haven't experienced problems and who are simply following the flock - I'd be looking at legal recourse myself. |
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Many programs leave registry keys in the registry, including microsofts, and it's complained about in many circles. It's not really a problem specific to installshield, and more generally it's a problem with the Windows Registry, and how it works. That's not really the point, InstallShield has a purpose related to the legitimate operating of the software. People are so angry at StarForce because it's completely unnecessary to the legitemate user. Publishers shouldn't have any control on how I use their software. The licenses and copyright-protection schemes they use are unethical and should not be legally binding. Do people actually know Starforce is being installed? No, so they never agreed to anything. |
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Whether you agree with it as a preventive of piracy or not is another topic for another day (I am personally more inclined now to believe that it can help in prevention), but regardless, I think the company has the right to use it in its products if it believes it can enhance its profits, just like you have the right of not buying these products. |
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I agree with RLacey here. Even though Starforce may be on the edge of legality/privacy, the complaints about it are completely out of proportion. It doesn't deserve that much bad attention. The ideas behind it are actually quite noble. |
Here are the results of Ubisoft's investigation into Starforce problems:
http://forums.ubi.com/groupee/forums...2/m/8121095173 The good news is, out of all the sold copies of four recent games, only 0.3% of users reported problems connected to Starforce. Even supposing that some users sought help directly from the Starforce website or some other place besides Ubi, there's no way to argue that a significant percentage of people are having problems - at least when it comes to Ubisoft's products. Being one of the statistically insignificant few who did have serious problems, however, doesn't comfort me much. To be fair to Ubisoft, I should note here that it wasn't with one of their games. More good news is that most of the problems reported do get solved. The bad news is that there are two issues they've had trouble with, representing only a fraction of all reported Starforce problems, that don't always get solved: Quote:
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I'm another person who's never had any problem with Starforce. Considering that gamers tend to be power users and put all sorts of crap on their machines on a regular basis, it baffles me that people have singled out Starforce this way. Any time you install something, you're taking a risk that your computer could blow up as a result. |
Certainly if I'd experienced problems myself, as doroposo has, I'd be pretty leery. But the other issue here is that StarForce has had different builds over the years. I think there's no question that one particular build a couple years ago caused a (relatively) significant number of problems. That's what started this whole anti-SF craze. But now that the bandwagon bashing has taken hold, it doesn't seem to matter that that particular build has long since been updated. People still refer to StarForce as if it's exactly the same program now that it was then. No point letting the facts get in the way of rampant paranoia.
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I've had no problems with it at all. I think it's strange people blame Starforce for screwing up their machines.
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I dunno, Doroposo's story alone is enough to turn me off from buying any game protected with StarForce. The fact that there's only a 1 in 50000 chance of a screwup means little if you turn out to be that 1 in 50000 person. I can't afford to buy new hardware if that happens.
Plus I find the fact that StarForce uses system drivers to do nothing but check for a CD to be... bizarre at best. I still remember the time I tried updating the drivers for my ATI video card. I downloaded drivers from the manufacturer that made my card, that are supposed to help with the actual functioning of my hardware, installed them, and they quite literally killed my computer. Rendered it completely non-functional. And I'm supposed to trust third-party drivers that don't assist in the actual functioning of any hardware or software? Er, no. I get paranoid enough installing drivers for stuff that actually *needs* them to work. :P Once bitten, twice shy, as the saying goes. Peace & Luv, Liz |
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