Starforce, that much reviled copy protection software that installs hidden drivers on your computer, has taken the battle a step farther than before.
Galactic Civilizations II, which touts as one of its selling points very weak copy protection, has been outselling protected games by a wide margin. Probably because it’s gasp a good game! No doubt Starforce’s makers feel threatened by this, as shown by their linkage to a place where a pirated torrent is available. Simply disgusting.
Note: The link buried within the link is, I believe, unavailable now. So you’re not going to be getting any pirated games from this link!
StarForce and its ilk are one of the primary reasons I’ve gone back to console gaming almost exclusively. I don’t like installing anything on my system that has the potential to break things, and StarForce in particular has a reputation for hosing systems.
Wasn’t StarForce part of GalCiv1? And what would it have put on my machine that I need to look out for? I haven’t bought GalCiv2 yet, but I plan to before too long.
No. GalCiv 1 had no copy protection at all beyond registering it.
I remember the first time I accidently clicked it without putting the CD in and it started without the ‘please insert correct CD’ message. I was shocked.
As for StarForce it puts driver wrappers around your CD/DVD drives that become active once you try to run a Starforce game. Early version of StarForce did all sorts of nasty things such as stepping the speed down on your CD drive every time it was activated until it was nonfunctional. There was also a host of rumors about other damage to HD mostly unproven. What really put people in an uproar though was the fact that most Starforce games didn’t correctly uninstall Starforce drivers leaving them on your computer.
If you’re curious if you have them you have to go into Control Panel/System/Hardware/Device Manager choose show hidden devices and look for anything with a label of Starforce. Starforce of course claims its newest versions do no damage to your system at all and you should update it if you have any of the older versions. There is of course still rumors about it damaging parts of people’s systems.
On a personal note I have two starforce games I haven’t noticed it damaging anything (though I have a top of the line system without any really bizarre configuration that might conflict with it) I do hate totally the fact that booting a Starforce game takes about three times as long as any of my other games and I enjoy the occasional No-CD patch because it makes my life easier to play without CD switching and No-CD patches don’t work with Starforce unless you download a bunch of other nonsense that disables your IDE drives to bypass the driver wrappers.
My biggest problem with starforce (aside from having to go back to swapping cds when I want to play games) is it’s inconsistancy. Sometimes it will say I’ve got the correct CD in, other times it won’t, even when I’ve got the correct CD in.
Other problems include being given the wrong CD Key to your CD - happens in game shops that keep the CD’s outside the display box to prevent theft, the check of the correct CD giving an artificial extension to the boot up time of a game, and of course the fact that most of the time the Starforce protection is eventually cracked anyway meaning that people who have acquired the software illegally have a much smoother experience with the product than people who have payed money for it.
I’ve uninstalled the driver and don’t play games that have starforce on them.
I managed to steer clear of that crap until I just had to play Firefighter Command (an Ubisoft game). It’s an awesome game, but the addition of drivers that interfere with my CDROM wasn’t part of what I wanted. (Incidentally, I later discovered that my secondary HD was running in PIO mode for some reason. Perhaps unrelated, but I found it suspicious).
I always knew they were skeezy jerks, but that’s really an astoundingly arrogant thing to do. I think I’ll finish writing that letter to Ubisoft about that. BTW, I think this site has a list of games someplace.
In essence, when a game maker advertised the fact that they used very little to no copy protection (a system which StarForce sells), an administrator at the StarForce message board posted a link to a site where one could download a pirated copy of the game via BitTorrent, mentioning how many people were pirating it at this moment.
Whew! I recently bought the Rayman 10th Anniversary edition. After reading this I was afraid I’d been ‘infected’ with Starforce. Thankfully it is not on the list of games in your link.
Dodged a bullet there. Though now I’m going to be very suspicious of any Ubi releases. Or anything from that list really. (Most of them don’t tickle my fancy anyway, but unfortunately there are a few good games I’d actually consider buying but now won’t. Ever)
Well, if Napster and other filesharing programs can be sued and shut down for facilitating the illegal distribution of software, I’m pretty certain that posting links to BitTorrents with that software is illegal too.
I played the original – unregistered – and was convinced to buy a legitimate copy for the free and frequent upgrades. I enjoyed their point of view:
Italics mine. They got my sale.
And even though my gaming time is fully booked with Battlefield 2 and Civilization 4, I purchased GalCiv2 through Stardock (why not give the developers the full retail price, instead of having a retailer take their cut?). I knew I was going to buy the game anyway, and I wanted to reinforce their behavior. If only all developers had the same point of view.
I’m thinking about sending Stardock a supporting email, as well as sending messages to other game companies urging them to use sensible, non-annoying copy protection. I refuse, for example, to buy more STEAM games because of the irritating and invasive required internet connection.
As well as the fact that it’s a bloated piece of crap. TFC loaded up quicker on my Cyrix 266Mhz, 32Mb RAM, Voodoo 2 PC using the WON network than it does now on my P4 laptop and I’m not joking.
I acutally like and respect Stardock. They make some very cool stuff and they have my full support. I’m even going to buy WindowBlinds (or the entire suite) at some point, both because it’s nifty neato pimp-my-Windows kit, and because they’re one of those rare, small development houses that really gives a crap who buys their stuff and the experience they have in doing so. That, friends, is service with a smile. An infectious one at that.
Steam is a bit of an inconvenience but I don’t really mind a whole hell of a lot. I bought the Half Life 2 special edition. I actually kind of like the fact that it automatically downloads and installs new updates as soon as they’re available. It’s also kinda handy for keeping up to date with new releases on the Steam Engine, but there’s really not a whole lot I’m interested enough in to buy there, so I just stick with HL2. I would probably have been a little happier with a standalone app that didn’t run through an online proxy (especially when after the initial lengthy install process it spends even longer decrypting the content it just copied to the system) but it’s not so much a burdern that I can’t live with it.
But the very second an app gets invasive about its protection, installing rootkits or hidden system drivers/wrappers or other crap malware, it gets to be my new beer coaster and I never buy anything developed/released by that company again – or at least until they stop using said protection scheme.
Personally, I think the more they treat their customers like potential criminals, the more legitemate criminals they create. Sort of an, “Oh really? We’ll see about that” kind of response to copy protection by the crackers, and a “Screw you and your intrusive protection crap” response from their customers.
And really – how much do you hurt your bottom line by using weak copy protection? Ask Stardock.
I support getting rid of stupid anti-theft measures. I received Half Life 2 as a gift right about when it launched, and someone had either removed the CD key and resealed/returned it or it didn’t come with one. Long story short, I have a completely useless copy of Half Life 2 I can’t play. I’ll probably wait until it gets really cheap and used and pick it up then, but any Steam games are getting no more of my money. Shame, because I love Counterstrike, but I’m not purchasing another copy and they won’t provide me a new CD key (due to no receipt). Doesn’t matter that I own the game and that it came without one, they can’t help me.