Scandalous news about Starforce
 

From Celestail Heavens, a Heroes of Might & Magic V fansite:

The Starforce made the headlines once again when an administrator of their forum posted a link to a torrent site distributing Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords, as a proof that software piracy was bad for sales. The post has since been edited. The publisher of the game, Stardock, reacted by posting a rather diplomatic editorial on their own forums, calling the admin's action unnecessary. The post is also an interesting description of the current state of software piracy, along with Stardock's own way to deal with the issue: "Our primary weapon to fight piracy is through rewarding customers through convenient, frequent, free updates. If you make it easy for users to buy and make full use of your product or service legitimately then we believe that you'll gain more users from that convenience than you'll lose from piracy."

Here's the image of the incriminated thread (torrent censured)
http://www.galciv2.com/temp/starfo2.jpg

So...Starforce just hit a new low...no serious developer should have relation with a such self-righteous comany like it.

Spread the news EVERYWHERE, maybe this time we can bring some good developer back to reason...

Sorry, bit confused... Can someone explain to me what the above means and what the .jpg should show us?

Who is reacting how and why...

Sorr, if its a dumb question, but I didn´t get the point.
English is not my native language...

GRx

In short words, one of the Starforce crew is trying to hype their protection on a very low performance. They try to argue, that Galactic Civilizations 2 would been sold more with a protection.

!HaGaR!, basically a Starforce employee has posted a link to a Torrent Website where a 'warez' copy of Galactic Civilizations II, another Developers game, can be downloaded!

This was done to show how widespread piracy is, not to encourage it, but the way in which it was done has made Stardock, the developer of Galactic Civilizations II, not very happy as people could have gone there and download the game.

This was a bit stupid of Starforce.

thats is not ture you can get in torren toca 3 for example or other starforce game and i dont thik this afect the sales, if is true right now there not be any games for pc or consoles along time ago now this is my tough i dont suport warez but there is people or countries they cant suport buy a game if they dont downloas anyway they dont buy a game ,why the game company instead spending money in protection dont make a games more cheaps like 20 us or less , anyway i alwasy buy the original i only need a backup ,and i dont buy starforce games
sorry for my english

Thats the most stupid thing Ive ver heard. Piracy does infact affect only a little or doesnt affect the sales. People who but pirated goods are the ones who can't afford the game in the first place. Meaning they dont have the money, not that they have the money but wont spend it on the game.

Anyways, someone should post on that pathetic forum a link to a torrent where people can download POP :TTT (a starforce protected game) just to embarass those bastards.

It was stupid of Starforce, because I can tell you for certain, Galactic Civ. 2 would have had, at least, one less sale (me), if it had included Starforce.


Not only that, but the point is, yes people will download the game, but they cant get it working because it badly needs patches, and those you get from registering with Stardock.

for germans :D

http://www.krawall.de/news.php?s=Kb5...&news_id=19376

Someone should definitely spread this out into the whole net. Someone should post this on shoutwire.com. Hopefully, the best scenario after this is that most game developers would be disgusted at what those bastards did and stop using Starforce for their protection.

Spoken like a true Warez Protector..


1. Its nothing to do with money, ok, it doesnt matter if it was £200 or £20 or even £2, people would still steal it. People who buy from Pirates are infact no net connection or very slow connection, if they had broadband well they wouldnt buy it if they could download it.

It doesnt matter what excuse is used, ive seen and heard em all. Simple fact is people are thiefs.

2. No lets not get people to do that with torrent links.

3. Of course it affects income, nobody is buying it! It isnt such a hard concept. You buy game they make money, you no buy game and steal it they no make money, multiply by 100000's of people who download it = big possible drop in income.

Nope, it just means Im someone with a higher logic.

1st : "if they had broadband well they wouldnt buy it if they could download it." - its just like you openly admitted are a pirate, coz you yourself could just have downloaded it.

2nd : Even if people have a T1 connection, its useless if they don't know where to download the game.

3rd : If you know anything about business, you can never gain a loss or a profit on a market that doesnt have the money to buy your products. That simple. In the gaming sense, the pirates steal only data, not the actual CDs the game developers had costly produced.

In short, they dont make money but they also can neither gain a loss or profit. By the way, im not in any way condoning to piracy.

Stealing is stealing. People try to grey out the line, but to me, its perfectly Black and White. Which reminds me, I have to go finish Black and White 2 :D Cyall

I'll start out by saying that what SF did was extremely distasteful. They basically sell their services as "protection." If you don't buy it, they'll put a link on their site to assist pirates. Hopefully this will hurt SF more than they thought it would hurt Stardock.

As for hurting sales, is there really proof that a better protection will reduce it? How do they know that people who can't download simply won't buy it? Games are not a necessity.

About stealing: As far as I'm aware, stealing involves taking an item from someone. For example, I take a book from someone, now they don't have it anymore. Warez is just copying it.

You're misguided. Stealing is taking something that you would otherwise need to pay for to own. If you copy the game and don't pay for it, that's theft. Pure and simple.

Just a comment DABhand. I have read a lot from u, and perfecfty know ur point of view, but in this case, where do u live? Nigeria?
There is something called inocence principle, that, basically states all people is inocence till the oposite is demonstrated.
It is evident SOME copies will be originally stolen for different reasons, but in my case, for example, and i dont think i'm an alien, i can download a game ( if i should), test it, enjoy, and BUY if like enough. There is no prize on a good manual, and package (Neverwinter nights/Spellforce for example), and another games are good enough that package does not matter a lot ( Soldiers of anarchy which IS NOT PROTECTED in SPANISH version, and package is awful (non-existant manual and a virgin black case with some paper inside a hard paper)) so i buy it.

Considering it, and regarding ur thoughts, i must be ET.

Morg

time is coming
 

Hi! Friend's Excellent new's & thank for german link, i am french but i anderstand bether german as english.
Now is time, for the publisher of this game, Stardock to crack all starfoce protected games and to send the link to cracks on torrent sides, only a game publisher can easy crack games and now stardock have a motivation.
Have fun, if you like good games speed performances, don't buy starsh*t protected.:cool:

In 2100, our descendants will either be living on a planet run by monopolies - not democratrical goverments! - and you'll have to pay even each time you fart, for environment pollution (worst case), or will be laughing at us arguing about free or paid software as software will be, by default, free then and only user support will be charged for (best case).

[Edit] You see, many of you are talking about theft and digital rights (both that of the publisher and that of the customer) as if they were absolute and not the result of the constantly changing culture of mankind. Those people are seriously wrong, although this fact doesn't become apparent in a mere lifetime... Oofff, thus I spoke! :D

No your Portugese :P

I mean Spanish :P

And you're a prick :P

Please, everyone keep forum rule #7 in mind, thank you!

Lets not forget the main argument here.
I like car examples, if, for the reason that cars do get stolen quite often companies invent protective mechanisms that hinder distribution, sales and popularity of cars, they`d be quite stupid.
Peer to peer is an excellent way of distributing software. The designers of starforce are of the opinion its best to ruin this innovation by forcing their opinion upon GalCiv II, simply cuz they dont pay.
I think starforce is prolly russian mafia.

did someone post this on shoutwire.com yet?

More bad press: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6145864.html

And You cant read english to see the joke.

How unfortunate you didnt goto school

Interesting to read:

That's the point. The best protection is a valid serial number, so you can't play online if you are not a legal user.Copy protections can be justified for games which only have single player mode, but not for multiplayer games calling for a serial anyway. Only the existence of these numbers can force people to spend money in a (good) game despite they could got it illegally.

Again, Starforce can't argue nothing, failling to remember "a few" SF games which can be played from a copy.

If you can afford a $1000 PC, then you can afford a $50 game. That simple.
If you own a PC which can run F.E.A.R., then chances are you're not too poor to buy it.
What does your "Higher Logic" have to say about that? :P


And to those of you abusing Starforce over this incident... Not that I'm supporting them or anything, but you can't blame them. It's the action of one moronic forum administrator, so you can't place the blame on the company as a whole. It's not as if they hold a general meeting before every post :D.

shure
 

Probably in next time the autor of this scandalous post will loose the job by starfo*ces and appear as a new group on the scene. lol, i don't need trojans on my computer.

:cool: Many poeple die daily, nobody's perfekt.

@Anti669: Perhaps, not all people can afford to buy a thousand dollar PC. Also, perhaps, some people can barely afford to buy a multi-hundred dollar PC and, when they're done, they're left with no more money to buy software.

I'm not saying piracy is good. I'm not saying that poor people shouldn't be allowed to buy PC. And I'm not saying that having poor people around, at the beginning of the era of space travel, is good either. I'm just saying this problem is "grey" rather than "black & white"...

If a Game has Copy Protection I would prefer not to Buy it, but its good to have Copy Protection on your Games to Stop Casual Copying.

But everyone should have the Write to make a Backup Copy & they should not Try to make Copy Protected Games that are impossible to Copy. Also you should not need to use other Applications to make a Copy work eg DaimonTools.

They should explain to to the Purchaser on how they can make a Backup of there copy, or place a Card Explaining how to in the Box, after all there not Cheap to buy...

I wonder how they would go if you had to Contact the Game Maker to get your Retail Key that you just Bought at the Shop ? Meaning every Key that would get sent to the Buyer's would be on Record & if that Key gets Black listed then they would no who gave the Key out because it would be on Record... I guess you can call it Registering your Game in a Different way.
:)

You might buy a game once a Month or Maybe 2 @ $180 x2 I would average 1 Game every 5 Months Unless there is some good Tittles out, but then again once in a while I might buy 3 in 1 hit Labuying the other 2 games but how many Computers are going to buy @ $900 ? you would be dumb & or Rich to Buy a new PC every 6 to 8 Months:D

I buy a new PC (CPU, Motherboard, Ram & a Video Card) every 4 Year's & thats usually because I need to as to keep upto date with the New Game Releases... Also Update hard drives when needed to...