Starforce Petition!

[dajunka]

Well it looks like we are winning lads, with the anonouncement that UBI soft are trashing Star**** another publisher is added to the list of 'those who have seen the light'. Starforce does not make more money for pubishers, quite the oposite thanks to all those who stood up and shouted ' I AM BOYCOTTING Star**** so you can shove your new game up your ****'.

[saulob]

yep.. Starforce is gone from Ubisoft....

so.. I hope that Ubisoft release new patchs from the starforce game, without it... like.. KING KONG!!

[pendragon361]

With all due respect to the author of this post..the only people haveing issues with starforce are the ones with illegal copys....my advice is to buy the frigging game if you like it and quit bitching !

[Grumpy]

@pendragon361

..the only people haveing issues with starforce are the ones with illegal copys....

Not true at all!! You obviously have no idea! Please keep your opinions to yourself! No unfounnded accusations!

[dr_psikick]

boycote, no starforce in my system.
In fact all the copy protection schemes IMO are dubious and abusive, because when you buy one game, you are not buying only the game itself, you buy the box, the media (CD / DVD) and so on... and you have every right to copy/backup any part of the product - it's yours you have paid - for your personal use.
For example, when I was in the university, I often copy my own books (that I have bought) just to study, because I like to write and cut pages... so I still have the originals nice and cleans...
Other point is that a copy protection scheme that makes you to have the CD on drive to play the game is demaging the drive - CD/DVD drives are like commom lights they have a certain number of hours of life...
Finishing a key code, IMO is the only legit scheme of copy protection - I can have 1000 copies but I only have one code...

[Grumpy]

@dr_psikick

because when you buy one game, you are not buying only the game itself

This is a common misunderstanding as you 'never' really own the game. When you purchase the disc etc you actually only purchase the licence to play that game on 1 pc at a time. You dont technically own the actual game itself.
I know this sounds stupid but thats how it is.

[Joe Forster/STA]

Yes, you have the right to use the game (with tons of limitations, see the EULA for the details) but you never get the copy- and intellectual rights of the game.

See chips in cars. As far as I've been told, their firmware is also copy protected (at least, by the law) and you may get into legal trouble if you provedly changed it without the manufacturer's agreement (besides losing the guarantee of the car, of course). You may use it as you received it but you may NOT reverse engineer it, change it, copy it (partially or fully), resell it etc. etc.

[Mason]

Laws trump the EULA. AFAIK, USA law has recognized things like the right to make a copy for archival purposes, the right to resell and the right to reverse engineer regardless of what the EULA says.

[Eindhar]

i hate SF protection and i will boicott all games in the list.
simply i hate that i can't make a back-up of my Second Sight and i won't buy two copies of it.
and i really dislike softwares that install something that i don't want on my system.
i will boycott StarForce games

[chaosmaster]

Originally Posted by Game-Hacker

Sorry for my lack of knowedge, you mentioned Starforce Virus? What are those? I have Kasperky anti-virus installed but when installing Stronghold2 I do not get any alert so is after scanning my PC with it? Do you mean StarForce Virus as a real virus?

with virus i mean, that Starforce is software which is installed without my knowledge and which can destroy some hardware in my PC!

[The-S-Owl]

Great idea, Grumpy

I have never bought any Starforce protected game before, and i never will. I have encountered several issues with Starforce protected demo's: after installing such a game demo, my system became unstable... i randomly got Blue Screens Of Death. I uninstalled the SF drivers, and hey, all of a sudden no more BSOD's !

However, almost no protection is 100% "clean": Safedisc, Securom, Tages, VOB ProtectCD and most other commercial copy protections do install 'hidden' drivers:
- Secdrv is a driver installed by Safedisc
- UAService7.exe is a service installed by Securom 7 (i do not know if this protection installs a driver)
- Enodpl/Tandpl/Lemsgt/Hwpsgt are drivers installed by Tages
- SshDrvXX (where XX is a number) is a driver installed by ProtectCD
As you can see, almost all protections install "something" without your knowledge. But there is one big difference: the drivers installed by the protections apart from Starforce seem to be totally harmless. For example, I have never ever heard problems that were directly related to the Safedisc driver.

The Starforce drivers are getting worse each time they are being updated: the latest versions even prevent you from properly reading DPM info from CD/DVD media, which is, in my opinion, a real shame, and illegal !
The SF coders surely know of the current USB drive trick. What will be next ? That the new drivers will prevent you from using a USB CD/DVD drive ? I hope not.

[DABhand]

Originally Posted by The-S-Owl

Great idea, Grumpy

I have never bought any Starforce protected game before, and i never will. I have encountered several issues with Starforce protected demo's: after installing such a game demo, my system became unstable... i randomly got Blue Screens Of Death. I uninstalled the SF drivers, and hey, all of a sudden no more BSOD's !

However, almost no protection is 100% "clean": Safedisc, Securom, Tages, VOB ProtectCD and most other commercial copy protections do install 'hidden' drivers:
- Secdrv is a driver installed by Safedisc
- UAService7.exe is a service installed by Securom 7 (i do not know if this protection installs a driver)
- Enodpl/Tandpl/Lemgst/Hwpsgt are drivers installed by Tages
- SshDrvXX (where XX is a number) is a driver installed by ProtectCD
As you can see, almost all protections install "something" without your knowledge. But there is one big difference: the drivers installed by the protections apart from Starforce seem to be totally harmless. For example, I have never ever heard problems that were directly related to the Safedisc driver.

The Starforce drivers are getting worse each time they are being updated: the latest versions even prevent you from properly reading DPM info from CD/DVD media, which is, in my opinion, a real shame, and illegal !
The SF coders surely know of the current USB drive trick. What will be next ? That the new drivers will prevent you from using a USB CD/DVD drive ? I hope not.

At last someone who knows what they are talking about for protections.

Im not gonna start a flame in this thread, just saying congrats to this guy for having knowledge of what he is debating about

[Joe Forster/STA]

Hi guys,

As a software developer, I believe that adding suspicious or potentially malicious code to a software hurts the user and voids the trustful connection between the developer and the user. While the developers always disclaim all damage and loss, caused by their own software, they shouldn't add questionable code on purpose.

As a hacker, I believe that using undocumented system functions is a very bad idea (unfortunately, M$ operating systems are known to be extremely ill-documented, except when a third party comes to the rescue!) because their functionality may not be exactly as documented and may change any time, without notice. As a result, you may have strange problems if your PC has "non-standard" hardware or software installed. (Meaning: hardware and software that the code hasn't been tested with.)

As a self-conscious user and administrator of the home PC's of my family, I would hate to have any software running on my systems, without my knowledge. This even includes those sh*t little icons in the system tray, which I carefully get rid of; viruses, ad-ware and other malicious code is much worse than that.

The Starforce copy protection has gone too far in the last year or so. It's becoming too similar to trojans and may have severe consequences to the stability of your system. (And the average user doesn't even know the reason as all copy protections are well hidden, for a reason!)

Whether this thread has any chance to call the attention of game publishers, I don't know. Actually, I don't think so... Still, I'm against intrusive software, be it trojans, ad-ware or copy protection!

Joe

[gnozal]

No SF game for me. Never