Join Starforce, or they will link to torrents of your game!

KdjaCL

This is crazy, Galactic civ 2 dev team feel that Starforce is a draconian way of enforcing copy protection, so the makers of star force to prove the point link to tonnes of illegal torrents of the game

http://www.galciv2.com/temp/starfo2.jpg Linking of torrents (website removed)

http://forums.galciv2.com/index.aspx?forumid=161&aid=106741&c=1

For example, we were quite disturbed to discover that the company that makes Starforce provided a working URL to a list of pirated GalCiv II torrents. I'm not sure whether what they did was illegal or not, but it's troubling nevertheless and was totally unnecessary.

All software is pirated, there's no way around it. We've been making software for over 10 years. We don't like our software being pirated. Like I said, every lost sales has an impact on us. But there are other ways to reduce it than through draconian copy protection systems.

Incidentally, the site that Starforce's forum admin linked to "prove" how much our software was being pirated we visited, followed the instructions on the site to get our game removed and the links were removed within a couple of hours. We'll continue to follow-up with them

http://www.bluesnews.com/


Thats insane, altho they may appear to have innocently done, its not quite right that they would link to the game in the 1st place. As someone could have linked to every Starforce game that is available illegally. As Starforce really doesnt do anything. Cant see this helping the Starforce is good debate.

kdjac

bizmark

Ya seen that last night couldnt belive it its like they are really running a protection racket "use our software or by god you will suffer!" stupid really seeming as their standing among most gamers in rock bottom this is bound to hurt them more.

tba

Thats just wrong....

Dooom

every lost sales has an impact on us

I'm sure, they'll have to wait a few extra days to put the deposit on that Ferrari.

aidan_walsh

Spike wrote:

I'm sure, they'll have to wait a few extra days to put the deposit on that Ferrari.

Because every game makes massive returns for the developers...

On topic, this is a frankly sickening thing to see a company like StarForce doing.

Dooom

aidan_walsh wrote:

Because every game makes massive returns for the developers...

Yeah, I only realised how little sense that made now.

Kur4mA

It was a really stupid thing to do, but it was the mistake of just one of their employee's, and not something they wanted to happen.

Starforce Writes:

"In the end, on behalf of the whole StarForce I would like to tender our apologies to all people, who have been working on creation of the game Galactic Civilizations II. We have to officially claim that what has happened is just a mistake of our employee that was boosted into “our planned PR action” by the people, who hate StarForce. Using this link, he just wanted to show that every non-protected game can be cracked (in case of some own simple protection) or just put onto the internet resource for public use, sooner or later. I think he guessed that finding the first link to a recent non-protected game would be the best proof. We have to accept that he chose the wrong way for that, but he is just a human and mistakes are human’s nature.

This employee has been responsible for the branch “General questions” during this week, that’s why nobody else had seen this topic and couldn’t remove the links till we heard negative references from different sources.

We have to claim that this has been the first and the last time we allowed posting a link to a resource with illegal content on our forum by our staff. And we will strengthen the administration of the forum to keep it clear from similar links posted by forum members and others.

In further we will necessarily improve our Forum, especially its rules and policy.

Please, once again accept our deepest apologies for inconveniences caused by this issue."

http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=32501

Pugsley

Starforce wrote:

Using this link, he just wanted to show that every non-protected game can be cracked

They cant be serious? EVERY SINGLE starforce game is cracked, using 1 very very simple method, that takes about 3 minutes, currently starforce is possably the worst copy protection about, not to mention most invasive and downright unhealthy for your PC, and the game its 'protecting', the likes of SecuROM and Safesidk are miles ahead of it, because at least they need some work to cracking, which 99% of people using noCD's dont have a clue how to do

RotalicaV

What does starforce do anyway and why is it so bad for your pc in general? I'm so out of the loop these days.

Stephen

It installs its own virtual device drivers without asking, and they seem to f**k up a large number of DVD drives.

kaimera

Pugsley wrote:

EVERY SINGLE starforce game is cracked, using 1 very very simple method, that takes about 3 minutes,

If you mean unplugging all your ide drives then yes, very simple indeed :rolleyes:

Given thats the only sure fire way to bypass current SF protected games.

BKtje

nothing as drastic as that is needed im afraid.

kaimera

I'm aware of certain anti_SF programs that do essentially the same thing but I'm also aware of SF protected games that won't run without the ide optical drives unplugged.

KdjaCL

There are Nocds for games with Starforce that work with or without Starforce being there. Odd something i cant back up without being banned



kdjac

Sand

I was never too bothered by Starforce until it started fuxoring up SH3 for me. Legit copy, legit DVD, no go all of a sudden. Clean disk, reinstall, patch, vist SF site for upgrade and check their tech support. Still no go. Hours wasted by a this piece of crap that wont let me play the game I bought.

One quick visit to another "support" site, happily playing SH3 once more. Load of needless hassle for useless protection. Their logic of "If you dont use us, youll be pirated" is garbage. Use SF and youre still pirated, and you annoy legitimate owners as a bonus.

MrPinK

kaimera wrote:

If you mean unplugging all your ide drives then yes, very simple indeed

Given thats the only sure fire way to bypass current SF protected games.

As B-K-DzR hinted, there is a workaround that doesn't require unplugging the drives. Someone always mentions it on Slashdot every time SF makes a headline.

I don't like jumping through hoops in order to play my games though. I just return any games with SF now.

Pugsley

kaimera wrote:

If you mean unplugging all your ide drives then yes, very simple indeed :rolleyes:

Given thats the only sure fire way to bypass current SF protected games.

You can get programs to temporarily disable your IDE's, doesnt need a restart once the program is installed either, and you can enable/disable them at will, only takes about 10-15 seconds

RotalicaV wrote:

What does starforce do anyway and why is it so bad for your pc in general? I'm so out of the loop these days.

It can kill your DVD/CD drives irreprably, it can corrput your windows install (usually a reinstall of windows will fix, sometimes you need a full format), and has also been known to kill hard drives (rarely though).


My copy of Chaos League (legit copy) doesnt work because of starforce using the CD, need to use 'other' means.

the_syco

kaimera wrote:

If you mean unplugging all your ide drives then yes, very simple indeed :rolleyes:

Given thats the only sure fire way to bypass current SF protected games.

Aye. Unless ye had a USB DVD drive, and were able to stop it somehow...

Pugsley wrote:

You can get programs to temporarily disable your IDE's, doesnt need a restart once the program is installed either, and you can enable/disable them at will, only takes about 10-15 seconds

Point to note, tho. The program that you use (which would actually be starred out here) only works with IDE, and not SATA.

Finally, there's no point in me buying any starforce game, as it won't work on a 64bit machine, but doesn't tell you that. Oh no. I installed a demo. It just ****ed up my PC.

Vuk

Pugsley wrote:

You can get programs to temporarily disable your IDE's, doesnt need a restart once the program is installed either, and you can enable/disable them at will, only takes about 10-15 seconds

Not strictly true, the various programs you refer to, don't always work, and can kick up a fuss with certain motherboards/chipsets.

KdjaCL

We received email from StarForce today apologizing for the incident. We appreciated them taking down the link. It also gave us the opportunity to request the various meta-torrent sites to remove links to illegal torrents.

In every case, the torrent list site in question responded quickly to our request. One might make the argument that a simple polite email to a meta-torrent search site is as effective as copy protection.

There is probably some irony that this whole thing occurred just before last week's EBGames.com top selling games list got posted on their site. They list Galactic Civilizations II as the top telling PC title and the #2 overall (all platforms). And that was before this incident.

I don't want us to come out like we're on some sort of anti-copy protection crusade. We just don't think CD copy protection is an effective means to increase sales.

http://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=161&AID=107193


kdjac

Pugsley

In every case, the torrent list site in question responded quickly to our request. One might make the argument that a simple polite email to a meta-torrent search site is as effective as copy protection.

I like their approach on this, that method would make it harder for casual warez monkeys, whos knowledge of aquiring things doesnt go beyond maybe a half dozen of the main torrent sites, which would stop a good chunk of pirates, while it wont stop someone who either knows their way around, or really puts their mind to it. Best of all it doesnt effect legit buyers, in any way shape or form.

RuggieBear

tbh i'm just sick of going to warez sites in an effort to find out how to get my purchased games to work with my virtual drives and software like nero.

FEAR, Farcry and Quake 4 had me banging my head against the wall till i googled solutions (all of which were either torrent comments or warez forums :rolleyes:

Copy protection is such a pain and really only affects those who've legitemately bought their games.

Matt Simis

the_syco wrote:

Finally, there's no point in me buying any starforce game, as it won't work on a 64bit machine, but doesn't tell you that. Oh no. I installed a demo. It just ****ed up my PC.

I think Starforce have 64bit drivers now, least all the games I got recently have installed without issue and worked (x64 Pro). Even if it didnt work, there are various methods around it, though you have to pretend to pirate your own legal copy to get rid of it.. :rolleyes:


Matt