Starforce

yoyo

OK all, Anyone know about this copy protection, I wanted to buy Worms 4::Mayem but as it uses Starforce I can't. This thing is a right pain, I bought Kill.Switch for dirt cheap (in game I think) loaded it in, and it sayed "Please insert a correct cd, Your using a illegal copy", WTF, I bought the f'n game, Now I got my new DVD Burner, It takes 30 seconds for the bloody protection to load! Watch out for this new thing, its no use, and ohh, btw, I got no support from Namco the devs of Kill.Switch but I found a way around needing to put the cd in It don't work anymore,
Watch out when your buying new games. Peoples CD/DVD drives have been destroyed because of this protection. Not only that but until recently I couldn't play a purchased game, my cd drive was not even 1 year old at the time,

I hope this is a good warning, find out a games protection before buying, if its starforce it will cause more harm than good, only a few people can use a starforce game properly,

So the bottom line, Don't buy a Starforce game!

Cheers,

Nick

Azza

I double that. Starforce games have no labelling on the boxes. It installs without prompting or saying it was installed. When you uninstall the software that came with it starforce remains. I have seen it reek havoc with DVD drives. Its a shame I really liked Silent Hunter III but I won't install it (thinking about a seperate windows partition for it). I won't be buying anymore starforce games again. They have already lost out as I was going buy at least one of the codename panzer games.

Dagnir Glaurung

I hate these things. They only punish innocent people, just like every anti-piracy measure ever has.

yoyo

Glad to see others agree, I will NOT buy another Starforce game unless I can find a crack, coz with a crack, your pc stays safe, I can't beleive game companies allow this virus! Its a shame Ubisoft has gone down this road, I would have bought Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, but the newest Starforce, no way, When will game companies learn? Starforces own support is very poor and those of you with 64bit windows, don't even think of running a starforce game, it wont be compatible and TBH I doubt Kill.Switch or Dead To Rights will ever have a patch made, Especially now that hip games (The game developers) went bankrupt, lol, to check a games protection I use this forum, http://club.cdfreaks.com, or do a search for [GAME NAME] protection in google , You'll get a result

Nick

Lord Oz

Yup, I agree. Though you can use this to unistall the starforce drivers.

Pugsley

Got Chaos League: Sudden Death recently, worked for about a week no bother, then when I took the CD out to install something else, when I put it back in it tells me to insert the right CD. Curse be to you Starforce!

Does anyone know where a list could be found with all the starforce games on it? I know the latest Cossacks has it, it wont work for me either (both games legit, from Game). A list of Starforce games would make it so much easier to avoid the games that do have it.

KdjaCL

Google "starforce game list"



kdjac

Syth

You should bring it back to the shop and raise bloody hell that they sold you some software that broke your PC. If you really want to annoy them, get a list of starforce games, install them on a seperate windows partition, complain to the shop lots. Do that for lots of games in lots of shops. Get as many people as possible to do it. Hopefully the shops will put pressure on the game companies and they'll stop.

yoyo

Syth wrote:

You should bring it back to the shop and raise bloody hell that they sold you some software that broke your PC. If you really want to annoy them, get a list of starforce games, install them on a seperate windows partition, complain to the shop lots. Do that for lots of games in lots of shops. Get as many people as possible to do it. Hopefully the shops will put pressure on the game companies and they'll stop.

Great idea, or even better some kind of petition, thankfully my computer has not broken coz of Starforce yet, and I don't plan on it breaking either which is why I WONT buy a new starforce game, its really sad game companies put this on games as they are ruining peoples enjoyment of the game, why does San Andreas only take a few seconds to load and Kill.Switch takes about 30-45 secs (and sometimes tells me a illegal disc is inserted lol), so what if San Andreas has been "cracked", it will still be bought by most and probably more due to there being no starforce. I have some good news though, rumour has it that Ubisoft are planning to ditch Starforce and use a less invasive protection, I doubt Codemasters will though, I never really liked codemasters as a company anyway, very rude and unhelpful in my expieriences, I think Ubisoft are a great company and would be thankful for a change so I can buy the next Splinter Cell if one comes out!

Regards,


Nick

steviec

Is this really as big a problem as forums would have you believe? I've read horrible things about it before but the minority of people with bad experiences are always the ones who shout loudest and I've played plenty of games that use it without any problem whatsoever, on three different PCs. Race Driver 2 and Chaos Theory I can think of off the top of my head. The wait at the start is a little annoying but I can live with it. Plus, when I tried to find a no-cd crack for Race Driver 2(due to having it installed on a PC which no longer physically has a DVD drive because I moved it to another box), I discovered there was none, just lots of warez monkeys complaining about Starforce. So the protection does seem to actually work.

DonkeyStyle \o/

What I find annoying is having to leave the cd in the drive for no reason... it's not loading anything, just spinning and making a deep vibration that rattles my case...
uurghh...
The prime culprit for me was The Sims... although granted it read music from the CD, it was unnesessary since I've buckets of harddrive space for any music they'd like to install... so every time I'd click on the build menu, I'd have to wait 4 or 5 seconds for the drive to spin up, then the menu comes on... and when I go back to the normal view, it takes like 10 minutes for the fcuking drive to spin-down from super-jet-engine mode.
I like to keep my PC running as quietly as possible, so needless to say that did my head in.

After all these years, you'd think they could find a better way of securing their games than needlessly requiring the CD... gg making your paying customers suffer.

yoyo

Sorry guys, some are missing the point of this thread, Starforce is working OK for you, but for allot of others its not, and ohh btw, Starforce will be cracked soon, a new software is in development to allow to bypass the starforce protection so Warez junkies don't really give a flying f*ck, I myself am complaining as both my new CD drives seem to be "incompatable" with the starforce, hence I canot buy or play a new Starforce game. BTW this new thing is called Daemon Tools 4 and it will allow copies to work.
No one can say Starforce is a top protection as soon as I say it will be hacked and also it is proving very unrelyable on the majority of peoples computer, I'd say software companies are loosing out more with Starforce due to all the returns of people bringing discs back to the shops, thats another thing actually, most game shops in Ireland don't accept returns so when you buy a Starforce game your pritty screwed really if its incompatable.
Edit: The Sims isnt starforce but I see where your coming from, at least you were able to play the game you bought


Regards,

Nick

kaimera

starforce IS the top protection atm. Very few if any of it's games have been copied with success.

so what if daemon4 will allow copies to be run, SF will be ahead of it again and again.

personally, I hate the ****ing thing. Cant play any of the current games with SF due to my pc hardware config [ide dvd drive and usb external burner to be exact > SF wont play in the external so **** 'em]

btw, GTA SA wasn't starforce. twas securom.

yoyo

I know GTA SA wasnt starforce, thats why I can play it, and if your pc hardware isnt compatable then why should you have to suffer, you are as entitled to play this game as anyone else is, a protection shouldn't be hardware depndant, especially coz your paying top dollar for a game, you expect to be able to play it, I bet someday Starforce will be fully defeated, and all the people who bought the games will suffer, this daemon tools thing will work, and apparently, starforce will find it hard to be able to disable the new daemon tools working a game, I'm looking forward to it as maybe I'll buy the new Worms, otherwise no way,

Regards,

nick

the_syco

Depends on the game. There are some games, such as Trackmania, where Starforce was cracked. It was a total crack, not just a no-cd exe file.

Also, the "newest" version of Starforce, 3 I think, has not being cracked yet. Once it has, you'll see every Starforce 3 game cracked.

yoyo

NFORSE

I found this site which lists all cracked games including Starforce, do a search on a starforce game and you will see if its cracked or not, its not a illegal website as there are no game downloads just info, it isnt a warez site dont worry,

Regards,

Nick

BTW: I do agree once someone cracks the new Starforce all games will be hacked but it may be long time more