A godsend? Doubt it. They may have to stop believing their own hype about how many billions of dollars they lost due to piracy. They probably had $1k increase in sales.

Not to forget that even originals sometimes refuse their work. That isn't godsent, that is taking the piss out of legit customers.

Hmmm...I wonder what *company* you were refering to? :D *w00t*

Cost Of Piracy
 

They say they loose on avg 1 billion a year in sales but they don't take in consideration how many people actually buy software after trying the full versions of their product found all around the net. There was a post on here saying if they can get piracy under control that will lower the cost of games, well I don't see that ever happening as greed is good just look at the record companies they were even sued and had to pay a huge settlement because they were over charging consumers but did it effect the sales price of a cd? heck no theyre still going for $17-22.00 a piece so gaming companies aren't gonna budge either just because they nipped piracy in the butt....temporarily :)
SiN

Good idea!
Put up a sticky about the SF3!

As far i i can see, not sure, but StarForce v3 has been cracked is "GangLand" not using that protection too ?

As I understand it there are different levels of how to implement SF3 protection.

One is to just protect the EXE, not too difficult to deal with. I believe Gangland and Singles are examples of this

Another method involves not only protecting the EXE but encrypting data files too, look at Dead To Rights for an example of that! The 'crack' was nearly a whole CD!

Then there are the 'emulated functions'. As I understand it from a reliable source, it's these 'active protected functions' in the EXE that are the bitch that has stopped the release of titles like Beyond Divinity, TOCA2 and Killswitch as they are time consuming to find/trace!!

Please correct me if I'm wrong on any of those points :)

U re right barry, but lets say the problem is not to trace such functions, but "create" the VM SF code that is removed when a dump is made.

Thats the problem with SF, finding and linking the so called p-code table to make an "universal" crack that just works for every game release, and not only in the native cracked release.

Good luck!

As far as I know, StarForce3 sneakily install hidden hardware devices (software dongles).

This degrades system speed/stability, and soon tools like Spybot S&D or AdAware will have no other option than to scan for, and remove these illegal "installs".

I'm not sure a 'universal' crack could be made Morglum, maybe coded tools to help in the tracing/creating these functions that don't get dumped, or maybe you mean once dumped, then fix it with a universal tool? Still not sure it's that easy, the developers of this protection meant it to be tough to crack, and it's proving just that!

Well, i think it is possible. The problem is to hook EVERY p-code, used or not, and not just the minimum required to launch with a specific release of the game. Thats like the API calls in SecuROM. In SF there is a p-code table and a "translation table" found in near .dll ( not protect.dll) The problem is to get all translated. With US/UK/german releases, it is fixed just the p-code to make working such releases, but not every one, so other releases in other countries do not have "support". the way of obtain such table will make a "universal" way of procceding.

Good luck!

Ok, what about those "Active protection functions",something similar to sexxurom triggers? Just checked out a "known title" and *wow* hooking every p-code sure as hell gonna take some time....nice antidebug, it took me 3 beers to get around (and some reboots) :D I should join your forums, Morglum..this starts to look like a real challenge heh

Well, that "Active protection functions" are too easy to find in SecuROM. It is just API call. SF works in another way.

Good luck!

thats called 'triggers'

sf3 works in many ways, api rerouting, api hooking, virtual file system and p-code procs, oh and the sf3 api system doesnt work in another way, look deeper and think a little

Well, what i mean to say is that SF is not based on that "active functions" that are know as triggers. The difficulty of SF resides in its p-code fixing. In SecuROM it's quity easy to find such triggers, cause once dumped, iAT fixed and OEP found (with crc fixing of course), there is just to nop or jnz to jz some call to cercain API and done. Anyway, not every SecuROM released game have triggers on it, and just only a few titles have it ( commandos 3, vietcong...)
Thats like the "silent alarm" "technology" of newest safedisc, and both of them copied the Codemasters/Sta clara Fade scripting system to do that.

Anyway, SF is strong for its p-code table, not for its API system. (besides relationated, i think not mixable)

Good luck!