[t.foster73]

I have a few Starforce 2 games, and Alcohol120 can play them with emulation, but not Starforce3. I think it's more than an update to Starforce2, and is a lot harder to crack. As you say, the fewer Starforce3 cracks there are, the more tempting it will look to game developers. There is no question that crackers can rip anything given time, but that's the idea behind many of these new protections. They make such subtle alterations to the game code (Guns jamming, Key cards that can't be found), that checking any crack works correctly is going to take a lot more time, and there can be a lot of PC releases at certain times of the year (The next 3 weeks being a prime time for games). If EVERY Starforce3 game has to be cracked in a different way, I suspect we will only see cracks for the really big titles, if at all! In fact, if these new protections only set the crackers back a few weeks, then that will make them successful to some degree, as this is the time most stolen software is sold/ripped off.