Starforce Petition!

[chaosmaster]

How's about a sticky for this post?

[Monty Burns]

Okay, I just had a dispute with a very good friend of mine, who is a lawyer. I really get sick and tired of discussing this stuff...so here are my final words:

Music industry has almost learned its lesson. Incompatible Audio CDs are just not acceptable for legetimate customers. I personally do not have a CD Player (Standalone) anymore, cos they are far to expensive compared to DVD players. Some of my original audio cds simply refused to run on my dvd standalone (cos it used a pc dvd rom). I didn't return them (some of my friends did, after backing it up with clonecd!)...I just copied them with clonecd and thus circumvented european law...just to listen to the music I LEGALLY bought.....Meanwhile I cannot find many audio cds that actually have a copy protection...which play in every player I own (car cd changer, home dvd player, discman, etc.....GOOD!!!!!).

On the other hand, video industry is running into the same problem the music industry used to be in some years ago. Meanwhile, there are DVDs which refuse to play in standalone dvd players (greets to ArccOS, etc.). Is this really necessary ? People start to return dvds to store... I assume there will be some new protections...and some day, when problems due to copy protection increase rapidly, the protection will be gone.
In this case AnyDVD was of great help for me. I bought "The Forgotten" which didn't play fluently on my DVD standalone. AnyDVD is forbidden in Germany...but hey, I bought it..and I want to watch it. AnyDVD did the job, i.e. it got rif of the silly protection...

Finally, we come to games, and I think, "game protectors" will never learn. Okay, I see a DVD or a audio cd is only around 15 € and a new game is almost 50 @ and up, but in my opinion the price is not important.

I buy all my games, DVDs and audio cds. I do not see any need for backing them up (exception: Audio CDs, cos I use them fairly often in different places, e.g. in my car, at home, on vacation). I don't regularly watch a movie 20 times a week, so the dvd won't get '"hurt". I sometimes use nocd cracks, just bceause I am too lazy to swap disks all the time. But that is just convience and I cannot expect that a backup does as well as an original.
BUT... what I can expect is, that an original runs on a system it was actually developed for (i.e. a dvd runs on a dvd player, a audio cd can be listened to in every cd/dvd HI-FI component, and finally any game runs fine on my computer, as far as I have the neccesary system specs, like CPU speed, Graphics card, etc.).

Here comes starforce's special hour. Every effective protection has broken standards (e.g. CDS for audio cds, you cannot call this audio cd anymore; ArccoS, see above; or Starforce....).

I know, that SecuRom7 also has almost nothing to do with any standard, but Starforce is miles ahead...
--> Quote from Starforce Nightmare developres:
"Since starforce version 3.4.65.09 to prevent old star**** methods for deactivating
cd drives starforce goes a very hardware incompatible way. StarForce protected game tries
to reset ide channel before it begins to check protected disk. Therefore this can take up
to 2 minutes before starforce begins with its disk check. All users, who have CD
drive on SCSI controller, ATAPI CD Drive on ATA/RAID controller, CD drive on USB controller
and even coming hardware innovation called CD drive on SATA controller, all those users are
involved by this hardware incompability issue of Starfore protection. This hardware
incompability appears even than, if you remove all your drives from IDE channel physically
and deactivate your IDE channels in BIOS to set needed resources free, also you don't even
need to use our program to find it out."
(If you have read so far, don't hesitate to begin your answer with: "Yepp, you are right Monty")
I know that SafeDisk, SecuRom, etc. install drivers on my system too, but none of them is that aggressive like the Starforce one.....

I know, there are a lot of people saying that they had no problem with Starforce.....just wait a little....
The first audio cd,dvd or game protections didn't harm me either, but the day will come!

[kosmiq]

Monty... Gotta tell you that was pretty d*mn nice written! I'm proud of you..
The part about music and video made me think a little and as I thought I suddenly realized I stopped using CD's years ago. Haven't even thought about it because as soon as I buy any new CD I rip it as it comes through the door.
This started because my portable CD-player wouldn't play some original discs but all burned discs I threw at it. Nowadays it is my mp3-player that needs the music.
But back on the starforce topic (its the point of the thread right? ).
I have bought 2 Starforce games and I managed to get them working on my second PC. It refused to work on my gaming rig for some reason. Ever since there is no starforce for me.

Long story short, monty I couldn't agree more (if it is something to be happy about )

[Monty Burns]

Originally Posted by kosmiq

Monty... Gotta tell you that was pretty d*mn nice written!

Thanx!

Originally Posted by kosmiq

But back on the starforce topic (its the point of the thread right? ).

After rereading the thread I am not entirely sure about this

Originally Posted by kosmiq

Long story short, monty I couldn't agree more (if it is something to be happy about )

Yep.
Not really.

[ashleymalpas]

I am also never buying a starforce protected game ever again. I brought I-Ninja (which I didn't know had starforce V3 protection until recently) and since installing the game my system has been very unstable and constantly crashing. So today i downloaded the starforce cleaner and surprise, ive had no problems whatsoever since, whereas before it would crash 4 or 5 times each hour.

I think starforce is BS, those A******S need to stop putting this crap on games.

[Monty Burns]

SF can make your sytem unstable that is for sure. The protection itself does not have anything to do with any standards.

Again: If developers want to protect their software, they should always have in mind that an average customer should be able to use their soft without any problems. Customers in trouble are customers in search (for alternativrs!). I like protections which protect software frome being stolen, but they should not be recognized by legitimate customers!

[Grumpy]

@Monty Burns
Yes very well written mate.

[Joe Forster/STA]

Hi guys,

A few weeks ago, in one of the threads, I suggested someone to not upgrade to the very latest nVidia Forceware drivers as they're causing instabilities on my Windows XP system: after playing a game, opening Control Panel's Add or Remove Programs function or launching a DVD in Cyberlink PowerDVD causes a "BAD_POOL_CALLER" blue screen of death.

For this reason, I downgraded to Forceware 67.66 or something about two or three weeks ago but the crashes still occurred during the next one or two weeks. Then something came to my mind and I removed the Starforce drivers with their own utility. Guess what, no crashes for the last week!

So, if someone tells me that the Starforce drivers cause no system stability problems, all I can say "F*CK OFF!"

Joe

[TippeX]

Originally Posted by Joe Forster/STA

Hi guys,

A few weeks ago, in one of the threads, I suggested someone to not upgrade to the very latest nVidia Forceware drivers as they're causing instabilities on my Windows XP system: after playing a game, opening Control Panel's Add or Remove Programs function or launching a DVD in Cyberlink PowerDVD causes a "BAD_POOL_CALLER" blue screen of death.

Joe

the nvidia drivers also cause a nice crash in softice.. makes you wonder what nvidia are playing at, quite suspicious.. downgrade the drivers, all is fine

[Joe Forster/STA]

Well, TippeX, yeah, the next step of the test would be upgrading to the latest Forceware drivers again. I have the feeling, the crashes won't come back; it's probably not the Forceware drivers causing it but Starforce!

[Morglum007]

The way nvidia may crash or not work properly is the same with Starforce. Nvidia main chipset, nforce have no public chipset specs, so it is so difficult to program something for non public and unknown micropics. The same happens to Starforce, cause when trying to access with certain bad coded instructions, win return a big BSOD, an exception.

SF crash cause it tries to access almost to everything in ur system, to get ride of it and control it. When it can`t, then system gets unstable. Anyway, thats a soft problem, and not like the worst one, a drive death, the final effect of having SF installed on ur system. Lets see how many drives must dead to people have knowledge of what SF is doing.

Sice and SF are incompatible, cause SF works in ring0 level, and a debugger too ( specially sice), so it can only be one at once working: sice or SF, but not both. There is a pretty warn when trying to launch a SF protected title, but if u override such warn, cross ur fingers, a boom is near.....

I do not like SF for its drives secondary effect and windows bad working: lets wait...

[ubik]

The only piracy I support is the one practiced inside Sid Meyer Pirates!, but Starforce is not the answer for software piracy. As a legal costumer I am suffering for the wrongdoings of others. After 3 Starforce games, two of them giving me serious problems (had to return them and spent quite a few hours around my system), I am going to give them a wide berth.

Besides, take for instance Paradox Entertainment, a small swedish software developer: to generate lots of money a game don't need to be protected at all... it just needs to be good.

Buy Europa Universalis 2 or Hearts of Iron 2 or Crusader Kings...

[The-S-Owl]

Yes, as John Carmack (ID Software) ever said: Quality software is the best protection

[jimmi4u]

ok, I'm not gonna buy any starforce protected games anymore.
cya

[DUKE_NUKEM]

Hi guys, sorry for my english but I'm italian. I've been checking this forum for months before I decided to post something (how great is the power of Starforce ).
I have been playing gamez since 1992, and I see that in these years they've become a BIG BIG BUSINESS. And where's the money, there comes a trouble!
Too many gamez, too high prices, too much generous reviews (=too many "must buy" gamez) and , last but not the least, hyper-aggressive protections. The truth is, pc gaming was, it's still and it will forever be a hard matter if compared to consoles' easy-gaming. I don't think a honest-but-normal customer would spend thousands of euros (or dollars as you prefer) for the hardware and then fall into the deepest despair by seeing that some f@*#ing protections is devastating his system.This is a paradox: a guy who buys an original games have more problems than a warez kiddie.
Also, we should consider that a 6 to 18 years old guy often cannot afford a price of 50 euros for a game (while, with the same money, he can download a lot of stuff, including gamez from the net, I know this isn't the right way of thinking, but this is REALITY); so, you say gamez are not necessary to live, I agree but nothing related to entertainment is, so the common way of thinking is: if you can have them for free, why not).
In the end, I would like to remember that, even if it was possible to release a new starforce version every day, pirates would always have TONS of games to play with, choosing among old games, new-but-not-starforce-protected games and almost-new-starforce-protected-but-already-cracked games.
Cracking games is just a matter of time.
So, what are they waiting to cut the prices? By the way, isn't it primarily a problem of money?