OT: My worst nightmare... ever!

[DarkLeftos]

It's June 7th, and I'm walking towards my school for that damn Religion exam. As I walk and walk and walk, my eyes are caught by a glistening package on the local game store...

How could I ever have forgotten about it?

San Andreas is released today! (Well, not actually today, today's June 4th, but in my dream... oh anyway, you understand...)

My mouth starts drooling, I get dizzy and start to walk strange... I walk inside the store all zombie like, walking towards to the beautiful lady behind the counter.

"Gimme S... S... San Andreas, NOW!"

She looks over to me terrified, and grabs a copy of the game from the stool behind her, and hands it to me without second thought... I give my 50 euros and run back home. I boot up my computer and see Windows Server 2003 welcoming me once again.

I put the DVD in, install and after a good 5 minutes, I'm on the magical moment, ready to double-click on the desktop icon the kind install has just created.

And just as I do so, a rectangular dark screen pops up, saying...

"The StarForce anti-piracy system has just been installed on your computer, and a restart is required... Reboot now?"

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" I scream, my body weakening as I fall to my knees and start to cry, not knowing what's worse... That another game will never get a chance to be cracked, or that my hospital-clean install of Windows 2003 has just been infected with the worst virus ever to hit gamers...?




Thank god I woke up. Don't wanna jinx it, but it's just 3 days before official release, and I fear the worst.


P.S. Sorry for the off-topic. I know I'm not the only one fearing that mostly expected games are going to be infected as well.

EDIT: Look below for the GTA:SA being released with StarForce rumors.

[packrich]

Allways, Allways, take an Image backup of the working partition BEFORE adding
a new game or large program.

Thats how I sleep with good dreams.

Regards
Phil

[Grumpy]

@Dark Leftos
Well I for one truly hope your dream doesnt come true!

@PackRich
Yes I would be lost without my ghost images. Since I for one had major problems with the Starforce Protection, I always create a ghost image before installing a new game. Luckily I had ghost images from before my system ever came in contact with a Starforce game! After installing a starforce game i found a lot of my games would not even autoplay, my drives where reading the disc names after the disc had been ejected, I had programs no longer working properly, I had CD's/DVD's which would not eject, I had all sorts of problems!!
But as soon as I ghosted back to before Starforce all my problems magically disappeared!
Regardless I how much any future games get hyped up I will not be installing them if they have the Starforce virus!

[acal3000]

I don't think it will be protected by starforce. Take Two Interactive generally uses Secure Rom protection on their games

Hi DarkLeftos I wan´t to thank u for your great short story. I woke up this morning and read your post and laughed half an hour . Thank u so much!!! More posts like yours are appreciated !!!

[DarkLeftos]

http://filesharingtalk.com/vb3/showt...8&page=9&pp=10

As seen above, if the post is true, San Andreas is supplied with StarForce 3.4.90.666...

Although noticing the 666 revision number, I'd bet is a hoax.

[kosmiq]

I am pretty sure it will not be Starforce protected as Take2 still has an agreement to use SecuROM... So my bet is on SecuROM v7 and maybe with some custom checks like GTA3 had...

And if it is Starforce I will pick up the xbox version instead... Never support Starforce...

[thedood]

This is a tough one, as much as I dislike the Starforce method, I really really want to buy the PC version of GTA: SA !

[Panzerknacker]

hm it starts to look like the game uses Starforce as there are still no pirate versions on the internet. Not that I care that much about Starforce, I have 1 game installed already that uses it and it does not give me problems. So I just find out when I have the game probably tommorow or tuesday.

[kosmiq]

Or maybe rockstar have kept the game real good watched this time so that it wouldn't be a leak so fast...

Another theory of mine is that the game is SecuROM v7 and has random checks throughout the game just like GTA3 had and any cracker is making sure there are none left... or something...

Also consider that the xbox version is not you yet either, and xbox games has no hard protection... They are easily circumvented...

[t.foster73]

I think it will be mini-images if this has Securom, as Take Two do like their in-game CD checks. If it has Starforce, then I still don't mind, as long as the USB trick will still work. I must say I'm surprised it's less tha 24 hours from it's US release, yet there's no mention of it. I'm certain we'll know the protection by tomorrow evening, one way or another.

If it is Securom, then I'll bet the latest Alcohol or Daemon are blacklisted, so we will have to wait for new versions before we can mount our mini-images. And you can be sure that in their rush to be a first releaser, the groups won't spot all the CD checks, and the game won't be cracked properly.

Never mind

[kosmiq]

Originally Posted by t.foster73

I think it will be mini-images if this has Securom, as Take Two do like their in-game CD checks. If it has Starforce, then I still don't mind, as long as the USB trick will still work. I must say I'm surprised it's less tha 24 hours from it's US release, yet there's no mention of it. I'm certain we'll know the protection by tomorrow evening, one way or another.

If it is Securom, then I'll bet the latest Alcohol or Daemon are blacklisted, so we will have to wait for new versions before we can mount our mini-images. And you can be sure that in their rush to be a first releaser, the groups won't spot all the CD checks, and the game won't be cracked properly.

Never mind

You are thinking all wrong here... Of course it will not be starforce (I have decided that now :P) and there is nothing wrong at all with the game 24h from release and still not on the net. Thats great! But that is surprising me too actually...

Also I am pretty sure the game will be cracked pretty soon anyway if it is SecuROM v7 as the game is a big one and any group will earn soo much respect for cracking it...