Starforce Petition!

[Rayder]

Alrighty, I've read every single post in this thread. (WHEW!) Add me to the boycott list, I'm convinced that this protection should be completely outlawed.

I have 3 games in front of me right now that are SF protected that I still have the boxes to: Dead To Rights (DTR), Midway Arcade Treasures Deluxe Edition (MATDE) and Peter Jackson's King Kong Signature Edition (PJKK). I know I should have the Trackmania Sunrise box right here handy too, but I can't seem to find it at the moment. I know I have a few more, but these are the ones I still have the boxes to investigate.

Anyway, looking at the packaging, only one of them mentions anything about having any copy protection on it at all....PJKK. It says (and I quote),

Notice: This game contains technology intended to prevent copying that may conflict with some CD-RW, DVD-RW and virtual drives.

This was in a (approximately) 1/4" by 1" little box on the back of the packaging. Carefully notice that it DID NOT say the protection was Starforce. Hey! At least in warned you though....nevermind that you you had to hunt it down on the box to see it. Also notice that it said it may conflict, not destroy, your drives.

The other 2 games say NOTHING about the fact that it can damage (or conflict with) your PC in the least.

(minor digression)
A couple of months ago, my Plextor CD-R drive (2410a if my memory serves) started getting VERY slow to recognize disks and would fail to write basic data CD's consistently (sometimes it would, sometimes it wouldn't). I just figured that the drive's time had come and replaced it. Now I wonder. I can't test it to see if it works fine in a non-SF infested system since I tossed the drive and replaced it with a LiteOn DVD-R drive.

Anyway, to my point. I think ALL Starforce infested games should have the warning that PJKK did, but TELL you that it is, in fact, SF that is the protection, not only that the protection used MAY cause issues. That way we'll know not to waste money on those games. While I've not had any absolute proof that SF has really caused any damage to my system, why blatantly invite problems?

I have a couple ideas for the people here to make our purchase decisions easier. One may be sort of shady and/or illegal, but that one idea would certainly help get the message across to more people outside of the internet.

First (and this is the easy one) make a sticky post in the PC Games section that lists ALL known SF infested games. Keep it updated as new games with the SF infestation come out. While this thread has that info in spades, many may never see it, but a sticky post is hard to miss. This way, when a game comes out and you aren't sure of it's protection scheme, you have one simple post to check to see if it's one with the SF infestation.

Next, (and this is the shady one that would have to be done voluntarily because it COULD get you in trouble) is to get a roll of super sticky labels (you know, the kind of sticky that license plate stickers have, can't remove those suckers very easily at all without destroying whatever they're stuck to ) that have something like this printed on them, "Warning: This game uses Starforce protection which MAY damage your PC or limit its ability to function properly", (or something like that) and stick these labels on SF infested games in stores so EVERYONE that picks up the box will see the warning (instead of having to search the whole box that may not even have such a warning) and hopefully will spread the word (or at least cause them to investigate) about the dangers of StarForce.....not to mention instantly alerting those of us that ARE aware to not even touch that game.

Sound like good ideas to you?

Well, I'm going to uninstall MATDE (only SF game currently installed) and run the SF cleaner program now. Later all.

My goodness! This ended up to be quite a long post. Sorry 'bout that. Just goes to show what a sensitive issue this is to us honest puchasers of games I guess.