To any gamers.

There is a copy protection being used by game manufacturers called StarForce, which can cripple your optical drive.


It installs itself without you knowing (during the games installation), and can screw your operating system, or even worse.

It's also hidden from view, a bit like Sony's rootkit.

You can check by going to Device Manager, then View, then Show Hidden Devices.

Under Non Plug 'n Pray Drivers, there should be no StarForce listing.

If there is, you can download a removal tool HERE.


Running the game again will install this crap again though.

What you can do is not buy games that use this rubbish. They will soon get the message.

Currently, there are only a few recent, big name games that use it, the most popular being King Kong.

 

Some additional info: StarForce Interview and Piracy Discussion

PP

 

Yep. MG had it in their "News" links on Jan. 31.

Here's a list of all known games that have it:
http://www.glop.org/starforce/#games

I've played 6 games on that list, and haven't had any problems. (shrug)

 

Thanks, thought I was clean but found one on the bottom of the list: Worms 4 Mayhem. Just picked it up last weekend.

 

Found it interesting there is nor disclosure about it on the outside of the box, from what I saw (looked at a StarForce game).

That right there is grounds for getting your money back, as far as I am concerned. Sony wasn't above the law, neither is StarForce, or the real enemy, the game manufacturer.

 

Just noticed I do have Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory.

WTF.

I am so in on a class action lawsuit when one hits the streets. I want my money back on this game.

 

I acknowledge that companies have a right to protect their investments. But we, as individuals have a right to protect ours, when the 'protection' is destructive and unreasonable, i.m.o.

Yeah, I have a few of those games listed too. Doesn't make me inclined to play them ever again, despite paying a fair chunk of cash for them.

 

I have heard about this, that is such crap. fortunately it wasn't on my computer, I am never buying a legal version of a starforce game.

 

http://www.digg.com/security/Starforce_claims_to_have_squashed_the_rumors_

 

And this article i found the most useful.

http://www.glop.org/starforce/

 

ROFL....

 

Those crazy russians...

 

No, unfortunately there isn't any warning or disclosure, and that's part of the problem.

There are sites that list what is what, but they aren't perfect, and it varies from country to country.

Just about all games are copy protected, usually by SafeDisc or Securom, but they are benign and don't install this crap on your PC or threaten it.

Even demo games have this StarForce crap!


I for one will be taking back any StarForce games, regardless of how old they are, and I'd love to see them say no to a refund!

 

Just looked at my Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory box and it does say this at the bottom on the back:

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

Uninstalled.

 

It should tell you the name of the protection, so you the consumer, can make an informed choice.

There are tools that can scan the CD and tell you, but that means buying and opening it.


UbiSoft, Digital Jesters and CodeMasters are the main customers of StarForce.

 

Both my machines don't have it. I installed Worms 4 on both and transport the CD to where ever my wife it not (between the Kid and I). Apparently there is a difference in the US version, it came pre-patched and StarForce free.

 

Yeah, different countries can have different protection, and sometimes different number of CD's etc.

The 3 main zones are the US, UK or Europe (and sometimes Australia).

That should make a messy situation even messier.


Even downloading patches can be a pain when you can't tell which version yours is, and each patch is 80MB on dial-up.

I for one will never be buying either a Steam game, or any game protected by StarForce.

May the force never be with me.

 

Hmmm.

Got a URL that will scan say, a game DVD?

I'm curious.

 

Do you mean a program to scan your game CD?

 

Yes.

 

I'll PM you.

 

Let's add a bit more to the discussion

Check out Mark's Feb. '06 blog in it's entirety here--> Using Rootkits to Defeat Digital Rights Management

PP

 

i have daemon tools and when i ran splinter cell, the game wouldn't make it past verifying disks.

 

A lot of games won't run or install if you have a virtual drive, or even burning software like CloneCD or Alcohol 120%.

The programs authors keep releasing patches to cloak their programs, and the game manufacturers keep refining theirs.

And so on, in an endless and futile battle.

 

An interesting link, thanks Phillie.

....LoL!

 

Exactly.

 

That simply isnt an option to me,starforce sucks as does alot of copy protections progs like steam,I personally havnt had any problems with any of them

Whats the alternative?Never buy any of the cool games that are released and sit there bored but happy in the fact I'm bored on my moral highground ass

Or go and play pirated games,the exact reason for the copy protections

I'm happy to put my £30 toward the gaming industry and havnt been dissatisfied with any of the games I'v bought,copy protection for me is something I feel happy to live with,the minor annoyance I see as me doing my bit to keep the gaming industry alive and kicking releasing cool titles I wanna buy,if starforce is proven to save the developers money this is extra that can be put toward my legit games,extra developement time to tweak and clean up bugs,polish the title off,every extra hour that can pay for the testers of the games is money well spent,If I had to install five copies of starforce or steam I'd be happy to if it meant the developers and testers could have a couple more weeks testing the games to perfection

My two pennies

 

(shrug) As I mentioned earlier, I've played 6 games that use Starforce, and haven't had any problems with any of them.

Steam seemed to be a royal pain in the butt at first, but once I told it not to start when Windows starts, it's been not only painless, but helpful. Half-Life 2 is the only Steam game I play. Game updates are easy, the next episode of HL2 is due out next month, and I can buy and download it directly (at a discount right now) instead of waiting for the local stores to get it (the stores around here are ALWAYS behind on new releases). It allows me to play without a disk in the drive, which I very much appreciate. Some of its downloads and updates have been pretty massive, and I can see where it would be agony on dial-up, but with a high speed connection, it's been good for me.

 

You both miss the point that it does nothing to curb piracy.

What it does is annoy legitimate users. Pirates and thieves just find other ways.

I've said this a million times, but if you accept this rubbish now, other companies will adopt this (like Product Activation is being adopted), then you will have to put up jumping through hoops every-time you want to use a program.

Also, Steam forces you to update just to play the game.

What do you do if the update makes the game buggy?

Only Half Life 2 (and some re released versions of Half Life) use STEAM, and the only popular titles worth playing that use StarForce are Splinter Cell and King Kong, and they aren't that great.

Now is the perfect time to vote with your wallet. Later will be too late.

 

The developer wouldnt do something if it didnt increase sales figures they arnt stupid,they will have the best analysts looking at the figures and come to the conclusion whether they selling more games or not,the fact that starforce is making money is testiment to it working,some developers have gone down the "were a good developer we wont use starforce route" this isnt testament to the fact it doesnt work its just PR spin

Games companies want good sales in the first couple of weeks when the game is hot and from what I'v seen starforce stops the game being pirated by everyone and their mother in this period,after a few weeks in some instances starforce has been cracked but the rush to play the game cools off after this period,also alot of the downloadable starforce games are leaked versions without copy protection, thats the developers fault

I have no doubt starforce stops pirating,ok alot of people will just go to a torrent and get a cracked version of the game,but what about people who want a copy of a friends game?They cant just open a copy program like clone cd and make a copy which I believe many people would,with starforce they cant and will have to download a cracked version of the game,forcing people from doing something they might not consider wrong to outright illegally downloading pirate software which they know is wrong and may think again

Imagine if everyone in a circle of friends only needed one copy of each game between them,they could easily make multiple copies with ease without downloading a crack,many people dony know about cracks and torrents now,I'll bet there are a thousands of people a day who stick a game into a drive right click 'copy' and paste to a blank cd expecting it to copy the game,the next stage is to download a crack,no crack find a torrent and download the entire game,at each stage the process becomes more complicated and someone's will to copy the game other than buy it is tested,also anyone without a broadband connection has no option to download the game this cant be overlooked as alot of people dont have broadband connections yet,their only option is to have contact with someone with one directly or indirectly who has the knowledge and the will to pirate software

I also dont see it as jumping through hoops,I understand why guys on a slow connection would suffer with steam but other than that its only a few extra minutes installing the game 'once' and then your done,no biggy IMHO

AFAIK if your running steam in offline mode with no internet connection it will have no knowledge theres a patch available,also the patch is released to fix bugs I'd be suprised if the patch has more bugs than fixes but thats an unlikely hypethetical situation,the developer could always issue another update to fix those bugs and so on

Theres no way I wouldnt buy a game if it has starforce on even if I hated starforces guts,if its good enough for me to buy then I'll jump through any hoops they want and be happy as long as I get to play the game, hoops far worse than what starforce and steam are,its the developers right IMO to ask you to jump through hoops

 

StarForce doesn't stop people from copying and playing their friends games.

I won't go into it, but it's very simple to do.


If StarForce was so good, and games companies so switched on as you say, then how come SafeDisc and Securom are the most popular game copy protections used (StarForce has been out for years)?

 

I wont disagree with you I didnt know what the most popular and effective copy protections are\were ,AFAIK starforce takes the longest time to crack once a once a game has been released which increases initial sales,even if I had any number to back this up interpretting sales figures for a particular game would be hard as they vary in popularity

I dont doubt someone can copy a friends starforce games I HONESTLY dont know anything about it so cant argue,I would imagine you would have to download some sort of file that has to be created by a hacker which again takes time,if anyone can do it to any game easily with one tool available at the moment of any starforce game release then I retract my statement

Its 1.40 UK time Insomniac I'm off, leave me something juicy I'll check back tommorow afternoon have fun

I

 

Only reason StarForce hasn't been cracked like the others, is because it's not in widespread use.

I remember when SafeDisc was first released, it was as difficult as StarForce.

That didn't last long........

Yes, that can be done with one tool or patch, easily. (Re: patch, providing someone has bothered to make one)

As I said, most hackers couldn't be bothered because StarForce isn't in widespread use.


*And don't anyone bother PM'ing me asking how*

OK, I left something juicy for you on your bedsheets.

 

Insomniac h8 to b a n00b but WTF is "Non Plug & Pray Devices" have opened my device manager and expanded every option but the only "Plug and Play" refrences I can find are:

Plug and Play BIOS Extension, &
Plug and Play Software Device Enumerator

Excellent thread by the way and Rikky you have some validity to your thoughts and I often learn a lot off you, respecting your opnion, but at the end of the day;

a). Any Co. that installs software on your system without FULL DISCLOSURE is doing an illegal act! Very coarse analogy: Would you like the US Govt. to freely tap your phone so they can stop terrorisim which is their current paradigm as they ever further SPY on the populace and erode our rights as a whole but won't tell the populace until EXPOSED. Yet terrorisim is a riff as it ever was in fact it may actually increase due to US actions, imposing their will and further adopting the "Big Bully in the schoolground" approach. Such as they are spending incredible amounts of funding on R&D to develop more powerful Nuclear Weapons, starting wars on falsified information/claims yet trying to dictate to other countries they cannot have such weaponary and establishing illegal prisons defying the UN. Same with the Starforce app this will probably fruther inspire illicit and or illegal activities as how am I supposed to make a legimate "back-up" to protect my purchased software? I will now have to search for an alternative method to produce a copy so I can protect my original thus become a PIRATE, it would take ~48 hours for those clever little 16yo hackers to circumvent ANY protection. Thus through their actions I must know consider illegal activities and my system may actually become impaired or damaged due to their "Protection of their rights" at the expense of my rights, the little consumer. Do I have to become a pirate!

b). We do need to fund the developers so they have a larger budget for R&D and produce better products for the consumers at the end of the day, so yes buy the game, especially of smaller software Co.s. But as soon as a developer gets a large market base, good sales turnover and list itself on the "Stock Exchange" they create their CEO's, increase aggressive marketing and justify their pricing. Sadly the majority of the profits probably go to CEO's wages (irrespective of performance) and shareholders with very little seen by the actual programmers and yet all to often we see a deteriation in quality and especially service (try getting help when you have problems with your purchased software either $4.95 p/min on purposely slowed phone services to someone in India with impaired English or non-responsive email options). The majority of the time you have to resolve the problem via forums with others consumers. These are the Co.s that are most inclined to put "crippling" protection measures on their products to protect the CEO's "bonuses" and "flash" advertising campaigns with little being passed onto the geeky programmer.

If products were released at a reasonable price from the onset, e.g AUD$30 compared to $90, many more would purchase the original and if the quality of support service was improved in conjunction this would go a long way to actually stamping out piracy. No need for "crippling" protection measures as they would increase their sales expotentially, probably maintain similar profit margins and everyone better off. They only difference maybe increased production output (create more employment) but how much would it cost to produce the average game, I'd estimate $3-4 a unit.

Just my 2c.

 

Bit more, just remeber when you bought the old LP's although you could readily record it onto a blank tape and pass it round it was so much better to have the actual Album with the cover, lyrics etc etc and thus you would buy it at a "reasonable" price. I bought FEAR and finished it in 2 weeks feeling rather ripped off at the end of the day cause unlike music I can't revisit a game again and again and again, very boring.

 

@Bold Eagle, you need to go to View, Show Hidden Devices in Device Manager.

 

Just reread the top thread, obviously not clearly the first time, cheers I'm clean I mostly play 2-3 yo games that I can get at reasonable prices. But have to watch out obviously!

 

lawl windows.

This is why running apps through wine in linucks owns.

 

Hmmmm...does Linux always have the effect of language degradation?

 

LOL, but I'm intrigued Tonglebeak;

What version of Linux are you running?

Does wine let you use any app you want?

Would using wine within a Linux environment completely rule out the potential of Starforce or any other "crippling" code from affecting the OS?

I'm sure others would be interested as well.

 

Geez dude you need more fibre

Just say whats on your mind

Rikkys closing thoughts...I'm gonna accept the fact that starforce is overintrusive,I personally have no problem with it or any other copy protection software,I wont accept the fact that its not needed as everyone even extrememly casual gamers would be distributing pirate software,everything that can be done to make software harder to pirated is a good thing IMHO and I dont mind if I'm put out a little installing it

I come from the uber clean gaming community,I buy a game for 'full price',put the disk in,install and play the game,this method has worked flawlessly throughout my gaming life,I dont need a backup of the game on my harddrive,cracks,copy software isnt even installed on my machine,this method has worked flawlessly throughout my gaming life

I think I'm just plodding the same old ground I'm never gonna agree that copy software isnt needed,so ermm thats it me thinks

 

What I really hate is having to insert the CD/DVD to play the game (yes, there are ways around it, but it's still a pain).

At least STEAM removed that when later models were released.

 

1) Gentoo amd64
2) for the most part
3) Most likely. Wine keeps windows crap within a windows environment, and is never allowed outside of it. There'd be no problem running vmware or whatever natively in linux. Now if you tried to run an emulation tool through wine, then maybe, but having vmware emerged natively on linux will prevent it from being affected by shitforce.

 

My main gripe is Corporate greed has gone absolutely mad this example highlights that where a Co. justify their right to use a "crippling" app within their product to protect the very few at the expense of the many! Even the developers of Crapforce tell the software developers to remove it. You made a very important point how about the mom and dad owners who are sick of their son damaging games that can't be used again and thus they try to copy this game?!? Without a forum like this there system becomes severly impaired or DAMAGED because of the "fews rights".

Someone noted another protection measure where the game won't play if Alcholol120% or Dameon Tools are present thus they want to dictate to you what software you can have on your system even though you can use them for very legitimate reasons.

Another point you buy a game and maybe prompted for online registration but once you have no-one else can ever use that game on-line and thus what is the resell value of the expensive software?!? Whereas a music CD (AUD$15) takes at least the same amount of time/money to produce I can resell once I'm sick of it.

Sorry Old Bloke having a whinge, banks used to pay you to have your money in there!

 

Of course, to stay in context of this thread--most games will not work.

 

False. Steam runs as well as its games, and many other games run well with wine as well.

 

Steam doesn't= most games, or even a percentage of them.

 

And nor does STEAM have StarForce......

 

And when's the last time you guys have ran wine, and what version?

Why are you bashing a program you really don't know much about?

 

Thats a weak defense if I've ever heard one.

I'm making it quite clear so some sorry soul who doesn't know reads this thread, runs out, installs Linux, then realizes "insert game" doesn't work. Wine is not the be all, end all, answer you claim it to be. Some things work, sure. Definately NOT everything!

Linux is also not an answer to copy protection problems, and you know it.

There was no bashing.