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Encryption PC Games (Games) Security Entertainment Games

StarForce Copy Protection Causing User Ire 72

Posted by simoniker from the ire-and-brimstone dept.
Ant writes "According to a thread on the Rage3D boards, and another on The Adventure Company's site, the copy protection system StarForce, as used in PC videogames including Toca Race Driver 2, Traitor's Gate 2 and Broken Sword 3, is installed on a user's PC without proper explanation, and doesn't get removed on many uninstalls - some users report difficulty in keeping their systems stable due to conflicts, and think they've tracked it down to the StarForce protection."
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StarForce Copy Protection Causing User Ire More

StarForce Copy Protection Causing User Ire

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  • Copy protection sucks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dtfinch ( 661405 ) * on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:13AM (#9405200) Journal
    The pirates will always crack it. They only wind up hurting paying end users. It seems nowadays the more you pay for a game the more worthless it is, due to the increased amounts of so called copy protection, which actually does little at all to halt piracy. CD's get scratched. Their attitude is "if it gets scratched beyond repair, that's just one more reason to buy a new game to take it's place" and preventing piracy is just the excuse. I've never pirated a game in my life. I know a couple people who have, but copy protection never stopped them.
    • Right.

      Take the following example (stolen from one of the forums mentioned in the blurb):

      "...software piracy is nowhere near as bad as these companies make out (it's just an excuse to explain why their games aren't selling, when the truth is it's because they're crap).

      In the second place, I can find a crack for a game in 0.5 seconds time. "

      Ok, wait just a second, could this guy/girl be any more contradictory? Piracy isn't as bad as they make it out to be, but he can find a crack in half a second ? Whew
      • uh when everyone knows www.gamecopyworld.com it does take 0.5 seconds to find a crack.

        waiting waiting waiting

      • Re:Copy protection sucks (Score:5, Insightful)

        by kenthorvath ( 225950 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:52AM (#9405310)
        Ok, wait just a second, could this guy/girl be any more contradictory? Piracy isn't as bad as they make it out to be, but he can find a crack in half a second ? Whew, sure sounds like piracy is pretty damn rampant and easy to come by to me.

        Not all persons using cracks are pirating games. There are legitimate uses for backups and cracks (not wanting to search for a CD everytime I want to play a game being a MAJOR factor). It is an unavoidable fact that people will copy games.

        Instead of trying to curb piracy by introducing new and irritating (and often crippling) DRM, the focus should be put into making a game worth the investment. The price should be just right so that it is actually easier to go to the store and buy a copy than to wait for a friend to burn it for you, or spend the time to download it, etc... And let us not forget that many people who pirate would never have purchased the game anyway - they just copied it because it was available and worth a try, not because they were rich and selfish.

        • The most effective forms of copy protection I've seen are for online play, where you need a valid, issued CD key to play. People who pirate the game can only play single player, or LAN. Everyone else can play anywhere they choose.

          Good games are worth buying. Bad games are rarely worth the CD-R you might burn it on.

          • The most effective forms of copy protection I've seen are for online play, where you need a valid, issued CD key to play. People who pirate the game can only play single player, or LAN. Everyone else can play anywhere they choose.

            Ever heard of key generators?
            The idea of a cd key is nice, but if tools exists to generate them, want's th point in using them. Just look at the quake 3 misery where a lot of buyers could not play online. Evertime they tried it, they got a 'cd key already in use' message. Very a
            • Ever heard of key generators?
              The idea of a cd key is nice, but if tools exists to generate them, want's th point in using them. Just look at the quake 3 misery where a lot of buyers could not play online. Evertime they tried it, they got a 'cd key already in use' message. Very annoying if you buy a game and cannot play it.

              That should never happen if the keysystem is implemented correctly, that is, the number of potential keys should be up there in the trillions. Also, limiting how fast somebody can try to
              • Yeah, and I would like to mention the worst case of this ever. Diablo 2. Those newer, DVD-like cases had the CD-key right in front, visible trough the plastic! One would only need a reasonably good digital gamera, go to the store and take a picture of the Diablo 2 rack. There, instant 20+ legit keys! What were they thinking?
            • How often do you find a valid key generator to a new game on the net. dimes to dollar you won't find one within the first 6 months of the games release. The tool used to generate them are often just approximations of the algorithm done by tracing back form a few valid keys. If it was implemented correctly it'd take a while before anyone firgures out the algorithm. Quake 3 "cd-key already in use" wasn't a key generator problem I heard it was an actual bug. and they removed the protection scheme in the sub se

        • Re:Copy protection sucks (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Allison Geode ( 598914 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @02:43AM (#9405434)
          when I buy a game, there are a couple things i do while installing it: 1. look for and download a patch. 2. look for and download a crack. to me, being able to play a game on the pc without needing the cd is important, and i consider cracks just another patch I have to install to make my games function the way I want. i have a large colletion of games, which means a large collection of discs, and its easy to temporarily misplace one disc (its on my shelf or in my binder somewhere, but it can take longer to find the disc than it does to play the game in some cases!) that said, I do not pirate games for myself, ever. i consider paying for games (to have the official disc and the manual) to be important, and I have to give big props to developers that either don't include copy protection in their games, or 'crack' the game themselves upon release of a patch (games like quake3 and unreal tournament 2k4 make me happy.)
          • Not to mention that if you loose the key but still have the disk you are suddenly without access to somthing you paid good money for.
            I have a game that's fun to play, but I don't play it often cause it's only fun when I'm in the right mood. well somewhere in a move I lost the 'quick start guide' which is the only place that had the key on it. Now I can only play one demo level and that's it. I've searched for a key or keygen but not recently, need to do so again.
            If you absolutely insist on cd keys t

        • Re:Here's a legit reason (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          My friend purchased Painkiller immediately after it was released. He liked the demo so much, why not? Well, there were some issues with Safedisc. Certain CD and DVD prevented the game from running. AAnother one of our friends also ran into the same problem -- it wasn't an isolated case. After several weeks of him trying to get it to work with official patches I finally suggested he try a no-cd crack. Guess what, it worked. Personally, I think the game industry is in serious trouble when warez groups have be
          • Well, there were some issues with Safedisc. Certain CD and DVD prevented the game from running. AAnother one of our friends also ran into the same problem -- it wasn't an isolated case. After several weeks of him trying to get it to work with official patches I finally suggested he try a no-cd crack.

            A friend of mine had a similar problem with Diablo II, except that the problem was the game was working, but when a new patch fixed some game bugs, the updated copy protection that came with it made it incomp

      • Re:Copy protection sucks (Score:4, Funny)

        by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:52AM (#9405312) Homepage Journal
        "Ok, wait just a second, could this guy/girl be any more contradictory? Piracy isn't as bad as they make it out to be, but he can find a crack in half a second ?"

        The rate of piracy cannot be measured by the speed of crack.

        • Re:Copy protection sucks (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Indeed. The reason why games are pirated so easily is not because there is a mass pirating industry - but because the copy protection doesn't actually work.

          If it did work then there wouldn't be any pirated versions.

          One would wonder why it is necessary to state the obvious - but clearly there are companies out there buying copy protection technology that when put to the test turns out to be nothing more than snake oil.

          It defies belief that games companies who are the major purchasers of copy protection so
      • No necessary contradiction. Easy != commonplace.
        It's not very hard for someone to dye thier hair green, but since the eighties it's not really been that common outside of a certain subculture, just like craking.
        And that's what the warez culture is, a sub-culture.
        Your argument is somthing like becuase anyone can replace most of thier software with linux easily then everyone must be doing it.
        The fact that it's easy to find cracks is because a dedicated sub-group is constantly creating them. And with

    • Suggestion for avoiding such copy protection (Score:5, Interesting)

      by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @02:00AM (#9405334) Journal
      1) Don't buy the game. Pirate it once a warez group comes up with a cracked copy with all the annoying copy protection removed.

      2) Send a personal check to the development company for what the game would have cost you. In some cases, dev houses have copy protection forced on them by the developer. Most dev houses will have contact information listed on their website. Include, with your check, a letter saying that you are sending them this check because you are unwilling to buy the game with copy protection included. This is very important, to ensure that they get the message -- this is an unhappy customer who is honest enough to pay for their game -- the copy protection not only was unnecessary for you, but made you unhappy.

      You shouldn't have any ethical problems, as you're paying the developers for their time and effort. As for legality -- technically, what you're doing is illegal, but prosecutions for pirating software for personal use are nonexistent, and the possiblity of such lawsuits is openly ignored en masse.
      • This is a very noble gesture, one that I've contemplated in the past, but have you actually done it? Be honest, now.

        Instead of fighting with computer games and copy protection, I've simply moved on and have begun to use the Gamecube for all my gaming needs. Now, I've played thousands of games ever since Jumpman and King's Quest I in all it's Tandy 16 glory, but I'm just not willing to combat these copyright schemes any more. No, I will not flash my DVD-ROM with a new firmware required to work with your

        • Re:Suggestion for avoiding such copy protection (Score:4, Insightful)

          by bigbigbison ( 104532 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @09:15AM (#9406419) Homepage
          The weakness of this method is that the game companies won't know why people stoped buying the games. They will just see sales decline and say "Well, the pc is dead" and stop making pc games. Either that or they will continue to plame piracy like the music industry does (our sales are down so it must be piracy, not that people don't want our product any more).
          So if people are going to stop buying games because of copy protection, make sure that the game companies know that is why you aren't buying their games.
      • This:

        In some cases, dev houses have copy protection forced on them by the developer.

        Should read

        In some cases, dev houses have copy protection forced on them by the publisher.

        Doesn't make much sense otherwise.
      • I think this is what a lot of people do, except they skip step 2. ;)
      • Yeah, that's genius. When the publisher finds out they aren't getting their cut from the game and suppoena the dev's financial records your name, address, driver's license #, phone #, and bank routing # will pop up.
        • Yes, but they have no financial justification to prosecute.

          The reason publishers occasionally go after people running warez servers or in cracking groups is because they *propagate* things to other people, and when combined with the dissuasion factor, there isn't a huge issue.

          Trying to go after an individual person who still sent in their money and wrote feedback...well, there are always risks in life, but I'm much more concerned about being whacked in the head by a meteorite.
      • Great idea, but ... send them a money order. The dev house might get excited and leak this to their publisher in conversation, and the publisher might just sic lawyers on you for the principle of it. Game developers are hoopy froods. Media publishers as a rule almost never are.

        It's not like you'll be able to justify your cracked copy to the Disney Police when they come through your door with a warrant for mandatory copyright violation inspections anyway...

    • Old hashed topic, no solution (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fwitness ( 195565 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @06:59AM (#9405984)
      We've gone over this countless times. You are 100% correct, pirates will pirate, regardless of protection. I remember my pirated copy of 3DStudio MAX, which was cracked despite requiring a bunch of serials and an actual hardware dongle.

      The end 'legitimate' user will always pay the price of hacked-up protection schemes. I still install my warezed copy of starcraft instead of the copy I bought. Searching for the CD for a game that completely installs on my drive is just annoying.

      Companies don't understand this, and for some reason it seems they never will. Or perhaps they just don't care. Either way, we should just let the subject die, or come up with a better way for users to benefit from protection.
      • starcraft? The only copy protection on it is a serial key and the requirement to have the cd in the drive(saferom I think). It's not intrusive. Just blind write the cd and mount er up. no cracks needed. Adn you'll never need the cd again.
        • Yes, StarCraft's protection is not all that intrusive. However, would you want to find your Office CD everytime you wanted to open up Word?

          It's a computer game, I have a huge hard drive, it should install completely. It is *not* a console game. Many games do this and it really ticks me off when I have to search for CDs.

          I should not have to prove to my computer that I own the game everytime I want to play it, period. The 'protection' does little to those who pirate the game, again, only annoys legitima

    • Re:Copy protection sucks (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      There is a financial incentive for publishers to include copy protection on games; otherwise, they would not do so. Remember, in a capitalist society, money talks :)

      The majority of piracy comes from Joe Average Gamer telling his friend Mikey, "Hey, you need to check out this game!" and installing it on his system. Joe Average Gamer buys 3-4 games per year and doesn't know a cd-crack from an ass crack, let alone have a clue about torrents or newsgroups. So, he installs the game on Mikey's computer, but M

  • ugh (Score:5, Interesting)

    by loomis ( 141922 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:34AM (#9405264)
    I read through much of the threads on the forums mentioned in the abstract, and what is terrible about this thing is that even after installing the game, the "driver" remains. Remove it manually and it returns later like spyware! And what is most disturbing is that one user received an uninstaller after he complained to the company--only the uninstaller didn't uninstall the thing either!
    • it also conflicts with virtual drives many(nearly all) burning softwares install.

      besides all this.. It's _still_ possible to circumvent, so essentially what it ends up at: LEGIMATE PEOPLE FEEL LIKE THEY'VE BEEN SCREWED.

  • I noticed they claim to have a "firm shield" against debuggers and the like. Yea right. I assume we all know that any binary can be debugged, right? fscking idiots. someone wana bury the company in nuclear waste?
    • Oh, it could work, you just dont understand the mechanism..

      The BINARY can be decoded directly, or a deadlist can be compiled..

      My guess is they have lots of no-start loops that throw debuggers off or other common tricks.

      Now the problem I see is they could provide a runtime de-cypher (with the decrypting stub program) decryptiong the contents of the exe.. Even worse yet is if they decrypt it to CPU cache (A murder to debug) and do their operations in that. I could allocate 2K in cpu cache and use a nasty (
    • Starforce does have a very clever way of preventing debugger to work.

      To explain it requires some little background about how an OS like Windows handle the initialisation of a process that uses dynamic libraries.

      Basically, Windows will create a process environment (virtual memory, ...) and load the exe in it. It then check which dll is required by the exe and load them as well. Each dll as a usually small function that is called by the OS when the dll has been loaded, before the exe is even started, for i
  • but I'll say it again.
    Agressive copy protection is often more a hinderance to legitimate users than it is to pirates.

    Copy protection (especially for games it seems) stops only most amature pirates, and I'd venture to guess they would still be thwarted by the simplest measures. Certainly they should be as confused by cd checks for bad bits, as they are by hidden drivers and the like.
    • This is almost true. The lastest copy protection schemes (like Starforce 3) has delayed games from getting to the warez-scene, often several weeks/some months. Another thing is that patches often don't get cracked (to small gain for a huge amount of work). This has probably a positive effect on the number of games sold. That is good, since software developers ought to get paid too.

  • Another Form of Copy Protection (Score:4, Informative)

    by thirty2bit ( 685528 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @06:57AM (#9405979)
    TMPGEnc 3.0 XPress by Pegasys needs the usual reg key, but the product page on their site also states:

    LICENSE VALIDATION is required for TMPGEnc Plug-in AC-3 and TMPGEnc 3.0 XPress. Therefore an Internet connection will be needed to validate your license from time to time.
    To be able to use the Software, the license validation procedure have to be executed via Internet. The purpose of the license validation is to verify that you actually own the license. The information you have input the first time, will be sent to the license validation server, and you will be able then to use the Software.

    This is a new annoying form of copy protection. For some reason, 'guilty until proven innocent' comes to mind.

    I almost purchased the software for our department's video needs, for manipulating safety and training videos, but our corporate firewalls and proxy prevent it from hitting the internet. No cha-ching, this is a lost sale. Ironically it's inexpensive software. Like $60 US.

    I don't like any software that needs to 'phone home', since you'll never be told what's being phoned. Real Networks RealannoyingPlayer comes to mind with the user-tracking feature that got their butts in hot water. TiVo monitors your watching habits. Windows XP phones back to the mothership on occasion.

  • argh (Score:5, Informative)

    by chrish ( 4714 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @07:02AM (#9405991) Homepage

    Copy protection might prevent "casual" copying between the computer illeterate and that's the intent. But when it screws up your computer (by introducing instability), affects game play (I've heard of schemes that check mid-game causing major lag points for online players), or even makes it impossible for you to play the game you just bought (many of these schemes don't actually work with all disc drives), then it's just a load of crap.

    That "protection makes it impossible to start the game" thing is a real killer for some people with crappy drives because you can't take software back most places. There should be a big WARNING: Disc is copy protected! sticker on the front of the box to warn people.

    I was using cracks on some of my games because:

    • The CD check at the start of the game took an unreasonable amount of time.
    • I was sick of having to dig the original CDs out of the pile of papers/CDs/cats on my desk.
    • I don't want to risk damaging the original CDs; I'd rather leave them snug in their jewel cases.

    The problem with using a no-CD crack is that you're suddenly locked out of future patches unless you backed up the original executable/DLLs. That's a pain in the butt.

    Using DaemonTools to mount CD images and BlindWrite5 to make images, even of "protected" CDs has been awesome. No worries about patching, or damaging the original CDs, and the copy protection checks happen fast because you don't have to wait for the CD drive to detect a disc, spin up, etc.

  • Psygnosis - latin for "Won't Boot" (Score:5, Funny)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @08:37AM (#9406284) Homepage Journal
    Back in the days when games booted directly, my friends and I had a joke - "Psygnosis - Latin for Won't Boot"

    Psygnosis copyprotected their games with every trick in the book, to prevent the game from loading if it was pirated.

    It worked.

    It also prevented the games from booting if they WEREN'T pirated, but your drive was a little off. Or you had an accelerator card. Or it was a day with a vowel in it. Or if there were baryons in your computer.

    Simple solution - don't buy copy protected software. Don't copy it. Don't use it. If you buy it and find it is copy protected, take it back, say it won't work, and demand your money back.
    • Just an FYI for those folks who don't know; baryons are a type of matter. Baryonic matter is "normal" matter - protons, neutrons, and electrons. Non-baryonic matter includes stuff like axions (still hypothetical), neutrinos, anti-matter of various types, and so on.
      • Technically, electrons are leptons, not baryons.

        "Baryonic matter" is used to refer to normal matter because it is mostly correct - by mass the amount of normal matter that is leptons rather than baryons is much less than a percent.

  • Does anyone else find it funny that the Starforce home page features a picture (top right) of a dude at a keyboard throwing up his hands (blurred) in apparent disgust while the two "overlords" standing behind him are laughing and smiling?

  • simple copy protection (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SanityInAnarchy ( 655584 ) <ninja@slaphack.com> on Saturday June 12, 2004 @09:35AM (#9406508) Journal
    As far as I know, everyone who's ever been to a LAN party has probably pirated Half-Life, along with a few dozen mods. But that won't work outside the LAN party. I also know that, with the advent of Steam, everyone who wants to play any kind of online game at all has to have a CD key. It only costs about $10 to get one anyway, so most people just deal with it.

    It's even more centrallized with an MMO game.

    The best copy protection is: Make online games so you can make it reasonably difficult to pirate the game -- but make the CD key and online identity the only copy protection. Make good games so everyone wants it, and make them cheap enough so that everyone can buy them.

    In fact, make it so that when I look at a game, it actually costs me less money to buy the game than time to crack the copy protection.
    • IIRC, Half Life had a "LAN ONLY" key which disallowed all Internet play but would allow LAN games.

      It was something to the effect of 123456789012345 or something like that. (digit groupings obviously not right)

      I think they figured that if people wanted to play it at a LAN, let em; to get the real functionality they'd still need to buy.

  • Bypassing online cd key requirements (Score:4, Informative)

    by Sparky9292 ( 320114 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:16PM (#9407648)

    Ever heard of key generators? The idea of a cd key is nice, but if tools exists to generate them, want's th point in using them. Just look at the quake 3 misery where a lot of buyers could not play online. Evertime they tried it, they got a 'cd key already in use' message. Very annoying if you buy a game and cannot play it. That should never happen if the keysystem is implemented correctly, that is, the number of potential keys should be up there in the trillions. Also, limiting how fast somebody can try to contact the key server should lock down any attempt at brute force searching. But this doesn't address what I think is the real cause of those people getting "key in use on their new games" - that is, people going around in stores, ripping packages open and typing down the often quite visible key.

    To get around online cd key checking, pirates have been launching cracked servers where the keys don't get checked. Browse on Battlefield 1942 servers and you'll find a bunch with cracked in the title.

  • > users report difficulty in keeping their systems
    > stable due to conflicts, and think they've tracked
    > it down to the StarForce protection.

    If I was licensed at bar, I'd start working on a
    class-action suit.

  • Follow-up & Removal Tool (Score:4, Informative)

    by antdude ( 79039 ) on Saturday June 12, 2004 @01:36PM (#9407781) Homepage Journal
    See here [bluesnews.com].
  • ...Why did the bloody idiots added this horrible, intrusive "Protection" to the bloody *DEMO* of TOCA 2?

    Isn't a demo freely availale and it's distribution activley promoted by the publisher??
    I got this SF.virus from trying out TOCA 2 (the demo), I was about to buy (once I dig up my wheel), but now I won't get near any CodeMasters game.

    Why put such files in the demo? do they gain anything from distributing (read: infecting) people's PCs - people who have yet to buy the game? Why did the drivers stay after
    • This way if you tried the demo, and it doesn't work, well.. you'll be reasonably guaranteed that the retail won't work either. Less chance to 'steal' it that way (get it and return it). Though I doubt that's the real reason.

      It was probably because they didn't want anything similar to a 'clean' exe out there in the wild, such that it might be easier to find in memory and debug that way in the retail version. That, and the game was probably written with a few things integral to the game such that the prot
  • You won't get that crap if you just play Tux Racer!
  • The irony is, starforce is one of the most annoying copy protection schemes out there right now, but can actually be defeated without cracks. physically disconnect your cd/dvd drives, mount your disc image across the network, and voila! bye-bye starforce...
    • That doesn't work anymore, at least with Toca Race Driver 2 it didn't. I am about finished buying games, movie DVD's and Music CDs because of this. I am SICK of the troubles and junk they install these days. Copy Potection has back fired on them as far as I'm concerned. I hope more of you will feel the same way and one day these companies will just lay off the junk when they aren't selling anymore products because of it.

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