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- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17Starforce isn't just easily crackable, it totally screws with your system, leaving it unstable and buggy (potentially).
A fantastic way to make sure nobody buys one of your games ever again it to stuff their system up today! - Drood, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17I had a system here damaged for 18 months before I could figure out how to repair the damage. No CD I burned could be read on the system, and these were disks burnt on two different burners. However they worked fine in every other one I have. Turned out that using the official removal tool does NOT undo any damage caused. It just prevents any further damage. To fix it, you have to go into the device manager and uninstall all CD/DVD devices, and also uninstall both the primary and secondary IDE devices. Only then is the damage repaired as Windows has to reinitialise the drivers.
Though Ubisoft don't get off lightly with me. They can dump Starforce, but they still screwed their customers, and labelled anyone who complained as a hacker, so Ubisoft are still on my personal "DO NOT BUY" list, with or without Starforce. - ziffel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15This is potentially huge news, and a huge win for the starforce boycotters. ++++DIGG, this should get to the front page.
- shinynew, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13yea starforce sucks, My comp + starforce detected Ipods as CD drives and asked me to put a disk in
- shiftless, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11I installed a game with Starforce on it once
I had to reinstall Windows shortly thereafter - Drood, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11If this is true, it's the beginning of the end for Starforce, and it's about damn time.
- Keith0256, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10This company and Starforced has been a bad experience for me. I bought King Kong for the PC before I knew about the Starforce problems. Luckily I found out before I installed it. The place where I bought it won't take a return, they will only exchange it. OK, fine I figure the manufacturer stand behind there product. Nope. Not at all. I emailed back and forth several times. Ubisoft basically says it is not their problem, return it to the store. OK, so I have this game that I can't play, I have never installed it, in fact it isn't even opened (the plastic over wrap is still securely in place), and I can't even get the manufacturer to take it back.
Any one want to buy a Star Forced King Kong game??? Even Ubisoft doesn't want the junk back. Nice to see a company stand by it's product. Thanks for the taking my money for a product I have never used!!!
(BTW, I have the emails to prove this, so I would love them to try to sue me for slander!) - DarkZen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9This is great news, i was really hoping that they wouldn't put that crap on the new Hero's game (my GF is really into that series and I'm planning on buying her this game new..)
Anyway, looks like the customer is always right...well sometimes...NOW if we could only get this kind of stuff to work on Hollywood and their DRM....
DZ - SuperSloth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8rm999: All copy protection is rather easily crackable. All flavors of SafeDisc and SecuROM are crackable; they just make fair-use backup copies from honest people not work. As others have said, copy protection itself is a flawed scheme. You're giving every legitimate user what amounts to an encrypted copy of your product (yes, I realize it's often not actually encrypted; it's called an analogy) and then giving you the key to decrypt the product, too. That's like giving someone a lock box and a key and telling them never to look in the box when they open it.
Trying to make digital content un-copy-able is like trying to make water not be wet.
Trying to encrypt digital content and then giving everyone the key means you cannot prevent them from making copies of the key or making decrypted copies.
Basic copy protection -- meaning serial keys, invalid sectors, CD checks, and online registration certification -- are still the most cost effective copy protection schemes. All copy protection gets broken. Making it so difficult to break that your honest customers dislike you is a very bad idea. - patto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8thank you for coming to your senses ubisoft.. but it's about f'ing time
- thushan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7The more we voice against the use of Starforce, the more companies will make their decisions against using such eff-ware in their stuff...
If FutureMark didnt discover this, we wouldn't of had this outcome today... So go on... make a voice and start contributing your thoughts on forums etc... - durzagott, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Thank God. Please say they don't include Starforce in Heroes 5! All the other games on the boycott list I couldn't give a toss about, but I want Heroes 5!! So much so that I was considering installing another version of Windows on a separate partition just to play the damn thing.
- V1ncent, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Great news indeed! They're not done for yet, but hopefully eventually. BTW if anyone thinks that because no one collected that 10k bounty = Starforce doesn't damage or glitch systems; I have many bridges for sale.
- Galaeron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Good. Dark Messiah looks to much like a damn great game to boycott.
I had wipe windows clean after my last starforce encounter. - FallenSeraph, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Another reason to hate starforce: lack of support for 64-bit systems.
Imagine buying a prestine new copy of say, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, only to find out the game itself works with x64 windows, but starforce doesn't - therefore no game for you. No patches or nothing. - Jadinlee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I will never by a Ubisoft game again due to their actions. However, booting Starforce is a good step in redeeming themselves in my eyes. But like others have said, its more than just their use of Starforce... its their treatment of customers.
- perry, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4http://www.ghostrecon.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=32630
I'm hoping that the upcoming PC release of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter will also be without Starforce as was previously thought. Seeing that Ubi may be moving away from Starforce in other titles is just further confirmation that GRAW will be Starforce-free as well. - jonjj7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Or at least a Starforce-fee copy of the game they bought.
- scrubking, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Hopefully this is the start of game companies realizing how bad StarForce is and giving them the boot. It will be a good day when StarForce goes out of business.
- Pimptastic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4This has been a huge issue in the 64 bit community. it took me months to give up and use the crack on Silent hunter III to try it on XP64.
two places ive found that have helped me with my starforce problemsand xp64
http://www.64bitstuff.com
http://www.planetamd64.com - rm999, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8I bet you the reason why they are doing this is that the current starforce technology is easily crackable - it's not worth the money. When (if) starforce comes out with a new patch that can't be cracked I think ubisoft would jump back on.
- Spoonicus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4One slight victory in the fight against invasive programming. Congrats UBI for taking a step in the right direction.
- wrongbanana, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Looks like the class action against Ubisoft for using Starforce:
http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/legal/5m-class-action-lawsuit-against-ubisoft-for-starforce-164303.php
has already produced results.
That was quick! - Klowner, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Time for a petition!
- NanoStuff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It's a good start but not good enough. Now give people that bought starforce ***** a selection of a couple free games and maybe we can begin to forgive and forget.
- rm999, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2SuperSloth
Starforce actually took a while to crack. It took them almost a year to crack trackmania sunrise. Once it was cracked, though, all the games that used it were essentially cracked. A year is still pretty good in the game business.
Agret
Starforce is no longer effective. I can get around starforce without unplugging anything. Do some damn research before telling me I don't know what I'm talking about. - iperez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hurray! Now I will actually buy Heroes of Might and Magic 5.
- Agret, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2powercow you have to go out to their head office in russia and pay your own way there and then they probably won't accept your evidence anyway
- Agret, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2 rm999 you obvioulsy have no idea what your talking about. Starforce is NOT easily crackable, you have to use all this emulation software and anti-blacklisting and you have to physically unplug your cd / dvd drives from your computer. It's a major pain in the ass.
- Agret, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2A good game will sell well even without copy protection. Oblivion has just come out recently and features absolutely no copy protection and it broke records with it's sales.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3most starforce patches are a pain
most require no ide cd rom drive
starforce games tend to be the last to be
cracked when they come out.
I doubt they are dropping starforce because it is so "easily" crackable as ever other method is much easier to crack. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1IF you could have duplicated this starforce would have paid you 10k a piece
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1if you could have proved that you could have gotten 10k from starforce
i bash starforce as much as the next guy but i have never had any damage to my systems from starforce.. never heard of any one collecting on starforces offer.. never heard a tech detail on how it screws up your system... maybe it was older versions but today doesnt seem to destroy a pc and or cd/dvddrives - sporkwitch, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1I'm not seeing much substance to the article. First off, the article gives second-hand info. Looking at the link to the forums where the post says "we will not be using starforce in future products" or whatever the exact wording was, there was nothing on the poster suggestion that it wasn't just another poster on the forums, and I'd have to register with their forums to view his profile (I tried, sorry, not registering, even with a junk name and email, with a company that would use something like Starforce). Marked as innacurate for lack of substance or solid supporting information, as much as I'd love for it to be true (I'm a big fan of the Splinter Cell series, and I would rather have them for PC than X-Brick, n2m I'd like to just be able to buy them at all; boycotting doesn't work if you juts buy the console version instead, they only care that you bought the game, not what platform you bought it for.), it just doesn't have enough backing it up to make it look like it IS true. As they say, "if it looks too good...."
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