Starforce?

[AP-H2M]

As earlier reported (http://www.editingarchive.com/viewnews.php?ID=1488), Ubisoft will be dropping Starforce as its copy-protection software. While earlier reports relied on a Babelfish'ed translation of a French forums post, 1up has confirmation, as not only has Heroes of Might and Magic V producer Fabrice Cambounet stated as such (http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3149560) in the the official Ubisoft forums, but after contacting Ubisoft directly, 1up has received a response (http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3149611) verifying the report. It should be stated that Ubisoft will be seeking some other form of copy protection software, but that from here on, that software will not be Starforce. A long wile ago i read this and was confused because i had no clue what star force is and why it is so bad. Any 1 wana shine some light in the cloud of dankness surrounding my mind*lol*. I know it hard to get off ur PC but thats about it.

[Google]

[Sim9]

I'm going to quote wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starforce) on this one:

StarForce is a software copy prevention (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_prevention) brand by the Russian developer Protection Technology (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Protection_Technology&action=edit), which licensed it from CD-Cops (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=CD-Cops&action=edit). Its various implementations are compatible with different versions of the Microsoft Windows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows) operating systems. Its main strength lies in wrapping executable (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executable) and DLL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic-link_library) files using byte-code, interpreted through its own virtual machine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine). [1] (http://www.reteam.org/papers/e53.pdf)

. . .

StarForce has received criticism for installing its own device driver (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_driver) onto computers. The Starforce drivers are often linked to system instability and computer crashes. Some users claim that the StarForce drivers can cause optical drives to fail. Supporters of StarForce believe that the stability problems were exaggerated and have been resolved in newer versions of StarForce. See "External Links" and "News Coverage" sections below for more readings.


Essentially, the problem is that StarForce installs a driver on to the user's computer without the user's permission. I've heard that this driver is difficult to remove, and won't remove with the standard uninstall procedure. Furthermore, this driver causes crashes for some users. StarForce is starting to be grouped with other malware applications like spyware and adware. Wikipedia also suggests the following informational links:

Official site (http://www.star-force.com/)
StarForce Drivers Removal Tool (http://www.onlinesecurity-on.com/protect.phtml?c=55)
A list of games using StarForce (http://www.similarities.org/starforce.html)
A boycott website (http://www.boycottstarforce.net/) with its list of Starforce protected games and detection methods
Another boycott website (http://www.glop.org/starforce/) the initial, first list of games using Starforce.

Hopefully this answers your question. :)

[Moving this to Game Talk, since it relates to gaming. You probably did not originally know which forum was correct since you did not know what starforce was :)]

[AP-H2M]

Thanks a ton sim. Never though to look there lol