Talk:StarForce/Archive 1

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents 1 Older Discussions 2 Bullying tactics? 3 Criticism 4 Stolen from CD COPS? 5 Dramatically decreasing piracy 6 List of programs using StarForce 7 Protected, dispute 8 Page protection 9 TRUTH 10 StarForce Apology 11 StarForce Contest? 12 Removal of Image:Starforce vs stardock.jpg 13 Drivers widely used 14 POV edit warring 15 GCW discussion. 16 Onlinesecurity-on 17 minor accuracy edit in list of publishers 18 Is it even possible to remain objective at this point? 19 Have made some changes to the article according the last SF situation 20 MAJOR REVERT - Attention! 21 SF reverting 22 212.199.170.75 23 Bias 24 Microsoft and StarForce 25 StarForce and exploit 26 Installation point of Starforce 27 StarForce doesn't affect my PC

Older Discussions

Let's please keep the cut-and-paste jobs out of this article. Wikipedia is not a place where you can just paste in ad copy from a company's website. Rhobite 05:04, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

Hello all - I just wanted to respond to the statement that "The criticism StarForce received is only due to frustrated users unable to pirate a title" - I am not a software pirate - I legitimately downloaded the Heroes of Might & Magic 5 beta demo, which covertly installed Starforce, and my burner immediately began failing repeatedly and then had it's speed reduced by Windows until it ultimately just stopped working. There are numerous accounts of this behavior online from people who are clearly not pirates (boing boing, news.com, are just the tip of the iceberg) and who have detailed analysis of Starforce in action. Enough, I would argue, that the criticism section should be expanded here on Wikipedia. I also think it warrants a list of Starforce protected games - I am certain that could be phrased without being POV. The Glop.org link has an up-to-date list of Starforce - I want to say 'afflicted' - protected games. - LDB

In reply to Rhobite: This was not a cut and paste job; I rather was speaking out of experience (you may search www.star-force.com, and you will not fing a matching sentence). You should be aware that the amount of compromised StarForce protected titles is much lower than with competing products. Yet, you saw fit to add a negative remark about this line of products (about the device driver). So, FYI: the complaints about StarForce driver all over the web are *completely* baseless, since each and every CD/DVD copy protection has to install a device driver in order to work with the CD-ROM drive, plus some other ring0 stuff (As a programmer, I trust you understand what all that means). The criticism StarForce received is only due to frustrated users unable to pirate a title, or give a copy to their friends. Furthermore, as I wrote in the article: StarForce is NOT the only copy protection installing a driver. SafeDisc installs a driver as well (secdrv.sys), and SecuROM v7 even installs a perpetual user access service. Yet, you chose to present it as the fact that a certain copy protection system installs a driver is exceptional - while this is not the case at all. I find this disturbing.

While there were some bugs concerning USB HD access and such - they were immediately fixed by the vendor. There is no need to disqualify this nice product - after all, we're just giving a definition to the notion here; not a personal opinion, right? - And StarForce being an industry leader is a well and long proven fact.

Please read Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. This is not a forum to promote your software. Rhobite 05:29, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

"And StarForce being an industry leader is a well and long proven fact" - please supply data for this.

Please supply data that crack for every StarForce game is avilable at g***world.com. Robust Physique 03:04, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Again, you may check my IP address, it's NOT sourced in the Russian Federation. I am merely interested in copy protection techniques, not associated with Protection Technology in any way.

You are at it again, are not you Rhobite? Do you check this page every 10 minutes? why do you add false lies to the article, and call it a corporate advertisement when I edit them out (or rather whitewashing vandalism) while I said I do not have any connection to Protection Technology? Why remove the fact that other products install drivers too?

Why do you come in from a different IP address in Eastern Europe or Israel every time you edit the article? Vandalize the article again and you'll be blocked from editing. Rhobite 19:38, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

Well, in fact, the last edit was not mine - you are welcome to #cracking4newbies, EFNet (IRC) to discuss the issue.

You're the vandal here - it's not my issue to discuss. Rhobite 19:48, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

Vandal? how am I a vandal? While I have no longer added superlatives about SF to this article, how am I a vandal for correcting your mistakes? and when someone disagrees with you, you lock him from editing the value?

Mr. Physique is clearly a corporate shill. Every time someone adds a valid mention that there are cracks for every single starforce protected game out there, he removes them as lies. Gamec***world.com is a place where this is easily verifyable. Nobody, except maybe a corporate operative, would jump through the hoops of checking the page daily from different, obfuscated IPSpaces around the world to make sure it is PR consistent. He has been removing the "criticism" part of the page as well as the * fact * that there are cracks for every starforce protected game out there, despite it being difficult to crack, again and again and again as "lies". He also keeps readding the claim about the developers of Starforce monitoring the internet and other clearly PR oriented text.

Find me a crack for Prince of Persia: Two Thrones, and mabey i'll believe your BS. Robust Physique 03:29, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Unlike certain companies, i.e. the makers of StarForce (see criticism section that you try to rewrite all the time), I will not post links to cracked games on the internet, it hurts the developer of those games. There is a crack available for it however on a popular page supplying users with "fixed" executables so they do not have to have their CDs in drive.

And i'm the king of England. Robust Physique 03:42, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Very funny. Given the exorbitant number of edits you have made to this article, you are working for StarForce. Obviously it's your companies policy to request links to stolen software on internet boards and wikis, but I won't do you that favour. As for your edits in regards to pirated software - the information that pirated (read: not necessarily cracked) versions of software protected with StarForce is available only hours after release is useful for readers of this article and balanced within the context of this article. It would be wrong to withhold the information that it doesn't matter for pirates whether or not you use starforce from people potentially interested in this software. The article lists the software as "copy prevention software", so it is important to know for readers that pirated copies are in fact available shortly after release, so they can get an idea whether or not the whole thing makes sense. It might not make the software appeal to potential buyers, but that's what the friendly faces on your companies website are for, not wikipedia.

Proof of Prince Of Persia The 2 Thrones crack 17:32, 08 April 2006 (GMT)

Bullying tactics?

I see much more bickering than actual debate here, although I do not understand how my computer rebooting due to unwelcome DRM is debatable. I cannot add technical knowledge to this discussion.

What I do have to add however is that for any game company to use StarForce's protection scheme is foolish. Users unaware of the DRM may attribute any instability to poor game design and refuse to buy from that company. Power users will most likely avoid any company that has had anything to do with StarForce. Hackers will target all StarForce protected games to make a mockery of them.

The public's reaction I am basing off of comments posted on Engadget and CD Freaks, journalistic opinions and the countless guides for removal. http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/21/starforce-drm-said-to-force-reboots/ http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/13212 http://www.glop.org/starforce/ http://www.similarities.org/starforce.html

Also no one has referenced SF's bullying tactics. Why is this? Surely letters threatening to sue for criticizing a company's software fall under the realm of revelancy for this article. http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/31/starforce_threatens_.html

As to the countless, "suing won't work" references, they have an office in California. In the interview note the PR game face and the use of "disclosures" of "weaknesses" strategically placed to give an impression of strength and near infallability.

http://www.firingsquad.com/features/starforce_interview/

Also I have to add that since this is so highly contested and the links I have provided seem to be in jeopardy I will check back periodically. I really wish that it had not come to this.

Criticism

This statement is unsupported in the "Criticism" section: The StarForce drivers are reason for system instability and computer crashes (as it has been proven in many cases). Have you got any links to where this is "proven"? Tale 11:16, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

In the meantime I have changed this to "Some users have blamed the StarForce drivers for system instability and computer crashes." Tale 01:15, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Bias. Utter bias. That is what I read from the article. The complaints are legimitate; StarForce also exposes old security holes. A paste from the http://www.glop.com/starforce, which may be biased as well, also states the facts:

Quoting: "Starforce has received criticism for installing its own device driver onto computers. The Starforce drivers are often linked to system instability and computer crashes. If these problems occur, the end-user would be unware as to the cause of the problem, and would be helpless to solve the problem.

Moreover, the Starforce drivers, installed on your system, grant ring 0 (system level) privileges to any code under the ring 3 (user level) privileges. Thus, any virus or trojan can get OS privileges and totally control your system. Since Windows 2000, the Windows line security and stability got enhanced by separating those privileges, but with the Starforce drivers, the old system holes and instabilities are back and any program (or virus) can reach the core of your system by using the Starforce drivers as a backdoor."

It won't take long before virus and trojan writers take an advantage of this. That is why we don't want to have StarForce on our systems.

Are these similar reasons to why there was so much consumer outrage about the recent copy protection sony put on it's music cd's? Perhaps sony went a bit over the top. But the security issues you mention were one of the major reasons the security companies called it bad, and they labelled it spyware. Sony's definitely went furthur, it would connect a server every bootup. There seems to be a limit to how invasive a copy protection people will tolerate. 220.253.55.87 13:24, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

---

A few things:

1. When an exploit is found, trojan/worm/virus writers tend to release an attack very quickly. The ring 0 security issue with StarForce has been well known for quite some time, and yet, I haven't heard of any attacks on StarForce installed systems, though I am not doubting the possibility of one.

You have to realise that saying "no one did it yet" does not qualify as proof that it can't be done. I could be that making a backdoor this way isn't the best choice since it isn't as widespread as other security problems. This problem does not help delivering a payload to a computer, only helps escalading the privileges of a delivered payload. It does have it's limitation as a backdoor.

2. The problems StarForce causes are well documented and range from disabled DVD playback to broken optical drives to corrupted operating systems, this is not a subject for debate anymore than the benefits of CoolWebSearch are. StarForce is malware.

-69.118.247.101 15:52, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

---

Is there any support for the claim "StarForce has dramatically decreased piracy of computer games using such protection system"? That doesn't seem to be the case from what I've read (though admittedly, I haven't looked too far into the matter), and there's no source cited to support it.

Look, according to a post over at the "Boycott Starforce" about Ubi Soft's newest game, "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Lockdown," the StarForce protection for it has already been hacked, and it's only been out for less than three days. As a result, I am going to assume that the part about StarForce games taking months to hack is false and goes against the neutrality standards set by Wikipedia. I am going to just remove it with no replacement, since it would be difficult to cite a source for either side of the argument. CaptainConq 22:23, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I added the part about starforce often taking months to hack, and I can vouch that this is true. This supposed statement by them was my source: http://news.com.com/5208-7349-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=11535&messageID=86618&start=-184. If you want to research it yourself (and counter the rainbow six example) look for a crack for trackmania sunrise - you won't find one because it was never truly cracked, thanks to starforce. This is very rare in the warez world. I said that games "often" aren't cracked, not always, so a single counterexample proves nothing. I added the statements to offer the POV of the developers of starforce, a POV that is sorely lacking from an article about them. If you really want to delete these statements, PLEASE try to find something to replace it along the same lines, because it is the main argument that the developers and the software developers use to justify it. Not mentioning that argument is terrible IMO. 70.93.249.46 09:07, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

You cannot use a statement from a self-interested party like this to prove that point. Furthermore, that statement contains contradictions (they "haven't heard" of problems, they later admit they have heard of a percentage of people with problems). And Trackmania Sunrise cracks have been available since at least the first half of 2005, on Game Copy World and other such sites. --Yamla 15:35, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I do not know where to cite for this, but Trackmania has been cracked, I put this up for other users to research, as I have no idea where to find it. Anyone who knows, please verify my claim.

Instructions to crack trackmania from gamecopyworld:

• Install the game - Full Installation.
• Disable any CD-ROM/Writers and/or DVD-ROM/Writers using StarForce Nightmare.
• Mount the TMSUNRISE.MDS CD-Image in Daemon Tools v3.47 or the latest Alcohol 120%.
• Play the Game!

That's not a *real* crack because it involves disabling hardware. I hate starforce as much as the next person here, but I am trying really hard to present the view of the creators of starforce and the several game makers who use it, something lacking from this article. I tried my best and I think my statements are not only true, but inbiased. If you can do better replace it with something presenting the same POV, but don't just erase it...

70.93.249.46 03:58, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

My opinion (and this is just opinion) is that these steps aren't that bad. You just need to disable the drives while you are playing the game and can do so using software. However, I do understand where you are coming from. My problem is that StarForce claims games remain uncracked for months while it seems to me (though I have not done any studies) that the games are almost always cracked within the three month time period. The problem furthermore is that it seems like we have StarForce making self-serving statements on the one side and everyone else claiming StarForce doesn't work and it causes problems, etc., on the other side. It's very hard to find positive but unbiased statements in support of StarForce. You are obviously editing in good faith, though, and are going out of your way to try to improve the article. For the moment, I'll let your edits stand and see if I can find any pro-StarForce statements that we could use that do not come from a particularly biased ("marketing") source. How does that sound? --Yamla 16:18, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. I agree that it would be better to come up with a more objective defense of starforce (but good luck finding it). Perhaps a statement from a game developer explaining why they subject their users to starforce? I do not like the way my addition to the article is now: "The games protected by it are sometimes not cracked for several days or more." That is almost a vacuous statement - it's not a defense of starforce to say it is cracked within a day, it's an insult like the rest of the article. Rm999 07:59, 4 March 2006 (UTC) (used to be at 70.93.249.46)

Hi, im changing the months to days as months was two years ago, these days two well known groups crack SF in a matter of days without fail for about the last year, for more info see http://www.theisonews.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=2 , as you'll see EVERY game is listed in there in crack and/or clone format and all games were released within 1 week. Lets get the article straight guys, because theres some very wrong info in there at the moment.

That section has no substantiated claims and has unverifiable information which is forbidden to have on Wikipedia. No claims have ever been made about Starforce having to be removed via formatting the partition it is installed on because it can be removed via the official removal tool. Therefore I am putting the warning back up. 12.219.74.52 15:31, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

That section has sources and nothing there was unverifiable (unverified, sure). I agree that the uninstall portion was false, but it makes more sense to remove or mark that instead of claiming the entire section is bollocks. kotepho 17:02, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd just like to point out that the following is inaccurate or incomplete in the main article (I'm too polite to go in there and edit it!) "StarForce copy protection software also forces users to completely wipe and reinstall their partitions if they wish to remove the copy protection software. The protection will also write to any shared network drives that have full read / write access, causing problems for other users on the network.". The Starforce Removal Tool actually does seem to do the job. If there's proof somewhere that it doesn't, let's see it, please! Also, Starforce has never "spread" accross my home network, nor accross the partitioned OS's I've set up to isolate it. I've heard tale of it doing so on SATA drives, but not on an IDE one, so I feel that paragraph could use some clarifying, and some evidential support. (For the record I don't like Starforce - I'd just rather we bashed it with known facts!) 82.27.21.17 02:28, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Stolen from CD COPS?

Reverted the "stolen from CD COPS" claim. Seems like biased crap to me. 147.69.111.74 07:58, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Having spoken to an trustworthy industry insider, I can say with absolute certainty that this is a fact, not "biased crap". I'll let some other wikipedian with more patience than myself bother with the inevitable edit war of trying to reinstate this paragraph.. 83.88.94.242 20:38, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

We need some sources for this, other than an 'industry insider'. I'm no friend of starforce and I'm ready to believe this, but Wikipedia isn't about beliefs, it's about facts. Get some reference-able sources, and we'll include the paragraph. Edward Grefenstette 18:00, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Dramatically decreasing piracy

Considering it only takes about 40 seconds to bypass Starforce protection, I doubt this is true. Sources?

Do you have sources for *your* claim ? If so, please cite them. I'm very interested in showing that copy-protection is useless and I boycott anything that employs such "methods". 217.84.41.107 19:09, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Retorting with "I'd like to see your sources!" when a person asks for sources is not a valid argument. It is a very poor one. If you think that a person's point is untrue, and they ask for sources, provide sources. If you're sure you're right, than you should also be plenty sure that there are sources proving you right. - VirgilOrion

List of programs using StarForce

Would it be possible to start a list of programs known to use StarForce or expand on the list of developers known to use it? -Ross Taben 5:29 pm PST 1.31.06

Absolutely, as long as you provide credible references. Rhobite 01:46, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I'd do it myself, but I don't know where to find the info. -Ross Taben 7:50 PST 2.2.06

A list of games can be found [here. Fosnez 18:32, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

That list is incomplete. Does anyone have a more complete list? Does StarForce have an official list? --Optichan 18:13, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Protected, dispute

Okay, there's an edit war going on and so I have protected the page. I initially disagreed with the anonymous user, particularly because the user was not bothering to cite the information. However, given the entry above noting how quickly these games are getting cracked in 2005 and 2006, I must say I'm leaning more toward supporting that side. My opinions, though, are unimportant. There's a dispute and we should try to come to a consensus here. I'll try to get both sides to state their points. --Yamla 22:54, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

My apologies about not reading your messages earlier it was totally my mistake but I failed (somehow) to see them. I find it furstrating that people cite so much false information about starforce and saying months is far beyond a joke (like I previously said though, two years ago this was 100% correct), As far as I know there are only two uncracked SF games, these are Splinter Cell Chaos theory (but IS however available in Clone format and doesnt require any hardware modification, just the running of daemon tools and the image) and Trackmania Sunrise (which is also playable by using daemon tools 4.03 and in most cases doesnt even require unplugging an optical drive). There is also another CD emulator on the market (virtual drive pro) which will not only mount a SF image, but has NO need to unplug anything or touch any hardware, this works with every StarForce game to date. Saying that SF doesnt get cracked is also a half lie, the point of the copy protection is to stop it being able to be copied, correct? well cloneCD images are released on the same day as the games hit the shelves, cracks will usually follow shortly after (A matter of days). So saying in the article that games are "not cracked" is very misleading because clonecd games are counted as pirate games as well as cracked games.

My intention on editing this article was to bring it up to date and contain accurate information therein, I have much experiance with SF as the forum I previously mentioned is not only the oldest and largest site about piracy (while remaining legal) but I also happen to be a moderator there so I honestly do have to read up on these things.

If the dispute isnt closable in a simple way im more than happy to change months to weeks as a compromise but I dont see this as being accurate and my opinion of wikipedia is that it should be just that, accurate as possible. -- The annoying guy who keeps causing trouble but is really quite a nice guy. 172.181.245.96

I don't think this compromise is good. If the games are cracked in days, the article should say days. I think a lot of the confusion came from editors not realising that things may have changed since two years ago. I know for me, for example, the counterexamples given on this discussion page were enough to convince me that some games weren't cracked for months. If this turns out no longer to be the case, we should update the article and cite the information if possible so we can keep things verifiable. I would, of course, like to hear from the other party in the dispute (and the other editors for this page!). --Yamla 23:13, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

cracked means the removal of protection, so a clone (a SF clone is not really a clone, since one often needs to modify hardware to make it work) does not count as a crack.

Here are some uncracked starforce protected games

Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones

Splinter Cell Choas Theory

Toca Race Driver 3

Peter Jackson's King Kong

Trackmania Sunrise

Chrome Specforce

World Racing 2

The Suffering: Ties That Bind

Codename: Panzers Phase Two

X3: Reunion

LA Rush

Cold War

this list is most likely incomplete. There are a few SF protected games that were cracked quickly, mainly because bad implementation by the game programmers.

One of the recently cracked SF protected game is Worms 4, which took approximately 5 months. Splinter Cell: Choas Theory is still uncracked, it's almost a year since its release.

Robust Physique 01:31, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Splinter Cell Chaos Theory was cracked by Reloaded. It can be found on the site thesomethingbay.org

"Your honor, I clearly can't be guilty of breaking and entering as windows in the photos of the alleged crime scene are clearly intact!" "While it's true no windows were broken, the security footage shows you picking the lock on the front door.". This is a distinction without a difference. While they may not be 'cracked' in the traditional sense, the 'copy prevention' part of the copy prevention system is clearly not doing it's job. If it can be illegally downloaded off the net and played, then the system has failed, period. Technicalities and linguistic gymnastics serve only to decieve people and obscure the truth, and that is the antithesis of what wikipedia stands for. Fdgfds 04:54, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Newsflash PR Shill - Splinter Cell: CT executable cracks are availabe for quite some time now on pages such as g****world.com. So stop lying.

Whoops, didn't notice there was disucssion of my "months" comment down here. I didn't mean to start an edit war :(

I'll explain my reasoning. I personally do not support starforce, in fact i hate it. But I think this article, as it stands, does a terrible job of explaining why so many game developers choose to use it. It's obviously not to throw away money so their games can be cracked in a few days. Starforce's stated goal is to keep a game uncracked in the wild for a few months. After a few months almost every game has a huge falloff in sales because everyone who wanted it got it. This is actually a valid point, IMO. So it does not suffice to say a game that came out a year ago is cracked *now*, we need to see how long it took for a game to be cracked. According to the anonymous editor above who claims to have a lot of experience with starforce, *currently* starforce games are cracked within days. This may be true, I don't have much experience with starforce. My only experience was with trackmania sunrise, which was the first of many, many games that I have seen that was not adaquetly cracked in the first two weeks of it coming out. In fact, it wasn't adaquetly cracked as of a few months ago, when the best they could do was get you to burn a cd and hope it works in your player.

I agree that the length of time it takes to crack current games is the most important factor in all this, but we need to keep in mind sample size. Perhaps the current version of starforce got cracked so *all* the games were cracked or something. But historically (and we aren't talking about 2 years - this is less than a year) starforce3 games were not cracked within "weeks". And I'd say thats a pretty good argument for starforce. Rm999 08:16, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Just found an interesting article from 2003 that states starforce games are cracked within days, or before the game even comes out. I'm really confused now becuase I thought two years ago "months" was true. My theory it has to do with people cracking the technology, not specific games (which would cause starforce pretection to go up and down in waves). Could someone with more technical knowledge confirm or reject that theory?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/03/06/games_copy_protection_cracked/ Rm999 08:23, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Dude, read the article carefully, the article talks about a StarForce developers opinion on some other protection systems such as SafeDisc 2, C-Dilla 2 and SecuROM.

Out of six games protected by Safedisc 2, one game stayed uncracked during two days after the official release. The other five were cracked before they even came out.

For four games using C-Dilla 2.x the record was three days.

SecuROM seems have achieved a staggering six days uncracked.

And then the article talks about how StarForce is promoting its own protection system.

This article does not talk about the crackin of Starforce, it talks about how alternative protections have failed.

Robust Physique 08:55, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Haha, nevermind, I totally misread that article. Rm999 09:11, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

---

Let me just add that when a game protection is "Cracked" it doesnt mean that the protection is removed, in fact almost all games that are "cracked" have the protection left on the game and the replaced EXE that is in use basically "fools" the protection into thinking the original disc is in the drive. Now a CloneCD image is almost the exact same thing, obviously the clone image is NOT an original but by using programs like Daemon tools or Alcohol 120% it becomes possible to once again "fool" the protection into thinking the original disc is in the drive. Thus the protection has been "cracked" by fooling it. Starforce at one point got around these programs but currently EVERY single starforce game is 100% playable by using a pirate version, Every game can be backed up, Every game can be fooled thus they have all in essence been cracked. Stating that it takes months to crack a game is extremly misleading and makes the article give the impression that Starforce is acheiving something that it very clearly is not.

Another thing to note is that currently, Starforce games are THE quickest games to come out because of the simplicity of making a cloneCD image, so again the months thing is wildly unaccurate.

One other thing I think should be added to the article is that Starforce forces your optical drives to function in a way that they are not designed to causing a "step down" effect with the speed, this eventually will force the drive into PIO mode (which will cause the WHOLE computer to run like its broken) and this can and will damage some drives. I myself have lost a drive in this way and know several other people that have also had the same happen.

But really, saying a game is not "cracked" for months is far from the truth. How about changing the wording to state "It is often days before the game is pirated" ? this is 100% accurate in every way and will also remove the problem of defining the word crack.

Also as for the list of games above.

Codename panzer phase two - http://www.theisonews.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=134485 Prince of persia two thrones - http://www.theisonews.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=136461 Toca 3 - http://www.theisonews.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=138576&highlight=toca+race+driver

I would go on but as you can see every game listed has been released in the pirate world by groups, and cracking a game doesnt just mean to modify the code but to "crack" the protection so its playable from either a backup or a copy, and as you can see starforce fails to prevent this and games are very often released within a few days or sometimes even before the official release dates. But as I said before, I think its maybe best to change the article to say "not pirated for days" as this is a much more accurate way of writing it and is also not misleading.

You should really have a look at some real starforce cracks, the protection is removed so you don't need to install the starforce driver at all. Every example you gave are clones, which aren't even real clones, since they are not exact replicates.

To say that starforce is easy to clone is a total lie, a real starforce clone has never been made. The so called SFclones are only pseudo clones.

If you play a clone, you still have to install the starforce driver. And clones are unpredictable, works on some people's hardware, not for others. If clones can be easily made to work like you said, then that only means starforce is not malware.

And just because a game is released by a group, doesn't mean it actully works. Especially a group like Mirror, who's infamous for making craps.

A professional pirate who sells cracked games, would never sell a clone, because they are simply unreliable.

Robust Physique 04:58, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

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I agree that StarForce's job is to prevent people from being able to play the game unless they have bought it. If a CloneCD image is not playable by someone who has not purchased the game, that does not count as a crack (obviously). If a new EXE is released or some other method is presented which allows the CloneCD image to be played by someone who has not purchased the game, that certainly would count as a crack. As to the protection on the article, I will remove it as soon as people think it prudent. That is, please ask me or any other admin. At the moment, it looks like there's still no firm consensus but we are certainly getting closer. --Yamla 17:03, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Perspectives, perspectives… I won't take sides on this matter; I'll just point out somewhat ridiculous facts. The Starforce (SF) protection system in the form that it's now represented is utterly useless. If you want to play SF protected game all you have to do is unplug your IDE ROM drives, mount an image on any virtual drive manager and you are ready to pillage & plunder. Of course, this course of action can be unimaginably difficult (or considered as nuisance) to some, but it really is just unplugging of a simple cord. In any case the moment you "clean" your system of IDE ROM drives Starforce gives up, and does absolutely nothing… no need for cracks, no need for fuss, just simple and easy as it sounds. In future we can expect that this will change, but we also expect Deamon tools that will emulate IDE devices or version of Alcohol software that is able of making perfect copies (it can be done as you read this, on certain new devices and with certain tools) of SF protected titles. Since this is happening or it's about to happen it is logical that SF will have to find new ways of avoiding pirate attacks which brings me to the point of this article. You see, after every new battle in this great conflict that' forced upon us, there's a little less room on the battlefield. SF will be obligatory to make new restriction and unfortunately there is a very little space for that. Further development of "SF Protection System" leads and thus will result in more (or rather true) incompatibility (as seen during migration on the 64-bit platforms). This will be felt especially by the legitimate users who buy the retail products so they don’t have to mess with the cords, hidden devices and don’t know about such concepts as security rings, kernel or burning media with DPM or RPMS based on the given SF code. Whatever the case, there's certain line in all this and end consumers should recognize it to act upon it. From my perspective regardless of the fact that one cannot make a backup of costly software, despite hidden drivers, implausible security issues and funny reports of hardware damage caused by SF system, this protection took a dive when it started to blacklist other software & hardware (SCSI). This is violation of my personal freedom; it's done on my personal computer which setup I don’t won't to change because of SF demands. This war won't be resolved with force of any kind, enforcement tend to result with such publicity that now (with or without true reason) follows SF around the web and in other media. The funny thing is, all this happened before, and if you remember you'll know that this is just a little bit of history repeating… the things will remain balanced, always had, always will.--Lovelight

Insofar as balance, I can't say we can verify such an obscure concept as balance, because to do so we would have to define a mid point, which is imprudent. I will say this though, SF does not have the resources (nor does any company or even government) to TOTALLY prevent any and all piracy on something distributed on such a large scale.--64.13.35.17 18:55, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

A professional pirate who sells cracked games, would never sell a clone, because they are simply unreliable. This alone can justify many companies' use of SF.

Yes, in the old days, piracy was not as common as it is now. So StarForce will indeed bring some balance.

Last I heard, SF has recruited some highly experienced former crackers from Unpacking Gods.

Robust Physique 04:59, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Sources? That sounds more like a StarForce press release than anything and given the nature of press releases I think it is imprudent to cite them. (Too much posturing to be considered as a data source.) I doubt that we can verify either way StarForce's recent hiring trends. StarForce, bringing balance? Consider the links here that demonstrate cracked or otherwise pirated versions of the game. I do not see SF as a championing force against piracy, given their history I doubt that anyone should. I don't see where 1 - 10 games protected from cracking even matters, I mean really how many games are there that are "protected" by SF? I'm sure it must be more than 100. So at most we're looking at a 10% success rate at most, not something I would brag about. Also we must take into account another thing, most of these games listed as "uncracked" (I know everyone will jump on that word.) are not that popular. I mean really, they are no Half-Life 2 or Doom 3. I don't know where to cite sales numbers, so I'm going to ask for help here. --64.13.35.17 18:55, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Enough people have said that *currently* starforce is useless that I will back down. Maybe a mention that in the past starforce was effective would be warranted (if it really is useless this article will turn into a historical article instead of a current one anyway). Either way I think the article should no go unprotected Rm999 05:04, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

To put it in perspective, 2 people have said SF is useless, and both have a grudge against SF. Robust Physique 05:09, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

As I stated in the article above (perspetives, perspectives…) fact remains that SF doesn't work on SCSI devices, and buy not working I mean really not taking any action at all. The image (clone, copy…) doesn't need to have any properties of original, you just insert it in virtual drive and the game will run within seconds and without any SF checks. This is main reason why I cannot take Staforce seriously in its current form and you can verify all said as easy as you can unplug your IDE cords. The protection can hardly be called bulletproof if you can get around it in ways described above. I would also like to answer that grudged remark, cause the fact is, I have nothing against copy protection systems; and only reason for sharing my thoughts is fact that I work as a freelance journalist and I was forced to look into matter a bit closer then usual. Actually I think that Starforce took a huge step in the security of the executable and .dll files, but judging by the information's caught on Web it failed in tasks of pure copy protection and its functionality can be easily defined by the terms – forced & restrictive. Unfortunately the most interesting articles about SF are written in Russian, but after little BableFish translation and visit to CDfreaks, Deamon and Alcohol forums things should be a bit clearer. While I'm at it, might as well add that most attention-grabbing thing about Starforce is ability of its code to perpetually change (morph) while being investigated with debugging tools, thus making any reverse engineering as fun as looking for typing errors in War & Peace. I would also like to point out Wiki article about XCP (Xtended Copy Protection) controversy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XCP), because it should be linked with one discussed here. If you read about XCP you'll found quite unsettling similarities between these two protection systems. Further more the fact that SF denies a right to backup media needs far more attention. It's closely related to "fair use" doctrine, and therefore shouldn't be neglected (it's like having a car with only one key and no means to make duplicate; everything is just fine until you, or someone of a kin loose it…). As far as working executable cracks there are indeed very few of them available, because reverse engineering of code takes enormous time and effort and crackers seem to be more focused on emulation and/or cloning. However, one can easily verify that successful copies have been made, and if you dug a little deeper you'll found quite elaborated tutorials on how it's done. But, please let me be absolutely CLEAR on this. The fact that it can be done, doesn’t mean that SF is useless from everyone's perspective. You do need some technical knowledge to unplug cables;) and you have to read about it in very strange places (not including this one:). While unplugging of IDE drives is rather easy way to get around SF, I won't hesitate a second to call it profoundly extreme… Making of a functional SF clone is another thing, it can be done, but it is truly exhausting endeavor which implies very, and I mean VERY steep learning curve. SF is far from perfect but it does what it's supposed to do and it does it with great amount of success. I don't think that you should change anything about that; facts stated in your article are as close to truth as possible and I have found them useful as a fine summary of current events. However the fact remains that SF is easily avoided, and there is not a word about it anywhere. Also, If you would allow little suggestion, discussed article should say a few things about such tools as Starforce Nightmare, Starfu*** and a lot, because when Starorce meet these enforcers and they collide results can be quite annoying. Once again, I did lot of reading on this topic, so let me repeat my true concern. With all implemented measures and countermeasures there is a very little room on SF battlefield for any reasonable maneuvers. It started with modifying of original OS drivers, continued with blacklists and forcing of own hidden device drivers (in California, Sony silently installed hidden XCP drivers and got burned buy consumers, media and court), and one really has to wonder where it all leads and how will it end…--Lovelight

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There have been a few false truths posted here since I last saw the page so perhaps I better clean them up a little....

When a clone is made of a starforce game it is indeed a perfect image of the data contained on the CD or DVD, Starforce however will check the media to see if it contains an ATIP flag (meaning its a disc which can be written to) if the ATIP flag is there the image simply wont run, however if you place one of these burned images into a reader which has NO burning capabilities it will run fine as a normal reader cannot check for the status of ATIP, this is one way of running a starforce protected game and can be done by almost anyone with a basic knowledge of piracy.

Secondly when some Starforce games are released in CD format they come with patchers which will patch the image so it can be burned as a 100% clone but MUST be burned onto a certain media the patch program supports-

Now heres how incredibly easy it is to run a clone of a starforce game : Use alcohol to make a perfect image which MUST contain the correct DPM information, store the image on your HD, mount the image with virtual drive pro and disable your IDE drive with the same program. EVERY starforce game will run this way without the need for unplugging hardware or any kind of burning, you can also store the starforce image on burnable media and mount it the same way, no need to reboot other than to install the starforce media. As you can see the most basic user can follow these simple instructions so its probably just as easy (if not easier) than using a crack.

Obviously there are many other ways (a simple mount on daemon tools on an nforce 2 or 4 motherboard requires no unplugging of drives) or simply unplugging the IDE optical drives is another. For example, recently I went down to my local video store, hired a copy of X3 and loaded alcohol, set alcohol to the standard settings normally used for starforce or any other protection, made an image and once done I no longer needed the disc in my optical drive, total time to take an original and make a perfect clone fully installed and working took me roughly 40 minutes.

I wouldnt say that was difficult at all. And I never had to unplug any drives.

Also the information about starforce drivers not being installed is simply false, xpand rally which was released by ultima was one of the first (if not THE first) starforce games to be FULLY cracked and still installed starforce on the system. Although I admit there have been a couple of games which have been destarforced totally, but these are often just .EXE protected executables and the reason it was removed is becuase demo versions or patches were accidently released without starforce present on them, in ALL other cases the starforce is still there, this is exactly the same with Securom AND safedisc, the protection is never removed totally but rather fooled just in the same way as a clone image.

And the statement about "if you play a clone you still have to install the SF driver" yes thats correct, the protection itself (as you yourself have admited) is still present on the system yet has been cracked so that it cannot see the game as being a backup, EXACTLY the same way as a crack.

Also there are two forms of (what some would refer to as) cracks, there is firstly the modification of an exe file (or in some cases many data files) and then there is loaders which are simply TSR programs (terminate and stay resident) which can sit in memory and fool the protection (a good example of this is starforce nightmare which blocks starforce from checking for the presence of an IDE drive in the system - however this only works up until V3.5 of starforce but the same technology is in virtual drive pro and will be included in the next version of daemon tools and alcohol). These programs simply beat starforce currently. Incedently "professional pirates" dont "sell" games, there is a strict code of honor amongst most pirates and if a person were to be found selling games they wouldnt be able to obtain these games from "professional" places much longer.

And for the record, every game mirror have released has worked perfectly, its the people who run them that do things wrong and cant follow instructions, on isonews people often miss parts of the instructions on running them, already have software on their system that has conflicted with starforce (thus an original game wouldnt have run) or have been previously trying to beat starforce by changing registry permissions and things and have never reset these settings. Being a moderator of isonews I read about EVERY starforce game that comes out and can vouch that this is true, and if you dont believe me you're welcome to go check yourself.

So to stop typing before I end up writing a small book here, I think the article should maybe say "Cracks are often not released for weeks, sometimes months however cloneCD images are simple to make and readily available on the internet for download and several programs exist that will mount these images and allow the user to play any starforce game, these images are normally released within days of the games release" I think this refelects the current status accuratly and if the next version of starforce changes this then we can all agree that the article should be updated to reflect this, but I honestly believe that the wording now is not only false but wildly out of date and very misleading. my interest in this article was to show true facts about starforce, and although I must admit I dont like starforce (I dont install starforce games anymore myself due to hardware failure from it) I do think that this article should have an unbiased and truthfull information about it, and to be honest the wording now makes it sound like someone from starforce has been editing it (no offence meant to anyone over that - if any was taken then my apologies).

Uncle_Mart

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Yay. I have a Promise Ultra66 card in my Windows 2000 machine, because I need extra IDE slots. My fastest drives (including my DVD drive) are connected to the motherboard. I have a CD burner installed on the Ultra66 bus.

Now, the problem with this situation is that the Ultra66 drivers present themselves as SCSI, which renders any game using starforce unplayable on my system. I'm not about to unplug my Promise card every time I want to play a game, and I really don't want to have to keep unplugging my DVD drive (which is faster than my CD writer at reading discs) and rebooting every time I want to play a game. Now I understand why the games I bought don't work. Now I understand why I need to verify what copy-protection scheme a given title uses. Thank you, Wikipedia, for having an article and talk page explaining this technical wall.

11:55, 5 March 2006 (UTC)~

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Good to hear it helped someone, but while im here I'd like to lodge a formal complaint that this page is FAR too wide ;)

Might be an idea if that quote up the top is truncated into two halves or something :)

Also I would like to add that Robust Physique's idea of mentioning about what starforce has acheived up until recently DEFINATLY deserves a mention, as much as I dislike starforce, it HAS acheived something that no other protection has ever come close to, and that (at least on some games, Robust Physique is quite complete but as he said may contain more) beating the pirates totally, there are still games that havent been cracked, and it isnt because they cant but rather the effort of doing so would just be far too much to ever be worth it. That alone is an incredible feat to manage. Starforce has set milestones in the protection industry, the debate about how they have done it will probably continue for a long time to come but facts are facts and Starforce has proven itself to have some very innovative ideas which have worked. If Robust Physique would like to suggest a new set of wording for the days/months thing, clone part and the part about Starforce acheving what others have failed to do then I'd be more than happy to give my opinion with everyone else?

I'd also like to say how astounded I am at the wikipedia staff from remaining so neutral, as a moderator on isonews I know exactly how hard this can be.

Page protection

The page had the protection tag, but was not actually protected. I've therefore removed the tag for the moment. Do people here still feel the protection tag is needed. What steps have currently been taken to reach dispute resolution. I'd be willing to mediate a dispute if those involved wish it. jacoplane 17:00, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm leaving this unprotected for now (I had forgotten to press the "protected" button) in the hopes that the editors continue discussing the dispute here. It's easy enough to reenable protection if people get overenthusiastic and try to enforce their sides through edit wars.  :) --Yamla 17:46, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

TRUTH

I've invested a lot of time in reading about StarForce and I see no reason for avoiding the truth. All SF protected titles are available as functional clones immediately after or on the day of release and that fact is easy to verify. I understand that this is a rather touchy subject, but the tone of the article tends to favor SF. Please let me know the reasons why actuality cannot be presented within the main article. Correct me if I'm wrong or inform me if this collides with editing policy? The person who wrote the original article should visit forums of video game publishers that implement SF, along with those of Alcohol, CDFreaks and Daemon Tools. There are numerous tutorials that explain how to make a perfect SF clone and I wont to know why is this neglected? The swindle goes both ways, and the article should be closer to the center. In many ways SF is far from a bulletproof copy protection system, so please give me a good reason why that cannot be clearly stated? Please visit NFOrce and similar locations and check the .nfos. If you are willing to open your eyes then you're bound to see a number of actual SF cracks (not clones). I don’t care about copy protection, I don’t care about piracy, but I do care about the TRUTH! --Lovelight

The most important factor that determines what kind of information can be included in an article is verifiability from reliable sources. If you can provide such sources, there is no problem including the information in an article. We do not do original research, so even though something may be true we do not include it if we cannot verify it. Hopefully you can find a good source and this can be settled. Cheers, jacoplane 18:09, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

First, there is no "perfect clone" of SF, all starforce clones need additional tools or manipulate hardware to make them work.

Second, I have already given a list of games protected by Starforce that have never been truely cracked.

Robust Physique 19:33, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

StarForce protection is considered extremly difficult to reverse engineer. Games protected by it are usually only cloned after several days, and rarely or never cracked.
I think that this sentence is inherently POV. Considered extremely difficult? By whom?. This is using weasel words to make an argument. IF the article were simply to state "There are a number of cases in which StarForce protection has not been broken" or something similar, that would be fine. However, at the moment the article remains biased and POV. jacoplane 01:37, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

but, your claim "There are a number of cases in which StarForce protection has not been broken" is also biased by ommitting important information. Since a significant portion of SF protected games have not been broken and those that were broken usully take months. Robust Physique 02:27, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok fine, what wording would you suggest then. You are clearly more knowlegible on this subject than I am, so if you can formulate a good NPOV sentence, that would be fine by me. jacoplane 02:52, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, I guess that this particular sentence should be either removed, or explained. I've already provided you with the link which shows the reason for lack of SF cracks, and if you care to look you'll see that making of a crack is not so difficult, as it's time consuming and utterly boring. In any case, if you are unsure how things work, you shouldn’t write about it in the place that supposes to give facts… and if you think about it, it's quite natural that crackers decided to use emulators and images to defeat StarForce. It's like Sun Tzu; I mean it's really natural that you strike the enemy at his weakest point;)… BTW, those fellows at Daemon announced the version of their tool which will supports IDE interface. Don’t know about you, but I think that this fight is actually fun to watch, and rather amusing… --Lovelight

Sorry for a bit harsh reaction yesterday… Currently I have some work to do which is related to this subject and that is main reason for my involvement in this discussion. Anyway at the moment I cannot be as comprehensive as I would like. However I'll post a few links so that you can start with verification process and as soon as I find time I'll be more detailed. To begin, anyone concerned about this dispute should visit torrent sites and search for StarForce titles, including those mentioned by Robust Physique. There are literally hundreds of places where you can do this, and http://www.torrentspy.com/default.asp is good as any. However, I suggested this link because it provides means for further reading, so that you can see actual results for particular SF title. For example if you look for POP Two Thrones or Toca 3 you'll see hundreds of posts about numerous tools, different approaches and so on, but you'll also see that all games are playable in one way or another. As it has been stated already all SF titles are playable, but sometimes the means to do it are rather extreme (unplugging of IDE ROM drives). After a little swim through torrentz you can go to Netherland and visit http://www.nforce.nl/, here you'll find all current (cracked and hacked) releases, and if you browse through PC game ISOs section you'll have further insights that prove my point. You'll even find out that working SF cracks are not as rare as one would think. I guess that information about this can also be found on ISOnews, and Uncle_Mart gave us a very clear statement on that. Also, there is a lot of reading about it on CDFreaks forums (you can read 4 weeks) and this http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=132980 thread is just an example of the discussion that folks are having there. Actually, after you go through this you'll probably have enough information to see my point, but there are numerous other location, some of them are "hidden" on Russian servers that are quite direct on how to get around SF protection (SFCopy tool and a like). After all this being said, let me just add that dispute started when: " StarForce protection is considered extremely difficult to reverse engineer. Games protected by it are usually only cloned after several days, and rarely or never cracked." sentence was removed. As I've seen when I woke up, this is now included in main article and it's enough to satisfy my love for truth, except the fact that game clones are available immediately and not "only!? after several days" (I really do expect this to be changed, I'm new in here, I do respect others people work and have no intention of doing it myself…). I guess that now you can verify this easily; just ask torrents for any current SF protected title. Finally, this was not about perfect clones, it's about working clones (I was a bit tired when I wrote that post above, last thing to do before bedtime, indeed there is no perfect clones, sorry bout that), and also about the truthful (sorry, verifiable;) information that there are ways to get around the protection, which is only indicated within main article. Hope this clears things a bit, if you need further information, let me know, I'll keep my eye on developments. One more link for you, just to let you know where exactly true force of StarForce lay http://www.reteam.org/papers/e53.pdf. That's it 4 now, peace and love to all!

PS, Please understand that I'm in no way related to any pirate activities. I've just been asked to write an article about it for gaming magazine and I tend to take my job seriously. During research I've found way too many conflicting information and because of that I was forced to look into all this far more closely then I ever intended. There is a lot of smoke surrounding SF, it's hard to see clearly, but if only one percent of reports about compatibility/stability/security issues are true, then there's a real fire beneath it all…

--Lovelight

I know you can get SF game images easily, most are clones and are unreliable. I know there are cracked SF games, they were usully cracked because crackers found small holes that could be exploited. I know there are forums where they talk about different approches to bypass SF, but most of those approches are quiet complicated, and most people would not bother testing out all the different methods to see if they work or not.

A real SF crack, where SF has been completely removed, say the crack for Worms 4, is about 1.2 GB, yes, the crack itself is 1.2 GB, almost as big as the game itself. Robust Physique 02:45, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Look, judging by what you wrote our opinions are not so different, and we don’t need to continue this discussion since we are talking about the same thing. My only concern was that these facts that you just mentioned yourself should be reflected in article. Those posts up there, which started with perspectives, perspectives were written by me, before I decided to become a full member of this fine community and I already said there, that most people won't know how to use methods which swirl around the Web, but it doesn’t mean that we should all pretend they don’t exist. Anyway that little issue that bothered me the most seems to be resolved, I would probably be much clearer on all this, but as I said, I do respect other peoples work and that's all about that. As far as this Worms you mentioned, sorry but I really don’t know what are you talking about, the crack is available at GameCopyWorld and it has no more then 2.5 MB. Take care… --Lovelight

oops, I meant Bet On Soldier, not worms 4. Robust Physique 16:43, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, now you are starting to make me uncomfortable, especially if you are in any way connected to the main article. Cracked version of the game you mentioned works perfectly; this crack is actually very interesting as it will replace/remove SF files (to do this you need some kind of advanced heuristics or a lot of free time). This might be first of a kind, and could prove quite successful, but hear-say on that. And that aside, when you state something you should be clear about it. For example in this case you should say that crack is a whole directory which overwrites SF files and once that is done; obsolete files are removed with appropriate batch (clean.bat). If you only state that it's huge, and nothing else, and you do it in manner that suppose to make us hold our breath and say – shite, then you are like SF PR staff (you didn’t see anything, it doesn’t exist, move along…), you're twisting the truth and lead people to wrong conclusion (for example, based on information you provided so innocently and without any explanation one could even think that we're talking about executable which has 1.2 GB, or worse). There is a reason why I started this section as a call for truth. I'm here only few days but I already checked given editing policy, and based on that I presented enough of easily verifiable informations (at the moment I'm still waiting for serious changes in the tone and the size of discussed article). I would appreciate if you would be more careful while presenting your point of view. I've just took a closer look at everything you wrote, I don’t know if this is your intention, and I'm sorry to say, but you're acting like a smoke bomb (no hard feelings I hope!;). In any case I' am tired of repeating obvious facts. As you said, this is true SF crack, which only proves what's been said over, and over again. SF is NOT a bulletproof protection system (and that should be stated, not ignored, it's like ignoring the reasons for war on terrorism, we all know why it happened but fail to admit it…) if SF is anything, then it's just wicked, crackers don’t feel this, people who play games illegally don’t feel it, but legitimate user do. You must admit that SF proved quite disappointing to that fellow who bought games, but cannot play them because his dependency on Promise Ultra66 card (see above or look around for similar "extremely rare" cases). Once again, there is a reason for the size of this crack, it patches (replaces) SF protected files, when this is done, useless (SF) files are removed. Moderators please take some time, go through everything written so far, do check provided links (torrents and http://www.nforce.nl/ should prove more than enough) and act upon it. In any case my opinion on this matter has just shifted; SF deserves to be treated in the same way that it treats consumers. Downsides of this protection are underestimated and should be clearly presented, currently there is too many ways to get around it and it really doesn’t matter if this is done with cracks (of any size), clones or unplugging of drives. All and I mean ALL, each and everyone, the whole bunch, entire collections;)… of SF protected games are playable in illegal manner, and these are the facts, and facts belong to encyclopedia. We don’t have to write tutorials on how it's done, but this myth about unbreakable protection is a lie that belongs to the past. If you think about it it's even funny, you can take SF game, copy it any manner that you wish, unplug IDE drives and play without any interference at all. I can't say what will happen tomorrow, but main article should be locked, people should be pointed to this discussion and share their opinions. Love truth… --Lovelight

Mabey you should do more research. Nobody said SF is bullet proof, it's simply considered extremly difficult to crack amongst crackers. The Bet On Soldier crack is 1.2 GB because it replaces every file that has been wraped with SF by a decrypted one. Each file had to be manually decrypted. Mabey you think this sounds easy, but it's not. And it took about 4 months to crack this game. Every cracker knows how difficult starforce is to crack, there is no real cracker who would tell you otherwise.

You can provide all the p2p and nforce links you want, but guess what, real crackers don't hang around in nforce.nl. Hate to break it to you but you're no where near the real cracking scene. Mabey you should investigate more from a cracker's perspective rather than a gamer's perspective before mouthing off.

btw, you know this article http://www.reteam.org/papers/e53.pdf shows some of the reasons why SF is difficult to crack right?

Robust Physique 22:54, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I said that I'm in no way related to "the scene"! I really don’t know what gave you that idea? Are you aware that you just repeated everything I said above? Are you aware that I provided that link that you are showing now, have you seen what I wrote about it? Are you reading this at all or are you just buzzin'? While you talk the talk, I walked the walk, and provide editors with means to verify my claims. Torrents are simply easiest and best place to do it… this has nothing to do with crackers, it's about StarForce and the fact that it's currently useless! Just read what has been written… Main article should say that SF is easily avoided, nothing more, nothing less. I have no intention to continue this discussion with you… --Lovelight

Are you dense? I was trying to tell you that the link you have provided only demonstrates the strength of SF.

Are you too dense to realize every link you have provided doesn't really justify any of your claims?

Your own bias aginst SF is very apprent, talking about how starforce is useless. Face it, you simply do not know what you are talking about. You are not a cracker, you have never sat down and analyze starforce's pcodes, nor have you talked to any crackers who reverse engineer starforce. Starforce has been broken before, but one of the reasons that crackers fear starforce is because starforce constantly updates their protection and fix any loop holes that are discovered. Many starforce developers are highly experienced crackers from Unpacking Gods. Just because one can download a clone does not mean shit, because clone is not guaranteed to work. The fact that one has to manipulate hardware to get a clone work can discourage many causual pirates. Robust Physique 00:32, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

You know... poor grammar, ad hominem attacks, and bragging about your connections to the "scene" really don't help your case at all.

All StarForce protected games are playable. Period. That is my point, prove me wrong and I give you a lollypop and perhaps a nice flower;). You know that, and I know that and anyone who unplugged a cord knows that. The real questions is, are you a cracker? What's exactly is your interest in all this? Why do you care for this protection so vigorously, is it because you are Robust? Take care man, I have nothing against you or your opinion, just give me the proof that I'm wrong and I'll apologies to everybody and back down immediately… --Lovelight

PS

And most important of it all, if everybody here knows about, and if most people agree on it, then why is this fact only indicated, and not explained in main article? Most readers won't see what the sentence: "If no IDE drives are present, however, SCSI drives will function normally without interference from StarForce." - implies. Anyway I wish to thank you all for sparking this passion in me!;), it has been a while since I felt this way about something that didn’t bother me yesterday:). Of course, these last few post are subjective as they can be, and I would like to apologize if I unintentionally hurt somebody (especially you my robust friend;)… This StaForce thingy should already been far behind me, and I have indeed approached to it from a gamer's perspective… and from gamers perspective things look simple and kind as they always been. You folks are here far longer than I've been no need for me to impose more opinions, anyway I feel that I said, all I have to say (I even said things I shouldn’t have say;), see you around. Peace & Love to all, --Lovelight

---

Edited "can usully" be cloned to "can be cloned" as there is a 100% working clone of every starforce game available which all work without problems by using virtual drive pro (no unplugging, just mount and play). "Just because one can download a clone does not mean shit, because clone is not guaranteed to work. The fact that one has to manipulate hardware to get a clone work can discourage many causual pirates." This isnt true and heres a program that can allow you to mount and play on ANY hardware without having to manipulate hardware, currently EVERY SF game will work with this flawlessly and has done for about 6 months. This may be blacklisted in some way in the future but as it stands right now, cloneCD back ups are 100% working on this program. http://www.farstone.com/home/ensite/products/virtualdrive.shtml Uncle_Mart

---

That program does *not* work 100% with all Starforce titles. If you were to do some checking you'd note that all it does is attempt to disable IDE drives, which doesn't work on most motherboards as Starforce attempts to reenable any drives it finds disabled. From the Starforce point of view this program is nothing more than a basic SCSI virtual drive with IDE Node disabling features. There are programs which do all of this already. I have my suspicions that you are trying to sell this program as you insist on mentioning it on every available and unavailable opportunity.

Secondly the clones of Starforce are not 100% perfect copies of the CD/DVD they are infact edited in an attempt to make them more compatible. At very least some burners and CD writers cannot play the Starforce clones. It takes specific tools to make the Starforce clones usable.

I'd point you to http://www.nforce.nl/index.php?switchto=nfos&menu=quicknav&item=viewnfo&id=100136 note the instructions required for use there.. hardly indicative of a 'perfect clone' but a patched one, a perfect clone requires nothing more than burning to work. That same group's most recent release is not able to be burned at all. http://www.nforce.nl/index.php?switchto=nfos&menu=quicknav&item=viewnfo&id=102784

StarForce Apology

Wonder if the StarForce "apology" added tonight is right. This refers to the post added by one of the administrators on the incriminated thread, while closing the thread. I'm not sure if we can consider this as an apology, as for things like that, a real apology should prolly come as a news on their website, not discretely in that thread (even if it it the very same thread that started the issue). I don't edit anything, but I think it should be formulated differently to show that it's not really what would be considered by most as an apology on the matter. Gorkk 21:44, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Why should they apologize for revealing the truth? Robust Physique 03:02, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

They shouldn't. Not by any means. What they should apologize for is publically providing a link to an illegal download source for a product using a competing business model, to make a point that was already obvious (that a game without copy protection is being pirated) and in any case could've been made without using such means, and furthermore because this incident has received a large amount of publicity. --Kizor 03:30, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

ya, we should also add a section to microsoft article on how a puppy was killed on its compound. Robust Physique 03:49, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

This just actually happened and was reported. --Kizor 09:06, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I must admit, it doesn't really seem important enough to go in the article. It wasn't really a link to an 'illegal download source', it was just a link to some kind of torrent search engine, as far as I know. And it wasn't any kind of official company action, and they've apologised, so.. --Fuzzie (talk) 10:22, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually it was a link to the page of the torrent on the torrent index site, not only a link to the torrent index site, which would not have been illegal (the site itself is totaly legal). But linking to the page of the torrent on the site is exactly the same as linking to the torrent itself. Furthermore, in a way it was an official comany action: it has been done by an employee of the company, on the company website, and lasted more than a week, which means it has been tolerated by the company, until StarDock found out (and even then the link lasted longer on the thread than on the torrent index site - still, that torrent index site is prosecuted). I don't consider a sneeky post while closing the thread enough of apologies considering the press coverage on this. That's why I was questioning the way the apology was mentionned. Gorkk 11:57, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Added the apology by mail StarForce sent to StarDock (see [1]) instead of the simple mention of the apology. The "apology" on their forums is discutable: basicaly, they don't accept liability for it, and nearly say that that "mistake" had been caused by all the people who hate StarForce, as well as it was part of their "planned PR action"(??): just a mistake of our employee that was boosted into “our planned PR action” by the people, who hate StarForce. Gorkk 21:02, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

In any case, thanks for the paragraph's present condition. The accusations made against the company for the act, on reflection, needed no explicit pointing out. --Kizor 00:15, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

StarForce Contest?

I have a quick question here. Should this article include the "contest" that StarForce held, in which they were requesting people to prove that StarForce is malware by forcing them to fly out to Russia and display it on a corporate machine? It seems like an important thing to note. Source is here: http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/starforce/starforce-naysayers-invited-to-moscow-meeting-151890.php

Sorry if I did something wrong here, I'm new! I thought this was something that ought to be in the article or at the very least linked in the news bits. There's no way I'd actually edit the front page without running this through discussion first though. Let me know!  :) -DaveKap [[User:66.66.4.

Remo208|66.66.4.208]] 10:26, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Personally neutral on that addition. This is probably a better place to link, since it's on their site. Based on the contents of that link, 'corporate machine' doesn't necessarily seem to be the case. Certainly more notable than the GalCiv2 thing, though. --Fuzzie (talk) 10:42, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, concerning that contest, at first it was $1000, then $5000, and became $10000 only few days before the end. Furthermore, it's been reported on several forums that at least a few people tried to enter the contest, and couldn't. One got an automatic answer with a number, saying they will contact him => nothing. Another got a message telling him to contact support, which in turn told him to applicate to the contest, back and forth, until the date was over. If that contest shall be mentionned, the interpretation of the "results" by StarForce (saying it proves they were right, and StarForce does no harm) shan't: they said afterwards it was a proof StarForce was no malware, while the contest only concerned physical failure on drives (not all the other issues), claimed that noone entered, while several people claimed to have tried, and 'till a few days before the end of the contest, the prize was not $10000, so very few incentive to go there and risk losing money in the end. Gorkk 12:04, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I think it is relevant, and should be added. It was big enough news online in for instance the gaming community. The limited timeframe, the small "prize" (considering all the conditions), and eventually the logical fallacy where the company claims it has been proven their software does not cause the problems some claim it does (I'm not saying it does, haven't experienced any problems myself) are controversial. This makes it a difficult matter for Wikipedia, but the very fact that it's a controversial matter warrants inclusion in the article. Right? Retodon8 01:36, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

---

Removed that part where it said "pirated versions are often available shortly after release in form of cloned images" to "pirated versions are available shortly after release in form of cloned images" as often isnt accurate at all, as every SF game has a clone image released. If someone would like to provide some proof that at least 10% of games released havent been cloned then I think the "often" might be worth bringing back but im aware of no games that have never been cloned as its stupidly easy to clone a starforce game.

Removal of Image:Starforce vs stardock.jpg

I have uploaded the image to assist in the citation of the article, but it was removed by another wikipedia because they believed it was against fair use. Here are my points in favour for it. I will be re-adding the image unless a clear violation of copyright is argued for.

the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

It is a valid point to display an image to cite a criticism.

the nature of the copyrighted work;

The only copyright on [the original] page is for the forum sofware at the bottom, so the posts themselves may not even be copyrighted.

the amount and substantially of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

refer to previous, and the screenshot is 2 posts out of 76.

the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

in any case, the forum contents cannot be sold/marketed so there is none.

Please discuss Fosnez 18:54, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Of course the posts are copyrighted, the presence of a copyright notice is irrelevant. Your copyright tag of the image is the 'screenshot of software' one, which isn't what the copyright issues are about in this case - the comments are the problem. We're not criticizing the software. Presumably this is fair use, but you need an appropriate tag/justification. --Fuzzie (talk) 19:31, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, this is what I posted to Fosnez's talkpage earlier..... Thinking it over again, perhaps this could qualify as fair use. Template:Web-software-screenshot should be used, and you need to add the fair use rationale like you added on my talk page to the image description page. That should cover it. Do you think this image is noteworthy enough? I mean, it's just a message on some random forum, the description in the text makes it pretty clear what happened. Cheers, jacoplane 00:51, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I think it'd be better to link to one of the news stories on the subject, or perhaps the post on the StarDock site, rather than linking to or displaying the image at all. But then, I don't think the incident is notable in the first place, so my opinion is likely biased. --Fuzzie (talk) 00:54, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I did change the tag on the image and put a fair use on it, but it was still removed... I did also originally add "(Story Pic of Original Edited Version)" to the page but this has also dissapeared. If anyone wants to add these back in they are welcome to... Fosnez 16:27, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

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Once again removed the "usually" cloned as this is unacurate (see my previous post), but it looks like someone copied and pasted an older version with this still in Uncle Mart 21:26, 13 March 2006 (UTC) p.s thanks for the sig tip Fuzzie :) much appreciated sir.

And in relation to the copyright from forum thing, normally the copyright on forums is held by the forums itself, that is to say (for example) if someone were to post on isonews, isonews owns the copyright to that post and is liable for all content within it, this is normally stated in the terms and conditions upon joining that you agree to give the site you are posting on full permission to hold the copyright for anything you write. This of course can vary between forums but is generally this way for most places. Uncle Mart 21:30, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

You're confusing permissions and copyright transfer, I suspect. --Fuzzie (talk) 00:54, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Not at isonews im not :) we've had this discussion with our sites attorney before and I can say with 100% certainty that it works that way on our forum, others may differ of course reading the label before usage is always recomended, as for the material in question I wont get involved with that, im just citing info from my experiance to try and help out. I also once again removed the "usually cloned", I wont repeat my reasons again but I would like to call for robust physique to be removed as an editor of this thread if this happens again as he is obviously biased as I have provided countless sourcess of information to prove this and he repeatedly edits things back to how they were without any reason for doing so other than supporting SF. Uncle Mart 21:23, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

---

I've beefed the content up a little with some more scene information. I see a lot of the debate is about what counts as cracked, all pretty pointless IMO. Inside the scene you either have a crack or a tool supported image and both are just as easy, it's about half/half between cracked releases and a Clone or BWClone where you use a tool like sd4hide to fool the protection, very easy to use.

obviously you know nothing about the scene. The massive number of cloned images simply mean they are easy to make, not because sceners like clone or clones are easy to use.

Somewhat but still usually effective. The obssession with releasing cracked versions is just macho posing between groups now that Securom and Safedisk are so easily bypassed with a tool.

Drivers widely used

Almost very copy protection system including SecuRom and SafeDisc use their own drivers, I don't see why this fact is remarkable. Given that Windows 64 cannot load 32 bit drivers, and most copy protected games require drivers, that makes Windows 64 incompatible with many games not just StarForce protected games. I feel in the interests of NPOV that fact should be noted.

However SF is the only copyprotection that installs RING0 drivers, reboots your computer when it thinks an act of piracy is being commited, damages hardware and more. I think the drivers are one of the main factors about the failing of Starforce. 130.133.8.114 11:35, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

every driver is ring0. Einsensteiner 17:41, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, it's claimed that the SF driver runs application code in ring0, which is obviously quite different from the driver itself running in ring0. On the subject of drivers, I think the issues involved definitely deserve a mention, but if there are 64-bit issues with other copy protection drivers, and you can source that, then that should definitely be noted. --Fuzzie (talk) 17:50, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

This is true Fuzzie, the SF drivers run all their code and apps at ring0, and this is THE only protection that does this, hence it causing such massive problems with so many people. Also I re-added the boycott thing as its in the news as often as starforce is, theres no reading about SF without their mention and SF have publicly stated that there is a conspiricy behind it and that the boycott is run by the mafia and other protection companies (yes I know its hilarious ;) ) Leaving out the boycott of this article is pure idiocy as its obviously having a HUGE impact on SF and should be documented. Also I changed the "sometimes" works as ANYONE with a mild knowledge of computers can bypass SF without any problems, re-read my posts in the discussion for proof and links. Im afraid with the dissapearance of Robust physique from this article (and I might add almost the same time) we have a new person who seems hellbent on removing some important points (that are also true) that dont look too good on starforce, im now 100% sure SF employees are vandalizing this article. Uncle Mart 09:58, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Your attempt to push anti-SF POV is so blatantly obvious that even a blind person can see it. Einsensteiner 21:04, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

.. says the obvious sockpuppet who's even more clearly pushing pro-SF POV. Can't you at least try and avoid not using identical edit summaries and making identical spelling mistakes to your other socks? --Fuzzie (talk) 21:33, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Nice that you mention im anti SF, well I am but im trying my very best to keep that out of this article, something you seem to be failing miserably at. I've explained all the reasons of my edits and you've never come up with even a half decent argument against them yet continously edited out important factors about the history and state of SF. You are trying your very best to make SF out to be something its clearly not. I notice you didnt deny any of my points, nor find any good arguments against them but rather decided to just cal lme anti SF. well as I said, I am anti SF due to its HUGE amount of bugs and security problems that have caused not only me but MANY other people hardware failure or data loss. Im happy to keep my opinion off the article but this is the discussion page, and while im going to state what I think here im not going to publish false information about SF nor will I sit back while you do. p.s my aologies Fuzzie but I think I screwed up your edit a little, I offline edited the article and the site was reacting like it was dead. Uncle Mart 21:41, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

POV edit warring

Please be careful when considering your edits. I'm doing my best to de-POV this article here, and both sides seem to be pushing their views rather than thinking carefully whether what they're adding is neutral and appropriate. The 'usually' bit of the protection bit seems to correlate with the sources I've been linked to here, and as noted in a revert message of mine, the poll percentage isn't that relevant unless you can prove the poll is a decent representation of gamers/users/whatever, which I doubt (I'm sure any StarForce poll would've been flooded with anti-SF gamers and not a representative sample). --Fuzzie (talk) 21:43, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually, that's not true. I'm doing my best to de-POV the article without ripping the majority of the content out - the 'Problems' section could really be condensed down to a couple of sentences, the criticism section seems overly-large and the rest of the article really needs sourcing before it should be allowed. But I'm not sure how to tackle those right now. --Fuzzie (talk) 21:48, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

The usually thing is very unaccurate as it is stupidly easy to bypass SF protection, in fact its probably the least problematic protection currently, I've posted many times about how its done and have alot of experiance (I've been moderating the largest and oldest piracy website for 5 years now so I tend to hear almost everything about this). I wont go into details again but suffice to say I've NEVER had a problem while using programs such a daemon tools or other programs I mentioned previously. The poll percentage, well agreed as long as the article shows that the poll was against the usage I think thats probably important. considering it was 80% against though I think even with a large amount of anti SF'ers cheating in it, it would still clearly be against SF so im happy with removing the percentage. as for the criticism section, well I've never known anything to be so publicly and widely criticised so I dont think trimming that is a good idea, as it stands it points out the major problems SF and its users have been through. I disagree with me using a POV though, I've posted almost nothing but neutral information about SF but it seems that when someone says something about it that points out its bad points then they are accused of being either a pirate or someone who is annoyed they cant copy the game, simply untrue as I've backed up MANY SF games with no problem, in fact if there were a copy protection thats easy to beat its SF. Im simply editing this article because there are so many falsehoods about SF and this article seems to attract people who think these false truths are real. If anything needs verifying in this article I will be happy to do so but I do think its going wildly into a pro SF stance with some of the edits and my repeated requests at discussion about these edits have been ignored again and again, so if Einsensteiner/Robust is going to keep just removing info then I really have little choice to replace it given that he wont discuss why. You'll notice I didnt touch this article for a LONG time, reason being as it was kept very neutral. Now however.... well some of the past editors for this page would probably get jobs with SF.Uncle Mart 21:59, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

• edit* although the removal of the boycott website is just plain biased, if you think its not important then goto google and type in "starforce", do you think they would be there if they had no effect on SF? Uncle Mart 22:01, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

That can be accomplished with a simple google bomb. Einsensteiner 22:13, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

But wasnt. proove it was and where it SHOULD be on the list and we can remove it. Im afraid that the boycott site is mentioned in the article and if a user wants to see it for him/herself theres no link present. Let me know when you come up with a decent argument to remove it, as for now I'd like to request ANOTHER lock on this article for the time while these issues are resolved. Uncle Mart 22:18, 23 March 2006 (UTC) *edit* as a comprise I've edited the list of starforce games so it goes to glop, as the other list was very uncomplete and doesnt seem to be updated, this will give users a chance to see the games AND the boycott site if they wish. can I say ANY fairer than that? Uncle Mart 22:18, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

You yourself is trying to use wikpedia to google bomb the glop site. The lists on both sites look the same to me. Einsensteiner 22:24, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

The games lists aren't the same, glop's one is updated by the users on the forum. The similarities's is always some weeks behind and is just a copy of the glop's one. I don't see why you put Glop with a so bad title and as the last one on the list. Check Digg, /., Boinboing, Kotaku, ... and see how many well known sources linked it already. analogue 23:44, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Im happy with it being included as "anti starforce" by Rhobite, seems fair as nobody in their right mind would deny it is. however to not included something because its POV is crazy as the official SF site has been proven to print lies about their software many time so is probably FAR more POV orientated that GLOP. the reader of the article should have ALL the facts and links at hand, not just ones which would obviously be pro SF. Uncle Mart 22:36, 23 March 2006 (UTC)*edit* GLOP contains 11 more games in the list. And seriously go read up on how google bombing works before saying im using wikipedia as a google bomb, you dont make yourself sound like you know what you're talking about when you say things so unaccurate. Uncle Mart 22:39, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

It's fine to include POV links as long as they're appropriately labeled. Glop.org has a pretty active forum and several articles, it seems like an appropriate link to me. Are there any examples of google bombing or outrageous content on the site? If not, I can't see a reason to remove the link. Rhobite 22:55, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok this is getting quite pathetic now, so let me explain.... To googlebomb GLOP would be this <link rel="starforce" href="http://www.blop.org/starforce" /> In the HTML, google looks for a word wrapped in a link and associates it with the link its wrapped in, so if that link appeared many times on the web, a search for starforce would show blop.org as #1 , also using metawords and so on would have the same effect, however in this case our dear Russian friend has edited the link to say anti star force site from *Boycott Starforce - anti-StarForce site to try to make his OWN google bomb.

Reverting link as I think I proved that there is NO google bomb preset.... Uncle Mart 23:41, 23 March 2006 (UTC)*edit* GAH BEATEN TO IT :P well at least I explained what a googlebomb is so we can clear up that it isnt one :/

There, happy? http://www.glop.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=279 Einsensteiner 00:28, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

A link entitled "Boycott StarForce" isn't google-bombing the word "StarForce", which is what that forum link is about, and you're obviously biased about it because you're trolling in your replies to the post. I must say I'm unimpressed at the forum topic, though - google bombing like that isn't particularly cool. --Fuzzie (talk) 00:38, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

So ? This is a thread from some user asking if it could help the boycott to do what is called google bombing. Read the replies and you'll see that nobody's doing it, it's just a user who thought it was cool to bring the idea. Read the entire thread please. analogue 07:59, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Well as you can see, when that post was made the results were identical to how they are now. I decided NOT to pursue that thread (hence it being three pages back and not being bumped deliberatly) and have asked the webmaster to remove it but he has a strict policy of never deleting posts and as I cant edit nor remove it myself theres not much I can do about it now. the fact still remains though that linking to glop isnt any kind of google bomb. Uncle Mart 00:43, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

ha ha ha, i wasn't the one trolling in that thread. Don't let your own bias get the better of you, Fuzzie. Einsensteiner 01:03, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't even have a Windows machine to install StarForce on, never mind care about copy protection software, and you'll note that I've reverted people on both sides of this issue, and (as I said above) would prefer the criticisms section not babble so much, among other issues. However, User:Sn0rlax is obviously another sockpuppet by the same user as yourself and Robust, and as such, I'm unlikely to believe it wasn't you posting as 'snorlax' on the forum. You still haven't replied to my assertion that it obviously isn't googlebombing 'StarForce', I note.--Fuzzie (talk) 01:12, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

After thinking about this a little im 100% certain robust/einsensteiner/snorlax/sage386 are all the same person, I have several reason to think this which are probably unimportant but theres NO way someone would sit there trawlling through three pages of threads, each of which would have taken an age to read purely on the chance there would be something about googlebombing on the site, only someone who had previous knowledge of that thread would have gone through all this, and the only person that could be from GLOP is snorlax, hes had many other names but is mostly known by his real nick which is sage386, I thought he found this article from GLOP but it appears its the other way around. If his posts on GLOP are anything to go by I wouldnt expect him to stop changing the texts until he's banned. Which I would very much like to watch so I'll step back from editing for the time and watch till either that happens or a resoloution is found without my taking part. Uncle Mart 03:17, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

GCW discussion.

Just adding this as from the GCW

"It can, however cause Windows to step down to programmed input/output [PIO] mode, which could possibly damage some optical drives if they are run in that mode for an extended period of time."

"Sure enough, an extended test using a 4x Memorex DVD-RW drive and a retail copy of Ubisoft's Splinter Cell Chaos Theory PROVED it, as the drive's burn speed eventually dropped to a paltry 1x - only to return to its original speed once we removed the StarForce program."

Almost ALL optical drives will suffer this damage if left in this mode for long durations, obviously they wont say ALL hardware because it wont affect all hardware, nor can they give a list of exact models as this has never been tested but I think theres MORE than enough proof out there that with these comments (and before anyone brings up the "possibly damage" comment take a moment to think what would happen if they said "will damage"), and the amount of people reporting broken optical drives over the last year it would be foolish to think SF isnt doing this. I placed a link to SF's own forums with some of the article as to keep it unbiased, you'll notice that SF dont deny this anywhere in the thread either. If you think you can come up with some proof that PIO mode doesnt damage drives after prolonged use fire away because im all ears but to say they didnt proove it nor go out to prove it? Thats EXACTLY what the article was about! Uncle Mart 03:59, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

At the time of writing, the GCW article is mentioned twice, one at the top and one at the bottom of the section in question. It'd probably be sensible to merge them, or remove one, or something. :) --Fuzzie (talk) 04:12, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Fixed! hope it looks ok because it was the best I could do without spending much more time re-editing the whole section (time I dont have today unfortunatly :( ) Uncle Mart 13:45, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Added small write up on RLD's reverse tools designed to reverse engineer SF without problems, the tools are available to anyone and from a simple tests performed appear to work perfectly, I might suggest removing the "SF is hard to reverse engineer" part once some more facts come available. Also if im right about these new tools it will probably mean the end of the discussion of cracks as it should mean any game made by SF is now as easy to reverse or crack as anything else out there.Uncle Mart 12:27, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I think it is hard to substainiate the claim that it is hard to crack in the first place. While some things are simple the converse cannot be easily defined. I would say they are more time consuming. kotepho 18:42, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Onlinesecurity-on

I removed the paragraph below because it didn't seem to have much bearing on the article -- at the very least, it didn't belong in the top summary section --Mdwyer 17:03, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Recently, StarForce has created a seemingly bogus website, OnlineSecurity-ON that claims no relation to StarForce, but a whois search reveals that the administrative contacts are people with star-force.com email addresses. Additionally, the address listed is the same as that listed for Star-Force.com.

I think it clearly is a StarForce site - they host the StarForce removal product and talk about it as their own product. However, that's original research, so you're quite right in removing the paragraph - it doesn't belong here unless sources can be found. --Fuzzie (talk) 17:06, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

minor accuracy edit in list of publishers

I have removed egosoft from the list of publishers using starforce, as they aren't publishers ;). They are developers who have different publishers in different areas of the world (Koch / Deep Silver in Europe, Enlight in the US, for example) and while, to the best of my knowledge, their most recent game (X3) was published with starforce protection in all regions, this has not been the case in the past (X2) with different publishers choosing different copy protection schemes. In any case, egosoft do not choose this and release no games at all.

Is it even possible to remain objective at this point?

I've read the discussion and debate up to now, and I think you should all just throw in the towel and nuke this article.

De-POVing this seems impossible, which is a personal projection based on the following:

Everyone who isn't selling StarForce *hates* StarForce. I won't try to qualify the absolute I just used, albeit googling "StarForce" brings up what has to be the electronic equivalent of a lynch mob.

Everyone who is selling StarForce will not post an edit stating an admission of any flaws unless authorized by whoever cuts their checks.

Any specific description of how StarForce works is glossed over in favor of how StarForce works at breaking things. As to why nobody would post specifics, see above.

So in conclusion, I suggest the article be nuked, and replaced with "StarForce is a copy protection scheme. It is highly controversial." And then refer to the google search I previously mentioned, and StarForce's website. Searching for anything better is futile, and probably unimportant anyway, considering the dearth of "information" already available.

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I would tend to agree... I've been reading these exchanges somewhat bemused by the hostility. It seems that anytime anyone says anything even remotely non-hateful about Starforce, they are hurled with all sorts of accusations by the lynch mob... seems they can't believe that anyone who doesn't work for Starforce might not necessarily despise it.

Here is one interview I found online that is not biased anti-Starforce, but apparently comes from a source not related to Starforce. Perhaps this link could be included in the article, that is for someone else to decide, but here it is:

http://www.firingsquad.com/features/starforce_interview/default.asp

I must say, I share many sentiments with the interviewer here. I remember many online panics from the '90s, such as the V-chip he mentions, and these panics always fizzled. None of these great horrible intrusions that people feared ever actually came to anything terrible, it's all forgotten now. And I suspect that this is what is going on with Starforce.

One thing I think would be handy; perhaps there should be some kind of fair online poll, to see what percentage of Starforce users do have problems directly attributable to Starforce, so that we can get some real numbers instead of just some anecdotal evidence. I myself have several games installed on my computer with Starforce. My computer doesn't run perfectly, but well enough. Whatever instability it does suffer, there is no evidence linking this instability to Starforce. I have a home-built system, with an overclocked CPU, and TONS of all sorts of hardware and software stacked on, so it is no wonder that my system doesn't run silky smooth! No DVD problems that I can discern.

Before anyone starts accusing me of working for Starforce, I just want to explain why I play devil's advocate when it comes to anti-software-piracy stuff. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was heavily into the Amiga (and if you don't know what that is, you are not geeky enough to participate in this discussion... :) ). It was an awesome computer, way ahead of it's time. Of course I was a completely broke teenager at the time, so I never, ever bought any games, and they were oh-so-easy to pirate, available to download on many BBSes. Well, guess what, most other Amiga owners were equally broke teenagers such as myself, and hardly anyone ever bought those wonderful games that were SOOOO much better than anything else that came out for any other computer at the time... so after a few years of this, what ended up happening? The games ended. The Amiga ended. In 1995, I finally caved in and built a PC. Although there were other reasons the Amiga died, it was quite well known in the Amiga community that the ridiculous amount of piracy played a huge role in doing in the Amiga. Those of us who loved this computer, it was our fault that it died.

And so knowing this, I would hate to see the PC games industry go under because no one buys any games. I don't play console games; I love PC games, and would be very sad to see the industry no longer bother making any. Now that I am older and have money to spend on games, I always buy them, I don't pirate any more. I do understand that kids don't always have money to buy them, since of course I've been there; and I can't blame someone who can't afford a game for pirating it. But there are plenty of people with money who pirate just because they can, not out of any financial difficulty, and it is those people who should think about what they're doing, and their impact on the future of PC gaming. If you are so worried about Starforce, instead of boycotting Starforce games I would suggest this: why not BUY the games that DON'T have Starforce? If we all increase the sales of non-Starforce games, then those companies who use Starforce will certainly sit up and notice all those game sales skyrocketing - of games that aren't theirs! That could be effective, AND would help the industry, AND reward all those brilliant programmers etc. who develop that game, no?

Have made some changes to the article according the last SF situation

I'v tried to make article more unbiassed, changing some parts of it. Here is the history for your convenience.

Protection strategies section: Descride detecting of emulators more neatly.

StarForce family of products section: Remooved the mentions of SF clients, because it not related to "StarForce family of products" and mooved it to Criticism sectopn. Exposed description of SF 3.07 subversion.

Criticism section: Added and slightly changed JoWooD case.

Effectiveness section: Added info on SF guarantee for protection reliability.

Problems section: Added info on SF Rescue Key technology. Added info on SafeDisk's ring 0 drivers for justice. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 213.247.151.53 (talk • contribs) .

I've tidied up spelling/grammar mistakes. I think quite a bit of what has been added is ad copy (such as the details about the StarForce family of products), someone might want to work on trimming it down. Also note that the edits came from a Moscow IP (213.247.151.53)... --Fuzzie (talk) 16:31, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

MAJOR REVERT - Attention!

I have reverted the page to a version made a few weeks ago. Since then, the article has been edited by people with poor english skills and spelling, even some cut and paste jobs. There is also a lot of POV being added and links removed. This is all like vandalism. This page needs semi-protection to prevent anonymous and new user editing and I will contact an admin on this. huntersquid 19:40, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, please prevent any anonymous edits, this is a really disputed page with huge lobbies analogue 22:44, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

SF reverting

An person in relation to SF is reverting the page (or acctually, editing themself) and pretending that the content would violate international law [sic]. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=StarForce&diff=53198602&oldid=52855353 The same tactics used by the company to scare bloggers. 203.144.160.242 00:31, 25 May 2006 (UTC) Zarkow

• I think this revert is POV-pushing in favor of SF, despite its alleged claim to "establish NPOV". - Sikon 07:37, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

212.199.170.75

This user is multi-editing to cover/make it harder to revert his entries, but let's take a look at the version before his rampage: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=StarForce&diff=61193624&oldid=55056250

We can clearly see that FACTS are removed and POV is inserted.

Can we PLEASE have this page protected soon? 203.144.143.8 15:41, 1 July 2006 (UTC) Zarkow

Starforce 4 is out

// A reply from "212.199.170.75": I revert only lies and unproven propoganda. I do so because I don't think that wikipedia (which is, in general, a superb quality encyclopedia) should be used as a platform for attacks on any product, and only neutral points of view should be expressed. People reading wikipedia may take lies and unproven claims people post for granted. Your unwillingness to accept a different opinion only shows your illiteracy in computer security and computers as a whole. You want this page to be protected because, in fact, you are interested in sabotaging the freedom of expression. You can't stand a different opinion - which, distinguishably from yours, is based upon facts. Your accusation of multi-editing is also a misconception - I sometimes re-edit my modifications because of things I forget to mention at first or things I want to revise. Again, this paranoia of yours is expressed in this accusation as well. To sum it all up, facts are not being removed, and POV is not being introduced; The exact opposite - facts are being introduced and biased POV is being removed. Do your homework next time.

Bias

The article seems pretty biased in a mostly negative viewpoint of the company. How about a subsection on their effectiveness against pirate copies? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.161.126.143 (talk • contribs)

Feel free to be bold and add something in yourself. Make sure you source it, however. Oh, and make sure to sign your posts in talk pages, using ~~~~. --EazieCheeze 20:44, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Microsoft and StarForce

Starforce claimed in may 2006 that their FrontLine Driver 4.0 passed the "Designed for Microsoft Windows XP" test. These tests are executed by a company called VeriTest. I wonder if MS is aware of this situation at all. According to VeriTest: As a completely independent organization, VeriTest plays a unique role in this testing process. Microsoft receives no part of the fees paid to VeriTest. In many cases, vendors can request a test without the knowledge of Microsoft and will receive test results in strict confidence.

If MS is indeed unaware of StarForce then this is something to worry about because of the controversy surrounding this copy protection scheme, like the lawsuit by users against Ubisoft. As a result Ubisoft dropped Starforce.

I want to include these concerns somehow in the article, but I have trouble to find the correct formulation. Any ideas? MadIce 10:36, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

OK... I gave it a shot anyway. ;) MadIce 11:12, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I am not happy with it. The point I am trying to make is similar to a cult church getting IRS "charity status". That does not mean it is a bona fide religious organization in the eyes of the US. The problem here is the way the logo-system works. The tests are very limited and most programs will pass the test. The logo system does not check what the software does. MS assumes nobody wants to make maliceous software and trusts the softare house (in this case StarForce) by default. MadIce 12:06, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Someone (88.154.100.11) deleted the paragraphs I have added. That's OK, but I have moved part of it to the Controversy section. MadIce 15:46, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

StarForce and exploit

I'v tested my Win XP SP2 system with this exploit. There is a lot of SF drivers installed from varioius games.

Services Permissions checker v2.0

(c) 2006 Andres Tarasco - atarasco@gmail.com

[+] Trying to enumerate local resources

[+] Username: sopipnsci

[+] Listing Vulnerable Services...

[+] Analyzed 283 Services in your system

[+] Your system is secure! Great! :/

So the paragraph on exploit is lie. Removed.

Simply because it did not happen to you does not make it a lie, furthermore this is against wiki rules on doing your own research. This is a very thinly veiled attack on the legitimacy of this article since this IP address TraceRT's to Russia... Hmm i wonder who did that edit... Employee of Protection Technology or not, you guys be that judge(and whether to block the IP from edits). I however am re-adding that paragraph. Once again, can we please have this page protected from edits!! Also can we notice that the IP has also only ever eddited this page. Admin, save us! HawkShark 06:20, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

So you affirm that if my ip is from Russia im an SF's spy? Very interesting! Why didnt i use proxy to hide it?

You know - we have almost all games protected by SF here in Russia since 2002. Nobody but russian user really know what SF is. I have had a planty of SF's protected games been installed, and even now i have a lot of them. I want to say that this piece of software doesnt bring problems more that any other software.

I can see a boycott links on the SF's page here at Wiki, also i cant see an SF's Wikipedia links on every anti SF site i'v visited. Sometimes it looks like some kined of collusion. It seems that the article only edited by SF haters.

Does Wiki an independent resource were everyone could post his opinion? Or it just an "anti_somthing" site? I'v run a round of tests an could professionally declare - SF's exploit is myth! So the paragrph must be deleted or edited. You could do it by your self, of i'll do it. Also i have to notice that the "News coverage" section gives the impression that there is only bad news in SF over the internet. Let people search the news by thierselfs and not read what you want.

So i want to tell to Wiki admins that if you close access to editing the article - you will get an one-sided article which could not be connected with word Encyclopedia.

Regards

Also your little test that you ran above means nothing, how do we know you're reputable? how do we know you have SF installed on your system? I could copy and paste anything I wanted like you probably did. As such I see the article as being accurate and free of POV at the present moment, of course people will say that there are attacks on PT and thats mainly because their hideous repuatation for their software and customer relation skills, its all part of the history of the company and has a great relevance on this article. 85.178.205.135 12:41, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay kids, let's try to be objective for a moment. (Okay, not happening... Whatever.)

The main problem I with any claims of "uncrackability" for any time frame is that only a very few, very unpopular games can make that claim. And really, to be honest, how do you get a direct, accurate measure of game piracy? So with that said a lot of this article (and starforce) is obviously specculation.

I still maintain that it is suicide for any company to use starforce, being that it has become a P.R. liability.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.13.35.223 (talk • contribs) .

Installation point of Starforce

'allo! I've just changed this part of the article, changes marked in bold: "StarForce has received criticism for installing its own device driver onto computers. The StarForce driver, which is installed along with the protected product or when the protected product is first run" Simply because Starforce doesn't always install with the game but sometimes not until the game is first run. Egosoft's X³:Reunion is one of the programs that installs Starforce in such a way (although they've just released a no-cd/DvD that negates Starforce entirely, and can be installed without installing Starforce at all). 82.27.28.78 17:16, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

StarForce doesn't affect my PC

After reading that TrackMania Nations contains StarForce, this was like heaps of months after installation and I read mags like APC and PC User which use cover cds/dvds and my PC does not crash, and the CD performance has not dropped either. Either it's me or I'm just lucky. rctxtreme 06:24, 20 November 2006 (UTC)