Source: Tom's hardware UK – Keywords: DRM, Bioshock
Categories: Gaming
The Starforce story
To get a perspective on the back and forth that is Industry versus Consumer, Piracy versus Business, it might be helpful to take a look at the rise and fall of Starforce, the last (but not least) major draconian DRM system of note.
Starforce was a system that installed a hidden driver on your machine, and while results were not consistent a large amount of people began to experience a variety of strange issues with the system on their machines. CD drives would stop working, peripherals would crap out and programs – particularly ones for burning CD’s and DVD’s, for example – would keel over. StarForce, of course, claimed that the cold and flu had nothing to do with the bad weather or the fact that they stole our jackets and then they reverted back to saving the world one copy protected product at a time.
In what was to become a dirty game of internet flaming across forums and message boards, gamers began to bemoan the Starforce drivers and the ill-effects it had on their machines. Starforce was said to employ some rather dirty tactics of dissuasion against these people, but to unravel who-said-what-where-when in that internet bitch fight would be another missive in itself. Suffice to say that the voices were loud enough that publishers such as Ubisoft, who used Starforce in some of their best and brightest titles, eventually pulled the system.
A mixture of consumer dissent and the actions of the Starforce company – for example pointing to links for pirated downloads of a game that was released without any copy protection at all (thus making it a poster-child in the anti-DRM argument) – lead to the move.
So, nowadays Starforce is in its twilight years – though beware buying a game that was “protected” by it. It’s a good example though of the cycle of DRM – video game publishers lose a lot of money to pirates. They go to a company offering ever more effective methods of copy protection, the severity of which is mitigated by the money they’ll save; and then a consumer backlash eventually forces them to relent. The battle against the pirates is almost as much about PR and spin as it is software and cracking.
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This sucks ass. I pay for all my games and I expect to be able to install them and uninstall them at will. In fact I routenly re-install old games just if there is nothing new out at the time and im bord. If it gets to the stage where I cant re-install BioShock then I will be demanding a full refund and If the refuse I will boycot all there games from then on no matter how much I want to play them. I suggest you all do the same (I did this with THQ games cos they pissed me off). Infact if more PC game titles insist on attacking the legit users of their software I will say F**k you all and get a console; which would be a shame as i have been a PC gamer all my life (incase anyone is interested im now 30)
I recently bought Dreamfall: The longest journey
I installed it on Vista OK but Starforce would not
activate even with the latest vista driver, so in the end i got a no cd crack to play the game, so I pay for a game and still end up cracking it anyway
there is a cracked version out now... why don't they patch the game and remove the DRM?
I agree with Badger1977. I too bought BioShock when it released for the PC, however it would only play approx 15% of the time. Most attempts at launching the game would fail with a SecureRom error telling me to insert the original disc, even though I did have the original disc in the drive. Also, if I want to uninstall and reinstall a game I own, or install it on different computers, I should have that right as long as the computer is owned by me and in my possession. PC copy protection is getting way out of hand, and I have started purchasing less and less PC games because of it. I even took my copy of BioShock back and the store I bought it from was nice enough to exchange it for the Xbox 360 version because they considered my PC version defective. I have already boycotted Sierra games because I paid for FEAR, and it will not run at all anymore on my PC, because of it's copy protection; I even uninstalled all of my programs that have virtual drives and it still wouldn't work. One of the few companies left that I have no problems with their PC games is EA. I own every Need for Speed game and I've never had an issue with backing them up. Yes, I paid retail price for every copy I have. Also, backing up discs are important; I have had my share of CDs gone bad or get broken.
SecureRom V6 or newer is Hurting the sales of games now
you should not have to no-CD the game in the first place
in all most likey these games Will not work on the next windows to come out as it think windows is an virtual disk drive or some lame error msg
i not buying Bio shock for just the resone that thay did this to the game, thay should say now before you buy this game it has SecureRom on it so it mite not work or you mite have to Format your PC before you can play it and then you can only install it 3 times before you ned to buy an other one
I can understand why the companies do this sort of thing they are only trying to protect their investments and i don't pretend to know what the answer is but this isn't it they will drive the honest joes (the ones of us who are left if you believe the companies every one is doing it already)in to the arms of the pirates.
Do they seriously think for one minute that there wont be cracks and patches to work around these kind of draconian measures pretty quickly.
I know a lot of people who use no cd patches routinely just to protect the original.
But i have to wonder if people will get disenchanted and just download the pre cracked /patched copy and be done with it.