After an immensly successful launch of Stardock's new game, Galactic Civilizations 2, someone posted on Starforce's forums about how the game was a hit without having any copy protection on it's CDs. A forum admin of Starforce replied to this with a direct link of a search on a bittorrent site for the pirated copies of the game.

Right now several thousands of people are downloading the pirated version only from that web-site. Is it good for the sales? Unlikely. Good game surely would have the high sales rate even if it doesn't have any copy protection, but not because of that. Good protection is the tool, which increases the rate.
http://www.star-force.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=670

Stardock was appalled that they would provide a working url to pirated copies of thier game.
http://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=161&AID=106741

If they weren't a Russian company, they'd likely be sued over it.

This is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen. Any doubt in my mind about not buying Starforce products is gone now.

I hope to god this will bury starforce.Imagine they even critiscized Bethseda for supscepting to paranoia and not using starforce on their game.The morons.

Posted on Gamespot earlier:

GS: Will this change your approach to copy protection in the future?

BW: Not at all. As I type this, EBGames has released their top-selling PC games from last week. Galactic Civilizations II was number one. So if piracy is such a menace, it's not apparently affecting us to the degree that some say it should.


StarForce site forum moderator posts link to download pirated copy of Stardock's Galactic Civilations II (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/galacticcivilizations2/news.html?sid=6145864)

It is unbelievable that they posted a working torrent on their site all they while assuming that any game with StarFarce is not pirated. Let's hope publishers will start turning away from this sometimes problematic, and invasive copy protection. And of course, I am not even touching on the legalities of it either.

I used to work for a reputable software company in development/support and it would be like me posting links to torrents to download their competitor's software illegally - all the while I am representing the company I work for.

For a list of games that use SF protection, see the link in my sig

Yeah its crazy.

Sort of like: "If you don't use our copy protection, we'll give your game away for free"

Starforce was really ugly already, now my opinion of them can't go lower anymore.

No SF'ed games for me to be sure!

Hopefully the example set by Stardock and the gentleman solution taken against Starforce will make more companies rethink their copy protection methods.

Its time we legal buyers are seen as customers and not potential thieves.

And if that won't change their minds, the success of Galactic Civilizations sales wise might. Money is always a good persuader :D

I don't know if it 100% true or not but I've heard that Activision have turned away from StarFarce in recent weeks or months. I'm sure someone will correct me if I am wrong.

Someone should go post links to pirated copies of their games on their forums....wonder how they would like that?:p

People already have - numerous times. The thread either gets deleted or the offending post is removed.

The other thing the mods have been up to on those forums is that they have asked at least twice of people to scan an article out of a magazine and post that picture on the forum. That is illegal as well. Obviously, they do not know what constitutes piracy themselves.

In fact, if anyone remembers the 80s (with the C64 and Amiga), then if you were to fire up some old games (use winUAE for emulation), chances are you'd find the name "Star-Force" as the hacking group that originally hacked the game back then. Interesting huh?

Their name is mud. I was really glad when Firaxis/Take 2 decided not to use SF to protect Civ4. I feel that any other copy protection is fine but there are too many unanswered questions about SF to make it effective.

Only just noticed this, even though it's a bit late. Very ironic... and amusing. I mean, that's not even just some fan/chat site... it's supposed to be the official forum for the so-called "software", right? :lol:

Incidentally, just out of interest, I checked the topic views... most of them in that particular forum have around ~400 views, but this little controversial one is now at ~36,000+ views, and still rising... ;)

Starforce is an awful company, not because their software is bad -- it's actually rather clever -- but because their business attitude is immature and deceptive. Let me explain. The attitude that StarForce's representatives have shown the public, in general, is not "Piracy is a legitimate problem and we make the best copy protection scheme we can, regardless of how much damage it does."

While StarForce is a good copy protection scheme, even though it occasionally causes problems, their marketing of their copy protection is much more deceptive, hostile, fear-mongering and generally full of crap than that. For starters, they constantly claim that the way they should calculate revenues lost to piracy is that every download should count as a lost sale.

To justify this generally deceptive marketing and continue to make false claims about how much money their protection scheme saves companies by reducing piracy, StarForce representatives have actually publically stated -- rather than honestly admitting their figures are a bit overinflated given the way they do their math -- that they are actually being generous, since every pirated copy downloaded is actually likely more than one sale lost. Their justification is that whenever someone downloads a game, they give it to all their friends, and then their friends never buy it.

In other words, when it comes to things in general, StarForce's marketing is not only full of it; they don't have the decency to admit they've been caught with their pants down when they've been caught with their pants down. Hence, I'm actually a bit amazed they even apologized given how full of crap they are. In conclusion, I have nothing against the copy protection scheme itself, but I have everything against the butt****s that make it and their self-righteous, deceptive, fear-mongering attitude.

Ubisoft is dropping Starforce and HoMM will no longer have it.

Link (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=167116) to Blazer's thread in the OT with this (http://www.gamespot.com/pages/news/story.php?sid=6147655&page=2) story:

Citing "complaints," the publisher ends its relationship with the copyright-protection provider.

Following several days of rumors, Ubisoft has officially confirmed that it will no longer use the controversial digital-rights software from Starforce. "Ubisoft has decided to use an alternative copy protection system to Starforce for upcoming releases," said a rep for the company. The announcement means that Starforce software will not be included in Heroes of Might and Magic V, the publisher's much-anticipated forthcoming PC role-playing game.

Ubisoft's decision caps weeks of controversy surrounding Starforce. In Mid-march, an employee of the Russian-German-Chinese-Cypriot company was accused of posting a link to a site where users could illegally download Stardock's space-sim Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords. Shortly, thereafter, Aspyr Media decided to sever its relationship with Starforce and remove its software from its forthcoming game, Spellforce 2: Shadow Wars.

Ubisoft's motivation for ending its agreement with Starforce was more personal. At the end of March, the company was slapped with a $5 million lawsuit by gamers who claimed that Starforce's DRM system compromised the security of their PCs. "We are currently investigating complaints about alleged problems with Starforce’s software," said the Ubisoft rep.

"... and there was much rejoicing - (Yay!)"

:clap:

Ubisoft is dropping Starforce and HoMM will no longer have it.

At that, Ubisoft has entirely dropped starforce from their games, because it was creating too much bad publicity for them. Very interesting news and I'm quoting this because I did a quick google search and it appears this is true. I don't really feel bad for the StarForce people, not because their protection scheme is bad, but because their awful attitude about the problems that did happen deserves to ruin their business.