GreenMonkey Posted February 9, 2006 Report Share Posted February 9, 2006 Hey folks Any comments on boycotting a game due to draconian copy protection? I'm not one to flip about copy protection too much, but some things go too far for me. Here's a few quickie stories about StarForce, in case you aren't familiar (I wasn't either). http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/48427 Starforce says that since no once showed up at their office with proof, the reports of problems are B.S. One little detail: Their office is in Moscow. http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=587 Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarForce I'm not going to be buying Heroes of Might and Magic V based on this software. Not so much out of paranoia that it might harm my hardware, but because I don't like the idea of this software running active in memory ALL THE TIME monitoring and possibly interfering with my DVD/CD-RW drives, or any other software I want to run. For those familiar with the series, I played "King's Bounty" off a 3.5" disc back in the day (yes, it was an illegal copy - I grew up in a poor household). I played HOMM1 & HOMM2 at my buddy's house. I played hours and hours of HOMM3 at my grandparent's house, along with my sister (legal copies). I bought HOMM4 for full price and never really liked it that much. But I'm likely passing up HOMM5. I love turn based strategy, and HOMM. But I don't love this kind of B.S. running on my system. For that matter, I need to download the StarForce removal tool, as I played the beta briefly, thinking I was going to be clean formatting my box soon anyway. The beta also requires StarForce. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dogbert Posted February 9, 2006 Report Share Posted February 9, 2006 Any comments on boycotting a game due to draconian copy protection? You need to calmly & politely inform the publisher why. Simply not buying it isn't enough. Don't start a petition, don't start a website. Don't rant online. Send their PR department an email or written letter explaining why. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon W H Posted February 9, 2006 Report Share Posted February 9, 2006 If I were still gaming on my PC, I'd be boycotting Starforce, too. That's just ridiculous what kind of effect they have on computers. Reminds me of the whole Sony rootkit nightmare. I boycotted EA based on several practices they've been doing since the days of Dreamcast and I wrote them a long letter detailing why and that I had/have a very long memory as a gamer. They didn't bother to respond, although it was quite civil (I had other people proofread it.) Most corporations aren't going to pay much attention because there's rarely one specific person/department that will take the responsibility or blame. Voting with your dollar and explaining to others along with the company in question the reason(s) behind your boycott is far more effective, IMHO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyberwoo Posted February 9, 2006 Report Share Posted February 9, 2006 I ran an .exe file the other day to get rid of malware that starforce puts on your computer. That starforce shit is lame. I've written a couple e-mails to various developers explaining that I would not buy future products from them if they include starforce. I agree with dogbert that you need to explain to the game dev's why you refuse to buy a game with starforce on it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iainl Posted February 9, 2006 Report Share Posted February 9, 2006 Writing letters seems an awful lot of effort. So I just buy the PS2 release instead. Which is probably exactly what they want me to do, but there you go. I don't buy games with Starforce on, but there are so many other games I don't buy for other reasons that it's not something that particularly gets me angry. I just regard it as a different format to my machine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreenMonkey Posted February 9, 2006 Author Report Share Posted February 9, 2006 I left a message in the official ubi HOMM5 forums (in the starforce thread). Good idea on the mailing though. I do need to send a mail of some sort, though. Be it real mail or snail mail. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exile Posted February 9, 2006 Report Share Posted February 9, 2006 If the game is good I'll buy it, if not I won't. I could care less what copy protection methods they use. I know quite a few people who refuse to buy Halflife 2 because of steam. Personally I think they are idiots and missing out on the best game in the past several years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iainl Posted February 9, 2006 Report Share Posted February 9, 2006 I'm more interested in my PC continuing to work reliably with the video editing and DVD writing software without anything messing with the DVD-ROM drivers than I am in playing the PC release of Toca rather than the PS2 one. The Starforce uninstaller works well enough for me to have it on temporarily while I try the demo, but I wouldn't buy the full release. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magness Posted February 9, 2006 Report Share Posted February 9, 2006 I love Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory but, I did return it for PC because of Starforce. Thankfully, I got the Xbox version as a gift a while later, and it is a great game However for those not familiar, the Starforce drivers that load to your machine actually disable certain DVD-R drives as they assume you are trying to copy the game rather than play it. I also upgraded my PC to Win64 (I dual boot) sometime ago and starforce does not support Win64 even though Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory on the PC specifically had in-game ads for the Athlon64 and Windows 64bit edition. Mind you, there is a crack to remove the starforce protection on all these games that is ironically easier than actually uninstalling starforce itself. I now refuse to buy any Starforce protected games. I have a problem when a copy protection scheme does nothing to actually prevent pirating but does prevent a purchased copy from playing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Covak Posted February 9, 2006 Report Share Posted February 9, 2006 I hate StarForce, but I'll still buy games using it if I really want 'em. I haven't had any problems with StarForce on my machine. Writing a letter to developers and/or publishers still sounds like a good idea, though, since a part of me still hates 'em for the useless, overkill copy protection. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Daisy Posted February 9, 2006 Report Share Posted February 9, 2006 I only have one game that uses StarForce and that is Space Rangers 2. It's a pain in the butt, but the game is so great that I really didn't care what copy protection it used. Glen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickle Posted February 10, 2006 Report Share Posted February 10, 2006 With the exception of CoH and WoW, my PC gaming has dropped to almost nothing due to copy protection crap. I got sick of buying games, and then having to go to some seedy site and download a crack to improve game performance by removing copy protection. It started a lonnng time ago for me. I think it was SiN that refused to play because of the CD burning software I was using. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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