Langenscheidt-Collins Dictionary English/German came with SF. Short time later they released an alternative installer that did not only remove installed SF driver, but allowed people to install the dictionary without SF, and then copy only the books from CD - Sf never touched the HD that way. I doubt that we will see that for many older games, unfortunately.

It is a victory indeed, but sure, they will come with more sick stuff like that. Blue Ray for Playstation 3 - so problematic that it delayed the release. HardDrive-Videorecorders - and manufacturers choosing copy protections and standards that produce more and more incompatabilities. Incompatabilities with copy protections for Audio-CD, Sony it was. HD-TV, again with hidden intricacies and traps most people do not know about. The future surely holds sweet promises.

Nevertheless the massive anti-SF-campaign illustrates that if only enough customers vote with their wallets, something can be moved. Concenring the even worse intricacies that are laying ahead of us, and not only limited to the field of PCs, this is somethign weorth to be remembered.Since longer time DVD-videorecorders are laying like lead on the shelves, although they have become acceptable in price - too much incompatability troubles. I forsee the same, on a worse scale, with HD-videorecorders. And with HD-TV. I intend not to buy any of these for as long as technologically possible. I have a DVD-video-player, a VHS-recorder, and a standard TV, which eventually will get replaced this year, widescreen yes, but not HD, maybe even not LCD. No troubles that way, I will remain a happy man by reducing chances for trouble.

Having something new is all nice and well, but when the "new" things come in shorter and shorter intervals, they turn into a stress factor and a constant source of anger. Concerning copy protection (PC, music, movies), I think the industry has gone crazy, somehow. I think it is more and more about pushing through manufactural technological standards, to make customers stick to one's own products, and hiunder them to buy those of the other companies. In other words, it is about monopolizing, and control and power over consumers. Governments do not dare anymore to confront this. That'S why in Germany we have a perverted law situation saying nthat - like in my school days - the copying of music is allowed in family and friends-circle (!), even if the music CD is copy protected. The illegal thing is not to copy it, but to bypass the copy protection scheme. at the same time the GEMA-fees, that are included in every single price a customer pays, still compensate the industry for losses due to copying, like in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

Maybe companies are overfishing their own pools of customers? Maybe "more" is not always "better". Why spending ressources on producing crap? turn on the radio and you immediately know what I mean. Quality has become sparse.

I'm straying off. I apologize. Put the blame of the second glass of wine that I just had. :)

what i mean is just this: did we win the war? no, it will go on. did we win a battle? Yes. So give us some time to celebrate and take a deep breath, before we take on the next enemy.

It's great news because StarForce is especially insidious and if you visit their forums they're quite arrogant. I'd rather not give them any of my money by proxy.

StarForce, like other protection rackets, never effectively prevents software copying. Professional software pirates, those that use industrial processes to mass duplicate games, are rarely effected. It's generally the honest consumer that is screwed by copy prevention schemes.

So, yes, this is definitely positive news for would-be purchasers of UBI games.

Frankly, I am not aware of any other copy protection scheme that has faced opposition on a scale even close to Starforce. They're annoying sometimes, but nothing of this sort :hmm:

If SF had actually worked while others failed to keep their games from being cracked that might be different Herr Drebbelmaker :rotfl:

SH3 was quickly cracked but still sold well enough to justify SH4. Most use the crack to get rid of SF. After SF removal, like magic, I did a new install of the OC and never had a problem again.

SF was damaging. They, any of them, do not have the right to play Russian roulette with our computers.

I am sure we are all pro copy protection to insure future product. But not one that opens your PC to problems.

I have had many games and this one is the only copy protection that directly affected the performance of my PC. No other copy protection did that, nada, null!!!

This is a small victory that hopefully causes devs to demand protection that does not attack their loyal customer base.

Wulfmann

Just for the record, Drebbel, it's not copy-protection I object to, but bad copy protection. Why should those who purchase software legally be made to pay the penalty for those who aren't affected by poor copy protection because they aren't using legal copies to begin with? It's the outlaws who should be punished, not the people who are law-abiding to begin with. That's just stupid. The only ones who should be sorry about this are those who have been making a killing by selling cracked Starforce-free copies of whatever.

I have no objection to protecting property, or intellectual property, or creative work, but I have a serious problem when Company A forces something on me that totally craps up my work or something Company B made. I don't make my yard look clean by trashing my neighbor's.

As long as Ubi's choice of copy protection doesn't cause a SNAFU on my PC - as long as it doesn't operate in an invasive way like Starforce - I don't care what they use.

Now, all that said, while I consider this announcement good news, to me it's good news in the sense that something I consider to be a problem is going to get fixed. I do agree with you that it's wise not to celebrate by rioting in the streets. I'm just thankful they've apparently made the decision to drop Starforce, and hope that their next choice for copy protection turns out better.

I emphatically agree. :rock:
It would be so nice to play SHII without having my DVD drive spin up to ten gazillion rpms to accomodate the "protection system".

Yep. And I'm sure some new hard-to-crack copy protection will come along someday....will be interesting if the opposition to it looks like anti-SF II, the Sequel.

We'll see....

This is good news! Hopefully, that SHIII patch will come.

PD

Well, I'm sure that lots of the complaints won't have anything to do with piracy reasons, but with sowtware/hardware damage. Just like now.
Lots of my Flotilla friends had these problems, and they had their original SH3 version. I also had some problems, but I also have my retail game. Piracy had nothing to do with any complaints here. That's what I think, and what I have seen.

Cheers :rock:

How can you be sure a different copy protection system will cause "damage"? What if they make a copy protection that is crack proof? Will people find something to have a witchhunt over?

It has never been proven SF does anything detrimental to hardware. I've only seen "my CD-rom is spinning a million rpm, help! It's scary, and my burner stopped working and I blame SF, not the piracy tools I have. I know, all the people who claim SF damaged their system are legit software users. The people who copy games are decently silent. ;)

lol very droll Neal :lol:
But all said and done, I think i'm gonna have to wait for any future release of SHIV to be on the shelves for a few months to see how things go with other users first and not snapp it up on pre-order this time round. I'm sure that in any event I'll get plenty of dope here on subsim about this... as usual hehe. With any luck we'll get something that does the job of security without putting the kibosh on users systems :up:

Neal all I can say is one of 2 comments here.

1. You either don't get it and you don't do the research and thus you make a comment like this.

2. Or you just love the attention on your site. And thus the controversial statement.

What is it? A little of both?
You obviously can read when I came here in the past to post now can't you?
:hmm:

So think pick up a few magazines, read and listen to radio interviews with folks like Steven Levy if you don't want to believe people like me.

And finally.....get off this craziness spoof that this has been a campaign of hackers trying to take SF down.
Your mocking people that come to your website making idiotic statements like you made above. These are customers that visit your site and have had problems with the protection.

If you want to discus this in private then give me your tele and I will be glad to chat with you.
I can get you in touch with an attorney that you can chat with as well that has some vital info about the class action against Ubi.

Rock on!



LOL

:rock:

Soul

Agreed 100%. At least if SH4 will not have SF, I won't have to jack up 500 topics in the SH4 forum for trying to boycott the game :up:

Be thankful your site isn't dead and you can jack up whatever you need to jack!

:up:

What can I say? I have to see hard facts :) I know there are a LOT of casual game copiers out there (you may not like me calling them pirates, and I never said it was a "hacker campaign"). Among friends and associates, a lot of games, programs, software... have been trotted out, in front of me, and they were copies. Copied by other friends, or downloaded from peer-to-peer, or warez.

I also know that once a movement like anti-something gets going, there's plenty of room on the bandwagon, and people pile on. I subscribe to Google News alert, using the word "Starforce", and I keep up with the news. I noticed that several websites posted new that "Futuremark has uncovered that Starforce DRM said to force reboots." When Futuremark publicly said that no, they did not make that claim, it was a poster on their forums, I did not see any of these website retract the news item, or correct it. That's pretty biased.



I'm not singling out you as dishonest or a game copier, and I never said SF was all it claims to be (they certainly have crappy public relations!), and I acknowledge SF may cause some/all the issues claimed. But I never saw any real proof.