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.

Why would I worry about my site being dead? I don't undertand that.

Evidence? Got SF on two different systems. CD after putting them in not recognized until 3-4 minutes passed by, burning data backups on CD lasted up to 20-30 minutes, were usually it would be done in 2-3 minutes.

Got rid of SF, and problems gone.

Problem recreated on - well, on damn many different machines out there, and technically explained in a way that so far is not prooved wrong or contradicted by anyone. web forums were flooded with similiar descriptions.

All evidence I need. The information and proof is out there since long. It's just the question if one wants to ignore it, or wants to see it.

I have no piracy tools, nor do I run a single illegal copy of anything. It is almost a personal offending that you generalize frustrated customers all to be pirates. Kind of preemptive warfare against potential pirates that are not yet pirates but maybe, eventually, who knows, could become pirates.

I also have no sympathy for the first statement, that SF only was debated, because, as you imply, people were bored and not entertained. If there is no crappy protection software with a game, maybe the game itself would be debated then. Which is perfectly okay, I think.
Hasn't it always been like this?

Strange how so many people say the same thing; we're not pirates but maybe, eventually, who knows, we could become pirates. Does not sound like they have strong convictions. They're just a bad experience with copy protection from becoming pirates.

That's not evidence, Skybird. That's your claim, made on the Internet. In court, it would barely pass as hearsay. Sure, it's all the evidence you need but maybe someone who has not met you or seen your computer would like a little more to go on.

If I post tomorrow that Silent Hunter 3 screwed up my computer, is that evidence? If I say that your e-mail sent me a virus and erased my hardrive, is that evidence? You want evidence who shot Kennedy? I know who it was, it was a guy named George Bronlow. Now, you have the evidence.

Do I smell the nauseating aroma of envy? You're much too tense, relax. Besides, you should be pleased, as you have saved us from the invisible menace of Starforce. Was it ever real? Did it ever exist? Well, we don't know, but the important thing is that you have saved us from it.

So, what will you do with your time now? What becomes of heroes when they are no longer needed?

Ubisoft must convince me with better customer support over a longer period and more contents in their games before I buy again games of those.

The renouncement of StarForce points already into the right direction for me, but momentarily Ubisoft stands still on my list of companies which I don't support by purchasing games of them, they lost to much reputation of me in the past.

two questions...

1- do we get a chance to buy a version of SH3 sans SF for $5, or will they be sending us a free copy in the mail? :lol:

2- this aint another April Fools joke is it... one that didn't get out in the first batch :D


--Mike

Some links just FYI
 

So, just for your information on a similar case now quite famous, I post some links about SONY's XCP music CD protection system. This system is technically, in many ways similar to Starforce (installs stealthly, has Ring 0 (super user) permissions, and may be used by hackers to get inside systems which have this tech).

Well, Sony is already retiring this system...

Now, I'm not in for a fight, but I think truth and facts must be told, and not disregarded as "hacker stuff" or "child stuff". This is about technology, about our systems, our rights and freedoms. So there are facts 4 ya:

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004144.php

http://news.com.com/Microsoft+will+w...3-5949041.html

http://news.com.com/FAQ+Sonys+rootki...3-5946760.html

http://www.masternewmedia.org/sony_r...s_20051203.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XCP

http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columni...-rootkit_x.htm

http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/english/titles.html

BTW Sony is probably going to lose this lawsuit they have in NY:
(this is from the sony link)

Re: Some links just FYI
 

The system is quite different. XCP uses real cloaking techniques (every part of it is basically 100% invisible), SF doesn´t. By the way, dozens of other programs, for example many anti-virus programs, have Ring 0 permissions, I don´t see many people complain about that...