[Excalibur Bane]

I'd say Starforce is finished, but I doubt we've seen the last of it. Many publishers are still using and have agreements to keep. Version 4.0 of Starforce looks to be the worst of them all. I think most publishers are simply going to stick with the less intrusive protections, Securom or Safedisc. Or do the smart thing, and save themselves money by not using anything at all. Given the fact that Oblivion is selling like hotcakes and it only has a simple CD check, one would think that would send a powerful message to other developers.

Time will tell I suppose. I doubt anything will change. Copy protection companies will always be around to hold the hands of publishers and make them feel secure that their games won't be pirated because their protected by their latest protection system that can't be cracked, which is promptly cracked two days later. You can no more destroy piracy then you can blot out the sun. Black and white, night and day. One cannot exist without the other. Good versus evil I guess would be a good comparison.

As for the existing games, I suspect they will have tools provided either by the company or the community (now that Starforce has been reverse engineered) that will remove it from the game executable completely prior to running it the first time, thus it will never touch the system. You do have to run it once to install the driver after all.