Starforce

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Here's one guy's justification for using copy protection that breaks people's computers.

Starforce : final report


As promised, here is a second report about the protection system we will use with Heroes 5. I got my hand on precise data on the Ubisoft games protected with this very system, and also reports from the betatest. I hope it will appease the remaining fears and prove to be a useful information. However there wont be a third report from me on this subject, I've already spent enough time on this detail.


First off, I wont repeat the basics, refer to this post if you want : http://forums.ubi.com/groupee/forums/a/ ... 019843/p/1
I wont also enter the argument on WHY we use this protection system. Simply put, it’s the best available on the market. It takes weeks or even months to get a barely cracked version of a game, and usually it does not get fully cracked. This is a world of difference with having the game you've been working on for more than two years available as warez on the launch day, in terms of sales, but also in terms of team spirit.


So the subject of this post is to detail the problems encountered with the Starforce system.
My study is based on four games published earlier this year by Ubisoft, totalling more than half a million copies over a few months, protected by Starforce. I believe this is a large enough population to derive statistics from.

The number of reported problems totals 0,3% of sold copies. Splinter Cell 3, being a very popular title, generated more reports than usual (see below), and without this title, the level of problems drops to 0,1%. That's one user out of a thousand, and less than 500 reports all in all, worldwide. I'd say this is low enough but I'll get into more details, what matters is the type of problems reported, of course.

Most problems (more than 60%) have to do with the activation key or the disc check. Starforce comes in two versions : downloaded content with activation key, or protected disk. The protection works exactly in the same way, except how it is activated. The reported problems are either that the key was mistyped, or not valid anymore, or that the disc check failed, or not found. When the disc check is failed, it is easy to solve, so the legal user will have opportunity to play anyway.

A large number of problems (20%) are specific to SC3, and linked with users trying to start an ISO image of the game with an emulator. In such a case, the protection prevents the game to be launched, as it is supposed to do.

What can be considered real troubles are system crashes, or driver problems, or hardware problems. This is around 10% of reports. So that's about one player in ten thousands. I think this is a level consistent with ANY windows application

Ok but what happens beyond a problem report ? More than 95% of these problems have been solved with the help of Starforce or Ubisoft support people. Actually the level is usually 100%, except on two problems.
The first is with a system crash, it only gets solved two thirds of the time. This happens in 2% of reported problems, less than one user out of ten thousands. So its unsolved for one user out of thirty thousands. In such case starting in safe mode and removing the protection suppresses the crash cause.
The second is with cd/dvd functions problems (no more read/write) reported with Silent Hunter 3. Out of 11 such problems reported, only 2 cases were solved. The problem could not be reproduced, and the origin could not be found. It is suspected not linked with Starforce. It could be due to a defective manufacturing of the cd in the first place, as this is appearing only with one game title. On a statistics level, it is still very low, around one user out of a fifty thousands (0.002%).

Sure, but these are reported problems only ? What about the real existing problems that do not get reported ? Well that's right, we don’t know about the troubles encountered by users who did not report them. But when you're a legitimate buyer, and you have all the contact info to try to solve an issue, why would you NOT do it ? Not much of a logic there, so hopefully these reports cover most actual problems.


Now, what about live experience of the protection system ? We've been running the betatest for more than two weeks now, with Starforce included. Well I'd say that what we encountered is consistent with the statistics : a bit more than half a dozen reported problems, mostly linked with typing the key, and only one case that took a long time to solve (meaning, for the game to be playable). The furor on Starforce has now died in the betatesters people, and some of them were VERY active in this matter. That's probably even more comforting than statistics.

That's about all. I treated a very detailed list of reports, and I believe this is accurate. I'd like to address another issue bothering some people : the installing and uninstalling of Starforce. Some seem troubled by the fact that it gets installed without consent, and does not uninstall automatically.

Starforce gets installed with the content that it is protecting, no more no less. It is only one library out of dozens that a game uses. When you install a game, you have to install all of its libraries, you don’t get prompted on each of them. Either you agree to install the game, including its protection, or you don’t.

Regarding uninstall, I already said that indeed it is not uninstalling automatically, unless the protected application or game decides so. Heroes 5 will uninstall Starforce when you uninstall the game. In any case you can find the tools on the web to manually uninstall if you want to. But remember that other applications could be protected by Starforce as well, and they WILL require it to be reinstalled to work properly. In such case the protection will be reinstalled automatically, for the application to run properly. It just sounds logical.

Wow, sickeningly desperate. Why WOULDN'T you ask Ubisoft why your game broke your DVD-ROM!?!??! Why, why, why? Heroes of Might and Magic V is going to bomb, in my opinion. "It just sounds logical."

[Worm]

Fuck these guys. You know people are actually buying imports so they can avoid starforce but pay into gaming? Those guys are idiots. I don't see how this can't be the last straw for those idiots who never warezed a day in their lives.

When the only companies left are EA and BethSoft, maybe this cock sucking Spock -- on his death bed from aids -- will recant the bullshit he rim sucked from his bosses and spewed on to a webforum*.

*If this exists it should be called a brownout.