Starforce - Am I the only one who is still boycotting this?

DCL · Post by **DCL** » Wed May 25, 2005 8:05 pm

This post is meant in no way to point any fingers at anyone. Hey if people who were formerly against SF want to reverse themselves and buy products with SF that's their right as consumers.

But I'm starting to feel like I'm the only one who has (so far) kept up my Starforce boycott. (But boy it hurts not having Silent hunter 3)

Just kind of wondering how many other people here who don't like SF have the boycott still going?

Eduardo X · Post by **Eduardo X** » Wed May 25, 2005 9:02 pm

Starforce?
NEVER!

Dhruin · Post by **Dhruin** » Wed May 25, 2005 9:04 pm

Couldn't care less, sorry.

warning · Post by **warning** » Wed May 25, 2005 9:04 pm

Never had it. Never will.

Although to be honest I have also not run across a Starforce protected game that made me want to chance it. I'm not sure what'd I'd do if they released Planescape: Torment 2 with Starforce.

crumsteel · Post by **crumsteel** » Wed May 25, 2005 9:20 pm

I am in the boycott, but I forget to look at what games are using it.

setaside · Post by **setaside** » Wed May 25, 2005 9:26 pm

Still going strong.

disarm · Post by **disarm** » Wed May 25, 2005 9:29 pm

i was a little leary of Starforce for a while, but never really enough for a boycott. i took my chances to play Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Silent Hunter III and haven't had a single problem 8)

SlapBone · Post by **SlapBone** » Wed May 25, 2005 9:40 pm

Bought SHIII at release. Hasn't given me a problem since I first installed it.

A good friend of mine had to do a complete reinstall of Windows right after he installed SHIII.... course he is an idiot... who doesn't know how to work on his own computer.

After I installed the Chaos League demo, all of my USB drives (I have many) started and stopped intermittently (which was a Stargforce know issue for a while). I haven't had this problem since.

Cyjon · Post by **Cyjon** » Wed May 25, 2005 9:53 pm

My boycott of Starforce hasn't been a big deal for me so far. My boycott of Steam causes me physical pain, but I persevere

Samurai · Post by **Samurai** » Wed May 25, 2005 10:00 pm

Used to boycott, but then SHIII came along and everything stayed fine on my machine, so its off now.

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Wed May 25, 2005 10:03 pm

I accidently bought a game with it (Beyond Divinity) before I knew about Starforce. Had some weird problems with burning cd's. After deleting BD and the Starforce drivers it's been working fine. Haven't bought a game with Starforce on it since. I doubt I ever will.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Wed May 25, 2005 10:05 pm

I'm still staying the course. I thought for awhile that I was the only one still persisting with the boycott.

Freezer-TPF- · Post by **Freezer-TPF-** » Wed May 25, 2005 10:20 pm

I'm still not buying any games that use Starforce and have been generally avoiding publishers that use Starforce such as Dreamcatcher/The Adventure Company, Codemasters, Digital Jesters, and now it looks like Ubisoft has joined the party. I have plenty of other good games to play and to buy from companies that I want to support.

Interestingly, Starforce used to have a list of their publisher-customers on their website, but now I can't find it there...

knob · Post by **knob** » Wed May 25, 2005 10:33 pm

Like a few others, Silent Hunter III broke my boycotting. And I can't say I regret it. That game is incredible.

Kelric · Post by **Kelric** » Wed May 25, 2005 10:46 pm

Does it count as a boycott if I simply haven't bought any games that use it because I haven't bought very many games in a long time anyways?

Since spring last year I've bought OOTP6, Rome: Total War, Guild Wars, Half-Life 2 and Morrowind (plus expansions). If you go back to Spring '03 you can add OOTP5, Rise Of Nations (if it came out then, I don't recall) and maybe one or two other games that I can't recall...

em2nought · Post by **em2nought** » Wed May 25, 2005 11:21 pm

dbt1949 wrote:I accidently bought a game with it (Beyond Divinity) before I knew about Starforce. Had some weird problems with burning cd's. After deleting BD and the Starforce drivers it's been working fine. Haven't bought a game with Starforce on it since. I doubt I ever will.

Substitute (Enigma Rising Tide) for (Beyond Divinity) and that was my experience as well.

If I ever see SHIII for $5 at gogamer I might have to experience the pain of Starforce again. Really I think I'm just planning on giving up gaming all together because of this kind of crap.

CSL · Post by **CSL** » Wed May 25, 2005 11:42 pm

Everything still works after I installed SHIII, so Starforce ahoy.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Thu May 26, 2005 12:02 am

Still haven't installed a single game or demo with it. I boycott it, not because of what it might do to my machine (although that is a factor), but because it is the biggest, most intrusive example of the 'ends justifies the means' type of copy protection, and I'm not going to support that philosophy. I've drawn the line on what I'm willing to have done to the most expensive piece of equipment I own.

JayG · Post by **JayG** » Thu May 26, 2005 5:24 am

System's still Starforce free. And considering that the only PC game I'll be getting in the forseeable future will be GTA: San Andreas, it should remain that way,

Kinda off topic, but Splinter Cell 3 doesn't seem to have sold that well on PC, so maybe piracy isn't what's killing PC gaming.

And even more off topic, grat's Liverpool. Great game.

tals · Post by **tals** » Thu May 26, 2005 7:41 am

I don't think SC3 turned out to be that good - going by another forum I subscribe to so that could be the reason for poor sales - would make sense anyway - poor game - poor sales.

Never boycotted, if it effects my machine then I may change my views on that but tbh i've had worse rubbish/issues from standard ATI/Creative drivers to get that worked up over it.

Tals

Lassr · Post by **Lassr** » Thu May 26, 2005 9:26 am

Still boycotting but I want SHIII so bad. I will not even chance it because my setup is exactly what they list as a potential problem, burner and DVD player are both external USB devices.

ChrisGwinn · Post by **ChrisGwinn** » Thu May 26, 2005 9:57 am

I might be accidentally boycotting it. I don't know if the games I buy have starforce and I haven't had a reason to care yet.

Two Sheds · Post by **Two Sheds** » Thu May 26, 2005 10:05 am

I don't think SC3 turned out to be that good - going by another forum I subscribe to so that could be the reason for poor sales - would make sense anyway - poor game - poor sales.

By SC3 you mean Splinter Cell 3, right? As in, Chaos Theory? You're out of your tree.

(From Gamerankings)
Gamespy - 4.5/5
Gamespot - 8.6/10
IGN - 9.6/10
PCGamer - 91/100
Game Informer - 9.75/10
Worthplaying - 9.6/10
Gamerankings avg. - 90%

"poor game"? Negative!

Beer Goggles · Post by **Beer Goggles** » Thu May 26, 2005 10:17 am

Read my sig. Sure it is mostly tongue-in-cheek but I still hate Starforce. Sure, I have wanted to play Silent Hunter 3, Splinter Cell 3 and Chaos League, but I am not supporting viral copy protection. I can enjoy games like Rome: TW, Painkiller, SWAT 4, UT2004, Kohan 2, Dawn of War, Vampire, Pirates, Freedom Force, games from Shrapnel and games from Matrix.

Spiff · Post by **Spiff** » Thu May 26, 2005 10:21 am

Blackhawk wrote:Still haven't installed a single game or demo with it. I boycott it, not because of what it might do to my machine (although that is a factor), but because it is the biggest, most intrusive example of the 'ends justifies the means' type of copy protection, and I'm not going to support that philosophy. I've drawn the line on what I'm willing to have done to the most expensive piece of equipment I own.

My thoughts exactly.

Anything that tries to render my legally obtained (and used) hardware or software inoperable, nonfunctioning, or requiring the uninstallation thereof, will have a permanent vacation from the hard drive on my machines.

I understand the reason for copy protection, but Starforce isn't the answer. Too many problems for too many people. I know not everyone has problems, but that's not the issue. Those that have had issues, have had serious problems. If I had to reinstall an OS because a copy protection scheme FUBAR'ed my drive, I'd be more than a little pissed. It has happened, and I'm not taking any chances, no matter how bad I want to play a game.

Kobra · Post by **Kobra** » Thu May 26, 2005 11:00 am

Soldiers, SH3, SCCT, Trackmania Sunrise and Cossacks2 are reasons enough to allow Starforce into your lives. Some of the best games - ever.

Papageno · Post by **Papageno** » Thu May 26, 2005 11:41 am

No Starforce for me, thanks. Even if everything worked fine after it were installed, I don't like the idea of not being able to back up the CD/DVD in case it breaks or becomes unreadable and the game is no longer available.

Exodor · Post by **Exodor** » Thu May 26, 2005 11:45 am

No Starforce for me, but it's been easy since I have zero interest in any of the Starforce-enabled games mentioned here.

If Civ4 comes with StarForce, my "boycott" will disappear like a fart in the wind.

Do you have any idea how long I've been waiting to work that phrase into a conversation???

Ridah · Post by **Ridah** » Thu May 26, 2005 12:28 pm

I don't care if a game has Starforce on it as long as the game works, I still don't understand what people are trying to avoid by not installing Starforce.

HOWEVER, last night for the first time I ran into trouble with a Starforce protected game: Still Life. Basically, it was trying to check my CD and it kept getting an error so I couldn't play the game. Luckily, there is already a no-cd hack for the game so I got around the issue, but I pity the poor gamer who isn't aware of the little tricks to get around this issue. I was ready to cry when I thought I wasn't going to be able to play the game.

morlac · Post by **morlac** » Thu May 26, 2005 12:39 pm

Ridah wrote: I still don't understand what people are trying to avoid by not installing Starforce.

I couldn't play the game. Luckily, there is already a no-cd hack for the game so I got around the issue, but I pity the poor gamer who isn't aware of the little tricks to get around this issue. I was ready to cry when I thought I wasn't going to be able to play the game.

You can pity somone who doesn' know the 'tricks' to get a game to run but don't understand people trying to avoid a game that requires them???

Kobra · Post by **Kobra** » Thu May 26, 2005 12:45 pm

Ridah wrote:HOWEVER, last night for the first time I ran into trouble with a Starforce protected game: Still Life. Basically, it was trying to check my CD and it kept getting an error so I couldn't play the game.

How do you know Starforce is to blame? I remember when Painkiller first came out, the first batch of CD's wouldn't authenticate properly. Everyone was quick to blame SecurRom, but it turned out to be an error in code by the PK people.

Exodor · Post by **Exodor** » Thu May 26, 2005 12:59 pm

Kobra wrote:How do you know Starforce is to blame? I remember when Painkiller first came out, the first batch of CD's wouldn't authenticate properly. Everyone was quick to blame SecurRom, but it turned out to be an error in code by the PK people.

Did SecurRom have a history of screwing up people's CD-Rom access the way StarForce does?

Hrnac · Post by **Hrnac** » Thu May 26, 2005 1:22 pm

Exodor wrote:No Starforce for me, but it's been easy since I have zero interest in any of the Starforce-enabled games mentioned here.

If Civ4 comes with StarForce, my "boycott" will disappear like a fart in the wind.

Do you have any idea how long I've been waiting to work that phrase into a conversation???

Civ 4

-Hrnac

qp · Post by qp » Thu May 26, 2005 2:25 pm

I suppose if I bought a Sf game and it really messed up my machine or something I might care...but until then I don't even bother looking.

snoleopard · Post by **snoleopard** » Thu May 26, 2005 3:46 pm

I still boycott StarForce, and will continue to do so. Like others said, I won't have anything on one of my most expensive purchases that I don't want on it. After searching on the net, I did find one Adventure Company game that doesn't have that crap on it, and it was Return to Mysterious Island. I still enjoy a good adventure game sometimes, and was happy it didn't have the SF on it.
Cyjon, I thought my son and I were the only ones that will forever boycott Steam...two of the Deluxe Editions became coasters for both of us as we really, really hated the intrusiveness of it, when all we wanted was to play the single game. I know you can, and I did, get it running in single player, but I still hate Steam, no matter what anyone else says. To each there own... 8)

JSHAW · Post by **JSHAW** » Thu May 26, 2005 3:54 pm

On the day that I installed Splinter Cell-Chaos Theory I called Ubisoft tech support on an issue with the license code to install the game. Once that was cleared up I asked him about Starforce because I had heard the Chaos Theory had it on the discs.

He told me that the version they use is less intrusive and they've had very little in the way of tech support issues regarding it, and it's use on Chaos Theory. He told me that their use of it was only for detecting that the discs are legit and the license key entered is legit.

I have no problem with that at all. I have no problem with Starforce as long as it doesn't affect my ability to use my pc components in the way's they were intended to be used.

I'm in the "I could care less about Starforce as long as it does not interfere with my use of my pc". So far for me it hasn't, so I have no reason to boycott it.

gbasden · Post by **gbasden** » Thu May 26, 2005 5:06 pm

Cyjon wrote:My boycott of Starforce hasn't been a big deal for me so far. My boycott of Steam causes me physical pain, but I persevere .

I'll deny myself the pleasure of SH3, but HL2? THat program would have to format my hard drive, post my financials to the web and kick my dog before I'd give it up.

Turtle · Post by **Turtle** » Thu May 26, 2005 6:28 pm

I'm on the mostly boycott side.

I did buy Splinter Cell 3 because simply put, it's the game for me this year.

jpinard · Post by **jpinard** » Thu May 26, 2005 7:36 pm

When it came down to it... I felt I needed to support the developer's of Silent Hunter 3. Though I hate Starforce with a passion (still), I felt the future of simulations were at stake. If Silent Hunter 3 sells very well, it could change the mind's of publisher's that it's a worthless investment.

Plus I've had an amazing time with SH3...

Greggy_D · Post by **Greggy_D** » Thu May 26, 2005 9:33 pm

I also broke my boycott due to SH3. Then I said F it and also loaded Soldiers.

Octopus Overlords

Starforce - Am I the only one who is still boycotting this?

Boycott still on?

Starforce - Am I the only one who is still boycotting this?