Octopus Overlords

First off, let me say that I hope this will not lead to *ANY* debate whatsoever regarding Starforce.

I have searched on google and through this forum trying to find a list of games that are protected by starforce (GameCopyWorld doesnt have an updated list), and havent had any luck. I apologize if I missed something in advance, but I was wondering if there was such a list. If not, would someone mind posting some of the major games that use starforce. Thanks in advance and again, hopefully we can keep this from turning into a starforce debate.

Here is a list of games we have compiled so far that use Starforce:

Chaos League

Enigma: Rising Tide

GTR F1A

Silent Hunter 3
Soldiers Heroes of WWii

Their used to be a Boycott Starforce list somewhere but I can't see it. That said i've not problem listing the ones I'm aware of - if others do likewise you should end up with a fairly comprehensive list

If you can keep the master list updated at the top it will be easier to track. So without further ado:

Chaos league - Europe (believe all)
Soldiers Heroes of WWii - Europe (believe all)
Silent Hunter 3 - Europe (believe all)

Tals

Enigma: Rising Tide

There is a thread at The Wargamer.

Just be aware that the same title is often protected differently in different places. People always argue about Silent Storm, for instance, one person saying it does, one person saying it doesn't. In this case, one European release (Russian?) had it, but the North American release didn't. Just a list of titles isn't going to be accurate.

Blackhawk wrote:Just be aware that the same title is often protected differently in different places. People always argue about Silent Storm, for instance, one person saying it does, one person saying it doesn't. In this case, one European release (Russian?) had it, but the North American release didn't. Just a list of titles isn't going to be accurate.

True, the list should include the release region.

BCSF.org was shut down, not by any grand legal proceedings or anything, but because it came time to renew, and I didn't want to spend the money. I asked for volunteers to help with the data/content aspect, and never got any offers.

That said, if people want a regular list, I'd be happy to host the page(s) on my main website if desired. I'm not going to build the list myself, so it'd need to be a collaborative effort.

Like BH said, we need to include the release region (US, Euro, etc). Also remember DEMO's can include starforce as well.

GTR F1A is another title to add to the list.

http://www.makeabackup.com/modules.php? ... =StarForce


Check here.They have the copy protections for most every game.

I believe i read somewhere, that SF is in approx 100 different titles. Probably more now, who knows. Tough list to compile because there are tons of variables. (Region, Demo/Non Demo, etc)

Also, EA is testing Starforce right now for inclusion in future games as an FYI. From the Starforce site, we can see a dated list of companies using it, which might be a good start.. (although I notice a few companies missing)

Anino Entertainment
Cenega
Codemasters
Cyanide Studios
DaBrisoft
Deep Silver
Digital Jesters
Digital Tainment Pool
Editions Emme
Electronic Arts Taiwan
Fantastic.TV
Focus Home Interactive
Koch Media
LSP Games
Misty Hill
Monte Cristo
Nadeo
OdinSoft
SNSport
Soft-World International
SoftStar Entertainment
Transnationale.org
UbiSoft
WindThunder Era

Well if you all are interested in helping compile this list I have no problem keeping it semi organized. Perhaps next to every title, we can list what region of the game has Starforce. Any other suggestions? Or do you all feel this is worth the effort? Thanks for the input/games so far.

I'd don't have an issue per se with SF but i'm happy to advise when games I have are found to have it in them. No biggie for me but I understand others concerns. My list edited with region.

Tals

Scrapland

It's the one that fubared my CD writer.

Rhett wrote:Well if you all are interested in helping compile this list I have no problem keeping it semi organized. Perhaps next to every title, we can list what region of the game has Starforce. Any other suggestions? Or do you all feel this is worth the effort? Thanks for the input/games so far.

That's too much trouble. Knowing what publishers are using it is enough to establish a boycott of that publisher, even if they aren't dumping (yet) on your neck of the woods.

I don't think a boycott of a few thousand actually makes that much difference - but as this is not about that i'll leave that for another thread.

My reason for posting the ones I knew, wasn't for a Boycott, but to allow people to understand which games has Starforce in so they could either make an informed judgement whether they installed that game or at least understand if they subsequently experienced problems (in the low percentage side of users). As one of the complaints levelled at Starforce publishers is they don't tend to advertise that it is Starforce.

Ubi soft confuse it by having it in Silent Hunter 3 but not in Brothers in Arms. The one without it is pants and the one with it is great.

Tals

Star Wolves

tals wrote:I don't think a boycott of a few thousand actually makes that much difference - but as this is not about that i'll leave that for another thread.

My reason for posting the ones I knew, wasn't for a Boycott, but to allow people to understand which games has Starforce in so they could either make an informed judgement whether they installed that game or at least understand if they subsequently experienced problems (in the low percentage side of users). As one of the complaints levelled at Starforce publishers is they don't tend to advertise that it is Starforce.

Ubi soft confuse it by having it in Silent Hunter 3 but not in Brothers in Arms. The one without it is pants and the one with it is great.

Tals

I know of at least one publisher that is (was?) using it and is very concerned about any sort of mounting backlash. My guess is if there is proven resistence, they would cave: the games they make are too close to the margin in terms of market size to risk annoying a significant portion of their customer base to the point they will walk. The problem is, gamers are the weakest of all consumer groups - you can punch them in the groin time after time and they will always come back for more.

While I doubt many listen to me when I say "don't buy SH3, it has Starforce," I'm pretty sure I'm still costing them sales they might have otherwise had (besides my own). I thought the game looked fantastic at E3, and had they not kicked me in the nuts with this Starforce crap, I would probably be evanglizing about the game - which would result in more sales since I've been known to be convincing when I want to be. Pissing off a few customers isn't too bad - but it gets magnified when you piss off the wrong few customers.

I don't really care if UBI Soft releases other games without Starforce - until they make amends and release a usable version of SH3, I am not interested in purchasing any of their wares from this point forward.

Wow dbt, I used your link, and was surprised at some of the games that had Starforce on them. For instance, it says StarWars Jedi Knight Dark Forces II has it, but doesn't mention a region. This is one of my favorite old games, and I sure never had any idea it may have Starforce on it. Also, at GG when we had the boycott Starforce going, I could have sworn that Sacred was one of the games that had it, and had made a lot of people angry, but it says it's protection is 'Protect CD VOB5'. Never heard of that one. Interesting list.

Jeff V wrote:I know of at least one publisher that is (was?) using it and is very concerned about any sort of mounting backlash. My guess is if there is proven resistence, they would cave: the games they make are too close to the margin in terms of market size to risk annoying a significant portion of their customer base to the point they will walk. The problem is, gamers are the weakest of all consumer groups - you can punch them in the groin time after time and they will always come back for more.

Good point. From my point of view I will add game sites such as Gamespot as another source of the problem. I don't now how the print medium handles it because I don't subscribe tp a PC game magazine.

I have not read one single article on gamesites such as gamespot giving details about starforce, how it goes about installing itself and what issues it may cause. But we do get articles on game sites interviewing the developer of Starforce about how great it is. (and only after some users and MB's were starting to complain a lot) What about the other side?

Or how about mentioning in a review of a starforce game about the issues some people have with it?

Nope nothing, so it's up to me to find out what exactly has made my CDW go haywire. But I could be wrong on that and I would love to be corrected and someone point me to a few gamespot articles on the way Starforce works.

IMO these gamesites are way, way too tilted towards the game industry and it's up to the buyer to beware even more then usual. And no I don't see that changing anytime soon.

The hardware sites do a little better job watching out for us consumers I think...

DCL wrote:IMO these gamesites are way, way too tilted towards the game industry and it's up to the buyer to beware even more then usual. And no I don't see that changing anytime soon.

You mean they won't bite the hand that feeds them? Shocking. 8)

They would risk the ire of publishers if they publicized any Starforce problems.

tals wrote:I don't think a boycott of a few thousand actually makes that much difference - but as this is not about that i'll leave that for another thread.

You would be correct to say this. I'm amazed at how consumers overvalue the power of their dollar, and think that if they boycott something that it will have an "Impact". It doesn't, and they don't care.

When you are talking about millions of dollars, nobody bats and eyelid at $5000-$10,000 in lost sales. I can't tell you how many times I was in a meeting at a software company, and heard the CEO say "For 10-20K its not even worth our time to discuss". The best comparison would be for two guys in a bar to argue over a quarter that fell on the floor. It doesn't matter to them one bit!

Boycotts do nothing unless you take them nationally, advertise the hell out of them, and get some large scale organizations to hop on board. For example, someone might pay attention to a Starforce boycott if you got Fileplanet to put an anti-starforce ad up on their main page. Otherwise, its meaningless, so don't overvalue it - it might make you all warm and fuzzy inside, but nobody in the industry is going to bat an eyelid.

Yes or if the magazines started displaying the protection and their views on that. I could see that having a serious impact.

Tals

Kobra wrote:Boycotts do nothing unless you take them nationally, advertise the hell out of them, and get some large scale organizations to hop on board.

Wrong. It makes noise, and makes a problem known, even if the loss of dollars itself isn't enough to make a change. Since the big StarForce controversy started a few months ago, I've seen at least two mainstream magazines have segments on the issue of StarForce and overzealous copy protections. That was the direct result of communities like this one making their discontent known, even if their not purchasing the games was ineffective (I know that the Editor in Chief of at least one of those magazines was a regular reader of GG during the original outcry).

Mainstream coverage of an issue is something that gets noticed by the companies in question. Even if they aren't worried about the loss of sales from a few people boycotting their game, wise PR people will look at the issue and realize that their company's reputation is subject to more damage than a few thousand lost sales.

Blackhawk wrote:Mainstream coverage of an issue is something that gets noticed by the companies in question.

Uhh, how does that make me wrong? That sounds like EXACTLY what I said, doesn't it? Boycotts by a few thousand gamers does nothing.. Attention from major media or websites(or other larger organizations), is what matters. Again, thats pretty much what I said above, wasn't it? So what exactly was "Wrong" about what I said? Incase you missed it, here is what I said:

Boycotts do nothing unless you take them nationally, advertise the hell out of them, and get some large scale organizations to hop on board.

Sure sounds identical to what you said:

Mainstream coverage of an issue is something that gets noticed by the companies in question.

Perhaps you were confused, because it sounds to me like we are in agreement.

Kobra wrote:

Blackhawk wrote:Mainstream coverage of an issue is something that gets noticed by the companies in question.

Uhh, how does that make me wrong? That sounds like EXACTLY what I said, doesn't it? Boycotts by a few thousand gamers does nothing.. Attention from major media or websites(or other larger organizations), is what matters. Again, thats pretty much what I said above, wasn't it? So what exactly was "Wrong" about what I said? Incase you missed it, here is what I said:

Boycotts do nothing unless you take them nationally, advertise the hell out of them, and get some large scale organizations to hop on board.

Sure sounds identical to what you said:

Mainstream coverage of an issue is something that gets noticed by the companies in question.

Perhaps you were confused, because it sounds to me like we are in agreement.

No, Kobra, you are wrong because you contradicted yourself in your original post.
Apparently you don't understand a boycott. Boycotts are organized campaigns where the participants don't support the targeted company and make their boycott known. Otherwise, it would just be bad sales, or a personal choice to not buy a product.

Once again, thats what I was saying.. =) Let me clarify what I was trying to say in my overly wordy first post:

Boycotts mean nothing unless you get the media, organizations, and industry groups BEHIND your boycott, or at least to pay attention to it. Its quite meaningless to think that if a couple thousand people don't buy a game it will cause a stir.

Thats the point I was trying to make, but apparently I had too much powder in the cannon.

Personally I don't look at it as a boycott so much as the fact that I'm not going to have Starforce on my system and therefore am not going to buy any of their products (again ) . I make my views known online to like minded people not because I think it's going to make a difference to the publishers but because I want my like minded gamer friends to know about it and can make an informed decission.

dbt1949 wrote:Personally I don't look at it as a boycott so much as the fact that I'm not going to have Starforce on my system and therefore am not going to buy any of their products (again ) . I make my views known online to like minded people not because I think it's going to make a difference to the publishers but because I want my like minded gamer friends to know about it and can make an informed decission.

Thats a pretty good and rational view.

Also, i'd like to point out, this forum and this forum alone, seems to be a mecca of a few rabid anti-starforcers. MOST gaming forums I hang out at, you seldom, if ever, see a thread on Starforce. I've never seen a thread on any other forum hijacked by Starforce talk - whereas here almost every other thread has some mention of it.

So if someone just reads this forum, they might be under the impression that Starforce is some massive galactic problem. But the reality is, its not a problem for the majority out there and the problems of the few hundred active posters here just make the issue appear more magnified.

Kobra wrote:
Also, i'd like to point out, this forum and this forum alone, seems to be a mecca of a few rabid anti-starforcers.

That's funny considering you used to be one of them. I guess you've seen the light, and now know better than the rest of us, eh?

I really don't care how many other 'forums' talk about starforce. That doesn't change the fact about what starforce is, how it works, and what it does to our PC's.

This forum also seems to have the most rabid pro-Starforce posters I've ever seen.

JayG wrote:This forum also seems to have the most rabid pro-Starforce posters I've ever seen.

This forum has the ONLY pro-starforce posters I've ever seen.

dbt1949 wrote:Personally I don't look at it as a boycott so much as the fact that I'm not going to have Starforce on my system and therefore am not going to buy any of their products (again ) . I make my views known online to like minded people not because I think it's going to make a difference to the publishers but because I want my like minded gamer friends to know about it and can make an informed decission.

So you are calling us likeminded? Some might constue that as a personal attack

Also, i'd like to point out, this forum and this forum alone, seems to be a mecca of a few rabid anti-starforcers. MOST gaming forums I hang out at, you seldom, if ever, see a thread on Starforce. I've never seen a thread on any other forum hijacked by Starforce talk - whereas here almost every other thread has some mention of it.

So if someone just reads this forum, they might be under the impression that Starforce is some massive galactic problem. But the reality is, its not a problem for the majority out there and the problems of the few hundred active posters here just make the issue appear more magnified.

Perhaps we're some of the most educated, eh?

Zekester wrote:

Also, i'd like to point out, this forum and this forum alone, seems to be a mecca of a few rabid anti-starforcers. MOST gaming forums I hang out at, you seldom, if ever, see a thread on Starforce. I've never seen a thread on any other forum hijacked by Starforce talk - whereas here almost every other thread has some mention of it.

So if someone just reads this forum, they might be under the impression that Starforce is some massive galactic problem. But the reality is, its not a problem for the majority out there and the problems of the few hundred active posters here just make the issue appear more magnified.

Perhaps we're some of the most educated, eh?

Or perhaps no one's silly enough to say Starforce is a good thing on other forums, so it never became an issue.

I think its because the Starforce bullshit is tolerate - even condoned here. Whereas on other forums, hijacking a game thread with Starforce talk is grounds for banning.

I mean ok, you don't like Starforce.. STFU and move on with life. I could give a rats ass about Starforce, but I hate it being "Thrown" in our face on every goddamn thread created to discuss any game that has it in it. I make a thread to discuss a new game, and in 2 seconds some swinging dick is in there going "Did you post this because this game has Starforce?".. WTF is that crap?

Sheesh, if Taco Bell gives you runs, do you go on a life crusade to stop people from eating Tacobell despite that the fact that 90% of everyone else won't get the runs from eating them? Thats about whats going on here.

Oooo....somebody's getting their panties in a bunch

Kobra wrote:I think its because the Starforce bullshit is tolerate - even condoned here. Whereas on other forums, hijacking a game thread with Starforce talk is grounds for banning.

I mean ok, you don't like Starforce.. STFU and move on with life. I could give a rats ass about Starforce, but I hate it being "Thrown" in our face on every goddamn thread created to discuss any game that has it in it. I make a thread to discuss a new game, and in 2 seconds some swinging dick is in there going "Did you post this because this game has Starforce?".. WTF is that crap?

Sheesh, if Taco Bell gives you runs, do you go on a life crusade to stop people from eating Tacobell despite that the fact that 90% of everyone else won't get the runs from eating them? Thats about whats going on here.

Its called a boycott, just like you posted about before. You ought to read those posts, they weren't bad.

And if Taco Bell uses slave labor to pick its tomatos, you boycott their asses and win. You let everybody know that Taco Bell uses slaves and then Taco Bell will stop using slaves. It works, and its a shame you can't see that the dozens of people at OO who figured out that it was Starforce causing problems are some of the few who realized that Starforce was even installed on our machines.

Maybe Kobra if you stopped ranting about Starforce all the time others might follow suit. How many posts have you made about it? Most people believe you work for them. Thanks to your 'crusade' and bragging about how unbreakable Starforce is, we have constant posts about how to bypass and crack it. Most of your facts turn out to be wrong. In the Dungeon Lords thread you state that the demo is from a early Beta, and when someone from a highly respected RPG site asks where you get your information as a tester from that site played a version from last month with the same problems, you don't respond. When you were posting under your previous alias I though you were just having a laugh with all the nonsense you were posting. Your constant mocking of those of us who had genuine problems with Starforce is pathetic. So it works great on your PC. I'm happy for you, and everyone else, so if that's the case maybe you should move on.

Rhett wrote:First off, let me say that I hope this will not lead to *ANY* debate whatsoever regarding Starforce.

Yet another thread that quickly deteriorates. Cant we have a thread that sticks to the original posters intentions? Havent you guys hijacked enough other posts to spew this crap in? I dont know about the others that came to this thread, but I for one would like to have just a topic stay on track.
Geez, put any freakin mention of SF in a thread and this shit happens.
I for one dont give a shit about others opinions on SF. I'll make my own mind up about it. I dont know how I start up my computer everyday without coming here to get a debate started about it. It would just be nice to open a thread and see...oh I dont know....A LIST OF STARFORCE PROTECTED GAMES??? And a discussion about which games have and dont have it. Not peoples opinions ABOUT SF. And yea...I know my post aint got nothing in it about SF games and it adds nothing to the thread. I came here to see and discuss a list of games, but that seems impossible without wading through post after post of bullshit. Start your own thread
and you can all banter back and forth and impress each other with your impressive knowledge about all things Starforce. And just to be fair to the majority of posters in this thread and others...Kobra...STFU already. Youre an antagonistic [attack removed] and when I see your name show up in a thread, I cringe. You got alot to say about one thing. And you've said enough. We get it.

I can see where everyone's ire is coming from, but once again, keep it semi on topic, and keep the personal attacks out of the thread, or it'll be locked.

I request that we just let this thread die now, it served its original purpose and then went astray so lets just let it die. Thanks

Maybe we should have a Starforce dumping ground thread to dump all arguments pro or against Starforce

Tals