Ubisoft And Starforce Parting Ways?

Ars Technica posts about the possibility of Ubisoft ditching StarForce in the wake of some very bad PR for the copy-protection company. From the article: "'To return from there good on an important subject, that of Starforce, here information which should interest you: it was decided that protection anti-copy used on the very new Ubisoft plays would not be the Starforce software...Yes, that relates to Heroes as well!' The translation may not be pretty, but the news is. Starforce should be considered malware if you ask me, and treated accordingly. If this really does mean Ubisoft is going to stop using it on their new releases we can all do a little dance of joy."

Better translation

[iwan-nl]

Ars reader Broomball posted a better translation:

So, to come back to an important subject, that of "Starforce", here is something that might be of interest: It has been decided that the anti-piracy tool to be used on all new UbiSoft games will not be Starforce.

P.s. To answer the actual question: Yes, this includes "Heroes".

Re:Now what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your info is out of date. The 'remove hardware' workaround is only required when playing from a cloned bit-for-bit (uncracked) copy of the game (yes you can play cloned SF games without even cracking them). It's necessary because the virtual CD-ROMs all appear as SCSI drives and if you have one or more IDE CD-ROMs then Starforce forces you to insert the game in one of those IDE drives. No IDE and it'll boot from the virtual SCSI drive just fine.

Nowadays groups are able to crack StarForce just like any other program, so you run a patched .exe and the game runs like it was never protected to begin with. Recently, One of the main groups in the cracking scene even released some tools they'd written to help others crack SF games...

Re:Damn managers, poor hackers

[spyrochaete]

Most copy protection schemes simply encrypt the main executable file (e.g., GAME.EXE) to prevent crackers from reverse engineering the source. In addition to encryption, Starforce works like a rootkit to install bottom-level drivers ("ring 0 drivers") that directly control your CDROM drives by sitting just below Windows' built in IDE drivers, therefore controlling all CDROM access even for discs not protected by Starforce. Crackers have found it exceedingly difficult to squeeze code between ring 0 drivers and Windows' IDE drivers so many Starforce-protected games remain uncracked. Unfortunately, Starforce isn't compatible with all IDE chipsets and CDROM drives so it can cause Windows to read CDs incorrectly, cause burning software to find no CDRW drives, and even can reboot your computer without warning if it mistakenly thinks you're trying to circumvent the protection. Because Starforce's drivers are hidden it can be extremely difficult to tell whether you have it installed at all, and whether Starforce is the cause of such problems.

If Starforce had listened to its indirectly paying customers they could have made a better product, but instead their PR people called all naysayers idiots and criminals and touted their product as perfect. It's mainly because of this attitude (but also because of the bugs) that I'm glad they're losing such a high profile client as Ubisoft, and hopefully many more.

Re:Better translation: Nitpick

[Scrameustache]

"to be used on all new UbiSoft games"

That should read "to be used on the next Ubisoft Games".

"les tout prochains" means "the very next". "All new" would have been "tous les prochains".