Directional Pad

StarForce vs. StrawMen

Lets talk about copy protection for a moment. Piracy in the PC gaming scene has always been around - always - and the ever-present piracy boogeyman has led to a constantly escalating arms-race in copy protection techniques. We've long since passed the days of creative copy protection, like the types found in old Lucasarts SCUMM games, where you had to match up Sam & Max paper dolls and the like to make sure you had the manual of the game. Modern PC copy protection goes way beyond verifying that you bought the game and have the manual, and now comes in the form of cd keys, online authentication, and most recently methods of disc encryption and disc verification.

None of these methods have stopped piracy, or even slowed it down, all it does is make money for producers of the copy protection schemes and constantly annoy people who actually go out and buy these games. For a good example, stroll through any major gaming forum on the release day of any PC game that has a dvd version, and marvel at all of the people complaining about how their perfectly legitimate store-bought copy refuses to play in their dvd-rw drive. This is the kind of idiocy PC gamers have to put up with due to the piracy arms race.

It doesn't end there, though. One particular method that seems to be gaining steam is StarForce, a ridiculously overzealous protection system that has to dig into your system deep to install device drivers and special disc analyzing software and all manner of different DLL's just to even remotely get itself started. Once it's in, it then goes on the offensive, and makes sure you don't have any imaging software running. No Daemon Tools, no Alcohol 120%, not even Nero's image-mounting software. But it isn't done there, the StarForce verification software has to be running all throughout the game, because the games can be developed so that in-game events can trigger a StarForce check.

Oh, and when it comes time to re-claim that hard drive space occupied by the game, and you finally uninstall it, guess who sticks around? Why yes, StarForce stays. Wouldn't want to have to re-install StarForce next time you get a StarForce game. . . but even if you don't get another StarForce game, or intend to get another StarForce game, and you then try to uninstall StarForce itself, it puts up a fight. You can uninstall it repeatedly and it will refuse to leave, and the developers have no system in place to actually remove it. If you want it off, you have to resort to user-developed tools, which the developers of StarForce desperately try to keep out of sight.

The problems don't end there, though. For instance, there's no 64-bit version of StarForce. So if you're running Windows XP 64, well, tough. You don't get to play Ubisoft games. Then there's all the anecdotal evidence of bizarre problems, hard drives ceasing to be readable while StarForce is in-use, system slowdowns due to StarForce churning, cd/dvd rom drives becoming unusable while StarForce is in control, etc.

So why is this news?

Well, Protection Technology, the developers of StarForce, have issued a challenge, a public contest for $1000. All you have to do is show that StarForce breaks optical media drives.

Except you have to fly yourself to Moscow to do it.

Oh and it has to REALLY break the drive. The drive has to not work while StarForce is installed and running, but also CONTINUE to not work when removed and re-installed in a second computer.

The problem with this is that it's a rather straight-forward straw man argument. No one claims that StarForce physically harms drives, it just inhibits them from functioning properly while StarForce is running. Furthermore, even if people did make such arguments, said arguments would only be a tiny fraction of the actual problems with StarForce. So Protection Technology has singled out an insignificant aspect of the enormous argument against StarForce, set up a "challenge" no one is going to even remotely try to take since it's irrelevant to the argument, and will then declare victory when no one wins.

So watch for our coverage in February 2006 where we'll be reporting on Protection Technologies proclaiming themselves victorious, arguing that because no one took up their ridiculous "challenge" that clearly there cannot be anything wrong with StarForce.

We can only hope that some day people will realize that the way you keep people from pirating your goods isn't hilariously invasive copy protection, it's shipping a product worth buying at a reasonable price.

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