Ubi and Copy Protection

[HodgePodge]

Well I don't care much for spam or for "haters" who make up as much bullshit as they can, and claim it for truth without evidence to back it up. Therefore I wholeheartedly agree with the locking and banning on the official forum.

It has even banned people who have had first-hand knowledge and experiences of damaged computers caused by StarForce.

Yhea sure. And all of them passed on a oppertunity off getting 10000$ for free.

Also any who dare to disclose the technical how & why of StarForce … or just anybody at all who says they don't want StarForce on their computer.

Spamming that you don't want to play a game several times over should earn the user a break no matter what forum. Good work moderators. Altough in my opinion they are to kind. FC should stop answering stupid assucations he already have spent all to much time proven faulty. These people don't care about facts anyway. Concentrate on the game itself FC ,not these people who probably never will be a paying custommer anyway. And the mods should just lock up the threads about no;. Stop beating a dead horse people!

Okey I am generalizing. I am just tired and darn sick of haters.

First of all, StarForce issue isn't a "dead horse" … the issue is hotter than ever. There are plenty of valid first-hand reports of the damage SF has caused … deleting & locking threads, ignoring these reports & banning people for expressing their concerns is unexcusable on UbiSoft's part. Now it's even deeper than just SF, doing business with a company as sleazy as UbiSoft is out of the question!

FC continues to insult our intelligence with his preposterous excuses for having SF unwillingly thrust upon us. I'm not a "hater" as you accuse me … I've been a Heroes fan from the beginning and was really excited about the development of Heroes V. I love the Heroes series & the only time I ever said that I "don't want to play the game" was over the StarForce issue.

As concerning getting $10,000 for free? Are you completely blind? Fly to Russia in the dead of winter, with a computer broken by StarForce, and go to StarForce's office, with StarForce doing the judging, to prove that StarForce was responsible? (By the way, it was only $1,000 until about the last day of the contest.)

But UbiSoft (and their mouthpiece, FC) has never addressed the concerns of honest gamers, who just wanted to play Heroes V without putting their computers at risk. Instead, they have accused us of being pirates and then posted unreliable, unverifiable data to support their stubborn insistence of including SF with their games!

So what's next for you, Galrim, continue sticking your head up your … and defend the outrageous behaviour of a game publisher who knowingly puts their customers at risk?

[Kalah]

There, there.

This is exactly the reason we don't allow debates on this here either; not because we support either side, but because the topic itself is volatile and causes members to engage in flame wars. As a consequence (as you know) we allow SF talk in this single thread only.

Now, I have said on numerous occasions that this discussion would continue to be allowed, but if you cannot behave in a civilised fashion, I may go back on my word.

So please, people, be nice. I have given you my final warning.

- K

[pepak]

It has even banned people who have had first-hand knowledge and experiences of damaged computers caused by StarForce.

Yhea sure. And all of them passed on a oppertunity off getting 10000$ for free.

The "opportunity" was formulated in such a way to make it virtually impossible to "win". I mean, the rules of the "contest" were such that I wouldn't apply even if I had a 100% knowledge of the source code of SF and if Iknew there was an actual code designed to do damage to the host computer. With no source code and (hopefully) no intent of the developers to cause harm, it would be sheer idiocy to try to win the prize - you couldn't win no matter what you do. Not a fair "contest" IMO.

Note: I don't think most claims against Starforce are valid, either. I very much doubt SF could do any damage to the actual hardware, even if its creators wanted it to. On the other hand, I am pretty certain SF can and does damage various software (primarily the applications it was designed to stop, but very likely other apps through "unforeseen interactions"). I am not much worried about permanent (hardware) or temporary (software) damage, though, my objections against it are more of the philosophical kind: I just don't see why I should be punished for buying the game. The possible damage is just the final straw.

[Infiltrator]

I can't believe how fanatic the amount of people that are holding onto the "SF detonating your computer" issue are, even though their numbers are dwindling by the minute. I was one of those people, untill I was proven wrong. StarForce does not cause problems, I have installed it on my computer with the closed beta pushes and so have the rest of the closed beta testers and none of us had problems, but I guess some individuals need to live in a daydream and pretend it does cause problems. Go ahead, if that's your excuse to buy a pirated game, in my eyes it won't be anything but that. From the day I installed it I have experienced no slow ups, no crashes and nothing whatsoever that would indicate of it's maliciousness. Basically - if I didn't know I installed it - I wouldn't know it was there.

I live in a country where piracy is very much at large, and original games are hard to come by. StarForce is the best protection aviable and that's the simple answer on why Ubi picked it for their games in the first place. I won't go into detail on the how's to brake it, but the process is far more involved then breaking other protections and may not turn out to be a fully working after it's done, for example SafeDisc is a walk in the park compared to SF. So to any of you who want to buy the pirate.. I wish luck, you'll need it.

Ubi doesn't want to lose customers, if SF was a problem and caused that much rioting, they would definetly do something. But lets back out and look at the bigger picture - the whining people are a very small % of the buyers market, the people that don't want to spend their money on the original game anyway. They need an excuse for that and SF is the scape Goat. But as more and more users are reporting that SF does not cause any problems indeed, the whining has become especially strong in the last week by the few of those that will not change their mind even if you lay the bare facts before them.

[ThunderTitan]

@Infiltrator:

You do know that just because it didn't cause you problems doesn't mean that it doesn't cause any problems. If it caused problems to everybody they couldn't include it on games at all.

Like I said many time before Fabrice/Ubi said that there we're 0.3% of people that had SF problems, and 0.02% problems we're unsolvable. And that was from over 1 milions customers, maybe more. He compared the % to the one Windows has, which is idiotic because Win is an OS, not Cd-Protection.

[Romanov77]

Im glad that I dislike most of Nival and Ubi games...

Unfortunatly, Homm is an exception...I will have to wait for the starforceless (hopefully) budget version...or maybe wait for an acceptable workaround to bypass starforce.

Note that such bypassing methos already exist and they work.
Theoretically, if I would, I could play SplinterCell: CT without cd in the drive...but the amount of pain in the ass isnt absolutely worth the game...

Hopefully, SF will have a terrible blow, once that the new Daemon tools comes out.

[ThunderTitan]

Actualy, having a SATA drive is already a blow to SF.


And here's something interesting: http://www.galciv2.com/Databank/faq.aspx

Q: Galactic Civilizations I got some attention because you didn’t have any CD copy protection. Aren’t you afraid of piracy?

Our primary concern is our customers – the people who pay my salary. They’re my overlord and I don’t want to inconvenience them. Moreover, piracy is really about how many sales are actually lost. What we do is put out free updates after release. We got Editor’s Choice Awards from most of the major game magazines for the original Galactic Civilizations, and that was on the 1.0 version in the box. However, we put out tons of updates after release that greatly enhanced that experience.

So let’s say someone got a “warez” copy. If they like the game, they’re going to want the updates, and to do that, they have to have a valid serial number that is verified on the server side (i.e., no cracks). So at that point, we’re going to get that sale or we would have never gotten the sale.

I don’t like game companies treating me like a criminal. If I’m paying $50 for a game then I better well be able to put it on my laptop and PC and not have to futz around with keeping track of the CD. Besides, I end up losing my CDs anyway.

[Continuity]

The awesomest philisophy to all this crap ever. I wish more developers thought this way, but of course, most developers have no choice but to listen to the demands of their publishers.

[DaemianLucifer]

Actualy, having a SATA drive is already a blow to SF.


And here's something interesting: http://www.galciv2.com/Databank/faq.aspx

Q: Galactic Civilizations I got some attention because you didn’t have any CD copy protection. Aren’t you afraid of piracy?

Our primary concern is our customers – the people who pay my salary. They’re my overlord and I don’t want to inconvenience them. Moreover, piracy is really about how many sales are actually lost. What we do is put out free updates after release. We got Editor’s Choice Awards from most of the major game magazines for the original Galactic Civilizations, and that was on the 1.0 version in the box. However, we put out tons of updates after release that greatly enhanced that experience.

So let’s say someone got a “warez” copy. If they like the game, they’re going to want the updates, and to do that, they have to have a valid serial number that is verified on the server side (i.e., no cracks). So at that point, we’re going to get that sale or we would have never gotten the sale.

I don’t like game companies treating me like a criminal. If I’m paying $50 for a game then I better well be able to put it on my laptop and PC and not have to futz around with keeping track of the CD. Besides, I end up losing my CDs anyway.

Hurrah!Ill buy GC just because of this!

[HodgePodge]

What Scorch is reading …

Boycott StarForce!



Smart baby dragons know how to avoid danger when it is near.

[LongDarkBlues]

I had been away from the board for a bit, and, in truth, away from games for a much longer bit. I stumbled onto this thread though, as I had been concerned that my CD burner has been really acting up since around the time I installed the HOMMV beta. Maybe it's a coincidence, maybe not, but, sure enough, the HOMM beta had installed Starforce in the hidden system hardware. It took 3 hours to finally remove the thing, which involved some combination of uninstalling the beta, running the Starforce uninstaller multiple times (it seemingly does nothing - it would say it uninstalled it, but then it was still there) and manually disabling and uninstalling it from the hidden non-plug-n-play hardware menu.

I don't care what it's supposed to do - I downloaded the beta in good faith, with full intention of buying the game, and now have had to spend my evening trying to get some software I didn't want off of my computer.

As the owner of a record label, I understand the ramifactions of digital piracy, but I say this to Nival with the utmost concern and as a huge fan of the Heroes games: this will only serve to alienate your audience and, if anything, create more piracy. If you want to keep your customers, don't try to screw over your customers.

I promise you this: Just as I didn't purchase any music that was created with the Sony rootkit, I will not be purchasing this game if it ships with Starforce. I had the money in my hand to buy the new Rick Rubin-produced Neil Diamond album, and, because of the rootkit, I just downloaded it instead. I had already mentally written out the check for HOMMV, but it's a safe bet that, after this, I will be pirating it as well. Nival, what else did you expect?

[ThunderTitan]

Actualy Ubi is the one that decides what CD-Protection is used. It's always the publisher.

[val-gaav]

What Scorch is reading …

Boycott Windows!



Smart baby dragons know how to avoid danger when it is near.

A little edit from me

SF means no emulation under Linux ... and there will be no Linux version so I guess that : All SF haters should wait for edition without starforce (dreams ) and I will be left to wait for either working emulation or native Linux port.

Still u know Mac users are the most happy now .... They will get their game ... and they will get it without SF .. All that is left is to be jelous

[ThunderTitan]

Still u know Mac users are the most happy now .... They will get their game ... and they will get it without SF .. All that is left is to be jelous

Or buy a Mac!

[HodgePodge]

SF means no emulation under Linux ... and there will be no Linux version so I guess that : All SF haters should wait for edition without starforce (dreams ) and I will be left to wait for either working emulation or native Linux port.

Still u know Mac users are the most happy now .... They will get their game ... and they will get it without SF .. All that is left is to be jelous

Are you telling me that Heroes V will be released for the Macintosh without StarForce?? (When?)

[ThunderTitan]

Are you telling me that Heroes V will be released for the Macintosh without StarForce?? (When?)

SF only works on Windows! You should know that, seeing how much you hate SF.

[HodgePodge]

Are you telling me that Heroes V will be released for the Macintosh without StarForce?? (When?)

SF only works on Windows! You should know that, seeing how much you hate SF.

Yes, I do know that! What I don't know is whether or not there will be a Heroes V released for the Macintosh???

[Gaidal Cain]

It will . CH even hosts a small Heroes Mac site, and AS has mentioned it in a couple of of news items.

[HodgePodge]

It will . CH even hosts a small Heroes Mac site, and AS has mentioned it in a couple of of news items.

Well, that certainly puts a whole new "light" on things. All I need to do now is buy a Macintosh!

[Corribus]

Well, that certainly puts a whole new "light" on things. All I need to do now is buy a Macintosh!

Perish the thought!