Development Info Gothic III and StarForce break up

[psycojester]

The internet turned me into a rabid pirate. I downloaded 18 copies of Oblivion just so i could laugh about how much i hurt Bethesda's profits

 

[Seboss]

Ok I give up. The Codex is a good place for healthy arguments but this one is getting invaded by idiots.

Go Pirhanha Bytes and kick Oblivion ass ! (that won't be difficult in terms of quality but in terms of sales....)

Oh and Italians can die.

 

[Kraszu]

As for the game prices i think that they should be diferent in diferent part of the world. In Poland game should not cost the same as in Sweden. Games are translated aslo because of that reason, games for 10$ are doing good in Poland (new games, not most popular but more then average title like sr2), avarage cost of game droped, there are some games that cost 50$ but most cost 30$.

 

[sheek]

:shock:

 

[Seboss]

This poster is not only idiotic but technically inexact. That's what public proxies are made for

 

[LlamaGod]

They had an ad for it before a really shitty DVD I watched.

It was like

'Would you steal a car?'
'Would you steal food?'
'Would you steal clothes?'

'THEN..Why would you steal a DVD? Illegal Download... Inappropriate for All Ages'.


Yeah, DVDs are vital to my life and are unwavering in quality.

 

[Drakron]

Ok I give up. The Codex is a good place for healthy arguments but this one is getting invaded by idiots.

You are the one that defended StarForce with "only pirates boycott StarForce" that its their excuse.

The argument of piracy have been done several times here.

 

[Seboss]

Let's say that I expressed the eventuality that some of the technical issues that SF seem to arouse might be overly exaggerated by people who see SF as a threat to their warezing pleasure, yes.
I also tried to defend the fact that copy protection might be necessary in some cases, or at least that it's not necessarily evil.
But I'm not convinced myself.

 

[Naked_Lunch]

Let's say that I expressed the eventuality that some of the technical issues that SF seem to arouse might be overly exaggerated by people who see SF as a threat to their warezing pleasure, yes.

Or they may be true accounts by people who've actually gotten their computers fucked up by a retarded copy protection.

 

[Drakron]

StarForce operates as at level 0 ... level 0 is only for the OS, 1st party applications and trusted applications.

By working at level 0 it can fucked up your computer because it have the same privilagues as your OS.

Copy protection sould NOT opperate at that level, besides what its said by StarForce is not diferent of when Sony tried a copy protection for their CDs that was even illegal in several european countries.

Unless you are willing this DRM rootkit:

http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/1 ... aking.html

 

[Seboss]

I know that. But things got complicated since Microsoft certified Starforce 4, making it a trusted application.
I can understand that SF can make some ruckus on the software level, but these words of burned DVD-Rom drives and HDD are a bit hard to swallow without experiencing them don't you think ? Even the Chernobyl virus was not able to wreak so much havoc.

 

[Drakron]

http://news.com.com/5208-7349-0.html?fo ... start=-184

Its C|Net news ...

(I got a lot of things wrong in previous posts, I apologize for that)

 

[Claw]

What really annoys me are the un-interruptible anti-piracy ads on DVDs.

I ought to write the producers a letter: "If you keep wasting my time with those ads, I'll get pirated DVDs with the ads removed instead, you morons."

 

[Twinfalls]

What really annoys me are the un-interruptible anti-piracy ads on DVDs.

I ought to write the producers a letter: "If you keep wasting my time with those ads, I'll get pirated DVDs with the ads removed instead, you morons."

YES!

Uninterruptible shit (whoosh, STUDIO NAME, jingle) on DVDs is bad enough, uninterruptible anti-piracy lectures are stunningly enraging.

You should start up a website with that very message, a good number of hits might start putting the fear into them.

 

[Bluto]

I have declined to purchase Space Rangers II primarily because of what I have read in these forums about Starforce, so this has been an interesting conversation. In the interest of hearing opposing veiws I went to the Starforce website to hear their position. They have posted in their defence a $10,000 reward to anyone that can show that their software has affected their software or hardware. Have any of the posters on this forum claiming damage taken them up on their offer?

 

[Hazelnut]

What really annoys me are the un-interruptible anti-piracy ads on DVDs.

I ought to write the producers a letter: "If you keep wasting my time with those ads, I'll get pirated DVDs with the ads removed instead, you morons."

Too fucking right! They piss me off no end, especially since my youngest learned how to switch off the DVD player... cue another uninterruptable lecture and blue air!! :evil: :evil:

 

[Vault Dweller]

I have declined to purchase Space Rangers II primarily because of what I have read in these forums about Starforce...

If you've read anything about Space Rangers here, you should have realized that playing Space Rangers is well worth the pain of dealing with any potential problems SF may cause you.

 

[Frau Bishop]

Or playing SR2 without SF by using a rip-version. Every developer who still uses SF should place a reliable snail-address in the game to send the 20 bucks to - which it would be worth to use such a "shareware"-edition.

 

[Kraszu]

They have posted in their defence a $10,000 reward to anyone that can show that their software has affected their software or hardware. Have any of the posters on this forum claiming damage taken them up on their offer?

No that is bullshit, they want you to make exaclly the same error on 2 diferent pc.

Funny thing is that piracy actually make me buy the game). I wasn't sure if I would like so I downloaded sr1 to try it (it was before demo, and the weight of sr is not much more then half of sr2 demo). That was before Bryce guide on codex.

 

[User was nabbed fit]

I never experienced any problem with SF so as far as I am concerned, this is bullshit.

The world doesn't revolve around you. Just because you haven't had any problems doesn't mean that other people also haven't.

 

[RadioGnome Invisible]

Bluto
They have posted in their defence a $10,000 reward to anyone that can show that their software has affected their software or hardware.

Yeah, suuure. Looks like good old PR action to me. First, you have to demonstrate it on clean, freshly installed PC. Please tell me, how many PCs you know or use are working in lab conditions and have only OS installed? Second, even if you manage to demonstrate some kind of HARDWARE crash, feel free to prove it was SF's fault, even if everyone knows that.

Seboss
Try using Mitsumi CD-writers on GigaRAID controller with 3.5.XX SF installed (don't know the first version to cause this bug, mine came with A.I.M.2). Not sure about you, but I find frequent random system lockups on CD access quite annoying. My guess, they're trying to do something with people using RAID-connected drives, because you don't have to disconnect them running SF-clone.

 

[bryce777]

Bluto
They have posted in their defence a $10,000 reward to anyone that can show that their software has affected their software or hardware.

Yeah, suuure. Looks like good old PR action to me. First, you have to demonstrate it on clean, freshly installed PC. Please tell me, how many PCs you know or use are working in lab conditions and have only OS installed? Second, even if you manage to demonstrate some kind of HARDWARE crash, feel free to prove it was SF's fault, even if everyone knows that.

Also, the biggest issue is that it would not have a symptom of 1 install starforce 2. system dies. It would first make the system wonky and flaky, and then just die completely. That's what happened to me. Every single HDD and my dvd burner all dying around the same time a few months after installing it is too much for me to buy as coincidence.

 

[Nightjed]

What really annoys me are the un-interruptible anti-piracy ads on DVDs.

I ought to write the producers a letter: "If you keep wasting my time with those ads, I'll get pirated DVDs with the ads removed instead, you morons."

YES!

Uninterruptible shit (whoosh, STUDIO NAME, jingle) on DVDs is bad enough, uninterruptible anti-piracy lectures are stunningly enraging.

You should start up a website with that very message, a good number of hits might start putting the fear into them.

Heh, you guys should consider yourselves lucky, i live in Argentina (region 4), all the dvds made here have un-interruptible everything but the movie, yes that means antipiracy ads, fbi ads (i always wondered why they leave those, the fbi has no power over here), goverment propaganda(these are even more anoying than the antipiracy ads), product comercials and previews (between 2 and 5, sometimes more) and those are the actual "for collection" releases.

And thats without considering that movies come out on r4 about 4 to 8 months later than r1 (big budget releases come at the same time tho)

Its funny to see how the blockbusters (who only have r4 dvds) are getting trashed by small dvd rental stores that have lots of r1 dvds (sometimes you can rent r1 dvds of movies that still havent been released on cinema yet), i dont know hows the deal with r1 dvds is but they seem to be alowed to rent copies of those (hole in the legislation maybe ?)

edit: and btw, about those lame antipiracy ads, how the hell could they compare stealing food, wallets, cars or dvds to piracy ?, when you steal a car then somebody stops having said car, same goes to anything "physical" however piracy doesnt cause that kind of loss, all the costs involved (bandwith, blank dvd, burner, etc) are paid by the pirate, the only thing you are not "paying" for is for the license, physical things cant be compared with abstract concepts as licenses

 

[Seboss]

Seboss
Try using Mitsumi CD-writers on GigaRAID controller with 3.5.XX SF installed (don't know the first version to cause this bug, mine came with A.I.M.2). Not sure about you, but I find frequent random system lockups on CD access quite annoying. My guess, they're trying to do something with people using RAID-connected drives, because you don't have to disconnect them running SF-clone.

Yeah, they are blacklisting USB optical drives and DVD-R medias like crazy as well.
I have to admit that I overlooked exotic configuration like yours, and I'm not surprised you got problems. SF goes pretty low level indeed and they certainly cannot test every single driver/hardware configuration.
I know that SF causes crashes and lockups, I experienced it myself when I tried to use a SFclone of X3 (note, I had problems trying to circumvent the protection). Still, I know for sure from several forums that a lot of people are bullshiting about SF.
It became a common scapegoat for grilled HDD and optical drives and whatnot. But it's very difficult if not impossible to establish that SF is responsible of that.
Even so, if a mere illegal access to a cd/dvd controller can kill the drive, I think the manufacturers responsibility can be involved because firmwares should implement basic control to prevent operations that could potentially destroy the device.

 

[suleo]

They have posted in their defence a $10,000 reward to anyone that can show that their software has affected their software or hardware. Have any of the posters on this forum claiming damage taken them up on their offer?

Gene Ray is giving a $1000 reward (or is it $10k now?) if you can prove that his timecube is wrong.

Besides, read the fine print in that SF offer. They require YOU to fly to Moscow AT YOUR OWN EXPENSE, stay there for a while at your own expense and reproduce the problem at their labs. It's essnetially, as the Gene Ray example above, an unwinnable situation for you.

Oh and as for 75% of the SF games being uncracked. Sure...but 75% of them are TOTAL CRAP anyway.

- Splinter Cell Chaos Theory (the one deemed totally uncrackable): CRACKED
- Silent Hunter 3: CRACKED
- Space Rangers 2: CRACKED
- Cossacks 2 (and expansion): CRACKED

Ok so "Pippa Funnell Take The Reins" is cloned, not cracked. But as I said, good games get cracked these days after the reloaded public release. Crap games get cloned because nobody really bothers to crack them.