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Starforce: the DRM that couldn't

H

H-street

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Feb 25, 2005
Messages
4,538
I don't want this to be about Piracy, I am a big Anti-Piracy gamer but i just have to vent a little bit.

I am a huge PC game collector, I am currently hovering at just about 375 original PC games ranging from 1996 to the present.

Out of all the incompatabilies i have run across, I finally ran into the DRM itself preventing running of some of my favorite older games.

The culprit, StarForce. The solution - None.

This isn't about activation or any "intrusive" DRM, this is a simple fact that the Starforce drivers for some older games will not run and have no hope of being fixed to run on Windows 7.

Starforce says to go to the publisher, its their responsiblity to issue a patch, but lets be practical for a moment. What publisher (The one in question happens to be CodeMasters) in their right mind is going to spend time and money patching an old game? Starforce has said they will provide the updated protection free of charge, but in actuality the cost to patch the old game isn't any where near free. Starforce makes this statement to try and make themselves out to be the "good guy"

Starforce said:
Protection versions below 5.5 do not support Windows 7.
Users of products that protected with 3.x/4.x/5.0 versions should contact the protected program developers or publishers to obtain Windows 7 patches, or use previous Windows version to run the products.
StarForce offers FREE re-protection for all the developers and publishers of the programs that utilize version below 5.50 to release the appropriate patches. Please contact your sales manager for re-protection and further details.
Click to expand...

Anyways i just had to vent a little bit, i am not worried about the services of Steam or things of the online nature. Even EA's online activation is probably going to outlive Starforces inability to update their protection.

In the end, the consumer loses in a big way. I am in no way suggesting piracy, but i am do hope publishers will stand up and take Note of starforce's inability to provide future proof protection for the consumer. Up until now i haven't had any issues with starforce, but I guess i'll have to be a little more cautious moving forward.

The game that really brought this light for me is my copy of Colin Mcrae 2005 from Code Masters. I've tried for a while now to get their "vista fix" to work in Windows 7, but even that has failed (an email to Codemasters confirmed this)
 
Class action suit? Talk to a lawyer and see what can come of this?
 
I doubt you could sue a company for software not working in an operating system that didn't exist when the game was first released. Their only obligation would probably be to make sure it was usable on the OS they originally released it for.
Which brings to light the fact that if the OP wants to keep running games that are older the only option would be to dual boot with XP for older games.
 
Needs to be brought the attention of developers, Im sure its not what they wanted, they just didn't realise how shit starforce was when they decided to use it.
 
Nearly every software end-user license agreement out there says something to the effect of "...this product is provided as-is, without warranty of any kind, without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose..."

With that wording, they may be able to weasel out of just about any liability they have to provide functional software.
 
I'm not going to link or anything but I don't get why people are so afraid of running a no-cd hack on a legit copy of a game?
 
RexPokinghorn said:
I guess the question is, why should they have to?
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It is true that they shouldn't have to but if you have a huge collection of games I would always install a no-cd hack in the first place or at least make nice backups that I could mount instead of inserting a cd all the time.
 
Banko said:
I'm not going to link or anything but I don't get why people are so afraid of running a no-cd hack on a legit copy of a game?
Click to expand...

That is saying that the no-cd crack would remove Starforce before it installs. Dunno if thats gonna happen. On top of that some people will be weary that a no-cd crack might have a virus hidden in it or might just be a virus renamed as the crack.

I believe this site does not like talking about no-cd cracks. Its not that they contain Serial keys but still circumvent the original software design which is probably against the EULA.

For the OP, i'd try to write codemaster and ask them and see if they might release a starforce removal patch so the game could be installed and played.
 
RogueTrip said:
That is saying that the no-cd crack would remove Starforce before it installs. Dunno if thats gonna happen.

...

For the OP, i'd try to write codemaster and ask them and see if they might release a starforce removal patch so the game could be installed and played.
Click to expand...

How are they going to write a patch for a game you can't install? They would need to remaster the entire install media to fix this.
 
ocellaris said:
How are they going to write a patch for a game you can't install? They would need to remaster the entire install media to fix this.
Click to expand...

It is possible to do with a patch, though rather circuitous and cumbersome to the players and development teams.
 
Banko said:
I'm not going to link or anything but I don't get why people are so afraid of running a no-cd hack on a legit copy of a game?
Click to expand...

It's still illegal. Bypassing copy protection is a violation of the DMCA.
 
I know for Dirt (The Original), starforce needs to be installed when you first run the game. Same with Splinter Cell Chaos Theory (which due the starcrap, won't work on vista unless I do use other methods mentioned here).

As long as starforce installs after the game installation process, you still have the ability to run the game, just not how the developer/publisher/DMCA crap wanted you to (if you could lol).
 
WarriorX said:
Will running the game in compatibility mode work?
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Nope, the probablem isn't the game itself, the games work fine (or would work fine), the issue is the way Starforce protection works.

There is a driver/dll that is installed onto the system, there is then a "protection.dll" that is used for each game, the protection.dll has to have the driver on teh system to work (or at least that is how I have started to understand how it works).

The problem is the older star-force driver WILL NOT WORK on windows 7 at all, and never will. I just got an email back from Starforce that says they cannot (as in they don't know how) fix it.

maybe one day i'll get lucky and CMR2005 will show up on GoG.com DRM free.
 
Can't you just dual boot Windows 7 or Vista, XP...... to play whatever old games ???
 
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