Take your fight to StarForce

[sYk0]

If you are experiencing problems with starforce messing up your pc/hardware read this artical and you could win $5000 us dollars.

[lazlo]

So they raised the bar to $5000 eh.

They want someone who believes Starforce has made their drive/s malfunction to buy another drive and try to re-create the event in Russia.

They must be confident, one person would be enough to give a global 'hands-off' to anything with starforce attached to it.

Perhaps the devs here can offer Starforce $5000 if they can make a driver they can't *****

[joeboy]

They can't be very confident, if they are so convinced it doesn't cause problems then they should really make it worthwhile. If they were to add another zero to that figure they would surely be inundated with offers. As it stands there is not much incentive to travel to Russia with your PC tucked under your arm.

In the past year our staff and many of our clients tried restlessly to reproduce the matter based on these rumors. Using our hardware collection we assembled systems alike, but such problems never took place.

If they have indeed done as they say it must have cost them many thousands trying to track down this problem, surely if they are serious about curing this then it has to be worth big money for someone to show them the fault.

No this is just one big PR Stunt as the following statement proves

After ten days into the contest we’ve had a lot of visitors at our website and only one unconfirmed application.
This makes us even more confident that the opinion about StarForce drivers damaging optical drives is nothing but a rumor.

They are already gloating that nobody has taken up their challenge nobody will as it stands, all this will do is infuriate those customers that are experiencing problems

(Edit) I just read the contest Terms & Conditions & it states the following:

the subject PC’s hardware must be under warranty terms

I guess this rules out CD drives over a year old then

[_skip]

Even if noone can prove that SF causes hardware damage, it doesn't mean that it's a perfect, full-working, annoyance-free copy protection.

Don't trust me? Try googlin with starforce related keywords and it will lead you to many, many, many official game forums plenty of unhappy customers. (I started a topic about it).

They started offering 1000, now it's 5000... Not a lot if you consider than some companies offer more than 100'000$ if you can defeat their security systems.

What could happen if it was very high? Serious people and company would start investigating! But it is low, so even if your dvd drive stops working, your are more likely to go to the store to buy a newer one than you are to take a plane to Moscou.

As a result, noone will participate and starforce team will clean its reputation saying starforce annoyances are just rumors because noone has been able to prove any fact.

[BadIronTree]

anyone want make 10.000 $ fast?

http://www.star-force.com/protection.phtml?c=83&id=776

We are not joking!

Our contest has been going on for almost two months now. We received a lot of different opinions and zero applications.

Though we raised the prize from $1000 to $5000, some think that this is just a joke. Now we are raising the prize to $10,000 US.

Please, feel free to participate! We are not joking!

almost a nice car

[BadIronTree]

http://www.star-force.com/protection.phtml?c=261&id=707

If you can be the first to reproduce this situation in our office, we will be happy to award you with $10 000.00 US, cover your trip to Moscow and pay 2 days’ lodging.

Please submit your applications before January 31 2006.

[evilkittypiro]

You know they never intended on anyone actually entering the contest. Like they said, they haven't gotten any entry forms yet. It's not that their protection is infallable, just nobody wants to go through the hassle of taking time off just to prove someone wrong. Time's worth more than money, after all.

I claim the contect a bogus farce. They KNEW nobody would enter it, and they're just boasting the results of a trick contest.

[NetSoerfer]

Are you kidding? If I had a way to show them that StarForce breaks CD/DVD drives, I'd be happy to fly to Moscow! For $10,000 I'd be more than willing to bring my computer to Russia... And I suppose so would others. I think it's a pretty clever way to show that those rumors are nothing more than rumors. If there was such a problem at all someone would claim the money.

[BadIronTree]

same... i have never had problems with SF in any of my 50+ pcs ....
and i have never hear that destroy the pc...

only that is slow to start the game
and is near imposible to "crack - bypass"

well if you have a 6 year old Cd drive that cant work... it will propably cant work with other normal CDs tooo

i have seen some dvd readers that dont play DVD- or DVD+ or they do read them at 1x speed

[evilkittypiro]

Actually, I've had starforce kill a drive once. It scrambled my virtual drives just for seeing them when i forgot that my SC:CT disc was still in its case. I could play the game if I popped in the disc, but my virtual drives were fried (at least until a reinstall of XP).

But here's how I can prove them wrong. I tried to reinstall a new virtual drive later on and then burn something from it onto a real, IDE based burner. The virtual drive caused my burner to damage itself at the end of the process, an now i can only burn discs that are about 300 mb or less. Anything over and the discs are warped.

Starforce didn't kill the drive. It caused something else to kill it.

They have to know about this, hence why I said they probably don't think people would actually enter the contest. And I agree with _skip that another zero tacked onto the prize would actually make it worth it. That and it would make their company credible, since lock and security companies give out six-digit prizes.