StarForce new reliase

[al1uk]

clearest statement yet that tricking the new starforce will not work with dt: http://www.star-force.com/forum/inde...t=0&#entry2875

[ß]

??? what statement ?? clear ???
just because a sf member says that v4 will be better does not mean jack... let's wait and see eh ?? stop being an alarmist!

[LooDos]

they even said SF3.7 will blacklist DT4. and look at this loose CP... so i dont believe it until i saw it

[Mystique]

Right, i totally agree with you LooDos.

They say that SF 4.0 will not work with DT4 and/or Unplugging your Drives and i can tell you that there always be ways to play StarForce 4 Games by emulating with DT4.

Its only a little matter of time when a new Alcohol version ist out and DT4 brings a fixed version for it... And the War will continue.

[evilkittypiro]

I was just wondering, what ever happened to serial keys? Anything that must be obtained in the physical world cuts back on pirated copying, yet actual buyers can still copy the game like US law states they have a right to do (1 copy for backup purposes and 1 copy for every new medium the data is used on).

UT2004 did this somewhat. They included a light disc protection and a serial key. If you update the game, the protection goes away, but you need to pop in the disc when you update to verify you own the game first. No biggie. Yet in order to play the game online, as UT is focused on online play, you need a real serial key.

Why can't game companies just make your game check online periodically to verify a key, then lock or unlock the game depending on the result? No more Starforce scrambling IDE drivers or anything like that, yet the game still retains a great sales count for a long time. Only dedicated pirates would crack the game, and the masses that happened to discover what torrents are will still be clueless as to how to crack the game, resulting with them buying the game.

Or are my two cents counterfeit? I dunno, lol.

[LooDos]

I was just wondering, what ever happened to serial keys? Anything that must be obtained in the physical world cuts back on pirated copying, yet actual buyers can still copy the game like US law states they have a right to do (1 copy for backup purposes and 1 copy for every new medium the data is used on).

UT2004 did this somewhat. They included a light disc protection and a serial key. If you update the game, the protection goes away, but you need to pop in the disc when you update to verify you own the game first. No biggie. Yet in order to play the game online, as UT is focused on online play, you need a real serial key.

Why can't game companies just make your game check online periodically to verify a key, then lock or unlock the game depending on the result? No more Starforce scrambling IDE drivers or anything like that, yet the game still retains a great sales count for a long time. Only dedicated pirates would crack the game, and the masses that happened to discover what torrents are will still be clueless as to how to crack the game, resulting with them buying the game.

Or are my two cents counterfeit? I dunno, lol.

so u are wondering why no game uses online verification instead of f*cking CP?
let me explain it to you...

1. not everybody has an internet connection. sad but true! and so these guys wont buy the game & the company would make less money...

2. many people hate online verification as seen HL2. how long did it take to activate this game? i think it took me two or three days. and if i buy a game i expect to play it as soon as installed. after the verification i had to dl this shitty patches. but i think Half Life 2 is a great game and only because of this fact they sold it a lot.

3. also online verification games get cracked. this happened with Half Life 2 and Earth 2160 (dunno if u know this game, it's a very fine RTS).

so why should companies use online verification?!
nevertheless i think that in future more online verification games will be released...

[evilkittypiro]

Lol, I love the Earth (insert year number here) series. One of my favorite rts games.

As for what I was saying, I wasn't totally clear. I didn't mean allout file encryption like HL2 used, simply that core executables and libraries be encrypted. HL2 was unusable without the internet, and requires a downloaded snippet of data for the files to work. I'm saying that the files are intact, but just require a code to run. It's almost instantaneous to send a 1 kb info file to a user rather than a 38 mb append file.

The no-internet statement isn't a big one, either. About 5% of American gamers don't have access to the internet, and from what I've heard that's about the same fail rate for legal StarForce users. Either way you'd be losing the same amount of users by adopting one method or the other.

Finally, if online verification is cracked, only cracked copies can play with each other. You still need a working and unique code key to play online too, limiting the users further. Yes, you can play online, but with a vastly smaller playerbase and less matchmaking features (is "vastly smaller" an oximoron? lol).

You brought up some good points, but even so I still say anything's better than StarForce style copy protection encryptions. Especially since StarForce is violating American law anyway (in not providing for personal and free use exceptions to copyright law). It's only getting by because it's distributed out of Russia, and they know this.

Now I'm off to play Earth 2160 because you piqued my interest in it again.