Legally Downloaded Games

[Faraz_Hayat]

If we purchase games from websites(legal),what sort of protection do these have.It cannot be anything like starforce for we download it.

[Jito463]

Don't be so sure. I bought a D2D (Direct 2 Drive) download of Splinter Cell Chaos Theory back when I switched to x64 because I believed I could then use it to play my game under my new OS. It was also protected by Starforce, just without the CD checks since it was a digital download (meaning I was stuck with a downloaded copy I couldn't play).

[AnalCobra]

There is a german site where you can legally download games (www.gamesload.de). I think all (or most of them) are protected by Starforce.

[async]

Protections are for example:

ActiveMark
SafeCast
Starforce
Boonty

[Reef]

Starforce on CD/DVD is quite different than Starforce on demo's or downloadable games.

For example: Trackmania Nations is a free downloadable game with Starforce on it. But it doesn't install any drivers.
The only exception is when you already have Starforce drivers on your system, they will be updated and it will ask you to reboot.
I've played this game a lot on my SF free PC, it never asked me to reboot my machine and I also never had these SF drivers installed.

[Jito463]

Not necessarily. If that was the case, my D2D version of Chaos Theory would have worked on my x64 system. However, it did not. It was still stuck on using 32-bit drivers which are incompatible with x64.