A little worried about Daemon Tools V4 and Starforce......

[plexwriter]

Yea it's great that Daemon Tools V4 will beat Starforce, but I am worried that it's not going to last long. Believe me, the last thing Starforce wants is to take Daemon Tools off this chart: http://www.star-force.com/protection.phtml?c=95 An emulator that beats Starforce would cost them a huge amount of sales (why would a game company pay for copy protection that can be beaten by a free emulator).

No doubt the Starforce devs read these forums and are well aware that DTools V4 beats Starforce 3.5. They are also probably well aware of the methods an emulator can use to beat their protection, and are already developing countermeasures for the next version of Starforce. I hope I am wrong, but I think a new version of Starforce that beats DTools V4 will be released very soon after DTools V4 is released. Unfortunately, current games can easily be patched to the new version of Starforce. :? Like I said, I hope I am wrong but I doubt it. Starforce means business. Hmm looks like I might have to start buying games off of Direct2Drive if I don't want to deal with discs. 8)

[estimablesir]

i share your concerns

Yeah i was thinking the same thing, I'd also like to know in what capacity daemon tools will be supporting StarForce. It would be most unfortunate if after all this waiting and abstaining from harassing the devs about release dates, daemon tools doesn't support emulation of StarForce protection. I've read posts in this forum that suggest the developers "intend" to include support for StarForce in v4, but that's hardly a guarantee. I don't like to complain, it's just that much of the information available about StarForce discourages me from believing the devs can actually pull it off. Someone tell me, are my fears unfounded? :cry:

[TheColonial]

IMHO, I can't see how this changes the scene from the way it works now. There are many companies out there producing protections that DT is able to emulate (not juse SF). Yes, it's tools like DT that force them to constantly update, refine their methods, use better protection, etc.

I can't see how DT 4, and it's emulation for StarForce (or any other protection scheme), is going to change the lay of the land. If SF is updated, DT's emulation will (may?) be updated.

This is just a cat and mouse game that's been played for a long time already. There's not really anything new about it.

Cheers
TC

[|NOLAFF|-JD]

You know the general concept of ANY kind of protection is that it can be broken. Nothing is unhackable. It can get close to it, but where there is a will there is a way. If starforce is so great that it can be updated to beat anything that currently defeats it then I have to ask how can it be updated so that it includes old SF protected games as well? Over the internet maybe, but then what if a person didn't have an internet connection, or a firewall that blocked it. The point I'm trying to make is that if at any point the information is decrypted (which it is when it is played) then the protection can be defeated.

[plexwriter]

Well your right, they can't update older games but the game developer could add the updated protection in a patch. So then you can't play the latest version and you can't play online either. Starforce is a very strong protection, much stronger then any other protection ever made. They definitely want to keep that reputation, and I am just worried that it's going to be updated to beat Daemon Tools V4 ridiculously fast. Then it's another year of waiting for Daemon Tools V5. :?

[AG3]

I personally prefer to stay away from games with StarForce protection. The drivers installed by it makes my computer act ornery, with frequent explorer.exe crashes, slow startup of XP etc. Most games simply aren't worth all the crap my computer goes through if I use them.

Just like with copy protected music CDs that fail to play in many CD players; it's the people who don't do anything illegal who are inconvenienced by it, those who want to break the protection for illegal purposes usually find their way around it anyway.

[LocutusofBorg]

as soon as V4 is out, we provide support as we did in the past before we
recreated everything. for every blacklist we release asap new update

[estimablesir]

re

so Mr. Locutus, does that mean you intend to assimilate StarForce protection into the borg collective?

[pip8184]

My StarForce games are collecting dust on my shelf, if you wanna know...
And i decided that i will never buy games with SF on it again, cheers

[cypeak]

My StarForce games are collecting dust on my shelf, if you wanna know...
And i decided that i will never buy games with SF on it again, cheers

i bought two starforce games: codename panzers and silent hunter 3 from ubisoft....

panzers is the older one; i can play the game only from one cd-rom drive - there are 4 dvd/cd-rom drives in my machine...
since i installed silent hunter 3 i'm not able to play panzers nor am i able to play silent hunter - the original media is not recognized as it should..
the secpnd point is that my 160gb-raid 0 system was shreddered because starforce blocked the filesytem and the raid-controller was not able to deal with it...*grr*

the support adviced me to by a new dvd-drive...well..*wtf??!*

i will never again buy a starforce game - even if it should be a killer-application-game - NEVER!

ps: sorry for my bad english...

[LocutusofBorg]

THAT'S! how you should complain about the SF-protection!!
I can only encourage everyone to do the same!

[Chiefnuts]

I will say that I bought SC: CT and I will stay away from most (if not all) Ubi-Soft Games becaues they seem to be in bed with starforce.

[Goldenhawk]

There are ways to defeat Starforce already and anyone who knows his
way around google can find them. And theyve been around quite a
while too.

Im not talking more detail so i wont violate any rules.

[Underheaven]

Re: A little worried about Daemon Tools V4 and Starforce

Goldenhawk, it's not against the rules to talk about methods of circumventing copy protection. That's what most posts should be concerning! I think it's just that people are afraid of this one specific tool, indirectly referred to as SFN, and directly linking to it or saying its name, kind of like Voldemort from the Harry Potter series :wink:

And way to bring up a one month old thread.

[sodacan]

no worries here, i believe in dt4, however it would be really great if dt4 would somehow go round the starforce so it wouldnt even be needed to install it on system
or either some patch to disable the install of sf and use dt emu

sf made a mess off of my system, it bugged my usb ports, my dvd acting strange under usb or isnt loading at all, + some other shit like usb cant be uninstalled in device manager, everlasting not responding,etcetc, its a shit of a protection, and it even isnt compatible between its own versions not to mention it messes everything else, makes me not wanna install a sf game ever, althou i know i will but not the bought one

greets to dev here