StarForce sucks.
Finally real articles about how much StarForce fucking sucks are starting to appear. Like this on at Next Generation (but if you go there you should add http://www.next-gen.biz/images/stories/People/* to your adblock filter). The article talks about StarForce and mentions another article in PC Gamer along the same subject.
For the longest time tons of people had their computers fucked by StarForce and pretty much ignored due to the fact that StarForce does work for the majority of people. But that doesn’t make it right - at least, not for me. Essentially the software installs kernel-level hidden drivers on your system which are required to be present and running for any StarForce-protected game to work. The problems start appearing mostly in the areas of compatibility. Like say you install an old game that requires StarForce, say Silent Storm. When you install a new game that uses it (oh, say Trackmania Sunrise) what happens? Does StarForce automatically upgrade the old version? No - because then the old game wouldn’t work. Updates to StarForce require actual patches from the game vendor. You can also see this issue when it comes to the 64-bit version of Windows - the older StarForce drivers are kernel-level, and due to that they have to be compiled for the correct version of Windows. So no older StarForce games work on Windows 64-bit Edition without patches from the game manufacturers.
So for me, I play a lot of older games. The two games I’ve been playing mostly recently are Baldur’s Gate I/II and Battlefield 2 - the first is over eight years old. I have a ton of old games here that I either still play or will play again, and a lot of the development shops that created them are gone. If games like Baldur’s Gate II were wrapped in StarForce, the chances of me being able to play them now (or in ten years from now) are greatly decreased. Maybe a lot of people don’t care about the longevity of games, but I do.
Also, and this is purely my experience, the last time I got “infected” by StarForce I had little hiccoughs in my system every few seconds. It really fucked up my Counter Strike skills - which, to be fair, aren’t so hot as it is. Uninstalling StarForce and the software that vomitted it onto my computer (in this case ScrapLand) immediately cleared up the problem.
I don’t have any games now that have StarForce - partly due to my experience with it, partly due to the principal of the matter, and partly due to the way the company itself acts. In the future I’ll basically try my best not to buy things from publishers who use it. That really sucks - Atari uses StarForce and they’re publishing the upcoming NeverWinter Nights sequel. And Ubisoft has made some games I’ve really enjoyed (like The Sands of Time and the first half of FarCry), so that kind of sucks too.
What’s strange is that if this copy protection system, or one similar, was built into a tool like Steam and maintained by a company that didn’t suck then I wouldn’t be so against it. I mean take Punkbuster for example - it does some funky shit to your computer to make sure that you’re not cheating and I have no problem whatsoever with it. There are people who have been falsely accused by Punkbuster because their hardware “hash” matches one on file, but if that happened to me I’d just switch the harddisk or something (it’s worth it for Enemy Territory!) Plus, they’ve got decent tools to update Punkbuster for all of the games that use it, including the older ones. I just mentioned Enemy Territory - that game is free. It’s always been free - yet Punkbuster has always released routine updates to the version of Punkbuster embedded in Enemy Territory.
I guess what that last paragraph boils down to is trust in the company really. Nothing would restore my trust in the StarForce product. It reminds me of the infamous spyware password tool, Gator. One day Microsoft’s anti-spyware tool stopped recognizing Gator (now Gain) as spyware because the company “updated their privacy policy” on their website. Now that is fucked - trust doesn’t work like that, it’s earned. Anyways, sorry for the segue into a jab at Microsoft :)