Neurotech - the weblog of Luke Reeves

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 :)

Well it was bound to happen I guess. And it was pretty easy to predict if you read my last eBay entry. Yeah, I got fucking scammed.

I’ve been collecting for a while now computer RPGs. I love the boxes and the usually huge manuals that come with them. I’ve got so far Baldur’s Gate 2 plus expansion, Neverwinter Nights and expansions, Morrowind (and expansions!) and Icewind Dale 2. All of them cost less than twenty dollars each, and they’re pretty kickass (excepting Morrowind, haven’t been able to get too into it yet - but I haven’t given up). So anyways, I found Icewind Dale 1 on eBay for a decent price and stupidly order it before reading the fine print. In the fine print is the details “Picture does not match item” and “No boxes or manuals”. That sucks, but hey - at the point I caught that I chided myself for not checking all the details and accepted my loss.

Then the item came. And of course, it’s just the CDs and nothing else. Except they’re burned. And they’re not CDs! For some reason, this guy thinks that Bioware’s “original packaging” is cellophane and DVD-Rs with off-center stickers.

And another painful issue - I paid 4.47 USD for the game and 8.95 USD for shipping. At the time, expecting the box and what not, that was acceptable for me. Then I see on the top of the shipping label that it was sent from Thorn Hill. And the cost of shipping was 6 dollars Canadian. Excellent! Thanks, you bastards. And as I already mentioned they have an “auto-feedback” system, so when I leave them a negative comment they’ll do the same to me.

So I emailed them of course asking for a refund. I get an auto-response back that has a URL to a site that sells thousands of software packages for a penny each! Imagine that! And the best part of the e-mail was this:

Sorry for the incontinence,

THANKS.

Incontinence indeed! Anyways, I’ll wait for their response but I’m leaving negative feedback regardless of the outcome so that other people know what they’re getting. And for the record, the seller had 9505 positive ratings in the last year so I figured I would have been alright.

A Rogers salesperson just called me to try and pitch me High Speed Express. He assured me that it was for unlimited downloads - and I assured him that there was a 60 gigabyte limit. He insisted that there was no limit, and said he was going to check - then he hung up on me!

So a customer service representative tells me that their sales people are all “contracted from other locations” and that Rogers is not responsible for anything the they might say. Is it weird that things like this piss me off? I mean, how the fuck are you allowed to pitch something called “unlimited Internet” when your service has limits spelled out on the website??

Continuing today’s trend of bitching about corporate suckage, I just got screwed by Skype. Skype seems to be an interesting Voice-over-IP application with Linux, Windows and OSX versions that I thought would be extremely useful in talking to my wife when I’m back in Canada. So I tried to buy “credits” for about $15, and the Skype payment processing system showed the transaction as cancelled. So I figured maybe I fucked up the Verified by Visa phase of the process. I try again, same thing.

I then called CIBC’s VISA department, and surprise - the payments both went through! I immediately tried to contact Skype, but the only method of doing so is their “Live Person” support chat. Which is horrible. So I get into the chat with two different “people”, who miraculously resond to my queries with the exact same answers, word-for-word. Then I find someone else complaining about Skype payments, and sure enough, I see the same fucking support conversation.

I really, really want this system to work out for me, so I’ve not given up just yet.

Okay, I’m gonna lose all my friends over this one, but here it is. I didn’t like the new Matrix movie. In fact, I downright disliked it. It pretty much let me down in all aspects. Robin and Liz posted my thoughts here, but I’ll elaborate a little bit without spoiling anything.

• Almost all of the fight scenes were totally missing justification. They just had no point. In one fight, Neo just leaves out of (probably) boredom;
• The plot was like an old Infocom game. It consisted of people just directing Neo to the next person in a chain of painfully boring pseudo-intellectual conversations;
• The special effects were gay looking. And I mean really gay. I was telling Matt and Robin that some of the fights looked like the old video game Clay Fighters, with bodies flying around like rubber balls;
• There was a mind-numbing demonstration of causality by a woman that ate a bite of cake and then apparently went to masturbate. This was preceded by a Matrix view zooming in on her vagina. I’m not kidding;
• Every new character was retarded. Hey, look at the guy with the funny French accent! Hey, look at the Chinese guy always running around! And some new guy replaced “Dozer” I think - I’m trying to decide whether or not this new chud is an improvement, since I never gave a damn about Dozer;
• Oh, and I can’t forget this. With the orgy scene the Wachowski brothers have taken anything possibly erotic out of sex. Good job boys!

Yeah, so I’m a cynical prick, or whatever. I’ll still watch the third one, but I was dissapointed. It’s as if the writers said “Hey, let’s take everything from the first one, dumb it down and make it bigger! With more explosions!” I was watching the car chase scene saying to myself, “Look! Car number 3 is flipping over - IN BULLET TIME!” Not impressed.

What can you do though, that’s life, some movies I like, some I don’t, so please no one post anything angry or anything - I’m totally willing to talk about the movie, I’m not boycotting it or anything.