Straight from the french Ubi forums, devs have confirmed that Starforce is no longer a part of Heroes of Might and Magic V's copy protection.

Nor will it be used on future Ubi titles.



Hey, a basic understanding of a language I learned in high school and havent spoken in 6 years just paid off.

What does this mean, roughly? Starforce's largest supporter just kicked them to the curb. Most likely due to the recent rash of Starforce drama they have been peddling to the masses. Starforce had very quickly become a pariah among the PC gaming market, their very presence in a game affecting sales as stories of Starforce-related problems spread throughout the grapevine. For a long time you'd hear these urban legends of drives being wiped, any sort of rewritable media being disabled and games being broken by this copy-protection method. Starforce, a russian company had been for a while trying to prove that their product wasnt actually causing these problems, and that the stories were being spread by the 'warez underground'.

The straw that broke the camels back seems to have been a recent post by a Starforce employee on the Galactic Civilization 2 forums. Wherein the employee protested GalCiv 2's lack of SF protection by posting torrent links to copies of the game on the forums.

What this hopefully means is that A-List publishers will try to avoid copy protection in the future that does more damage to people who purchase the game legally, than to people who pirate it.

(I'm debating on whether or not this is article-worthy)

Mmm. Copy protection only harms legit users. It does nothing to deter piracy, and at times it even makes piracy more appealing. Particularly when someone is holding a copy of a game they bought, and cannot use.

I really wish game companies would finally learn this lesson. I'm not optimistic. There's always a vendor who will make ridiculous claims to close a sale.

Uuuh?



Means:

To reply: it is still too soon to know if the game will be protected with this or that type of protection.

Doesn't seem at all definitive to me?

For those who speak a civilized tongue: http://forums.ubi.com/groupee/forums/a/ ... 5521023234

Scroll down to the post by Muad'Dib, one of the HOMMV producers, he confirms it.

There are other protection companies like starforce that dont have the reputation of raping your computer. Mount and blade uses one, I forget what it's called.

Yeah, I was trying to find the more solid confirmation, but the french link was the only one I had handy, sorry.

This is great fucking news!!

Other protections schemes haven't fucked my computer like the stories I hear. I do hope they take it out some of the older games, Splinter Cell 3 and PoP 3 to be exact.

Last I checked GalCiv2 actually did fine with no DRM at all. CRAZY!

My rarely-used DVD/CDRW drive took a giant shit last month, the post-mortem is still a little ambiguous but I'm happy to blame starforce, since it installed with TrackMania Nations and prior to that my drive actually worked.

GalCiv2 is how you produce a quality product that rewards the customers.

Heh, would that be Fabrice Cambounet?

Yeah, it helps when you don't out and out shit on your customers. Imagine that!

Starforce was as bad as that retarded Sony rootkit shit. Russians are good at depressing, Bible-length novels. Consumer protection? Not so much.

I'm not fond of 400 page novels where nothing happens for 300 pages then someone's aunt dies either*.

(*And while this might SOUND like the Wheel of Time novels, I do mean Russian literature)

Strawberries.

That first fight scene in the Eye of the World is still pretty damn good, even though the buildup was boring.

Personally I've sworn never to read the blasted things.

First one is definitely worth it if you read fantasy frequently. Just imagine it all ends with that one book and you'll be fine.

I'm more of a scifi reader.

Brin, Stross, Macleod, Weber and Ringo. Among others.

Of course you're not talking about WoT. As if one of those would be as short as 400 pages. The very idea!

FUCK STARFORCE IN ITS FUCKING ASS!

...Sorry.

Ubisoft pulls Starforce completely.

I wonder if this means they'll eventually re-release previous games that used Starforce. That'd be nice.