Starforce DRM returns to pc gaming

[PhatoseAlpha]

I recall Starforce being pretty effective, actually, making cracked releases a no go for quite some time.

Hopefully their anti-piracy tech suffers less false positives this time without sacrificing that effectiveness.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: tk149
IIRC Unfortunately, some Steam games ALSO install non-Steam DRM, although I can't remember if it was SecuROM or Starforce. Talk about having the worst of all worlds.

GTA 4 on Steam was like this. Steam would launch Rockstar Social Club instead of the game. Then when I try to launch the game through RSC, it tells me I need Vista Service Pack 3. Keep in mind that this was back in December when such a thing did not exist. The only way to start the game was to go into the GTA folder and manually double click on "launchgtaiv.exe" which is not the game's exe. I think it was a Securom launcher.

I recall Starforce being pretty effective, actually, making cracked releases a no go for quite some time.

The only way to prevent your family from being killed by a psycho is if you kill them yourself.

edit:
Does Vista SP3 even exist today? We're 6 months after the launch of GTA 4 and it's still not "officially" supported I guess. Just you wait until Vista SP3 shows up. Then the game won't be such a piece of shit and it will no longer require dual nehalem xeon processors.

 

[Barfo]

Originally posted by: PhatoseAlpha
I recall Starforce being pretty effective, actually, making cracked releases a no go for quite some time.

Starforce rendered my CD burner useless and helped me make a couple tens of coasters while I was trying to find the problem, in all that time and until I got a replacement drive it effectively prevented me from installing pirated games (or any kind software, legit or stolen, that came in a CD, but who cares about technicalities?) so yeah...it was pretty effective.

Fuck Starforce, I prefer my russian thugs inside GTA4 where I can shoot them.

 

[thilanliyan]

I also am willing to deal with SOME other forms of DRM but NOT Starforce.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

I never had a problem with Starforce so I don't really give a shit. I'd buy a hundred SF games because I got myself locked into another Steam title. Steam is more restrictive, more damaging and more difficult to crack when Valve shuts the service down.

 

[videogames101]

Originally posted by: GodlessAstronomer
I never had a problem with Starforce so I don't really give a shit. I'd buy a hundred SF games because I got myself locked into another Steam title. Steam is more restrictive, more damaging and more difficult to crack when Valve shuts the service down.

Yeah, because Valve will want to make money by... shutting down?

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

Originally posted by: Barfo

Originally posted by: PhatoseAlpha
I recall Starforce being pretty effective, actually, making cracked releases a no go for quite some time.

Starforce rendered my CD burner useless and helped me make a couple tens of coasters while I was trying to find the problem, in all that time and until I got a replacement drive it effectively prevented me from installing pirated games (or any kind software, legit or stolen, that came in a CD, but who cares about technicalities?) so yeah...it was pretty effective.

Fuck Starforce, I prefer my russian thugs inside GTA4 where I can shoot them.

Out of curiosity, how do you know it was starforce? If you had removed Starforce and then it started working again, that would be one thing, but typically if you replace the drive and now you can burn again, that points to 'drive dead'.

 

[mwmorph]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: tk149
IIRC Unfortunately, some Steam games ALSO install non-Steam DRM, although I can't remember if it was SecuROM or Starforce. Talk about having the worst of all worlds.

GTA 4 on Steam was like this. Steam would launch Rockstar Social Club instead of the game. Then when I try to launch the game through RSC, it tells me I need Vista Service Pack 3. Keep in mind that this was back in December when such a thing did not exist. The only way to start the game was to go into the GTA folder and manually double click on "launchgtaiv.exe" which is not the game's exe. I think it was a Securom launcher.

I recall Starforce being pretty effective, actually, making cracked releases a no go for quite some time.

The only way to prevent your family from being killed by a psycho is if you kill them yourself.

edit:
Does Vista SP3 even exist today? We're 6 months after the launch of GTA 4 and it's still not "officially" supported I guess. Just you wait until Vista SP3 shows up. Then the game won't be such a piece of shit and it will no longer require dual nehalem xeon processors.

XP took 6.5 years to get to SP3. Maybe by then we'll have pcs that can run GTA4 at max settings.

 

[s44]

Originally posted by: Golgatha

Originally posted by: BladeVenom
SecuROM is no better.

No, at least SecuROM doesn't install Ring 0, kernel mode drivers.

Of course, Daemon Tools and Alcohol *do*. And locking those out is one of the main complaints about various DRM methods...

Hilarious. Only pro-piracy rootkits are good!

 

[AlgaeEater]

I have a bad relationship with starforce games, since Russian developers (and some European companies) are the only people still interested in the space-sim genre. So even though I tried to avoid Starforce in my system, I always ended up caving in.

That being said... Starforce REALLY IS not a pleasant thing to have in your system. It always, ALWAYS checked every CD I inserted that absolutely had nothing to do with playing the game. When I installed something, the disc would sound like it's spinning down after a few second intervals which delayed reads. It did mess up my Microsoft Office installs on two attempts simply due to time-outs, and it caused massive slow installs on other games as well.

Worst thing is that I had Starforce when it just came out, so there was no official remover. You literally had to search forums with other upset people and go through a laundry list to remove all the files from your system. And surprise-surprise, once you did that your hard earned bought game would no longer function until you re-installed it.

I went as far as to install any games that had the protection onto a seperate (although slower performing) older computer of mine not to corrupt my main. It was just a headache really.

But in the end of the day I had fun with those games, and ultimately Starforce didn't destroy any hardware... nor did I ever feel it would or could. Maybe I just got lucky, who knows.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: thilan29
I also am willing to deal with SOME other forms of DRM but NOT Starforce.

Hehe I tried them all,I was one of first to try Starforce on Vista x64,I fear no DRM,I'm well aware it can cause issues with users PCs.

I don't think DRM is going to go away anytime soon ,so you got to live with it or don't buy any software that uses it.
DRM has not broke my PCs yet but then anything is possible with DRM down the road,as a gamer I see it as occupational hazzard.

 

[Modelworks]

A little background on why starforce is worse than other methods like securom. In the past I have reverse engineered both types.

Starforce was designed for regions where piracy is everywhere, Russia and China. They needed something hardcore. The problem was publishers used it everywhere instead of just where it was really needed. The way starforce works is that it replaces the CD drive access with its own driver. The driver completely bypasses the windows kernel and runs itself in its own virtual machine that directly talks to the bios. This is the so called Ring0. This prevented the usual method of using programs like softice to hook into the kernel and grab the raw content off the CD. You could then strip the protection and you are done. The problem is that starforce in order to work had to be active all the time, even when not using a game that required it. It monitored everything going to and from the CD drive. If it detected something it thought was supposed to be copy protected it would inject its protection code into that data. This made some CD burners have corrupted firmware and become junk. There were a lot of other problems with pc lockups, slow game play. Ring0 drivers can be done right, just ask anyone using daemon tools, which also uses the same concept.

Securom is a totally different beast. Securom does not need to install drivers or run all the time. Instead it uses a system that is really hundreds of years old called a scytale, basically a strip of paper would contain one letter per line for the length of the strip, when wrapped around the correct cylinder you could read across to get the message. In assembly language every cpu has opcodes that define what an instruction like MOV does. In Securom the game exe runs inside a virtual machine that works as a wrapper for the protection. Normally an instruction like MOV would mean you are moving one bit from one location to another. In Securom what it does is change that so now MOV means EAX which is totally weird because EAX is a register. It is like someone telling you add 2+2 and the answer you give is coffee. It makes it really hard to decode because you first have to figure out what translates to each bit of code. The problem is that once you think you know, then Securom can change it to something different the next minute. It is like the scytale with constantly changing cylinder sizes. It makes games run slower because the code has to be translated in order to run. That is why when you compare the size of exe for a retail game and a cracked game, the exe is much smaller. The crack strips out everything but the actual game code and sometimes the game runs faster as a result.

Really that is the only downside to Securom. There are no drivers installed and no spyware. It does store a file that is used as a unique ID for that pc so things like online activation can be used, but that is totally passive. If a publisher runs the entire game in translation mode then it can effect performance. Most have taken to just using it for the initial protection and then unloading it once the game starts. That has made it much easier for people to crack.

Cracking software in general is not something that everyone is doing. In fact the number of qualified people has seriously dropped. I and others chalk it up to people starting out on high level languages and not learning things like assembly which really is required to defeat these protections. Knowing C++ or Java will get you nowhere with reverse engineering.

 

[mindcycle]

If this makes its way back to the States, let the boycotting begin!

 

[tk149]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
A little background on why starforce is worse than other methods like securom. In the past I have reverse engineered both types.

Starforce was designed for regions where piracy is everywhere, Russia and China. They needed something hardcore. The problem was publishers used it everywhere instead of just where it was really needed. The way starforce works is that it replaces the CD drive access with its own driver. The driver completely bypasses the windows kernel and runs itself in its own virtual machine that directly talks to the bios. This is the so called Ring0. This prevented the usual method of using programs like softice to hook into the kernel and grab the raw content off the CD. You could then strip the protection and you are done. The problem is that starforce in order to work had to be active all the time, even when not using a game that required it. It monitored everything going to and from the CD drive. If it detected something it thought was supposed to be copy protected it would inject its protection code into that data. This made some CD burners have corrupted firmware and become junk. There were a lot of other problems with pc lockups, slow game play. Ring0 drivers can be done right, just ask anyone using daemon tools, which also uses the same concept.

Securom is a totally different beast. Securom does not need to install drivers or run all the time. Instead it uses a system that is really hundreds of years old called a scytale, basically a strip of paper would contain one letter per line for the length of the strip, when wrapped around the correct cylinder you could read across to get the message. In assembly language every cpu has opcodes that define what an instruction like MOV does. In Securom the game exe runs inside a virtual machine that works as a wrapper for the protection. Normally an instruction like MOV would mean you are moving one bit from one location to another. In Securom what it does is change that so now MOV means EAX which is totally weird because EAX is a register. It is like someone telling you add 2+2 and the answer you give is coffee. It makes it really hard to decode because you first have to figure out what translates to each bit of code. The problem is that once you think you know, then Securom can change it to something different the next minute. It is like the scytale with constantly changing cylinder sizes. It makes games run slower because the code has to be translated in order to run. That is why when you compare the size of exe for a retail game and a cracked game, the exe is much smaller. The crack strips out everything but the actual game code and sometimes the game runs faster as a result.

Really that is the only downside to Securom. There are no drivers installed and no spyware. It does store a file that is used as a unique ID for that pc so things like online activation can be used, but that is totally passive. If a publisher runs the entire game in translation mode then it can effect performance. Most have taken to just using it for the initial protection and then unloading it once the game starts. That has made it much easier for people to crack.

Cracking software in general is not something that everyone is doing. In fact the number of qualified people has seriously dropped. I and others chalk it up to people starting out on high level languages and not learning things like assembly which really is required to defeat these protections. Knowing C++ or Java will get you nowhere with reverse engineering.

Thank you for the info, that's very interesting. What kind of jerk would write software to overwrite CD drive firmware?

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: tk149
What kind of jerk would write software to overwrite CD drive firmware?

I don't think it was intentional, never know with starforce though. They just injected code that they thought would keep the current ,supposedly illegal program, from running. The problem is that code was seen by some burners as the command to update firmware, so dead burners resulted.

 

[4537256]

This is one of the reasons i play mostly PS3 games anymore. that and so many PC titles are the same as the console versions with additions to forcing of activations, bugs and driver problems. the only benefit i have is i could use AA and higher resolution but unfortunatly their just graphical enhancements and not graphics themselves so i dont find it worth the trade off.
Some DRM games wont even run by default, you have to google forever to find fixes, work arounds or just hunt for a crack/pirate the stupid thing.
GTA 4 was a nightmare when i first got it, i had to wait about a week or so after release before a fix made it playable..maybe it was a workaround, i forget now.

Originally posted by: tk149
What kind of jerk would write software to overwrite CD drive firmware?

probably cause their intended result worked. lol

It does store a file that is used as a unique ID for that pc so things like online activation can be used, but that is totally passive.

but isnt installing things...anything...without knowledge or consent part or perhaps the #1 point?
sure, games now say in teeny tiny writing on back of box that it has DRM and may harm your computer which sometimes those who know will just look to pirate it instead, but if you buy it and open it and the game wont run like it should, your screwed out of some cash to restock.

its just a shame how not only publishers, but retailers treat its customers in regards to legit PC games. Its totally different than console despite the 360 can be pirated.
I got a PC game for xmas, never opened it and returned it ...along with gift reciept to best buy for a full refund....oh i got the refund, but i did get an attitude back with it, they asked questions, inspected it heavily and had an odd attitude towards me as if i were a pirate, those kinds of looks and of course the manager came by and took a long hard look at the game box seal tape...b.s. cause i could copy a 360 game too i'm sure.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

The solution is not to succumb to playing on consoles which just encourages companies to produce more watered-down, disposable games that cannot be modded or that aren't friendly to custom content with weak or non-existent online multiplayer components. Rather, the solution is to find and identify the good PC games that do exist that don't have nasty DRM, games like the excellent Sins of a Solar Empire.

 

[AndroidVageta]

In Russia, copy protection pirates you...

Seriously though, I had no idea DRM was a Russian creation, although this explains a lot LOL!

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: 4537256

It does store a file that is used as a unique ID for that pc so things like online activation can be used, but that is totally passive.

but isnt installing things...anything...without knowledge or consent part or perhaps the #1 point?

sure, games now say in teeny tiny writing on back of box that it has DRM and may harm your computer which sometimes those who know will just look to pirate it instead, but if you buy it and open it and the game wont run like it should, your screwed out of some cash to restock.

Uhm no.

The file it installs is no more harmful than programs that put a readme.txt file on your pc. It isn't a program or anything executable , its just bits that make up a key.

The DRM that securom uses cannot harm your pc or anything else you have installed. It will only effect the applications that use it. The worst problem with programs like securom is they can sometimes conflict with programs like daemon tools.

 

[4537256]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
The worst problem with programs like securom is they can sometimes conflict with programs like daemon tools.

that alone says alot doesnt it. Restriction.
use your computer how they want you to, way to side with the marxism.

 

[Barfo]

Originally posted by: PhatoseAlpha

Originally posted by: Barfo

Originally posted by: PhatoseAlpha
I recall Starforce being pretty effective, actually, making cracked releases a no go for quite some time.

Starforce rendered my CD burner useless and helped me make a couple tens of coasters while I was trying to find the problem, in all that time and until I got a replacement drive it effectively prevented me from installing pirated games (or any kind software, legit or stolen, that came in a CD, but who cares about technicalities?) so yeah...it was pretty effective.

Fuck Starforce, I prefer my russian thugs inside GTA4 where I can shoot them.

Out of curiosity, how do you know it was starforce? If you had removed Starforce and then it started working again, that would be one thing, but typically if you replace the drive and now you can burn again, that points to 'drive dead'.

This was back in 2005-6 so I don't remember very well, when my burner started acting funny I spent 2 months and countless blank CDs troubleshooting it, to no avail until someone suggested checking for Starforce, the burner matched the symptoms pretty well and the problems started shortly after I installed a game with it, so while I can't be 100% it was Starforce that killed my drive, I'm pretty sure about it, everything pointed to it.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: 4537256

Originally posted by: Modelworks
The worst problem with programs like securom is they can sometimes conflict with programs like daemon tools.

that alone says alot doesnt it. Restriction.
use your computer how they want you to, way to side with the marxism.

I guess games that conflict with anti virus are restrictions too.

 

[iCyborg]

do any games conflict with AV *on purpose*?

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: iCyborg
do any games conflict with AV *on purpose*?

Yes, this is the real question. Starforce actively blacklists certain software when you try and run a game. Also, you can typically tell your AV software to ignore certain files or folders. Try telling Starforce to ignore Daemon Tools, etc and see how far you get.

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: AndroidVageta
In Russia, copy protection pirates you...

Seriously though, I had no idea DRM was a Russian creation, although this explains a lot LOL!

Starforce is a Russian creation. DRM in general was not created in Russia.

Now imagine if China got into the DRM market.:Q

Edit: China has something like 80-90% warez, so Chinese DRM would be just about as effective as the rest of the world's versions of DRM software. I'll give them a 10-20% short-term success rate, and a 100% historically backed, long-term epic fail rate.