“Copy Protection, Customer Prevention!@#!” - Part 2: The UbiForce

Ubisoft – The “We’re listening, but who cares, company”.

   Now get this. Literally, I stopped writing at this point to go get something for lunch. When I got back, another friend sends me this link to a "call out" for someone to prove that StarForce breaks CD\DVD burners.

   I’m almost tempted to go out and buy the same DVD burner my friend had and see if we can’t prove it ourselves (the drive has since been sent back to the store he bought it from). It makes me wish we’d had macro recorded everything we did so we could replicate it exactly.

   Not that I have ever claimed I was 100% sure that StarForce was the pure cause of his drive being flaky. Just that before StarForce it worked perfectly. Something that was done between the time before StarForce was installed, and the time after it was uninstalled, did something to stop it from working correctly. And of course, this contest does nothing for the people who are having problems with just software issues, like the problem I had.

   Ubisofts handling of this whole situation has been absolutely dreadful. Instead of saying “we’re looking into the problem” they said “Everyone who claims to have a problem with StarForce is a cracker”. That, or "not enough people complained". Well, add me to the list at least. 

   Then you have the creators of StarForce, who basically disavow any responsibility with problems with old versions of StarForce (like what comes on Chaos Theory) because it’s not up-to-date. Of course, since this was installed in secret, how would you know to update it?

   Something needs to be done. Large companies are going the complete wrong direction when it comes to copy protection. Their schemes are getting more and more invasive into the average users life. Eventually, there will be a large enough backlash by people like me, you know PEOPLE WHO BOUGHT THE GAME, that they will have to take notice. If the debacle with Sony’s “Rook-kit” copy protection haven’t made Ubisoft look up, maybe they don’t understand that the two are related.

   I’m not going to buy a game with StarForce installed on it ever again. I don’t care if the all mighty Crom comes down to earth and puts his backing behind StarForce to say it works 110% of the time. I don’t care if it gets removed when it’s suppose to from now on. The handling of complaints, the outright posts calling people like me liars, has tainted StarForce for all eternity as far as I’m concerned.

   Even on top of that, I’m even more pissed off by one fact. Splinter Cell 3 Chaos theory IS A GREAT GAME! Damn It was worth my $70! I bought it. I played through about half of the game before all this crap went down.

   GET IT THROUGH YOUR HEADS PRODUCERS, COPY PROTECTION AFFECTS ME MORE THAN IT DOES A ‘CRACKER’.