StarForce causes 0/10 review for game

by Alexander Sliwinski on Dec 12th 2006 10:15PM

Angry Gamer has given Trackmania United a 0/10 for simply having StarForce copy protection. They say the game has good physics, track making and online play; however, the StarForce copy protection trumps all of that and causes the game to get an automatic nil. Angry gamer says, "This is simply us doing our job: making the games-buying public aware of what they're being offered."

Apparently the company that produced Trackmania United didn't get the memo about StarForce copy protection being considered by many as malware. This isn't the first instance that a Trackmania title was linked to StarForce, we reported on a similar title having the controversial copy protection earlier this year. Other publishers have treated StarForce like a leper and stated many moons ago they'll no longer use it. Looks like Trackmania's publisher just doesn't see the same problem everyone else does.

Source

Tags: angry gamer, AngryGamer, copy protection, starforce

Reader Comments (73)

That's not a game review then. You can have other points to go with it, but when one reviews a game, I expect the game to be reviewed, and not the other stuff that comes along with it.

Though granted, I wish more reviewers would talk about this extra stuff so that users would make a good purchase choice.

That's the review for me. Starforce has been a deal breaker for me on at least one occasion with a game that I otherwise wanted to play (Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones).

Kudos to Angry Gamer.

Starforce/10

what in the world is starforce?

What the hell is a hyperlink?

Prince of Persia: Two Thrones has Starforce? No wonder my system screwed up after I installed that piece of crap (which I was never actually able to play, since it would crash the whole system whenever I tried to play the first level). This was, in case you were wondering, straight off the shelf onto a PC that has nothing pirated from any source.

That's a screed, not a review.

to 1 and 7 :
if a game has so many bugs that it totally wrecks your system, doesn't that usually knock it's score down? same deal here, just that this time it's intentional.

read the article and i agree. starforce is a pain in the ass and the gamers need to speak out about this crap. A gamer donated his pc for testing and after trackamnia was installed and ran other games could not be run on the pc. This is absolutely unacceptable. If buying a game corrupts other games on your pc then i think legal actions should be taken. I wonder how many systems this happened to find it's place on(my guess is none because who the hell would buy this no name game), but if there happened to be alot of people could a class action lawsuit be possible

I agree that Starforce is bad news. In fact, this is exactly what I would hope for from a review from legit gamers- standing up against something that causes active harm to your computer.

But Trackmania isn't a "no name game" by a long shot. If it weren't for Starforce I'd say go check out Trackmania Nations (free, but has Starforce).

@10: The game being reviewed is Trackmania United, not Trackmania Sunrise. Sunrise may or may not have had Starforce (I don't know, I've never played it) but I'm guessing it didn't because your computer still works.

ohh for a second i thought it was a new ps3 game..

Trackmania Sunrise has StarForce. So does the original game.

I can only speak for myself, but StarForce has never caused any problems with my system, and I've played bunches of StarForce games: just use the driver removal tool and then use a no-CD crack. Problem solved. ;)

I don't like StarForce, but that's the price we have to pay for piracy.

By the way...

Trackmania United was developed by Nadeo and published by Focus Home Interactive. Thought I'd give you a tip since you didn't seem to know ("the company that produced Trackmania United", "Trackmania's publisher").

...Right.

Trackmania Sunrise does have Starforce copy protection, and as far as I could tell, Starforce hasn't been much of a problem for me. I even have the DVD version of Splinter Cell Chaos Theory with the Starforce copy protection as well, and I don't see what the fuss is about. The only problem I see Starforce cause is frustration amongst the pirating community. And considering Nadeo is located in the UK, the bad rep of Starforce circulating around gamers probably didn't reach them in time :P

starforce=hacker's worst nightmare, only way to make the damn thing work is unplugging your IDE cd-rom cable, and mounting a patched image, with daemon tools. Or using an external drive and and a burned patched image...

But there's always wallmart :)

There is a whole website devoted to telling the truth about starforce:

http://www.glop.org/starforce/list.php

Man, I was totally going to buy this game too. Starforce is a deal breaker - I will NOT allow that rubbish near my system. No Trackmania for me :(

re:16
You don't know the big deal because you've luckily never had problems with it. I once spent 2 hours installing and reinstalling, trying every suggestion they give me trying to get a game I purchased to work and having starforce tell me I can't run the game because I'm trying to steal it. Also had problems with another title running starforce but eventually got it to work, the first one i gave up and returned it, bought the game on Direct-2-drive, and enjoyed it.

Starfarced games deserve ZERO, it's a consumers/reviewers only ammo in the fight against pervasive DRM. Now i dont mind normal protection, CDkeys and what have you but Starforce (and what it could do to your system) was a bridge too far.

They will loose many more sales by having starforce in games than they would have to pirates in the first place!

I bought the original TrackMania, not knowing what StarForce was. And now, even though TrackMania freaking owns, StarForce is a complete disaster. I installed that on an older system (2004-era, Windows XP), and soon enough, it was unable to burn CD's. Period. Not through Nero, Alcohol 120, or even Winamp. Every attempt would cause it to hang the system and turn the blank disc into a silicon coaster.

another important point, crippleware copy protection only hurts legitimate users, pirates break or circumvent the protection, only the real users have to deal with it. (starforce is no exception)

I'm so sad for my 5 year old.

He saw Hydro Thunder available in the store as an Arcade Classic, in a compilation... I was happy to buy it for him and have it legitimately (No - I don't want some illegal MAME/emulator install - I would like to legitimately own it).

I took it home, sat with him while it installed -- and it refused to work. Starforce is incompatible with Windows Vista. What can I do??????

He doesn't understand at all - I feel bad for him...

I really wish PC games worked like, I hate to say it, but Windows Product Activation... Just PLEASE install once, FINE, call the mothership - then let me USE IT without ever needing the disc again... It's currently the worst of both worlds, you have to install this draconian crap on your machine and THEN YOU STILL NEED THE FREAKIN DISC every time!!! ARGH!!!

Ya news to all those who said that Starforce prevents piracy. Chances are starforce is stripped long before the ripped copy hits the internet so the pirates don't even have to deal with the headaches of starforce. At least any decent rip would have it stripped. Most pirates aren't stupid, the good ones know just as much if not more about computers then the game creators.

You know- that's better.
We don't need hackers, losers, people who don't actually go out and buy the damn thing and whine about it all day- to play online with the people who thought shelling out 50 bucks for such a great, big game with so much content that it at least TRIPLES Need For Speed with a transparent verification process is a baad idea.

So much, suckers! (United's February release in EU/US has no SF by the way, and the digital download version doesn't even touch your CD-drives, but I wonder why I mind telling you suckers in the first place)

If a game can possibly cripple and permanently (physically!) damage your computer, it DESERVES a 0/10. Even if it's the best game of all time.

Trackmania Sunrise had Starforce. Never, ever gave me a damn problem.

Thanks everyone for their comments about the story. The point I was really trying to make more than anything else is that gamers need to be told of the potential dangers - some people have no problems at all with StarForce on their system, some dont, fair enough - and that game reviewers have a responsibility to talk about this.

As for not knowing who the publisher was - it's indeed a Focus game in certain territories, but not all of them, so I made it "generic". Sorry for the confusion.

Oh man that's too bad... I loved Trackmania Sunrise but I had to stop playing because Starforce messed up my drive. I couldn't use my DVD burner for more than a year, that's how much I loved this game.

Now I'm not willing to go through this again... I was really looking forward to this game, but I had hoped that they would change their opinion about Starforce.

I have not played a couple splinter cell games that i have (pandora and chaos theory) because i found out it had starforce protection..
I bought gt legends..not knowing it had starforce protection. I found out before installation. Now gt is a great game of collecting dust.

So yes..any game that has starforce should get a 0/10!! Especially for the ones that never mention what type of copy protection they are using!

*it was nice of ubisoft to drop starforce protection. It would be nice if they removed it on their older games.

also read this on what game developers think --esp after a starforce guy provided a link so that people could pirate galatic civilizations 2 (starforce people have also created a fake website to spread some misinformation and well basic viral marketing really) :

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/galacticcivilizations2/news.html?sid=6146001

When i read this + the fact that galatic civilizations 2 has NO copy protection ...i rushed out and bought it!

Now to those people who feel there is no trouble with starforce on their systems(no hardware malfunctions), ask yourself this question:

Are you really comfortable with non-essential software that gives itself ring 0 privilege and hackers a way in!!?

I would imagine you know about the dangers of the sony rootkit by now :)

The reviewer did not reboot his computer after install because TrackMania, for the first time with United, does not install starforce drivers: the single biggest reason of anti starforce people. It is a lite version used only to protect the exe file from hack.

Previously, we have put starforce on a free game to avoid cheating and not to avoid free game piracy! Anti cheat is goog for gamers, even more when it install no drivers and browse nothing on your hard drive like TrackMania United. There, I can't see how this could happen.

People like to shout for cause and it is great, but they should shout carefully or they are lowering the effectiveness of others. Look at software patent or console concept approval problems instead of "I want a cr4ck and st4rf0rce is t00 b4d for m3" buzz.

Now, they should look at their PC why they have a problem. I sincerely wish they find it. If TM causes this too. I am SO interested to learn how and to fix it. There is millions of TM players all over the world and I read tens of thousands of players in the forums, and no previous player I know from the community had this kind of problem so far.

Cheers!
Florent from Nadeo

Got Sunrise when it came out and no problems.
Got Nations when it came out and few problems.
Was in the United beta which came with the online activation version of Starforce, that caused me nothing BUT problems and Starforce was the reason my friends and I didn't/won't buy the game.

The discussion about StarForce always centers on piracy, but the real issue should be the publishers' assumed right to shove anything they want onto our computers without telling us. I wrote about this in a recent Escapist article, "StarForce Must Die":
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/print/72/4

we made the beta with 4000 players, most of them from the forums. While we had reports on bugs, none of this happened in the french forum. Anyway, the beta is behind and we are talking of the box edition of TrackMania United which include starforce withtout drivers, unless TrackMania Sunrise. A game that received 82% on metacritic by the way with no comments on anything like that.

To Allen: TrackMania United starforce version install no additionnal file. You are making the same mistake.

to Joystiq: please consider the angry-gamer.net style. It is not a critic to them, they like to flame, and I think it is funny to do so. But when the man says it is 0/10 because one of his friends has a PC problem, it is a little like this review where they give 8,042,118 / 1,000,000 to mad tracks because they played 5 good minutes. The way Joystiq put this is a somewhat different.

Obviously some of you don't know the difference between a "REVIEW" and a "SCORE".

They REVIEWED the game. They explained what was good and bad about the game. The text part is the "REVIEW".
AND they gave the game a score it deserved for the overall experience of the game.

Then they gave the game a well deserved SCORE of ZERO.

Any other score is irresponsible, since a person might glance at the score only and accidentally buy the game and be horribly screwed over by the STARFORCE DRM.

If I purchase a game that's really fun for 30 minutes at a time, but then eventually crashes my computer or opens it up to Trojans (DELIBERATELY no less) later... that game DESERVES A SCORE OF ZERO. END OF STORY.

Florent:

If a game requires admin to install or run, it does not get purchased.

If a single player game requires any (direct) network access at all, it does not get purchased.

Crap like StarForce and Steam is why I bought a Mac and now do all my gaming on consoles.

Only DirectX requires rights for install.

The single player game does not require any network access at all even if the solo can benefit for the regionnal rankings. So, go play on your console games made by software patent company leaders that like to control everything and develop DRM.

DJ, you do the same mistake: it is starforce without drivers. And you proove again that many people that post don't even understand why.

Cheers

Starforce (in any form) is the rough equivalent of a giant flashing neon sign attached to the game, reading "DON'T BUY ME!" (IMHO, of course)

I will *never* buy a Starforce-"protected" game. I don't want it anywhere near my systems.

For me, it is the perfect neon to keep away some people having dumb behavior from the community.

Thanks

Florent:

Gee, you seem to imply DRM is bad, yet you use DRM. What's the word for that? Oh yeah, hypocrite.

A computer is a general purpose device. I expect a full inventory of what something does before installing it, since there are multiple things on it, *nothing* gets full access. Too many things assume they can run roughshod over me (see: StarForce, Steam, BF2142...) get the finger.

And your software runs under Windows, by *gasp* one of those patent leaders in the console space, so you're just as restricted.

"That's not a game review then. You can have other points to go with it, but when one reviews a game, I expect the game to be reviewed, and not the other stuff that comes along with it."

Wrong.

Your school of thought is it's not a review unless it has a number attached to it. The post SAYS "they say the game has good physics, track making and online play."

This is what we're getting now with the "gamerankings" generation of gamers. Someone could write the most eloquent review of a game ever, but if they didn't fall into the habit of sticking a number at the top of it, it would be ignored. Sad.

That little number you see is supposed to be a suppliment to the text, not an all-encompassing summary of it.

It's funny to see that Starforces began to have problems once it was used in North America by big publishers. In Europe games were protected for years without all those problems listed !

Am I the only one seeing "Derek Lite" in Florent?

You see Rob, the neon is working. Matt_M can not make the difference between starforce and starforce lite. It is probably the same way you understand Linux>windows>consoles but with a quite hypocrite
attitude, make like if you dont. I would really like to develop on Linux if it was easier to succeed with it with my limited brain: make games, sell games. But I still have to wait a little for Linux to be a gaming
platform for our company.

do you people read what florent says ? it's starforce lite, just a cd check. why do you people do not talk about securom ? it's working in the same way as starforce does...

OH wait i get it! securom is owned every single time by RELOADED so no probleme here i guess ;)

happy not to have you starforce haters in the community, please continue your crusade, in the mean time we enjoy our game even more.

ummm, what "memo" did nadeo have to receive ? you mean that boycott of ware0r users who don't want starfore in a game? :P

Florent,

Have you tried reading my posts? Like the one that said "Mac" and not "Linux"?

I don't want to waste time worrying about games screwing up my system, nor do I want to waste time doing much low level admin. Your attitude towards customers shows that I am still wise in staying away from computer gaming. I can't trust the developers, in either their cavalier attitude toward my computer, nor in their competency.

You are using Mac from Apple, and what?

Maybe you need it more simple: TrackMania United use starforce lite. This is a version without drivers, the single biggest critic made to this system.

Now, if you want to keep away from computer gaming, no problem. You may just miss real big network, creation tools and more community integration to a game.

Just to inform people, we at Gaming Trend also are rather outspoken in our stand against Starforce, and its effect on player's PCs as well as just the concept behind it. Due to this, we give any game we review 10% off the top if it has Starforce (reflected in our value section).

So, if you've got the best game in the world, but it has Starforce, the best you can hope for is a 90. Luckily for our readers, many Starforce-enabled games ... wouldn't get the best scores to begin with.

And yes, luckily, publishers are getting the message.

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StarForce causes 0/10 review for game

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