Starforce Linking to Illegal Torrents?

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As most of us here at Neowin are aware, Stardock published their highly anticipated, turn-based strategy game "Galactic Civilizations 2" last week to rave reviews from most of the major gaming sites. Stardock decided not to include any copy protection scheme with the release, much to the surprise of the gaming community at large. No Starforce, SafeDisc or SecuROM to hinder any sort of unauthorized distribution.

We get a report today that the folks over at the Starforce camp have taken notice of the game and its apparent retail success without employing a copy protection scheme. In a thread over on the Starforce forums, a member posted a link entitled "Game published without copy protection isn't commercial disaster", clearly trying to evoke some sort of reply from the copy protection powers that be. A member of the Starforce admin staff immediately posted a link to a well known torrent site hosting illegal copies of GalCiv II, in an effort to show how many sales are being lost by not using copy protection. We caught up with Brad Wardell of Stardock this weekend for some reaction to this rather humorous turn of events:

"I don't claim to be incredibly informed on warez. I don't pirate stuff so I am not familiar with sites that people go to in order to find, amongst other things, warez. I was not familiar with the site they linked to. I suspect I'm not alone. We cannot understand why they felt the need to provide an actual URL rather than state the obvious -- that like all software, ours is being pirated at some level.

We obviously don't want people to pirate our software. Every time someone pirates it who might have possibly bought it we feel the pinch. We're a small company so every sale counts. We simply think there are other ways to go about it than to inconvenience customers with CD-based copy protection."

Our question is fairly simple: Why would a company that invests so heavily in preventing software theft from occurring, choose to point people directly at a site which promotes the exact opposite? Stay tuned as this story develops...

View: Starforce Thread Posting

View: GalCiv2.com News item.

Update #2: Starforce removes links, Click 'here' for more details...

Starforce Writes:

"In the end, on behalf of the whole StarForce I would like to tender our apologies to all people, who have been working on creation of the game Galactic Civilizations II. We have to officially claim that what has happened is just a mistake of our employee that was boosted into “our planned PR action” by the people, who hate StarForce. Using this link, he just wanted to show that every non-protected game can be cracked (in case of some own simple protection) or just put onto the internet resource for public use, sooner or later. I think he guessed that finding the first link to a recent non-protected game would be the best proof. We have to accept that he chose the wrong way for that, but he is just a human and mistakes are human’s nature.

This employee has been responsible for the branch “General questions” during this week, that’s why nobody else had seen this topic and couldn’t remove the links till we heard negative references from different sources.

We have to claim that this has been the first and the last time we allowed posting a link to a resource with illegal content on our forum by our staff. And we will strengthen the administration of the forum to keep it clear from similar links posted by forum members and others.

In further we will necessarily improve our Forum, especially its rules and policy.

Please, once again accept our deepest apologies for inconveniences caused by this issue."

Thanks to Gergith for the heads up...

(4 replies) #1 Brodel on 11 Mar 2006 - 19:45

any chance of enlarging that screenshot please?

I think it's pretty obvious why they linked to a warez site, they really should take note of sales WITHOUT starforce being bundled with the software though.

#1.1 lardiop on 11 Mar 2006 - 19:45

Working on it

#1.2 McG on 11 Mar 2006 - 19:46

Alright, cool. Thanks!

#1.3 lardiop on 11 Mar 2006 - 19:48

There we go, i copied the tumbnail instead of the large screencap originally. Clearly we dont want to link to the actual thread because the warez isnt off the site yet.

#1.4 Brodel on 11 Mar 2006 - 20:43

yea no worries, thanks

(2 replies) #2 halloween_david on 11 Mar 2006 - 19:48

Could Stardock take them to court or anything over this? Seems like the company just got angry that Stardock didn't use their copy protection and so they took the immature kid route and posted links to it on warez sites simply because it didn't use their copy protection. That's pretty low for a company who fights piracy to go and Stardock will lose money because they did that.

#2.1 iOsiris on 12 Mar 2006 - 03:04

Yeah it truly is, its like they're advocating the sites to pirate GalCiv II. Which is retarded considering what the company is trying to accomplish..

#2.2 EugeneE3RD on 12 Mar 2006 - 22:12

Yes, Stardock can take Starforce over court for this. I think that Starforce is ticked off because Stardock didn't use their copy protection in the game & they want to punish Stardock.

I agree with halloween_david & iOsiris on this subject.

iOsiris,

Starforce seems like a hypocrite company. If you use their copy protection, they are happy but if you don't use their protection, they advocate pirating your software.

#3 rm20010 on 11 Mar 2006 - 19:51

Is this enough proof CD protection isn't what those moron companies purport it to be - preventing piracy?

As if Starforce's attitude towards Doctorow on calling Starforce 'malware' wasn't bad enough, they link to pirated copies of a game. Amusing.

#4 RGSPro on 11 Mar 2006 - 19:51

well, another reason why starforce hurts the gaming industry.

#5 xorian on 11 Mar 2006 - 19:51

That's just childish and I think illegal too.
Let them buuuuurn

(2 replies) #6 Eli on 11 Mar 2006 - 19:51

The funnier part? The link is still up on their message board and the thread is STILL open.

#6.1 lardiop on 11 Mar 2006 - 19:53

Indeed it is, we cant link to it for obvious reasons

#6.2 Eli on 11 Mar 2006 - 19:58

Well I'm glad you didn't. Although clicking on the link they provided didn't get me "any results". So I think the site in question took it down.

But I'm still glad there is no direct link.

(1 reply) #7 halloween_david on 11 Mar 2006 - 19:53

LMAO Since they are hosting the board they have the link on doesn't that make it to where they are considered to be hosting warez? Since they are linking directly to the site? Warez forums don't link directly to the files they CODE the links. They are straight up linking to the site and now there's a record that they hosted warez. IMO they just completely screwed themselves.

#7.1 trevor18 on 13 Mar 2006 - 16:24

by posting a link to it they are not hosting it...the file is not on their servers.
Warez forums "Code" the links so they are not shown as the refferer.
I do not play games, but it does sound pretty stupid what they did!Not having any copy protection fine, they should expect it to be put on sites like that, but then to have a member of staff on their forum to post a link to it, thats just stupid!

(1 reply) #8 Audhumla on 11 Mar 2006 - 19:58

Starforce is just having a hissyfit over their loss of potential future revenue now that Stardock has shown everyone what really sells a game, QUALITY.

#8.1 toadeater on 11 Mar 2006 - 23:42

I've never bought any game using Starforce anyway. Coincidentally or not, most games using it have been crap. For some reason quality developers have never resorted to this kind of behavior, I wonder why? None of the best-selling games have used Starforce, no wonder Starforce is getting desperate.

Starforce causes all sorts of problems and it doesn't even work as advertized to begin with. Since Starfarce is posting links, should I post some links to cracked Starforce-infected games?

#9 Betaz on 11 Mar 2006 - 20:00

Wow, Starforce is pretty much a pathetic excuse for a real company. This just further proves it.

(6 replies) #10 tommytom02 on 11 Mar 2006 - 20:04

Finally a company has realized the truth behind all of this copy protection software: first, if someone wants to get it illegally it only takes one programmer that is as smart as their programmers to break the code and nobody can stop it. no matter how advanced the copy protection gets it can always be broken. second, anyone who wants to steal software will and there is no stopping it. third, the copy protection does nothing but inconvenience paying customers and cost the software company more money which is passed along to the customer. copy protection software is a lose-lose situation for stardock so why bother. it is unlikely that stardock will notice any negative difference in sales; if anything it will increase and the paying customers will pay less and be more satisfied. If only the RIAA would take the hint...

Last edited by tommytom02 on 13 Mar 2006 - 06:43

#10.1 Audhumla on 11 Mar 2006 - 20:10

Exactly. A large portion of pirates are most likely not going to purchase the game anyway. Over-the-top copyright protection just alienates true customers.

#10.2 Dragular on 11 Mar 2006 - 20:38

Amen

#10.3 dragon2611 on 11 Mar 2006 - 21:00

My brother is getting that game off the internet :p

I know, I placed the order with play.com earlier

#10.4 Sn4k36 on 12 Mar 2006 - 01:31

yeah really.. I know i own a few games here myself and i don't like using the CDs.. So i even cracked the .exe file so i can run the game without any cd... Very easy stuff.

Hell even the next 10 million different types of cd protection software that comes out... It'll be easlie cracked..

#10.5 DirtyLarry on 12 Mar 2006 - 03:25

Incredibly Well Said.
Right On.

#10.6 jon86 on 13 Mar 2006 - 12:20

I was quite happy when I found out that Egosoft (makers of the X (Universe) Series) published a legal no-CD patch for X2: The Threat to get around Windows XP 64-bit not supporting the Starforce (or whatever else) copy-protection they use and it works on Windows XP 32-bit. The legal no-CD patch works great.

(1 reply) #11 Sens on 11 Mar 2006 - 20:12

I'm going to go out and buy that game now just because I love them so much for publishing it without protection. Who knows, it might be a good game too. Normally I never buy games, but I don't often pirate them either, so if i pirate something noone loses any money at all. Now this guys just gained my money by doing the exact opposite of everyone else.

#11.1 joeydoo on 12 Mar 2006 - 00:27

Right there with you. I also might buy the game for the very same reason. They know, and care, about the customer's experience so that in my mind is a good reason to suspect the game might be good.
Also without them having to pay for the licencing of this pointless "copy protection" software, they can keep even more of their profits.

(2 replies) #12 BTallack on 11 Mar 2006 - 20:12

What they're not telling you is that same site that has the Galactic Civilizations II torrent also has cracked torrents of pretty much every game protected by Starforce.

So what does this prove? Not protecting a game is just as efficient at stopping piracy as protecting a game.

#12.1 Jeremy1 on 11 Mar 2006 - 23:24

You are 100% correct. This just shows that Starforce is a useless waste of time and money.

#12.2 Danrarbc641 on 12 Mar 2006 - 05:00

Game. Set. Match.

(1 reply) #13 Rudy on 11 Mar 2006 - 20:14

i guess they didnt like the fact that they didnt use their crappy protection

#13.1 greenreaper on 11 Mar 2006 - 20:24

That's the reason . . . but it's no excuse.

I know that Stardock has also told people that they cannot have Starforce on their games that they want to distribute them via TotalGaming.net.

#14 Beastage on 11 Mar 2006 - 20:25

Well looking at the list of popular illegal downloads you find many "protected" files being shared
So StarForce point of view is null and void

(1 reply) #15 JK1150 on 11 Mar 2006 - 20:27

Why does anyone care about this, is starforce supposed to pretend there is no bootlegging on the internet? They guy was just proving a point, a valid point at that.

#15.1 mauro on 11 Mar 2006 - 20:43

His point isn't valid because there are countless games 'protected' by Starforce that are being pirated. all Starforce does is inconvenience the legitimate game user, it does nothing to stop piracy.

(1 reply) #16 Daniel on 11 Mar 2006 - 20:33

its near enough black mail. Use our protection or we show were to get your game for free

#16.1 Treefrog on 11 Mar 2006 - 23:23

Um, as if anyone that gets their games for free doesn't already know where to do this?

(2 replies) #17 samriley on 11 Mar 2006 - 20:40

of course copy protection doesnt work, it only hurts legit buyers since the copy protection will be cracked before the game is even released so anyone that wants to play the game without buying it will do so whether it has copy protection or not.

#17.1 elliot on 11 Mar 2006 - 23:28

You forgot to say how this hurts legit buyers.

#17.2 samriley on 12 Mar 2006 - 01:18

it hurts them by forcing them to put the cd in, installs malware, forces them to disable any virtual drives they may have for legit reasons etc. also by stopping the game work on x64 sicne the copy protection device driver is 32bit it wont load and so wont play the game (happens with quite a few of the starforce games)

(1 reply) #18 Liaqat_ali on 11 Mar 2006 - 20:40

The answer to why? is that Starforce and game developers do not understand the behaviour of a Gaming customer. You cannot make a gamer buy a game that they don't want. We only buy games that we like and we would still buy them even if a million copies of it are available online, and the ones we download are the ones we don wanna buy, the reason for downloading them is just to kill time. IMO most of them just occupy space on the HDD for a while and then washed away. Would we buy this game, no, because it is of no value to the money that we will spend on it. For free yes I will play it, for money no you need to make something really better to get those 34 pounds out of my pocket.

Gaming Piracy is different to that of music and movies, it does not effect the industry and in my opinion the only thing it will do is damage the image of the game developers for being too greedy about their sales and putting so tight securities over their games that it starts to cause inconvenience for their genuine customers, which will then start to leave. Thats pretty un-noticeable now eh! well think of the long-term, don't be so short sighted.

I hope this is read by those, for whom I wrote it

#18.1 Audhumla on 11 Mar 2006 - 20:50

Some big game developers (not listing anyone in particular) just like to lay the blame elsewhere. "Our sales are down this quarter? It's definitely not because of our games' cookie-cutter design, rampant bugs, non-existent tech support, and overall lack of care for the fanbase. No, it MUST BE those darn pirates! Git 'erm, Starforce!"

(1 reply) #19 cabletron2000 on 11 Mar 2006 - 20:48

why is this story about this game so different to any other game that gets ripped off - and therefore why is every game(or app) that gets ripped off not "headline" news ..

#19.1 metallithrax on 11 Mar 2006 - 20:51

The difference is that a copy protection supplier linked diectly to pirated copies of a game.

(2 replies) #20 Lycan on 11 Mar 2006 - 21:09

Shouldnt the title be Stardock instead of Starforce?

#20.1 Boxster17 on 11 Mar 2006 - 21:19

No because it wasn't that Stardock was posting links to the torrents, but it was Starforce.

#20.2 Lycan on 11 Mar 2006 - 21:21

yeh, read it again, now i understand the story

so ehm, wasnt even linking towards illegal softwares etc illegal? Now we can expect a nice letter from RIAA or whatever organisation towards them

i guess hehe. Sue their ass right

#21 mx3 on 11 Mar 2006 - 21:21

I've always hated starforce with their stupid hidden drivers, but wow, they just dropped another notch in my book.

(1 reply) #22 dl0711 on 11 Mar 2006 - 21:51

I dont know but to mee its seems like this was Planned by Stardock to see what Starforce and others who make copy protection scheme to see what they would do.. and if this was planned then that was so SMART..

#22.1 lardiop on 11 Mar 2006 - 21:54

Definitely not planned, infact check the galciv II homepage. People thought that Stardock WANTED people to copy the game lol.

#23 thagame on 11 Mar 2006 - 21:56

its childish tactics and pointless. as if starforce protected games arent pirated lol

#24 Joni_78 on 11 Mar 2006 - 21:57

Go Stardock!!!!!!!!!

#25 Xavien on 11 Mar 2006 - 22:03

ugh, i've allways hated Starforce for their invasive drivers and crippling other software that has nothing to do with the game. Big Publishers like Ubisoft should take a leaf out of stardock's book and start removing that nasty, unstable, invasive, hidden, spyware-like copy protection known as starforce.

Treating gamers as criminals will only lose you more and more sales, tbh in this age of DRM crappiness, stardock is the shining light that cuts through the DRM crap. Go Stardock!

Btw, i brought GalCiv II because its a great game, with good support, regular patches and the biggest reason of all is NO copy protection!

(1 reply) #26 Intelman on 11 Mar 2006 - 22:03

Apparently this is not true...

http://www.digg.com/gaming/Galactic_Civili...ate_their_game_

http://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=161&AID=106741

#26.1 Jugalator on 11 Mar 2006 - 22:07

edit: heh, misread your digg link and thought you were posting this:
http://www.digg.com/gaming/Company_WANTS_its_game_pirated_ (which was tagged as inaccurate)

:-)

#27 Captain Olle on 11 Mar 2006 - 22:04

Starforce is just affraid of loosing customers after GalCiv2 proved that a game could be a retail success without any copy-protection. It's quite ironic that I found a bunch of games using Starforce copy-protection on the same site (Way to go Starforce!

.
The fact that GalCiv2 was a retail succsess without any sort of copy-protection didn't came as a suprise for me.
It is quite obvious that people who pirate games know which tools to use to brake a copy-protection.
I therefore personaly think copy-protections are a waste of money. Why pay big $$$ for something that the pirate scene quickly can crack and release.
The most annoying thing is that the honest people who pay for their games; THE CUSTOMERS have to suffer because their games are using copy-protection.

#28 mundox on 11 Mar 2006 - 22:25

And when there was writen on stone that a game without copy protection would fail at retails sales?

If someone pirates a game its mostlikely he had never the intention to buy it in the first place, im not saying that pirates are good or anything, but hell they aren't going anywhere, and copy protections won't stop them so why include those at all?

I hope stardocks become very popular and get like huge sale on their game without copy protection, so that we dont have to see more crappy stuff like starforce

#29 excalpius on 11 Mar 2006 - 22:33

Starforce, check your fly - your hypocrisy is showing.

#30 excalpius on 11 Mar 2006 - 22:35

And anyone who's been following the (not really a) debate over DRM is not surprised by this either, I suspect.

#31 foxconn287 on 11 Mar 2006 - 22:40

Did the guy just link to a torrent site under a lawsuit? Eeeks!

(1 reply) #32 Chaoserver on 11 Mar 2006 - 22:53

Be careful neowin! dont they usually sue people that write anything negative about them???

#32.1 theyarecomingforyou on 11 Mar 2006 - 23:40

Starforce? If they did then there wouldn't be anyone they weren't suing.

(2 replies) #33 BobMarley on 11 Mar 2006 - 22:53

I looked on a popular torrent site and noticed that Splinter Cell 3 (a Starforce game) has been downloaded nearly 100,000 times. Starforce are idiots if they think their protection is actually stopping piracy. All it does is annoy the people that buy the game. I hated Steam when it first came out but give me that any day rather than having to put the CD in every time I want to play.

#33.1 elliot on 12 Mar 2006 - 00:16

Strange, I bought Splinter Cell 3 and never noticed the copy protection.

#33.2 Hanz™ on 12 Mar 2006 - 06:27

Enjoy your rootkit.

#34 bucko on 11 Mar 2006 - 22:57

Interesting...Nice one Stardock

#35 b0b on 11 Mar 2006 - 23:10

I didnt read it, but if Starforce is linking to the torrents, I think Starforce should die, Frogboy should be allowed to kill the people at Starforce involved with this without federal jurisdiction.

(3 replies) #36 thenay on 11 Mar 2006 - 23:12

I would never buy a starforce product, it installs a driver on the OS and has caused crashes for me.
And I don't have time to deal with tech support people who can't speak my language properly.

#36.1 icebrain on 11 Mar 2006 - 23:27

Is there a list of games/apps protected by starforce? I did not know about the installed driver thing (which reminds me of Sony)

#36.2 BobMarley on 11 Mar 2006 - 23:39

Yes, here: http://www.glop.org/starforce/

I had Starforce on my PC, which got installed with Trackmania Nations. I thought I could trust Nvidia's site not to contain malware, now i'll have to think twice about everything I install.

#36.3 rm20010 on 12 Mar 2006 - 07:50

I can't understand why a free game that doesn't need a CD whatsoever needs StarForce. Other than that Trackmania Nations is pretty fun... for a bit.

(1 reply) #37 vlsi0n on 11 Mar 2006 - 23:25

I think the title is a little over done.. I mean, someones trying to make a big deal out of very little...

#37.1 =NickJ= on 11 Mar 2006 - 23:32

the title is deadly accurate!

#38 werejag on 11 Mar 2006 - 23:26

im going to go purchase this game which i rarely do

#39 NinjaGinger on 11 Mar 2006 - 23:42

The only thing that will stop piracy is cheaper prices for the legit program/game. Wonder if they'll ever get it that lowering the price will actually increase the profit made due to increased sales. This proves it.

#40 Nose Nuggets on 11 Mar 2006 - 23:48

suck it trabek

ahem, i meen starforce

#41 nezermundy on 11 Mar 2006 - 23:55

They have removed the link, that is black mail.

#42 Dudlington on 11 Mar 2006 - 23:57

simply awesome...can't wait to see what happens next.

#43 Eli on 12 Mar 2006 - 00:27

Someone is going to get fired......

(4 replies) #44 Person on 12 Mar 2006 - 00:33

Is this really news? Big freaken deal, the only reason this was posted was cause it involved StarDock. Anything that involves StarDock always gets posted cause like Neowin and StarDock are the best of friends.

#44.1 SFalcon on 12 Mar 2006 - 00:43

Well it made the frontpage of Digg.com too. It's also on Slashdot. Is Stardock best of friends with those sites too?

http://games.slashdot.org/games/06/03/11/2049230.shtml

http://digg.com/gaming/Galactic_Civililiza...ate_their_game_

#44.2 matt74441 on 12 Mar 2006 - 09:32

I don't think the game and the publisher are really the issue here...

#44.3 theyarecomingforyou on 12 Mar 2006 - 11:35

I don't care if you like or dislike Stardock, this piece of news is of interest to most people and would be important whatever the company.

#44.4 scyphe on 15 Mar 2006 - 08:10

Interesting. Did you read the article about a Starforce admin posting the URL to download Galactic Civilizations 2? That's newsworthy if anything seeing as Starforce is the culprit here.

(1 reply) #45 Ivand on 12 Mar 2006 - 00:43

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