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In news that pleased pretty much everyone planning to buy Heroes of Might and Magic V, game publisher Ubisoft has made the decision to drop StarForce from all upcoming releases.

StarForce, a security program intended to protect game software from piracy, has been widely criticized for the security risks it poses to a system on which it installs. Since StarForce installs automatically with no notice to the user and since there is no clear procedure for removing it from a machine, the problems caused by the program are difficult to diagnose and repair. Among other things, the software can lead to optical drive slow-down and eventual malfunction.

Sources:
ExtremeTechBoycott Starforce

Wait...you mean there's a company out there that's more interested in not alienating all of its consumers than in squeezing a few piddling cents more out of a product with copy protection that doesn't work anyway?

With the growing trend in companies aggressively defending their intellectual property with means that may be inconvenient or even harmful to consumers, this is definitely a step in the right direction. I'm already at a point where I refuse to purchase copy-protected CDs (sorry, Rachael Yamagata) because of the hassle involved. Computer software that contains the moral equivalent of malware (albeit under a different guise) completely takes the cake. Without this change, I wouldn't be purchasing HoMM5 at all. Hopefully, other companies will follow suit and realize that harassing consumers this way is going to hurt their business far more than piracy ever could.

This post has been edited by karasuman on 18th April 2006 21:20

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Veni, vidi, dormivi.

Since the rootkit fiasco with Sony CDs, the tide seems to be turning slightly against aggressive DRM measures - we've seen two games PC games recently, Galactic Civilizations II and most notably Oblivion, achieve great success (well, as much as any PC game does nowadays) without including any kind of fancy antipiracy technology.

This news, from a company that's used StarForce on pretty much all its releases for a while now, is very, very welcome indeed.

Now, if only they'd release a no-StarForce patch for some of their older games... I'd like to be able to play Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones without having to reinstall all that StarForce rubbish.

I'll only say this: Justice has been served. I hope my dead DVD drive (thanks to StarForce) is happy about this.

Great news indeed.

And I hope the same Tiddles does: can't wait to play POP: The Two Thrones without blowing out another DVD drive.

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"But he's the sort of man who can't know anyone intimately, least of all a woman. He doesn't know what a woman is. He wants you for a possesion, something to look at, like a painting or an ivory box. He doesn't want you to be real, or to think or to live. He doesn't love you..."

Alejandro Artiles
AKA The Death Knight