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StarForce

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For the video game, see Star Force.

StarForce is a software copy prevention brand by the Russian developer Protection Technology. It is compatible with the Microsoft Windows operating system. Its main strength lies in wrapping executable and DLL files using byte-code interpreted through its own virtual machine.

StarForce is believed to operate by measuring the physical angle between the first and last written sector on the CD. This will be identical on all copies pressed from the gold master but is at present impossible to reproduce when burning a duplicate CD.

In addition to this, StarForce, along with SafeDisc and SecuROM copy prevention systems, uses blacklists of optical drive emulation programs such as Daemon Tools and Alcohol 120%, as well as blocking the use of SCSI optical drives when IDE optical drives are present in the system. The latter measure is due to the fact that many optical drive emulation programs appear as SCSI drives. If no IDE drives are present, however, SCSI drives will function normally without interference from StarForce.

Criticism

StarForce has received a large amount of criticism for installing its own device driver onto computers. Some users have documented instances of the StarForce drivers causing system instability. Supporters of StarForce hold that the stability problems were exaggerated and have been resolved in newer versions of StarForce. A small number of people claim that the use of systems such as StarForce also violates certain fair use rights, such as the right to make back-up copies for personal use.

Problems

A current problem is that software protected with older versions of StarForce will not operate on machines using 64-bit Windows, since the StarForce device driver is 32-bit; thus the OS will not allow it to install. Although Protection Technology has produced a 64-bit version of the driver, it is not possible to use this driver with software protected using the original 32-bit only version; thus, a patch from the developer of the protected software is also required and so far few developers have provided such patches. StarForce protected software that will work on 64-bit Windows can be identified by the presence of a .x64 file in the software's install directory.

Ubi Soft, Digital Jesters and Codemasters are now known to use StarForce routinely on newly released software.

Additionally, upon starting the game, StarForce will sometimes take up to 10 minutes to verify the game disc. This behavior is sporadic, and may go through phases where it is unable to verify the disc, only to open correctly the next time the program is run.

The versions of StarForce known to exist at present are:

  • "StarForce Pro 3" (official designation): Requires a "disk key" to be entered when the game is installed. This key is the same for all copies of the game, as it encodes the nature of the protection scheme as present on the master; thus most games use a traditional "CD key" as well for online play. (Present on Trackmania, Chaos League, Etherlords 2.)

External links

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