StarForce Linking to Illegal Torrents?

[news=http://www.star-force.com/images/t_logo.gif]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

StarDocks Response to Starforce

:source: Source: http://neowin.net/[/news]

I really don't know hy they even bother .. starforce I mean ... they just make a challange for us to crack games :P .. I know as well as u guys that starforce isn't impossible to crack so I think game companies should realise that and shouldn't put any protections any more and they will see a positive response all over the place :) ... I really think that with this game protections will dissepear fradually :D

yea i played games with starforce before. BUt then i get bored of it. Most if the games using starfoce suck anyway.

Sounds like someone at StarForce was suffering from a nasty bout of sour grapes.

Good on the makers of Galactic Civ II, they seem to have decided to a different approach to the whole piracy issue. I also see on their website that they are reporting record sales. :)

yes that's the point ... make ppl see that they can try a illegal copy of the game and then buy the game :) .. I think that making us think that by not putting any protection they don't give a damn on the sellings ( even if they do ) but on the quality of the game actually make a game even better :)