NA release of Spellforce 2 to ship without StarForce

[Everlost_MI]

Bluesnews (http://bluesnews.com/) has posted word from publisher Aspyr Media that the North American release of Spellforce 2 will ship without StarForce. (http://bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&threadid=65392)

Aspyr Media is responsible for publishing the North American release of Spellforce 2. We wanted everyone to know that Starforce will *not* be included in the retail release of this game. Starforce is being used in the demo in cooperation with the European publishers of the title, JoWood Productions. This is to help prevent reverse engineering that could lead to our product being put up on illegal software networks. We apologize for any inconveniences Starforce may have caused and would again like to reassure everyone that we have chosen alternative copy protection software for our final release product. Thank you for your interest in Spellforce 2!
Excellent news!

[Kelegacy]

Haha, nice. Now everyone needs to jump on this bandwagon. Muerte al Starforce!

[Oddmaker]

owned!11!1!!

[bapenguin]

6 months and Star Force CP is done on PC software.

[Serapth]

Funny thing is, there is a guy on the Starforce forum that seems to post every bit of bad news. The guy has like 1000+ posts... Talk about a crusade :) Kinda funny though, this news is posted there too.

http://www.star-force.com/forum/index.php?showforum=14


The other pissoff part, is Star Force has already been defeated, so it really just gets in the way.

[fitbabits]

Ah, a big 'git it right up ye' to StarForce.

Dan

[Serapth]

Does anyone else sorta read this announcement kinda like... "Yeah, we wont be screwing over our North American customers. But, Europe... well, fuck Europe!"

[fitbabits]

Does anyone else sorta read this announcement kinda like... "Yeah, we wont be screwing over our North American customers. But, Europe... well, fuck Europe!"
Blame the European publisher, not the developer.

Dan

[Deadend]

Starforce is hated... that is a fact. Copy Protection sucks as it eats up processor cycles and RAM. I have better use of that RAM and cycles, such as playing the damn game.

Dan

[Sazime]

So how long before someone posts the torrent of the game on the Starforce site? Cause you know, without it people are gonna pirate it (oh no!)

[Cool AN]

Wait, so the European version will have it? If so: Damn I was thinking about buying Spellforce 2.

[Heretic Machine]

Wait, so the European version will have it? If so: Damn I was thinking about buying Spellforce 2.

Import it.

[Cool AN]

Import it.

I will have to consider that.

[Knite]

heh. Someone should use an anonymous prox setup to post on starforces site the torrents of starforce protected games that are for d/l
After all, It's because of "no starforce" that games are pirated, right? StarForce stops tehm allz!

[NoName]

Spellforce had to many resources to manage for my liking, other than that it was pretty fun. Without StarForce it might be checking out :).

Dan

[lpmiller]

now to get the next might and magic games to not use starforce, and I'll be happy.

[TheBrainKills]

allright I will bite ..... whats with the


Dan.

Eh?

[Abash Alarmist]

This just occurred to me, but all the companies/games that have had recent issues with StarForce are linked by name: StarForce/StarDock (Gal Civ 2), and StarForce/SpellForce...Conspiracy?

Dan

[ddbrown30]

Why does everyone keep signing their posts "Dan"?

[thecrazyd]

Ask Dan. I am sure he will tell you.

Dan

[Abash Alarmist]

Why does everyone keep signing their posts "Dan"?

See EternalGamer

Dan

[danhoo]

Strangely, my real name actually is Dan

Dan

[Zombosis]

It's not all good news, people. Fine print says:

We apologize for any inconveniences Starforce may have caused and would again like to reassure everyone that we have chosen alternative copy protection software for our final release product.

Starforce might be the worst, but that doesn't mean that other copy restriction software is automatically sweet and innocent. SafeDisc has it's own evils too. If this were a press release stating that Aspyr were adopting the same pro-end user policies that Stardock takes great pride in, I could see more reason to be ecstatic.

Of course, that said, I really don't care if there's Starforce on Spellforce 2 or not; I'll be ALL over it... Speaking personally at least, I don't have much choice when it comes to the hell that is Starforce, I've reviewed dozens and dozens of games infected with that trash. That I have one less title forcing me to: reboot after install/slowing my system/crashing my system/inexplicably refusing to read the game cd, etc., is just icing on the cake, really.

I would also like to point out that I don't mean to belittle Aspyr at all. As publishers, they seem to really have their hearts in the right place. Their customer service is, if nothing else, prompt. Their handling of the Spellforce Platinum edition cd-key misprints was admirable.

[easi]

Look at the stickied thread about Alcohol/Daemon on SF forums and laugh at the massively out-of-context quotes.

Dan

[resikel]

Why does everyone keep signing their posts "Dan"?

They were infected with the Dan virus in another thread. Poor saps.

Steve

[president_fred]

Where the fuck is Dan anyway?

Dan

[resikel]

Where the fuck is Dan anyway?

Dan

At Starbucks. Where else?

Wally

[Serapth]

Jesus christ this Dan stuff is getting old already...

Dan

[AlmostSente]

Is it ok if my first name starts with Dan?

Dan

[fitbabits]

Is it ok if my first name starts with Dan?

Dan
Only if the rest of your first name is 'ger'. Otherwise, you can forget it. :)

[bean19]

6 months and Star Force CP is done on PC software.

I don't know. They probably make most of their money from Ubisoft, and they may have Ubisoft locked into a contract or something.

Also, my understanding is that piracy is much worse in Europe due to the fact that they did not get games as quickly as we get them in the U.S for years and years (and still don't get them as quickly). Plus, some titles don't ever get released there. I'd probably be a big old game pirate if it were the only way for me to get access to games. When I was a teenager, I pirated the ROM for one of the Final Fantasy games that never came out here (though I got stuck in a level where the map wouldn't display properly on the emulator and thus didn't get to play through it until it finally got translated as a reissue on the PSOne).

Anyway, that company sees piracy as a big problem because locally it is a big problem. European game developers themselves probably pirated games, so they view it as a big problem.

Having some form of copy protection is cool by me. I buy my games. Still, I think they should get out of bed with Starforce for reasons that have been mentioned over and over in several threads here.

[MasterEvilAce]

Why even worry about copy protection shit? How much money does it cost companies to use it? All it does is piss people off, and cause problems.

I don't think there should be NO protection, a cd-key and simple checks is really all you need. This way people won't generally give copies away. Keep only one CDKey per server, so if people want to play together, they need their own copies. (This would also protect a bit from wide-cdkey releases.. if all the pirates use the same key, they're not exactly going to have a fun experience getting kicked from servers)

That protects probably the biggest range of piracy. The rest just interfers with life, and pisses people off. And the pirates can bypass that shit ANYWAYS.. so it's wasted money. Those are the guys that are that dedicated to not paying--you're not losing money, they wouldn't have bought it anyways.