StarForce - The PC CD-ROM DRM that broke your Computer | MVG

In 2003, Russian Company 'Protection Technologies' released a new form of Copy Protection for PC Games. Known as StarForce - in this episode, we take a closer look at the protection, how it works and how it caused much controversy in PC CDROM gaming in the mid 2000s
► Consider supporting me - / modernvintagegamer
Voice Over Credits and Thanks :
► FrameRater - / framerater
► Alexander Mejia - / humaninteract
► KelpHelp - / kelphelp
► FacingWorlds Blue Screen of Death Video - • Blue Screen of Death [...
► SoftICE Cracking Tutorial-01 - • SoftICE Cracking Tutor...
Links :
► StarForce Wikipedia - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarForce
► Cory Doctrow - "Anti-Copying Malware installs itself with dozens of games" - web.archive.org/web/200812242...
► Reloaded StarForce Docs - www.glop.org/files/rld-sfrt.rar
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#StarForce #DRM

[@ModernVintageGamer]

Take a shot every-time i say 'StarForce' in this video

[@silvyxiv]

Roger that sir

[@offlinegamer6756]

Is this your secret receipt to cure the "Coronavirus"???...

[@phxsisko]

You won't have a fan-base left

[@mbe102]

:o, I actually suggested this in a comment (as I'm sure many others did as well), and its freaking awesome to see you discuss this topic! It was probably in the pipeline, but, thanks muchly dude!

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

I am now terribly piss drunk. WEEEEEEEE!

[@Xeniate]

I like how starforce's website is labeled by your browser as "not secure." The irony.

[@user2C47]

Security is not needed for an advertisement.

[@Locutus]

How is that irony?

[@skyguy4164]

@@markusTegelane Ah but it does matter. As the unencrypted messages can be altered by anyone doing man in the middle attacks. On top of that if a company can't take the time to encrypt traffic (which is very easy to do these days) it reflects on the rest of the company. Tldr unencrypted traffic can lead to exploits, and it's really easy to add to a website these days.

[@mar2ck_]

@@markusTegelane its really easy to MITM a non-https website and replace it with html that redirects the browser anywhere you want. Any http website is vulnerable no matter the purpose

[@ImaginarySpace]

Actually https does not mean there is a fully secure pcserver connection either... But yeah they have login and that stuff on their website so should be https that would protect at least something.

[@BSAnime]

DRM: Let's punish 98% players so that the 2% of players will have to wait one more week to play

[@CheapBastard1988]

Basically yes. But back in those times it was mostly easier to pirate rather than buying a physical copy. Digital distribution such as Steam has made a difference in a big way. Now I hardly ever pirate a game. Only sometimes when I already bought the game for PS3 or PS4 and want to check out the PC version and it still costs €30 or more. Or anything from EA since their recent price hike. Only I can't believe I paid for Red Alert 2 four times 😅. The first time just the basic game back in the day, the second time when one of the discs broke in the drive, the third time with "The First Decade" and the fourth time with "The Ultimate Collection". Especially the last one was a bit of a downer as I bought it in a physical store but was just a download code in a nice box, it needed Origin to claim that code and isn't optimized for Windows 10 so needs a bunch of fixes to be able to run reliable (Tiberian Sun even needed its DRM removed). All this while on my Chromebook running Linux, RA2 runs fine just using Wine and a noCD crack. The irony, bought it 4 times and still need a noCD crack.

[@elimalinsky7069]

I fully agree. In many regions around the world, such as the former eastern bloc countries, physical games were notoriously expensive and hard to come by in the 90s and 00s, and there was no digital option before Steam and fast internet connections were a thing. Piracy was sometimes the only option. Therefore there was no lost sale, because otherwise those people in those countries would simply not buy the game. Steam has brought piracy down significantly, and today piracy is no longer an issue. Piracy is still essential though to run older games that simply won't run with a legitimate copy due to copy protection schemes. So for pure game preservation, piracy is a godsend, similar to how emulation preserves old and forgotten console games, as well as games for various vintage home computers.

[@andrewszombie]

DRM punishes everybody. Its stupid and reckless and perhaps ironically the money spent developing DRM could go to promote their media or games and there have been issues where DRM caused peoples computers to be compromised ➡️➡️➡️ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal

[@Guiggs17]

Agree and for me that used to live in south america in those days, pirate was the only option because the games dont even where sold there. The few games that we were able to buy were extremely expensive. The consoles too. For comparison pruporses the PS3 cost 10x more than US and you have to pay 300% of the price in taxes. If you travel to US and buy one was way cheaper

[@duffman18]

@@Guiggs17 yeah I remember hearing that and it's absolutely crazy. It's cheaper to fly from say Brazil to Florida, buy the console there, stay for 2 weeks at Disneyworld, and fly back, than to buy the same console in Brazil Isn't that why the master system and mega drive are so popular in Brazil and the rest of South America and New ones are still being built to this day? Because the only way to get a console at a reasonable price is to get an old one. Plus the point of the stupidly high tariffs was to encourage companies in these South American countries to build their own consoles themselves, promote industry at home instead of importing from other countries and jobs being outsourced. But I know in Brazil it's a Brazilian company producing the master systems and mega drives, on license from Sega. It explains why there were so many new FIFA games for these consoles too, years after the console itself stopped being produced anywhere else. Because if there's one thing south Americans and especially Brazilians care about, it's football.

[@lemagreengreen]

DRM: Making piracy an attractive option since forever.

[@andrewszombie]

I remember the Defective by Design anti-DRM protests of the mid 2000s and the hilarious Sony rootkit copy protection scandal en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal. Good times. So frustrating were still having to deal with DRM.

[@DeadNoob451]

@@PotatoeSnow Not only that, but it just works once set up. No retarded requirements of some specific OS or hardware outside of what the game itself needs.

[@cheaterman49]

What's hilarious is how some pirates obviously give out infected files. And how it's sometimes the lesser of the two malware you can install on your machine. Also, the one you don't have to pay for. Sigh...

[@andrewszombie]

@@cheaterman49 no, no they don't. Those people aren't pirates. They're idiots taking adv a stage of file sharing to hurt people, which is wrong.

[@cheaterman49]

@@andrewszombie Fair - they aren't the ones doing the cracking, they're doing the distribution and adding their own little personal touch to it. :-) but you're right, it's not the reputable teams doing the cracking that will add malware to the binaries and tarnish their reputation! (and sorry if it looked like that's what I was implying!)

[@W4l0p]

Even some official re-releases used no-cd cracks created by the scene. Embarrassingly leaving the ascii art in the .exe.

[@DeadSpecimen]

Proof?

[@MattFowlerBTR]

@@DeadSpecimen For one, the Direct2Drive version of Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 used Reloaded's NoCD patch, with "*!RELOADED!*" visible in the exe distributed on D2D.

[@GoldSrc_]

@@MattFowlerBTR I remember that one lol.

[@DeadSpecimen]

@@MattFowlerBTR holy fuck thats amazing.

[@zeusgb]

I remember my CD based Vegas 2 and after spending two weeks emailing Activision Support they gave me the reloaded crack as well.

[@nosirrahx]

Imagine if there was a law that mandated either a refund or unlocked version release in the event that a game becomes unplayable. It would almost be like you actually owned the stuff you bought.

[@flying_Night_slasher]

Actually there is a thing that circumventing DRM when the authentication server's go down or any other thing that render's the game unplayable (after a few year's) will not classify as violating DMCA

[@karisasani7006]

If that were the case we would have darkspore

[@o4ugDF54PLqU]

@@flying_Night_slasher The problem is that it requires a lot of work and talent to recreate servers, even if it isn't illegal you still can't play if the game isn't large enough to have fans dedicate their time into server recreation. That's why few online games ever come back to life.

[@o4ugDF54PLqU]

It won't be quite like actually owning a physical thing though, since you can't transfer licenses most of the time, and stuff you own still do break down over time, which is analogous to getting OS upgrades over time and the game stop working because of that. If it's like a physical thing, at best you can hope for a limited warranty to update the game to work with any OS upgrades released in the time of the warranty.

[@flying_Night_slasher]

@@o4ugDF54PLqU well online Game's are hard and I'm actually thinking and planning a way to bring all old Game's back online on every platform like PS3, Xbox 360, PS2, original Xbox and old PC games. But in term's of single player game's there will be no authentication you can just open it and play.

[@sheik124]

You just reminded me of a one-off occurrence from when I was 14. GTA San Andreas got an update but I was planning on sharing the game while traveling with family that didn't have Internet access. I used a hex editor to compare the 1.0 exe, 1.0x update, and 1.0 NoCD exe, and then made the change from the NoCD to the update. Did not think it would work...but it did! The only time I genuinely felt like Hackerman.

[@8bitbubsy]

Quite lucky! Seems like you only had to modify opcodes and not addresses, or else it would crash.

[@Agret]

Funny enough the update for San Andreas actually made the game way more buggy and the best version to play on PC is v1.0

[@kris_0520]

Agret Yeah, that is the best version. Down to each line of code.

[@cheaterman49]

@@Agret Yep. There's an excellent Russian guy making a video series on this (voiced by excellent guests, too). Found it again: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jna2o62ta5elorM

[@bitelaserkhalif]

If you updated the GTA SA, bye bye mods

[@looneyburgmusic]

A friend of mine from back in the day, who was an attorney by day, game addict by night, used to do game reviews on the side for extra income, and was once threatened with a lawsuit over a negative review he gave of a Starforce crippled game. His reply was absolutely classic - "I look forward to full discovery," signed, so-and-so, "ESQUIRE." Last I knew, he never heard back from anyone.

[@adamhunt5291]

Always found the Esquire, thing fascinating as a Brit. In English common law, Esq denotes "dignity". It can be used when writing to someone with a title (like a Judge or Lord). I used it when writing a letter to an american company ones, there reply was terrified. So I asked an american friend who told me 😂😂😂.

[@jeffzebert4982]

If I ever get threatened with a lawsuit, then I'd ask the potential plaintiff, "You should know that, if you take me to court, then there's this little thing called 'discovery'. Do you REALLY want a court to air out your dirty laundry? Hmmm?"

[@shadoom]

Me: Glad we have intrusive terrible DRMs behind us Denubo: hold my VM in a VM in a VM in a VM

[@alaeriia01]

Thanks for reminding me to nuke Denuvo's HQ from orbit.

[@bitelaserkhalif]

Can I ask how to play GTA V on VM at full speed?

[@alaeriia01]

@@bitelaserkhalif yeah, but you won't get an answer :)

[@bitelaserkhalif]

@@alaeriia01 I'm just wondering

[@LukasFink1]

@@bitelaserkhalif VFIO?

[@vaibhavdabwalv1]

It's funny how the more heavy handed the DRM becomes. The more sense it makes to just crack the game

[@LiEnby]

I just bricked my pc from trying to install a starforce crack. The crack worked fine. But I accidentally checked "Launch game" after the install. Without copying the crack files. Now my windows install is in an infinite loop of repair mode

[@pawnstarrickharrison7225]

@@LiEnby curious, is there like NO WAY whatsoever to unbrick it?? I mean maybe like a fresh install or something even though if you have a lot of files then it’s gonna suck.

[@pawnstarrickharrison7225]

@@LiEnby oh and also, any game that has starforce I would recommend playing the console versions of them instead on an emulator if they are on it.

[@LiEnby]

@@pawnstarrickharrison7225 its possible to repair by deleting some drivers it drops in system32/drivers folder, there like named sf..XX.sys where XX is some numbers depending on the star force version Just, uh not sfloppy thats a scsi floppy disk driver made by microsoft and deleting that will cause explorer to crash after a minute of booting up .. yes seriously windows requires a scsi floppy driver from like 1998 or sm shit to work properly, because of course it does but since you cant boot into the system its kinda hard to do that in the first place, if can access recovery menu that has a command prompt so can use that to delete them, but failing that booting into linux or putting the drive in another computer should work same brick happens with a legitimate copy of the game. Btw

[@skult227]

@@pawnstarrickharrison7225 yes there is. It just happened to me and it was a 5 minute fix. I'm only annoyed because it shouldn't even happen at all. I fixed it by disabling automatic repair with command prompt then found out the actual problem (unsigned sfsync02.sys driver from StarForce) then restarted and through the recovery options I disabled driver signature check on boot then booted into Windows. Now I'm uninstalling the StarForce drivers and while that was happening I googled to find this video. A post by someone called vista.ultimate.64 on a forum called CCM, posted in 2011, helped me solve this problem.

[@matteste]

There is also that story I heard of when the developers of "Sins of a Solar Empire" refused to use StarForce in their game, the StarForce developers responded by putting up torrents of their games as petty payback. Don't know how true it is, but it honestly wouldn't surprise me.

[@Woodythehobo]

Fantastic game! I have a few copies, money well spent. They still patch the game after all these years too. Amazing devs and publisher.

[@josephbrandenburg4373]

The people who make DRM software are the most immoral.

[@matteste]

@@josephbrandenburg4373 Ain't that the truth. Those, and those who commission it.

[@indeepjable]

when the drm just bricks the computer when activated

[@gabrielv.4358]

Russians are weird

[@spawnlink]

Rings are feature of the CPU, not the OS (Windows). All x86 based OSes leverage the rings. Different aspects of the OS will run in different rings depending on the need. The core kernel will need to run in ring-0 to control the whole of the hardware. By using low level drivers they are effectively shimming into some of the lowest levels of the system and implement the DRM.

[@TN_AU]

And your point is?

[@JonasDAtlas]

@@TN_AU It's just a matter of accuracy. The video makes it seem like rings are a Windows privilege system, when in fact it's architectural.

[@TN_AU]

@@JonasDAtlas Ahh, yes that makes sense.

[@0xbenedikt]

And then there's ring -1 and ring -2 (SMM).

[@SpookySkeleton738]

I was gonna say this, really pedantic but still. Also to add to what Benedikt said, which is an interesting tidbit, there's a talk that goes more into detail on what's beyond Ring 0: kzbin.info/www/bejne/ooOTn5tjicmjjMk I highly recommend all of Domas' talks, they're all very interesting, however, the idea of a super-rootkit that's opaque to even the firmware is pretty scary.

[@BTStudioGE]

Mistakes were made: this thing was invented.

[@yuddpudd]

Blacklight Which shouldn’t be a thing to begin with

[@NathanJennings1222]

I've heard horror stories about StarForce, but haven't had to deal with it myself. Many of the games that used StarForce are now on gog.com with no DRM at all. I think I should count my blessings on that.

[@yuddpudd]

Channel Banned I had Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, and boy it’s a hassle to play. I used to have a 2 DVD readers in my old computer, and I had to unplug one to play. Plus no music CD and random BSODs

[@nintendo1889x]

@@yuddpudd Oh that was the game I had issues with on Windows 7. So I found a crack and removed the stupid thing.

[@decibelbnuy6155]

Splinter Cell: *takes 400 days to crack* Doom Eternal: "here's a DRM-free version lmao"

[@cheaterman49]

That's the study I wanna see: fairly sure it didn't have any impact on projected/actual sales, and we all saved 5 or 10 FPS at runtime.

[@bitelaserkhalif]

And it will be easy to run on core 2 duo Just get SSE 4.2 bypass (non DRM version AKA officially cracked)

[@frosty6845]

So much for that

[@bitelaserkhalif]

Edit: Bethesda being Bethesda again added denuvo anticheat that fucks up compatibility with linux Mvg uploaded it btw

[@cheaterman49]

@@bitelaserkhalif Exactly :-) and it seems like they did it very wrong, to the point where fellow Linux users can't even play singleplayer anymore...

[@CrowCZ]

One of the most baffling things I remember about StarForce was it's inclusion in original Trackmania Nations, a free to play game only distributed digitally :) SF is actually the only reason you can't play that game on modern systems these days.

[@hegyak]

I thought Trackmania Nations Forever removed that DRM? Or is that a separate game?

[@fusokku9212]

@@hegyak separate game

[@hypernucle]

As i know, Vista patch for Nations has added the modern Windows compatibility, up to Win10

[@Petar321_GT]

Love trackmania.

[@Agret]

@B3ro1080 Trackmania Nations not just Trackmania

[@TheDeadfast]

If I remember correctly in order to claim the "price" for having your PC broken by StarForce you had to personally deliver it to the StarForce office in Moscow, at your own expense. Not terribly surprising there weren't any takers.

[@Spectere]

I remember it being even worse than that. You had to fly there at your own expense and reproduce the issue on *their* hardware in a limited time window. Completely unfeasible considering the issue being tested (long-term stress) would require a unknown, highly variable amount of time to replicate. They basically rigged the game so that they'd score a PR win.

[@luzten]

@@Spectere fuckers

[@23GreyFox]

@@luzten Russians... -.-

[@foxxy46213]

@@23GreyFox still at it...Russians

[@BulletproofKuloodporny]

​@@LiEnbywhere video proof

[@dannybodros5180]

Ended up buying a PS2 just to play Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones. StarForce was THAT bad.

[@ExtremeWreck]

Honestly, I only have a PC because it's an easy way to pirate console games from the 90s, & 2000s lol.

[@unknown.1666]

It's even not install in win 10, with demo of the game. My Windows is 64 bit, I don't have any files from StarForce

[@costelinha1867]

Hey look at the bright side, you now have one of the best retro consoles of all time.

[@dmo848]

Pretty sure I have the cracked version of that on PC. Loved those kinda games

[@Kolyasisan]

Starforce legit broke one of my DVD drives one time. It didn't work on any PC afterwards.

[@aretard7995]

F.

[@cheaterman49]

Yeah, that "disabling DMA" thing sounded scary from the start. I'm fairly sure some drives don't have any other way (read: slower and worse way...) to access optical data. RIP your drive.

[@Kolyasisan]

@@cheaterman49 but shouldn't such a thing be controlled via the dedicated CD/DVD driver? If I don't have starforce installed then it should just continue working normally. My DVD drive couldn't even be recognized as one on any of the PCs, there must've been going on something bigger than just disabling DMA.

[@cheaterman49]

@@Kolyasisan I don't know - my guess from the technical perspective is the driver has to do some sort of translations from the high level command "disable DMA" into some firmware calls for the drive. Possibly they reused this communications layer from drives that could safely disable DMA, and forgot to disable it once they produced drives that couldn't (or more likely they didn't test it at all and assumed it would work), and the drives possibly became unusable once the "disable DMA" flag was set in firmware flash or something.

[@Kolyasisan]

@@cheaterman49 yeah, that also can be the case.

[@Fordi]

I kinda love that almost all the anti-piracy measures you cover have "mistakes were made" in the thumbnail. It's almost as if DRM itself is a mistake.

[@unfa00]

Digital Rights Malfunction

[@datriaxsondor590]

1:00 Piracy has been around for decades, and has never died. All the while, the industry is still alive, well, bigger than ever, and still continuing to grow. DRM hasn't staved off the industry's extinction, it's merely kept piracy relevant and nothing more. The PS1 and PS2 eras were both absolutely rampant with piracy on all systems, and look at the numbers those eras produced, back when "gaming" was still considered nerdy, or uncool. DRM is all about greed, control, and manipulation. End of story.

[@DerpySnake]

DRM is also about spending millions to save a few pennies.

[@ExtremeWreck]

@Zahir Datoo And to start a war.

[@phr33z10]

At this stage - shove a dvd/cd into a USB port and you have an exact replica of what these DRMs achieve

[@alhuno1]

Some cracks (Nuendo 3 for example) uses a custom-made USB drive emulation to simulate the dongle the program normally requests. Team H2O made this crack.

[@phr33z10]

André-Luc Huneault ... Cool information but my comment was about destroying a part of your computer is technically what some of these DRMs do

[@armyofninjas9055]

@@alhuno1 You a pro audio guy?

[@alhuno1]

I just happened to have that specific pirated release of Nuendo 3 in my 2 TB warez collection.

[@alhuno1]

I also have a pirated copy of Cubase SX 3 made by the same team with a very similar approach.

[@Lovuschka]

So essentially, Starforce was malware.

[@MandrakeFernflower]

the CIH virus of win9x used the same mechanism to destroy your BIOS chip It fakes a driver and then uses a kernel oversight to write random numbers to the BIOS eeprom thus overwriting the normal code and making you need a new chip!

[@theguardian8317]

I'm don't know much about these things but I believe some (if not most) DRM and also "anti-cheat" systems for games could be considered malware for one reason or another in the way they operate (some mess with your system furtively, some monitor what processes you're running or scan the memory sharing the data and so on) but they are usually "allowed", certified or white listed. that's one of the reasons games with old DRM eventually stop working as, for instance, Windows or anti-malware software simply stop supporting them

[@matteste]

Basically all DRM is.

[@kjeldlarsen912]

It's from Russia so yes it's a malware/virus/insert whatever evil thing you can here.

[@Omegaknuckles]

Not without an EEPROM burner, a known good bios image, and a lot of desoldering. Not worth the hassle.

[@jaysoosbeans]

Thank goodness there are groups of people dedicated to remove this crap from games to help with preservation and with compatibility. If it weren't for teams such as Razor, Reloaded and etc we'd lose a lot of gems.

[@cemsengul16]

DRM only hurts the customer, not the pirate. Publishers need to understand this already.

[@Rokabur]

Sadly publishers believe the Denuvo pitch that DRM actually causes people to buy the game raather then pirate a DRM-free version. Complete bullshit since Witcher 3 has sold ovr 20 MILLION copies and never had any DRM.

[@Locutus]

Tokabur, impressive that it sold 20m, but one could argue that it could have sold 25m or 30m if it had DRM. This is just looking at the other side of the argument. 🙂

[@emperorfaiz]

@@Locutus Pirates will continue to pirate regardless the game has DRM or not and hardly affect the sale numbers.

[@revenevan11]

@@emperorfaiz yep, reasonable availability is the main deterrent to piracy. If a game is easy to buy and at a reasonable price, people will buy it (except for the very small percentage of die-hard pirates), but if it's physical copy only or region locked or contains crippling DRM that makes it unplayable in the future then the *best* a company can hope for is for people to at least buy it to support the developers and then use a pirated copy. Even then it's certain that not everyone will do this, so there will certainly be fewer sales and less satisfaction among customers who only use the DRM version.

[@DvdXploitr]

What these companies need to realize is in the end, their DRM is just 1's and 0's...digital data, pretty much everything digital has been hacked and what hasn't been hacked will more than likely get hacked. DRM will only SLOW DOWN hackers, it won't stop them. Granted, it took over a year to crack Splinter Cell, but in the end it did get cracked....Vast majority of software pirates are either people that cannot afford the game or were never going to buy it in the first place...so it's not exactly a lost sale for people that pirated it....I flashed my Xbox 360 DVD-ROM drive and burned discs to try games out. I used burned copies of games like "rentals". Blockbuster was charging $9+ to rent games...I could burn a few games for that price....if I liked the games I burned, I would buy them. I liked having the original discs with the cases and manuals. I also liked that I could take those discs to my brothers house or friends houses and play them.

[@Petar321_GT]

World racing 2, starforce made me reinstall windows.

[@ILoveWomen]

I think some versions of the game didn't come with Starforce. The 'City Interactive' version that I had as a child did not have Starforce, because it still runs fine under newer versions of Windows (and because my old computer just wasn't compatible with Starforce for whatever reason. Maybe cause I had daemon tools installed or smth)

[@smiththers2]

i bought that game and it had some stupid activation crap that only let you do it twice. years later i find out there is an update so that it runs on new machines as many times as you want. i used to love playing it!

[@midge_gender_solek3314]

You only had to delete its files with live CD.

[@Mini-z1994]

Had this version, it didn't manage too break windows though for me before i patched/removed it.Pretty much as soon as i could & later just pirated a newer version that didn't have this garbage. Funny to see this mentioned here heh. Kind of fun modding the game.

[@scottkeegan8871]

I had an old laptop around 2010 that I nearly had to do the same with because of a repeated StarForce BSOD. What a piece of garbage.

[@pissmilker2313]

This is what happens when you give kernel access to Russian spaghetti code.

[@matthewrease2376]

In Russia, you don't remove DRM, DRM removes *you*.

[@cheaterman49]

In Russia, you don't use DMA to get information from your drivers, your drivers use DMA to get information from you.

[@AdmiralBison]

@@matthewrease2376 FitGirl disagrees.

[@matthewrease2376]

@@AdmiralBison Wii Fit Trainer says you'll improve if you stick to a regular schedule. Keep those calves in shape!

[@pissmilker2313]

@@xuis37 Alright, I'm going to have to stop you right there... Are you seriously so insecure about your own nationality that you get butthurt over a comment on the internet?

[@myehorov3320]

I remember there was a version of starforce when after installing alcohol 120% you just unplug all optical drives and start the game from virtual drive without any cracks.

[@smiththers2]

i used to use alcohol 120 on a lot of things! i dug it up again the other day to re-burn an image that i couldnt with any other program, on windows xp no less!

[@myehorov3320]

@@smiththers2 alcohol was a swissknife of virtual drives!

[@jZangetsu22]

I used that for King Kong, made an ISO, unplugged my drive, mounted, installed and played. Was such a hassle everytime I wanted to play the game.

[@triple-oe4hw]

Daemon tools?

[@myehorov3320]

@@jZangetsu22 But it was fun when you was just a little kid thinking you are smart hacker and great pirate)).

[@CraneStyleNJ]

"Starforce on Vista" oh boy, what a mix lol

[@dennisanderson8663]

Always check PCGamingWiki's information for an old PC game before installing. They will tell you if it contains a DRM that is not compatible with Windows 10. Unfortunately I did not do this when I installed one of the Brothers in Arms games and after the next restart Windows refused to boot. I had to go into the recovery console and remove the DRM's DLL file to get Windows 10 working again.

[@jamesflames6987]

Scary.

[@duuqnd]

"God, I'm so bored", I said out loud, returning KZbin's main page yet again. And then I saw this video, and my boredom shattered into 10^64 pieces and died. Thank you.

[@duuqnd]

I didn't realize that editing a comment removes hearts. Whoops. If KZbin told me that I wouldn't have fixed such a small typo.

[@h1k0usen13]

@@duuqnd Yeah, that's really annoying.

[@thejonathan130]

Why not learn how to make something? Physical or digital. Get a hobby while you're stuck at home my dude

[@NathanChisholm041]

@@thejonathan130 Thats what im doing! I make electronica Techno and house on my Laptop!

[@erm_ok]

Nathan C where can I find your music?

[@deusexaethera]

As much as people hated StarForce, you have to admire the technical skill required to implement such comprehensive copy-protection. Redirecting system interrupts? That shit is hardcore.

[@cacomeat7385]

Russia

[@kirillshvedov3283]

@@cacomeat7385 Murrica

[@laputadetumadre-ge1kz]

aka a malware, congrats donkey

[@alexhajnal107]

Not tricky at all. The interrupts handlers are physically stored as a list of instruction code blocks (x86 and AVR) or handler addresses (m68k, PPC, and ARM, IIRC) at a known, fixed location in memory (usually close to address 0). Each interrupt has a unique entry in the list. To replace ("hook") an interrupt simply note the existing handler address/code then replace it with your own. When your handler completes it simply runs the code it found or jumps to the address that it found. (I glossed over a few details but nothing that adds any real complexity.)

[@lazula]

I think it may have been helpful to mention that, in addition to running with higher privileges, kernel drivers require much higher code quality and reliability. A user-mode driver crash will crash the program that uses it. A kernel driver crash kills the entire operating system. This is why the shoddy (and shady) code in StarForce caused the OS to crash. Once it fucks something up, it takes the entire kernel down with it. Also, I want to add: SecuROM breaks games. StarForce breaks your computer. You can keep your playable games, I prefer the magic.

[@siphillis]

I'm okay with the current approach: launch with Denuvo, remove it after the sales window closes. This is a fair compromise in which people who absolutely must play the game at launch can do so, while game preservation and modification can enter the fold well before compatibility becomes an issue.

[@amak1131]

Only a few games do it that I know of, and denuvo itself is also pretty bad. Performance issues that suddenly vanish when the DRM is removed is... kind of funny honestly.

[@LonelySpaceDetective]

Or they could do it like how Bethesda did it, by accidentally releasing the game without any DRM on one storefront.

[@selanryn5849]

@@LonelySpaceDetective "Accidentally," twice.

[@LonelySpaceDetective]

@@selanryn5849 That happened more than once? I only heard about them neglecting to implement Denuvo in the Bethesda store release of DOOM Eternal at first.

[@anjoliebarrios8906]

I thought Sonic Mania (a former Denuvo game) had to be connected to the internet every time you played it? Not nearly as bad as SecuROM and StarForce, of course, but incredibly annoying that the pirate who downloads a cracked version gets a measurably more convenient experience.

[@GamerAlexVideos]

I'm glad someone else is also talking about this DRM. This by far is the worst, and most destructive DRM for modern computers, and sadly, people who don't know this are bound to corrupt their Windows. Great video, keep up the good work!

[@essplays6636]

yep happened to me twice trying to play world racing 2 and had 0 idea why

[@ShadowRaptor42]

@@essplays6636 same

[@ModernOddity728]

"Ubisoft then dropped StarForce for SecuRom." Oh hey, LOOK WHAT'S IN MY PLAY NEXT SLOT. *SecuROM - The PC CD-ROM DRM that broke games* lol

[@skalt711]

Same.

[@user-yg4kj2mf1p]

At least it broke games, not PCs. Progress is relative.

[@midge_gender_solek3314]

A year ago I decided to reinstall Prince of Persia: T2T on Windows 10 from my old original CD. It didn't boot until I remove its "drivers" using a live CD. I download a patched pirated version, and I don't feel any guilt.

[@sonicghost8845]

Well you did buy it so you shouldn’t feel guilty, I did the same after I brought the Xbox version without realising it won’t work on 360.

[@PixelOutlaw]

Oh crap I just realize I have Star Force installed on my NES. And an additional cart in my game drawer. In all seriousness good job covering the dangers of DRM.

[@Exnem]

NoCD cracks are so nostalgic for me. As a kid I lost my CDs and serial keys all the time. Then I found out I could just download games for free, blew my 8 year old mind lol.

[@dmo848]

I know, the first time I was showed how to crack things I was like oh you just unleashed a monster. 5yrs later with hard drives full of games n DVDs still hanging around. I'm bad

[@ThePrayingMantis08]

i found that often the game would take 5 years to load if i had the cd in, but as soon as i popped that nocd crack in it would take 5ms did i say i used cracks? oh shit

[@silkwesir1444]

in many jurisdictions you did nothing illegal as long as you actually owned the game.

[@picc9000]

*MVG theme starts up* You gonna learn today...

[@madfinntech]

Oh boy, a good old nemesis of a gamer from back in the day! StarForce and mistakes were made in the same thumbnail = drop everything else and watch.

[@RAZKEN.]

Mistakes were certainly not made when I subscribed to this fantastic channel! Every video got excellent pace and is so easy to understand even tho I got no knowledge about the subject. I was surprised to also hear FrameRater in your video 👍

[@-kurogane-]

I may be confusing StarForce with some other protection measure or something else, but I think it happened with SF protected game CDs, where the more worn out your disc was, the lower was the chance you would pass the checks, and it took longer and longer to launch games, until it stopped functioning completely. Oh, and don't forget chainsaw sounds from spinning the disc on maximum speed inside your drive when validation sequence starts.

[@aeriumfour6096]

Can you do a video on the Myth 2 (Bungie) installer bug that would nuke Windows installations when uninstalled? I remember a couple years ago I didn't know about it, had an original disc and... it was a bit of a shock.

[@Weretyu7777]

@Shredder Was Deltarune created by Toby Fox, or is it a fan made thing? Because Toby doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would create code that sloppy.

[@cyphaborg6598]

Yeah I remember that happening. lol (luckily I didn't have a PC back then.)

[@bradleypearl2986]

@@Weretyu7777 Nah, bro, it's made by Toby.

[@Weretyu7777]

@@bradleypearl2986 Huh. Weird. Has the bug been fixed yet? The one for Deltarune, I mean.

[@bradleypearl2986]

@@Weretyu7777 I dunno.

[@mikea683]

Your intro music brightens my day! You're a wizard dude.. Your videos are spot on

[@mr_chocomec]

I remember Starforce. Not that I had any particular issue with it, but I remember that everytime that I wanted to play Trackmania, Starforce would start by checking the presence of the disk by spinning the CD and doing so much noises... And the sound that my drive did still haunt me to this day :'(

[@oni8245]

I love your videos, I was/am active in the scene and love hearing the old stories, Gives me insights on stuff going that i did not know the details of. LOVE IT keep it up!

[@pundemon9659]

Great video, glad KZbin recommended your channel! While my memory has been affected by disability, back when I was still abled I was studying computer Science at Stetson, and your delivery style makes this kind of content really digestible and reminds me of what they were teaching us before I went on medical leave! How nostalgic :D

[@Daz555Daz]

I completely forgot that Starforce even existed to be honest. I soon remembered after I installed GT Legends on my Windows 10 PC just to see if the game would still work on Windows 10. Next time I rebooted - completely non-bootable.

[@unocualqu1era]

Doesnt starforce get automatically rejected by windows 10? as in, it doesn't even install? I thought this was the case Edit: apparently newer versions of starforce were made compatible and can break even the newest versions of windows 10. The people at starforce just wont give up breaking computers

[@berthold64]

@@unocualqu1era LMAO how is this even possible

[@lucasn0tch]

@Zeta0001 bruh I tried playing the Russian translation of the Japanese game Sakura Taisen in a VM, but the activation service knew I was using a VM. The Japanese PC DVD versions only needed a No DVD patch.

[@danielm.595]

@@unocualqu1era that is illegal, isn't? Why these people aren't arrested yet?

[@Daz555Daz]

@@unocualqu1era apparently not. My game disc for GT Legends is from 2005 or so.

[@MidnightSt]

The piracy argument have been proven to be nonsense already. There's two types of people who pirate games: One type wouldn't have bought the game anyway, so there's no loss of profit. The other type wouldn't have bought the game blindly, but after having pirated it, played it, and seen that they like it, they decide to support the devs by then buying it. Often even if they've already finished the pirated version, and even if they won't actually (re)play the legal version. They just buy it after-the-fact and let it sit in their library, but they still consider it money well spent. So in the end, piracy doesn't cause a loss, but might cause some extra income for the creators. Which some companies have realized, so the coolest ones actually create the "pirate torrent" themselves.

[@wibs0n68]

@ASS BURGERS Well I do (depends). If its a good game, i'd still buy it. Or for testing purposes (because not much games have the shareware/demo version nowdays)

[@NightMotorcyclist]

This is why demo discs or demos in general need to make a comeback.

[@SnoozeYaLose]

Hey, congrats on getting FrameRater to do a voice over for ya. The guy deserves a bigger following, and I thank you for giving him that exposure.

[@XMrPineappleX]

Congrats on 400k mate. Keep up the quality content!

[@deadbzeus]

Hey MVG just wanted to say I am impressed at how many videos you are able to get out a d still have them be such high quality and full of information. Just wanted to say thanks for all the awesome content. Keep up the great work.

[@novostranger]

Everyone: Do you destroy PC's? StarForce: DA!

[@DerpySnake]

I'm gonna be honest, making software that breaks things on software and hardware levels shouldn't be ok just because the EULA says "not our fault we can't code".

[@sgt.thundercok4704]

What a revelation.

[@lachainedumeurtrekillerpot1908]

your amazing intro music give me chills!

[@The2808erik]

I remember you could bybass StarForce on some games with a burnt DVD via clone DVD, an external DVD drive and all internal drives disconnected.

[@rajvinder89]

I find it funny that Ubisoft to this day is still known for using heavy-handed DRM in their games.

[@rajvinder89]

@@desertfish74 Yep, and not listening to the community who's been asking for a new Splinter Cell game.

[@davidherbstayala]

I really love this series. Also this Intro is just fabulous

[@adaw2d3222]

I always wanted this video from you! Thanks.

[@unclerubo]

I bought Trackmania Sunrise in the XP days. Haven't been able to play it since upgrading to newer versions of Windows. Not to mention multiple issues with it back in the day...

[@leo34150]

Trackmania original just plain killed my win10 laptop

[@GeddonJones]

I'm thinking of putting XP on a spare drive just to play Trackmania Sunrise again.

[@unclerubo]

@@GeddonJones I have an older machine with XP and even a CRT monitor for old games, but for me, TM was always about couch gaming...

[@unclerubo]

@Gabriele Nocentini I don't think it would run there, precisely due to the use of StarForce...

[@unocualqu1era]

I loved that game. The later trackmania games don't have that colorful graphics and amazing soundtrack. I don't think I'll be able to play it in any modern PC though...

[@therealCG62]

The flight simulator DCS was running StarForce DRM up until fairly recently.

[@Kernle32DLL]

4:27. That "my eyes" cover. Bandcamp release maybe? Anyhow - excellent video as always!

[@Gantradies]

I can personally confirm that the talk about physical damage to optical drives is true- The blasted thing ruined my first laptop’s DVD Burner- ironically I was “infected” by a legal copy of one of CENAGA’s UFO After_____ games- and went full on torrenting .iso’s as a result- it simply died :( It’s also important to note that at the time, they were demanding that people ship their PC to Russia/eastern Europe for analysis- at the senders cost- it wasn’t truely in good-faith...

[@dndboy13]

the starforce dudes were russian? man, for some reason i thought i remembered they were french? maybe i'd associated it with Ubisoft? its interesting that i sort of remember them at all to be honest, I think i was was still in high school when it was still a thing; i never really had issues with drm doing wonky stuff to my computer, my dad had a subscription to PC Gamer and I recall reading about Starforce and its issues fairly regularly in its articles and the uh, kind of snarky, probably ill advised, tone that 'Protection Tech' would use in its PR.

[@rustblade5021]

You may be thinking of TAGES... they were both "next generation" protection, came out around the same time and were very secure... they weren't cracked until years after

[@2prize]

They had French publishers

[@SelectStart89]

I even thought it was a game. Hahaha

[@VladPayne]

Daaaamn got so many flashback while watching this. Remember taking a hit at starforce in the days gone. It was actually brute hacked in 3 months, but the instructions along with binary were mainly on russian forums and were incomplete, as every game DRM used a somewhat different method. STARforce monitored these communities and actually updated the DRM in silence even on hacked versions via driver updates :D so you could have a working crack today and tomorrow no more. Ahh the good old days, where hacking a game to work took as long as to play the game itself.

[@wrathofthegravis]

Great vid, thanks ! I will never forget this pain in the ass protection and my effort to play PoP Two Thrones.

[@libertine09]

awesome and interesting vid as usual! one small thing i noticed at 5:51 installed had 3 L's XD

[@KuroAno]

Ah, StarForce, the software that prevented me from playing my legal copy of Worms 4 after Windows Vista (which was already very buggy). On Windows 7, it wouldn't work. When I tried it on my current PC running Windows 10, it outright corrupted my system drive ! Thanks game ! I broke the disk out of anger.

[@soniablanche5672]

That's hardware abuse, I'm calling the cops.

[@weon3302]

Hardware abuse.

[@unknown.1666]

How corruped your disc? I installed demo of the game with StarForce, uninstalled it and my pc runs good. Windows 10 64 bit, [*] for your disk. This is another reason, why we need backup. And I have question, it breaked only C: drive, or another? It's very buggy software, it's not ended in my opinion. Use nocd crack, to don't use StarForce (Sorry for my English, I can speak it, but I am bad), just reinstall system and you be great :)

[@goldylover1000]

Thats strange when I played it on my windows xp nothing went wrong at all. Maybe because it was pirated and It was Europe exclusive so I guess it was cracked good. So moral of the story just pirate starforce games they don't deserve squat for bricking computers.

[@LiEnby]

@@goldylover1000 worms 4 version 1.1 has star force installer but the game never actually uses it. It's effectively drmfree (you can even delete protect.exe/x64/dll) so you probably had that one 2nd. It's windows XP. The bricks only happen on windows 10 Finally. It's a crack

[@NFT2]

You should do a video on Denuvo, always interesting to hear your insight on this kind of thing

[@sumbodyshero]

I sincerely love your videos. Keep gaming, my dude.

[@nopls9255]

So glad to hear my homie framerater in your new video

[@Blowcrafter]

6:00 is that background song not also in the oculus game robo recall? Seems familiar somehow. Very interesting video as always :D

[@EliasEA]

The song is My Eyes by Nero

[@claytonmoorawa9512]

Anti-Piracy Protextion: *exists* *Clone CD* : I'm About to End This Man's Whole Career

[@papajammie]

Loving these DRM Videos, keep them coming 👍👍

[@the_hamrat]

I'd love to see a video made by you on how the old Starforce games were cracked. Excellent video as always

[@brandonr.4910]

I love your channel. Not only do you have fun, informative videos that illustrate that you actually know what you're talking about, but you don't screech and act like a 13 year old. Great content. You deserve 3m subs.

[@EpicTyphlosionTV]

Oh boy, this thing is what caused my physical copy of GT Legends to make me think my computer broke. Thankfully I had a live CD of a Linux distro that allowed me to remove the faulty .sys files that it installed into the system. However, even after getting a copy of it on Steam, it refused to run on my PC...

[@unknown.1666]

So, if I don't have any sys files from StarForce, I don't have it, right?

[@dogearflopper7011]

1:55 Hearing the phrase "Daemon Tools" blasted me with a huge wave of nostalgia

[@danmanx2]

Great video MVG!!!! You are always a wealth of information.

[@over00lordunknown12]

5:26 Star Force DRM installing its self with Ring Level-0 access without the user knowing... That’s a lot more relevant now thanks to the game Valorent.

[@FurtiveCutless]

Try Doom Eternal :p

[@thelunchbox420x]

I was just reading about this on some old forums when I opened up KZbin and your video popped up. Holy shit.

[@Salfordian]

Because it checked search history, cookies

[@thelunchbox420x]

@@Salfordian he just made the video... It was within 5 minutes. Has nothing to do with cookies.

[@Salfordian]

@@thelunchbox420x Owning a website with adverts I know how this works, had enough people comment on adverts showing up they've just been looking at!

[@thelunchbox420x]

@@Salfordian Dude what do you not understand? He just made the video! It doesn't matter what was in my cookies if he didn't make the video. Holy shit dude think about it.

[@sagacious03]

Pretty interesting! Thanks for uploading!

[@AlexanderEngler]

Congratulations to 400.000 subscribers!

[@firstsurname9893]

"Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That's how the light gets in"

[@DogeGaming26]

I like how the CC almost always says "Star Wars" instead of "Star Force."

[@jefftank3300]

I worked at a PC repair shop when the Sony rootkit and Star Force made their appearances. I did a study on the effects of Star Force. I created identical systems. One with a StarForce game, the other without. I conducted identical steps with the optical drives on the system (a CD-R and DVD-R drive) Using the CD-R for a backup of misc. Office files: The burn process began at full speed. But it quickly slowed down to Programmable I/O (PIO) mode (2x burn speed) That burned CD was unreadable on the SF system by either optical drive but read fine on the other. Using the DVD-R for backup of misc. Office files: The burn process began at full speed. But it quickly slowed down to PIO mode. Within seconds of entering PIO mode, the system either froze or BSOD. . After 5 attempts, the DVD-R drive was no longer detected by the OS or in the BIOS. Swapped it to the other system. It was not detected by the OS or BIOS. Dead. I conducted this same process on three more systems. On each system with SF installed, the DVD-R drive failed after 5,7, and 5 attempts. We also used a different brand of DVD-R drive for each test. In later research, I found that DVD drives, unlike CD drives, were not designed to function in PIO mode. Therefore forcing them into that mode caused them to choke. And choking it too many times, killed it.

[@NewBye]

Holy crap I've been waiting for this.

[@shortcat]

Even StarForce and Denuvo aren't as bad as relying on connection to the official server like many games do nowadays.

[@Loundsify]

The preservation of games for the future looks bleak.

[@gunswinger3110]

cant even play modern warfare 2019's campaign without needing an internet connection, you're instantly booted from a mission when you lose connection

[@blueelectric05]

And if those games' servers got shut down and unsupported, the game practically became unplayable. And I'm mad at Sony and Polyphony Digitals on what they have done to GT7 mostly for that specific reason

[@LukeAkAscooterkid]

Thanks for covering this! the starforce on prince of Persia two thrones ruined my child hood windows xp PC, this explains all the issues that pc had at the time my childhood brain could never understand haha. I knew the problem was starforce but never at this detail, really thank you! all makes sense now.

[@CptFitzgerald]

I love how consistently inflected your sign off is. You fucking rock, dude- keeping our brains engaged during these hellish times.

[@Driftking009]

As a newcomer to your channel, I am addicted to your videos! They are really awesome!

[@fuerchter]

4:27 someone hasn't watched lgr's crt recording guide ^^

[@saghwteam]

Everytime a video about DRM came out it's always about how the said DRM ruins the experience for its users or outright damage hardware. Why can't we have a video about helpful, successful DRMs for once? OH, WAIT

[@redpheonix1000]

I guess you could say Steam itself is a successful DRM, because it's not really intrusive at all, and provides lots of extra functionality (the store, social features, etc...)

[@Lovuschka]

There are many videos about Steam.

[@JoeBee9]

Helpful ones have little to discuss. Protecting the game sales while also enhancing rather than disrupting the user experience is what is expected. Instead, some companies chose to appease greedy shareholders and executives who only care about the bottom line even if it ruins a customer’s computer.

[@chestermc9954]

@@redpheonix1000 Steam also doesn't force DRM on the games they sell, there are plenty of DRM-free games on the store.

[@ABaumstumpf]

@@redpheonix1000 Steam is not a DRM but they offer an API for a very basic, non-intrusive, DRM.

[@syrusse8660]

Literally 5am tired af but I must watch the video, so much enjoyable

[@robin.mp4]

I had similar issues with King Kong a few years ago and I didn't know, it was a DRM that caused the bluescreens. Looks like I'm pretty lucky, that I didn't had to reinstall my operating system.. Very interesting video. It gave answers to questions I never knew I had

[@TheUltimateBlooper]

Meanwhile at Denuvo Inc: "We're gonna run anti-cheat on ring 0 and it's gonna be great!"

[@DarkonFullPower]

It's a darn shame that the cheater arms race forced this. Any anti-cheat not at ring 0 is completely worthless. BattlEye is also ring 0, yet gets none of the conversation that Denuvo has.

[@TheUltimateBlooper]

@@DarkonFullPower I play no multiplayer games... I used to like them as a teenager, but grew out of that crap real quick. Can't stand playing with random people anymore, so it's friends-only or single player for me :D

[@sapientsatellite]

They were very shady. Not to mention offset print shop and CD manufacturing, that produced pirated CDs and were located in the same building with StarForce creator, Protection Technology LLC, in Moscow.

[@NaokisRC]

If thats true then there is no bigger case of irony

[@texemplarstudios5481]

So I was just looking for this today. It’s the only video on YT about it. What a coincidence! You got a like.

[@MexMxc3]

Awesome content thanks so much! Love your channel