Starforce destroys PCs

Starforce is a piece of software bundled with some modern PC games that aims to provide unbreakable copy-protection. Unfortunately it falls quite short of that mark, and might actually cause quite a bit of harm.

For a start, it would be nice to know when you're going to have Starforce on your computer. Sure, I bet it's somewhere in the reams and reams of licence agreement that nobody ever reads. The licence agreement that you can only read after opening the game and trying to install it. Yes, the one you're accepting by buying the game in the first place, but are unable to read at the time of purchase.

Besides, nobody reads all that stuff. We all just trust it conforms to the realm of common sense. If I've just bought a game, you can bet it's because I want to have fun, something that is guaranteed not to happen if I sit down to read through the entire licence agreement. The game in question? DiRT.

Don't get me wrong: DiRT is great. Despite the pretentious lower case 'i' in the otherwise capitalised title, it plays like a great arcade rally game should. Then things start to go wrong. A crash here. A crash there. Totally unrelated programs, and at totally random times. I haven't made any changes to the system at all, so I can only assume that it's DiRT. Or more accurately, it's Starforce, that was installed on the sly by DiRT. If this was legitimate and above board, why wasn't I given a window allowing me to choose whether I wanted to install Starforce? If my sink breaks, and I call the plumber, I'm going to be pretty annoyed when I find him installing a new boiler and half a mile of pipes without asking. Why would it be any different with computer software?

No problem, I thought. Just uninstall DiRT, great game though it is, and Starforce and its associated problems will go away. Except the mouse is no longer moving. Come to think of it, nothing is happening because the computer has frozen. So much for uninstalling. That's the middle finger from Starforce right there. I press the power switch, turning the system off, then back on. Windows begins to load again, but wait! A blue screen of death appears, too briefly to read the message, then the system reboots itself.

Don't panic, I tell myself. It's just a freak occurrence. It happens all the time with PCs. Right? Rebooting again, the same thing happens. And a third time. This is now no coincidence; something is badly wrong. I attempt to load Windows into safe mode. The same thing happens. I attempt to start with the last known good configuration. The same thing happens. I then insert the Windows DVD, expecting to have to reinstall the operating system. The same blue screen of death happens again.

What's going on here? As a last resort, I unplugged the computer from the mains and left it for half an hour. As it happens, this sorted the problem, but this is not normal. A computer should not be doing this. After getting back into Windows and uninstalling DiRT, the random crashes continue. It turns out Starforce hasn't been uninstalled at all. Searching the net, I find that there is a removal tool provided by the developers of Starforce. I run it, and it tells me there is nothing to remove. On closer inspection, it turns out that the removal tool does not work with 64-bit Windows. It doesn't say "sorry, but this application won't work with your version of Windows." It flat out lies and claims to have functioned normally. This is surely deliberately malicious software design. This feature could never arise from sloppy programming or simple omission.

I'm now very angry, resorting to attempting to remove Starforce manually. This involves scouring the hard disk and registry for certain files, and removing devices (hidden devices) from the Device Manager. A 'regular' computer user just wouldn't have the knowledge nor the courage to undertake something like that. What an appalling piece of software.

I don't support software piracy. I don't want to see game developers going out of business because their products are distributed for free on the Internet. I do expect that software is open, transparent and easy to remove. Copy protection such as Valve's "Steam" actually works, and doesn't do damage to a computer. Copy protection such as Starforce is no less than malware: software that enters your system without your knowledge and prevents you from using your computer the way you want to use it.

Search for "Starforce" on Google. Go on, I dare you. How many of those results have something positive to say? I still haven't sorted my computer out. Things are still not working properly, and crashing randomly. There are stories of physical damage being caused to PCs by Starforce, and after my experience, although I have no proof either way, I am certainly ready to believe them. I have enough to deal with, handling spam emails and malicious trojans on the Internet. I can do without that kind of thing on the games I spend money on.