StarForce is one of those groups, kind of like Jack Thompson and his ilk, that seemingly can't help but be boneheaded. They threatened to sue the writer of an article laying out all the things that are wrong about their copyright protection software, which has been known to cause system instability and crashes on some computers as well as being plain hard to get rid of, even when the game it came with has already been uninstalled. They claim anyone who talks bad about their software is simply a "beginner-level hacker" who's trying to cheat the system. They offered $10,000 to anyone who could offer proof that their software damaged optical drives -- as long as you didn't mind hopping over to their offices in Moscow on your own dime and demonstrating it right in front of them.

But they aren't finished being stupid. Stardock, the developer of Galactic Civilizations II, recently mentioned that their game has no copy protection and yet still enjoys strong sales, a result they say is due to not hassling consumers with excessive anti-piracy measures.

"Our primary weapon to fight piracy is through rewarding customers through convenient, frequent, free updates," the firm explained.

"If you make it easy for users to buy and make full use of your product or service legitimately then we believe that you'll gain more users from that convenience than you'll lose from piracy."

StarForce brilliantly decided to make a counterpoint to this by posting a link on their website to a pirated copy of the full version of Galactic Civilizations II on a torrent site with the statement: "Right now several thousands of people are downloading the pirated version only from that web-site. Is it good for the sales? Unlikely."

The link has since been removed, but the PR damage is already done. Unfortunately, StarForce is still used in a number of PC games, and not just third-tier fringe games either; All of UbiSoft's recent titles have used it. One can only hope, like Jack Thompson, the people behind StarForce will continue to be so crazy that they'll drive themselves right into obsolescence.

Source: GamesIndustry.biz