Rush For Berlin: Who Has It

With the free key I guess...

Starforce = malware

Gul - you can clean it from your system after trying the game. Just beware of starforce if you have a multiformat CD/DVD writer. Bad things can happen.

Not buying the game sadly as I refuse to have Starforce on my system and the response of the makers of this game to questions about Starforce weren't particularly great.

I dont see the big deal. Its a protection tool just like Securom, Themida and others. Only downside is that Rush for Berlin cant be cracked so you have to play with your cd in the drive. But then again you can download the game from gamersgate.net so you dont need a cd.

But going on how much is could mess up your PC is just wishful thinking, if it was that dangeruos then it wouldnt be used by anyone. If it doesnt contain any key-loggers, trojans and other useful bonus programs, then I'm fine with it.

Gul Brown said:

That is the other side of the arguement i have heard. It is all very worrying and confusing.

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And is the arguement of Starforce themselves.

SF does screw a system; there's no discussion or "wishful thinking" on that matter. However, you can be lucky and experience no problems. It's up to you to take the risk.

And there are plenty of Starforce games that have been cracked for the record.

Room 101 said:

And is the arguement of Starforce themselves.

SF does screw a system; there's no discussion or "wishful thinking" on that matter. However, you can be lucky and experience no problems. It's up to you to take the risk.

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I'd say that you were unlucky, seeing as how many experience no problems at all. So yes, there might be a small risk of it screwing up, and it is good that it is brought to light, but you should not make it sound as it means guaranteed breakage.

And to make it clearer for you: If you want to discuss Starforce in Rush for Berlin more, do it here: http://forum.deepsilver.com/showthread.php?t=15708

Well I am not going to sink myself deep into another SF thread. That was indeed a heated discussion.

Before you are so quick to judge, take a few minutes to swing by the www.rushforberlin.com forums. I think you may be pleasantly surprised to see that what happened here does not happen there. At the very least, you may see a likeable side to me.

There is also an open and continuous discussion on Starforce there. We have made every effort to make it non-inflammatory and it has been successful. If you would like to discuss it in a civil manner, you will be made most welcome. That is what has allowed us to keep it open for so long. But you should know that if the tone of your message is angry, provocative, flaming, trollish etc. it will get deleted. You don't have to be mindful of what you say but rather how you say it.

We also keep the SF conversation to this one thread here:

http://forum.deepsilver.com/showthread.php?t=15708

There is no good reason to fill a board with multiple posts on the same topic and again it has helped to keep the conversation as calm as it can be. It is an ugly topic and only gets uglier the farther it spreads.

But I am curious about one thing from you guys... Is this the only topic of interest for you with the game? This is basically a dead forum and only shows signs of community life when the "SF" issue arises. Or when a free key is given away.

Lastly, if this is your passion, you can also see the results of the SF issue with RFB in the Tech forum. We have already done a high level of sales (worldwide) for the first 2 1/2 weeks so looking at the RFB forums should give you some idea of what problems arose.

@ Room101:

I notice that you are here again to talk about SF so I would like to extend an offer of peace to you so that these forums do not just become a place for SF flamewars.

On your behalf, I did do some research. I visited the Paradox forums for Victoria here:

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=160

I opened the tech support forum and went all the way back to the beginning (November 2003) to get a handle on what happened with Starforce and Victoria. I scrolled through 15 pages of posts and I unfortunately had little luck. I could not find any threads with "Starforce" in the title and couldn't find any threads talking about Hard Drives being destroyed nor any threads started by you.

I also checked the bug report forums (only a few pages) and had no luck there.

So I need your help.

I need to see what happened and how it happened. Can you provide me with some links to threads where people are talking about Starforce problems in Victoria? I would especially like to see the thread where you first mentioned your problem. I want to see how the folks for Victoria handled the issue and what help or suggestions they made. Also what other community members there had to say about your problem.

To be honest, I am baffled that a game (Victoria) that uses SF could be so quiet about it. Are there more forums somewhere for the game? We have SF show up in every one of our forums.

So if you had a problem with another game (Victoria) and won't buy Rush for Berlin, we may as well talk about Victoria.

Sound cool to you?

Went to the wrong place.

Only the Spanish version of Victoria had Starforce.

Somehow I suspected that as I seem to remember you mentioning something about the Spanish version before.

Can you give me the links to the Spanish forum and the link to your post. I don't speak Spanish but a colleague of mine here is fluent. I can't make him hunt around for me but I can get him to translate it.

Thanks.

Gul Brown said:

I always intended to get rush for berlin and this isnt meant as a starforce thread however it is very off putting. I have been on both webistes [sf's and rush for berlins] and eespecially on S website there seems to be a large majority of disgruntled people. The whole issue is annoying seeing the hugely successful sales of Galciv2 which has no protection whatsoever.

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There are a lot there. But what about the Rush for Berlin forums? What is your opinion of the threat based on what you have read there?

And I admit that Gal Civ did well but that is not the whole story. They got a very high rating from Gamespot and the loss in PR value to Starforce, thanks to their blunder, was a huge gain to Gal Civ. In other words, what hurt Starforce really, really helped them. They did make a lot of money but they also lost a lot of money to thieves.

A game could make $1,000,000 and lose $100,000 to thieves. Another game could make $100,000,000 and lose $10,000,000 to thieves. In the end, one company has made a lot of money but they both lost 10% to thieves. Plus, the whole SF PR blunder was about a working copy of the game being available for download on the first day.

[SR]Caveman said:

But I am curious about one thing from you guys... Is this the only topic of interest for you with the game? This is basically a dead forum and only shows signs of community life when the "SF" issue arises. Or when a free key is given away.

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I'd been following the game for some time and do pop into your forum hoping to see an estimated time on when Starforce will be removed as I'll pick up the game then (should it happen).

The game has been previewed and reviewed in quite a great deal of depth. The only issue which prevents me buying is SF.

Interesting that this board only springs to 'life' over that issue though. Perhaps you're missing out on sales? It is good to hear the game is selling well for you despite SF, but could it be selling better?

If you look at Paradox games in general, the copy protection is not usually an issue as it is rarely there (sometimes it is added by publishers regionally). The last rumpus I can remember was when the old download site insisted on a check to play the game every third (IIRC) time you loaded it. Paradox listened and removed that restriction.

Many of the stories about SF are absolute nonsense. Yet there are recognised issues with that copy protection method which may either cause or exascerbate existing problems on your system even if Starforce's little PR stunts deliberately exclude such problems as being eligible to claim the money.

As Nicolai doesn't want another SF thread, I bow out here and wish you all the best for Rush for Berlin. I