SEGA and Macrovision ink a deal

Macrovision? CSS? Safedisc? who cares, people can always get ways to get rid of the encryption, copy them and back them up. simple!

Actually, not so. It would seem that a type of disc security called StarForce 3 is causing some problems, but not many games use this protection. That's kind of wierd.

Really? is that on ps2 games? and which ones?

Ha ha ha, safe disc! just use Alcohol 120 to back up games with that protection

SEGA SUCKS!!

i know safedisc is easy to crack thats what im saying, u can crack anything so can programs.

I agree sega is really crap, i dont know why they bother with making the games and platform.

Actually StarForce 3 is only on computer games, as far as I know.... It was on Kill Switch for the PC, and that's probably the only game I've seen it on.

You have to note about the latest version of SafeDisc which could become a real problem for crackers wishing to crack out there, especially ones who just crack without playing the game at all. The latest version of SafeDisc comes with a new feature called SilentAlarm. This is a piece of code any developer can add anywhere into their game. The developer adds several copy-protection checkpoints into the final build of the game. If one part is cracked, then the next checkpoint causes the game to be pretty much unplayable. This means things like, a gun not being able to shoot, or an endless loop of an animation, and plenty of other things. What might make this difficult for a cracker is the fact that it has capability of hiding where the protection is (apparently). Today's games require release groups to test every single part of the game, which means play ALL of it, not just check if it starts without the CD or a copied disc. The last line says that they believe that their copy protection is the sophisticated. This SilentAlarm feature is about as sophisticated as it gets. And before that, it was nothing but a CD check. All release groups have programs that can remove that without the need of a cracker. As far as DVD encryption, I have no idea what they are talking about. The keys to decrypt were leaked and everyone is decrypting everything (DeCSS, DVD Decrypter). They still haven't done anything about it. It's like dummy copy protection, which is placed on every US DVD. The Chinese are cool and realize that protections get cracked and that region encoding is cracked (and uncool), which is why my Hong Kong DVDs are all regions and have no CSS protection. Always have to remember that copy protections are always going to be cracked. As far as SilentAlarm, it may even take months for a release group to crack, BUT IT WILL BE DONE. Those people are ALWAYS motivated.

That sounds like a lot of work... And you know, release groups don't even gain any profit from cracking and releasing games, so there's chance they might just say, "Fuck it."

StarForce 3 is absolutely deadly. When you istall games with it, it can do as much damage to your system as battlefield 1942 did. It can mean a complete reinstall of windows or worse - and that's without trying to crack it, reverse-engineer it or remove it from a game. it uses a fake CD-ROM driver to overwrite part of the ASPI without your permission. Illegal protection to stop illegal copying, what has the world come to???

:O I installed KillSwitch... but at least my computer seems to be in working order. (which uses StarForce 3)

Mine too, with Trackmania. How long for, we wonder??? Though to tell the truth, it does start bitching occasionally and take over a minute to check the cd. Usually though, you can tell if its taking too long, and an eject and retry solves the issue. Shouldn't be necessary though, should it?

sammorris: NOT AT ALL

Fortunately, it seems that this is one area that most people are agreed on. Though to be quite honest, I don't think Doom 3 provides as much aggravation, and that uses SF3 to the best of my recollection.

The biggest flaw in all PC games that allows such easy copying is the hard drive, hard drives aren't protected in any way and where is the first place the game installs itself to? The best form of protection would be to keep the game on the disc like the consoles do (even that isn't 100% secure, but it does stop a few people who don't know how to crack the disc from using no=cd hacks available from various places). As for SilentAlarm, that's been around for years, I think it was the Codemasters who originally developed it back in 2000 and they've used it on a number of there games since. Theme Park World would revert to "Demo mode" if you tried to copy it, Harry Potter & The Philosophers/Sorcerers Stone would make it impossible to complete any of the spells (you'd always score just under the required amount, yet on the original you could easily get nearly 100% doing the same thing). Quite a number of the Worms games also use it.

Ya know if they want to waste miloins on COpy Protection and not R&D on a game or even deving on a game fine as long as its nothing like Star force 3 or 7 thats fires DVD drives and crashes computers. Sega has drooped 80% in quality since 98.....sad...they only really have 1 game now adays and thats PSO...