Starforce enforces DRM by instant reboot

Despite all the problems DRM has been causing lately, it seems like companies involved in copy protection just keep trying to create more dangerous copy protections.

Now, Futuremark has uncovered a very dangerous anti-piracy system Starforce is now using. This copy protection system installs a driver that runs at the highest level of access on the system, which gives it low level access to the PCs hardware and any drivers and processes. This driver runs regardless of whether the game runs; keeping an eye out for any suspicious activity such as attempting to copy a protected disc. If something suspicious is detected, it forces the PC to make an immediate reboot, regardless of any other applications running and whether or not the user has any unsaved work.

To make matters worse, this copy protection interferes with DPM readings from software that is designed to allow the playback of copied game discs, which means that any game backups that rely on this Data Protection Manager will no longer play with the Starforce protection driver in place. Finally, as the Starforce protection has been found to interfere with certain device drivers, some drivers will run in legacy PIO mode instead of DMA, which not only slows down the PC by hogging CPU resources, but also slows down the data transfer to the affected hardware.

However, for those who get affected or lose several hours of unsaved work due to an unexpected reboot, chances are that they are not going to get any compensation or sympathy from Starforce or the game publishers using the copy protection.