Please discuss the topic only in this thread.

Great timing, guod! Now I can make an entry as well.

As someone who has worked closely with ED over the past couple of years as a volunteer, I'll voice my opinion here. It is by no means official and may not even be accurate. It's simply my perspective.

We have to assume that ED's choice of using StarForce in Black Shark was based on their experience in using it in Flaming Cliffs. Although we have no numerical data, everything points to that experience being a successful protection of their product. There are a lot of claims that all games, including ones protected by StarForce are ultimately cracked and that Flaming Cliffs is no exception. Sorry, but Flaming Cliffs has not been effectively pirated. Yes, there may be a pirated copy floating around somewhere (I've tested two or three myself and none were actually working copies of FC), but for all practical purposes, despite all of the clamor on the various forums, FC continues to sell well to this day and there is not a widely available pirated copy being used. From a pure analysis of this experience, ED probably feels that StarForce has protected their product well and therefore they have chosen to continue using it.

However, besides that pure analysis, there is the question of customer service. To me personally, as someone who participates actively on ED's forum and helps communicate product information, this is especially important. ED had already indicated that other CP providers were evaluated and that in fact ED was in contact with Steam. This process continues and likely will continue, because everyone is looking for the best possible solution. I don't know if other CP options will become available in the future, but I can tell you that they were and in fact are still being pursued.

Finally, I would encourage you not to give in to provocations by posters who insinuate that ED is out to cheat you. In many cases, these are the same people that have been banned at our own forums for exactly such behavior. On the other hand, I do support the idea of voicing your opinion on ED's choice, so long as it's done without insult and insinuation toward the developers who, believe me, work days, nights, and weekends to build flight sims.

FC is another product that I haven't purchased due to SF as CP.

So that's now two sales to me that they've been protected from.

I wonder if they considered using a Codemeter dongle, like SteelBeasts ProPE ? That one has not been cracked as far as i know.
The few that already have the dongle could just put another license file on it, and be good to go. Others would of course have to buy the dongle, but if future sims could agree to using this as their CP scheme, it would be a good investment. Then license files for all your sims could be stored on the dongle, and they would not get lost with reformatting the pc, or in a HD crash!
There was a lot of debate regarding this method, when eSim games implemented it, but I think everybody is more or less happy about it now. I sure am, as it ment eSim just let me download a cd image of SB, when I had the misfortune of cracking my gamedisc.
If it had not been for the dongle CP scheme, I would have had to buy the game again.

Oh, and regarding Starforce and BS, I will probaly wait and see if anybody is having problems before I buy it.

FC is another product that I haven't purchased due to SF as CP.

So that's now two sales to me that they've been protected from.


Your loss. Great sim. I have FC and suffered not one ill effect whatsoever. I wonder if what goes on re this issue is not some hackers jawboning so that the product will be released sans SF and wind up on bittorrent.

It'll probably end up on bittorrent anyway.

You could be correct. But think about it for a second...why would they? Priates do not care for most of the products they crack themselves. God knows why they do it...probably simply kudos that they were able to break x million dollar protection system.

Regardless. No casual gamers will be interested in playing this. Very few people would download this and the ones that did would shelve it within a week and move onto the latest FPS.

This is NOT a profitable pirate genre. The people that were going to get Black Shark would be buying it. I doubt very much one serious simmer would download a sim like this...they know how endangered their genre is. They do not want to help kill it off.

As for Starforce...yep...ED have lost 2 sales from me also...I never bought Flaming Cliffs either. You are correct...it is the most effective copy protection out there...of that there is very little doubt. But it can, has, and will be broken.

All ED have done is alienate me twice now. I would like to tell them that in the hope that they change their ways.

And just a little warning to them, and you and anyone else who does not care that StarForce is implemented...let it be known that ED and their choice are actually helping to make their industry even more niche than it already was. Regardless of how many people bought FC and will buy DS, they are losing sales through their copy protection choice.

At present, that's £70 from me and the guy above who said he didn't buy FC and won't buy BS.

I hope they change their way and release a starforce free copy, because I am desperate for a new helicopter sim and I'm gutted they've pushed me away again.

I do realise I am only a little voice in a great void...

Well...my fingers are all worn out on this topic. I posted way loads more of my views on another thread and I can't be bothered to do it all again.

Suffice to say they've lost money from me and I hope to god they change their ways, either for this sim or future sims because if they do not, they're just losing my money and I'm losing the chance to play games, which is all I want to do...but I'm not desperate enough to hand my money over [Admin Edit] that make Starforce after the crap they put me through.

I'll keep my eyes open here in the hope that something changes...other than that, I'm done here now.

If SF demonstrably does not cause any harm to users who install BS - we'll see that over the next couple of months - then I don't see anything wrong with it in its present state.

People say SF will cause a loss in sales, but I am guessing that the gain in sales will be much much bigger than the loss, if it works as it is supposed to do.

I just cross my fingers for big sales of this sim. If not, then there will be no future franchise with new helis such as the Apache, etc...

BTW, kudos to SimHQ for directing the whole SF discussion to one particular thread. This forum should be mainly about discussing the sim, and one thread certainly suffices for the SF discussion.

I am not happy with the Starforce decision either, mostly because it can be cumbersome and slow some times. But I will be buying DCS, maybe not BS, but surely one of the later ones. Flying a sim that good, that's much more important than the copy protection.

BillyRiley, are you saying that cause it's a small market they should not care about protecting themselves? In these matters I believe you must always take the best protection available, no matter the size of your target group. I'm not saying Starforce is the best, mind you.

And just to clarify two common misconceptions.

1. It does nothing to your PC. MAYBE (very big maybe) some very early versions but not now, I have heard some things regarding earlier versions of SF but I cannot be at all certain of their validity.
2. Starforce games can and have been cracked. However FC was indeed one of the few SF products that were never cracked AFAIK.

But I seriously cannot believe ppl not buying DCS cause of this. When you're interested in such an advanced sim, you must obviously be very deep in the sim thing, flying sims for years etc. I can't believe anyone can be put off such a seemingly amazing sim for such a trivial reason.

DISCLAIMER: I'm not saying the following for any members of this discussion for whom I do not believe this to be the case, but I've seen relevant topics in other forums with ppl really pissed off with SF in DCS and usually ppl with very few posts: when you suddenly forget how advanced this sim is in an instant and what it will do for the genre, and whine, strongly react and walk away from it just because of it's very strong copy protection, you're starting to look less like a simmer and [Admin Edit - no name calling please] .

Round and round we go...

I'll buy it, I had no problems with FC.
And if they put it on Steam I'll definitely buy it, since it won't come with a printed manual anyway.