#Peter Jackson's King Kong (StarForce DRM)

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

fathom obsidian
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I think it would be awesome if we could explore an old PC game from 2005 that had the infamous StarForce DRM and discuss why it bricks modern versions of Windows when it installs the StarForce drivers. As to my knowledge I don't think we have explored the StarForce DRM in a video yet. It would be cool to find a way to reverse engineer the rather frustrating DRM as an insight into how StarForce works and find out how to fix and run the game as a bonus.

Since this is an UbiSoft game that never got an official patch to remove the StarForce DRM so it can run on modern versions of Windows like Dreamfall The Longest Journey did. I think it would be a nice little project for a video. What do you guys think?

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Peter_Jackson's_King_Kong

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Dreamfall:_The_Longest_Journey

Peter Jackson's King Kong
Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
real harbor
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I’m all for Nathan exploring StarForce in a video. For this specific game however KRBDZSKL released a crack on rutracker in 2019

fathom obsidian
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Yeah we also have a community fix for it as well made by WIFIDarthMaul's that also includes that same crack from KRBDZSKL and some registry keys to fix other errors. But I would love to see Nathan dive into a StarForce DRM protected game and make his own fix for it. Because the StarForce DRM is the most destructive DRM I have seen so far and it is very hard to use a debugger on it to analyze what is going on. So it would be interesting to see how Nathan would approach this game and its DRM. Or any game that uses the StarForce DRM for that matter.

formal echo
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Makes you wonder if there's a starforce game out there that never got a crack treatment

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I mean even something as obscure as Psychotoxic got one so yeh

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although I still suggest that one because it has other issues that haven't ever been properly fixed

ornate mural
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Starforce? theres no way in hell nathan will be able to crack that

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this is ragebait btw so nathan will actually give it a try

rich oasis
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But Starforce is incredibly difficult to crack, it requires special debuggers to access the kernel level stuff where it operates

fathom obsidian
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Yeah I know. That's why it would be an awesome video. Plus Nathan could explain why the StarForce drivers cause modern versions of Windows to stop booting. Because that is the most frustrating thing about this DRM. It is so destructive that it harms itself from even working in the first place.🤣

rich oasis
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Usually Russian hackers were able to crack it back in the days, and even then it took months of concerted effort to do it

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Hence many SF games that weren't at least mid to well known never got a crack, it was pretty impossible for most crackers

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Starforce was really a special kind, it put SecuROM in a corner

fathom obsidian
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Yeah it's insane how effective and ineffective it is at the same time. I am just wondering how Nathan would tackle this. Because using breakpoints from normal debuggers won't get the job done. He will have to take a unique and rather cunning approach instead.🤔

rich oasis
fathom obsidian
rich oasis
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And running a SF protected exe automatically installs the driver

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So it's a deathwish

fathom obsidian
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Oh so the StarForce drivers aren't installed during game installation? It's only when the game is first run? That's a sneaky way to get around the EULA.

rich oasis
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If it isn't present already, that is

fathom obsidian
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That's just plain dirty. No wonder StarForce got sued.😂

rich oasis
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If it doesn't find it installed, it installs it silently I think

fathom obsidian
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Wow. So basically a rootkit virus.

rich oasis
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StarForce was really notorious and just terrible at how it operated in ring 0 mode

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It could wreak havoc on disc drives, like disabling DMA

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Which meant audio CDs wouldn't work

ornate mural
fathom obsidian
ornate mural
rich oasis
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And badly coded drivers that operate in ring 0 can easily brick a system

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Even SecuROM never dared to do it, it always ran in ring 3 I think

fathom obsidian
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Plus not only being a security risk for hackers and malware to abuse those ring 0 permissions. What a mess!

rich oasis
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User mode that is

rich oasis
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And had security flaws too

fathom obsidian
fathom obsidian
rich oasis
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It uses StarForce 4 or 5 I think, and never got a crack

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3 and 4 have one, but not 2

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The first one has protection, but it's just simple CD checks

fathom obsidian
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I didn't even know they had StarForce 5. I thought it stopped at 4.

ornate mural
rich oasis
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I scanned the exe with Protection_ID and says between 3.4 and 5.0

ornate mural
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idk ive been theorizing this

rich oasis
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It can't detect the exact version

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Game is from 2006, so it's probably between 3 and 4

fathom obsidian
ornate mural
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probably using some really obscure debugger or undocumented windows features or using wine

fathom obsidian
rich oasis
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The crack scene back in the day was absolutely amazing, they could crack games in a couple of hours

fathom obsidian
ornate mural
rich oasis
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Often scene groups competed between themselves to see which one would release a working crack first 😅

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It was a big honor back then

ornate mural
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ok guys lets move this convo elsewhere

fathom obsidian
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It's funny that nowadays we need those same cracks just to run the games we legally bought.

ornate mural
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b4 nathan gets angry loll

fathom obsidian
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Oh okay. I'm just glad my video suggestion gained so much buzz. I hope Nathan makes a video of this now. Let's take this to #💬〢general I guess.