Horrorfying. I refused to use Steam for several reasons, and now will skip over these two companies offerings, since I refuse to play ball with any outfit who devalues normal customers in zeal to catch crooks.

Agreed 100%.

Seriously, if I was a Starforce programmer I would either quit that job ASAP or quit life... I would feel like a criminal otherwise... And they are criminals IMO.

Uh, you know I was using the HalLife Steam Engine as a point of reference, right? Which is to say there are more & more examples of suits in these companies incorporating punitive measures on all their customer base in the name of catching elusive, cunning pirates who usually steal the same 'protected' intellectual property within hours of the new measure being instituted upon the rest of us. There is a price tag and we pay for it, both with the anti-theft measures' inconveniences and potential damages done to hardware & operating systems as well as higher costs, fewer talented game developers being retained, fewer games being developed, and most critically, fewer games worth playing. Good grief ,there are too many 'experts' running around trying to get ppl straight, LOL.

That's just not true... since the copy protections does not work anyway, the only people that suffer from it is people that do the right thing and buy the game. That is wrong. If the copy protection does not actually DO anything but hassle people that bought the game in perticular, there is no real reason do add that copy protection in the first place. It won't change whats going to happen anyway. StarForce in perticular though, this is just wrong. They have no right to intrude on peoples computers and start making decisions for them, especially when they enforce it with instant reboots/rootkits or whatnot. It's just not right.

For most idiots Steam is not a curse, its a blessing to them. Thats why he prolly didnt understand it. /shrug