I was going to write a long post about Ubisoft and its relationship with Starforce, wondering if the use of the copy protection program written by clownholes was going to affect sales of Heroes of Might and Magic V.
I'm glad I didn't write that, though, because it's being reported on the Ubisoft forums (thanks Blue's News) that the company has dropped Starforce. That hasn't been confirmed yet, but the PR rep for Starforce has said so many idiotic things that it has to make any reputable company wary of using them, along with all the strange and unnecessary things that the program seems to do.
If Ubisoft has actually dropped Starforce--completely--expect everyone else to follow. Quickly. This might be the wooden stake in the vampire's heart.
With one possible caveat: I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Starforce has apparently written a "new" protection program with a different name. If Ubisoft is just swapping over to the new program, then it's old stupid with a new name.