Similar story here. S***Force plainly refused to recognise the disk in one drive and killed the other one, almost new one. Of course killing the disk itself in process.

For what it's worth, the damaging hardware thing is almost certainly just a myth - No-one has ever come forward with an actual drive damaged by starforce, despite the company offering a $1,000 reward for an example and/or steps to replicate it.

Far more likely is that it's just a rumor started by pirates to get people to hate starforce more - at one time starforce was 'the' copy protection and splinter cell: chaos theory was uncracked for over a year (how's that for being useless? still a record for a AAA title afaik). If you can't break it with code, break it with social engineering.

Edit: which is not to say starforce didn't cause software problems (it certainly did, especially with older drives/drivers). It was hardly perfect, and there was valid reasons to complain about it.

Pah, Starforce is nothing compared to what Blizzard employed on Diablo 2's expansion.
They thought "Why break drives when we can have the drive try to asassinate the filthy pirates"

A classmate of mine, who did have a couple of pirated games, had bought Diablo 2 and the expansion original since he wanted to support Blizzard. After only a few plays of the expansion his drive started to spin the disc faster and faster in drive, he thought it sounded kinda ominous, so at last he quit the game and clicked the eject button on the drive, it didn't slow down or open, so he clicked a few more times. Suddenly the drive popped open, without stopping the disc. This caused the disc to get launched out of the drive at speed, he was luckily sitting to the side of the computer. The disc flew across the room and smacked into the wall, leaving a half inch deep groove in the wall where it'd hit and shattering the disc. No more Diablo 2 for him.

The same thing actually happened to me in '99!!! Freaking CD passed just about ten cms. from my neck and crashed into a ceiling!!! That was scary.
Not Diablo, though, - some gangster themed strategy.

edit/ It was Legal Crime, iirc.

Considering that trying to get this reward required to you fly both yourself and your computer to Starforce's headquarters (at your own expense) then definitely demonstrate the problem to them in order to receive a measly $1000 (that probably wouldn't even cover the travel costs), it's hardly surprising that no one decided to take them up on the challenge. Plus their first response to the story of Starforce damaging drives being reported was threatening to sue the reporter- it doesn't give one much faith that they have any intention of trying to honestly address any problems.

That Bioshock story is also one I could tell myself, only I was on the DRM "hate" bandwagon for quite some time already.
I was following that game since it was first announced, being sort of a System Shock "sequel" and all that didn't go unnoticed. The day 2k+IrrGames shared their DRM plans I was among those who protested and complained about that move. They kept telling us, the customers, that everything would go well and the activation servers would be able to cope with the amount of users on release day. How anyone could possibly promise this, while they were really pioneering that kind of activation system was beyond me...
I knew there would be problems arising on release day, turned out to exceed expectations. The server were down, serial numbers would not be accepted, users burning through activations. Some needed to go through the hassle of contacting SecuRom themselves to get a replacement executable...
Some people, including me stayed on the forums to help out the bunch of frustrated guys who couldn't get their legally purchased game to run. The game was not only plagued with activation issues but also with technical difficulties. Forumites dedicated their free time to give technical support while the official channel was unable to help in any way.
Bioshock stands proudly in the hall of fame of technical+DRM disasters of PC gaming.
I found it funny they released a "revoke tool" some time after the first release to get some activations back instead of completely disabling that inane "activation story" once and for all (or at least that disc check!), which they did a long time afterwards though.

Well to replicate the damage one would have had to buy same drives starforce broke first time and let it break another. Not really worth it considering that, if I remember correctly, it would have actually required a trip to Moscow to get the reward. And while I can't prove actual physical damage being done, it most certainly did screw with software and drivers (especially CD/DVD drives).

One, it refused to allow execution of game (Space Rangers 2) while drive emulation software (Alcohol 120% and Daemon tools in my case) were present in my computer. Two, it reduced drive speed of my DVD drive every time I lauched SR2 up to the point my drive stopped working. I could manually restore it to normal speed from Device Management but Starforce would continue to reduce the speed every time I would play SR2 so I uninstalled and have never installed Starforce infected game again. Normally I would have cracked the game upon installation but for some reason it was one of the few games that did not have crack available back then (probably due to poor sales and being obscure title from eastern europe).

lol, I guess that set of DVD drives that started spinning up to an unreal speeds after which they would not spin up past 1x or allow me to burn a DVD at anything but 1x . . .was a myth? . . . sure seemed real to me. Removing and reinstalling the drives did nothing . . . same symptoms no matter what I did.

Reward? Russia? Really? REALLY??? I just replaced the fairly expense drives (at the time) and never installed a Starfarce game again . . . so far . . . no more problems . . . =)

Edit: Ok, there was that 4 hour first time removal of SecuROM from my system. That ticked me off but did not damage anything.

I see. I thought they only released the revoke tool.
What the fuck.
I'd wager some people did, but Putin must have offed them, hence no news.

For me, I think it all begin with a re-install of my Shogun-Total War (with expansions and stuff) copy.

I switched computer some years ago, and the DVD unit seemed to give me some problems: When I inserted the first disc the unit began to sound loudly as a meat mincer while installing. 'Crap' I thought 'the CD is really beaten, better make a security ISO copy, that really sounds awful'. Stopped the installation, fired up Ultra ISO and began the copy process...
...but safe disc had another opinion on it.

My DVD unit couldn't crunch over Safedisc DRM, so I had to look for my old LG CD burner to read it, installed in a crappy-ass old computer. That meant reach for a IDE/USB adapter, the power cord and connecting it all to my new computer (A laptop). Finally, I got the copy done and the game installed from the copy. And when I tried to launch the game, please, insert the CD.
Yeah.
The same CD I've just copied because it was damaged.
The search for a crack began while my mind was thinking "Why I have to go across such a ludicrous quest just to play a game I bought?" An original CD almost broken. A happy setup with wires and my old LG reader, a search for a crack in really dirty places... al because the publisher (EA) didn't want pirate users to copy this game. What happen with legal users? They are screwed.

Similar case with Syberia (Tried to make a copy of my game but the anti copy prevented me to do so), I ended up downloading the game from the torrents because the copy protection prevented me to make a security copy of the game.

Lately I've been looking forward some EA games (Dead Space, Mass Effect) in PC, but the happy "We have online DRM! You can install 5 times and use the revoke tool! You need to stay connected!" text in the box drove me away so quick I broke the sound barrier. Similar case with Bioshock, with the difference I finished Bioshock with a pirate you-don't-need-activation version and then bought the collector's edition. (And really, it's a game worth playing).
I haven't installed it yet. Honestly. I don't have the guts to try it.

Been buying lot of stuff in the steam sales until I discovered this webpage. I'm now praying to ye 'o gods to gog to began publishing indie titles so I can move away from steam, which is like the nuclear energy: If everything's ok, its awesome, just pray to not have any problems with it, or you are screwed big time.

Look at Gamersgate too. It's close to DRM-free, once you know how to bypass their "obligatory" in-house DRM; so, if a game listed there says DRM-free, it technically is DRM-free. PM me if you want to find out more about their DRM or any other questions you may have.

Thanks for the interesting responses guys. I remember having other brushes with DRM hell such as not being able to load a genuine CD of Civ 3, apparently because SecuROM had put something in my startup to block any SecuROM titles from loading. I had to replace the .exe with a crack to play the game. And then there's the Big Brother-ish DRM in Mass Effect 2 where it reports your gameplay activity back to EA unless you happen to notice the option
(turned ON by default) to switch off the reporting system from the title menu. Anyway thanks to GOG i can finally get on with playing my games instead of trying to make them work.

Those are probably phishing emails. This article provides steps to see what addresses the emails really come from.

I came to hate it when I had to change CDs, enter some 20 digits key etc. at the installation. Earlier, discs were necessary because HDs were small. When HDs grew bigger, they kept discs as ARM (analog rights management).

Needless to say, I am not amused to have over 600 GB of CDs on my HD now and some still don't work unless I put in the original (or use a crack which is the better method).

Now GOG:
I install the game, I play it. No need to have discs inserted, no need to enter 20 key combinations (except for some The Witcher 2 DLC, but could have played without entering it)!
On the downside, it still takes away the space for the games on my HD. But at least they run without any hassle then. Mostly. Well, I got a bluescreen once on Giants: Citizen Kabuto, but that might as well have been due to a community patch. And a few bugs in Sacred are also not fixed (although not gamebreaking). And scrolling in AOW2 is awful. But that's some small things I can complain about on the forums. No comparison to 1998 when - I admit it - I didn't even have internet access.

It was Bioshock that was the last drop for me too actually.

Prior to that I can remember having to return a legit copy of Titan Quest because the disc couldn't be read, probably for ominous reasons.

I used to hate steam and avoid it like the plague but some good deals and the inclusion of adventure/indie games warmed me up a little. Even so its worth to note that I have never bought a single full price game there since Half-Life 2 and my subsequent discovery of the platform. I did however buy Dawn of War 2 and Dark Messiah in conventional stores just to have them nag about Steam to me so now those companies too are a million miles away from getting a day one buy from me, and firmly relegated to steam sale/bargain bin/whatever.