There is an announcement on the Steam website that, effective immediately, the Steam version of Trackmania United no longer has StarForce malware included. Great news, those of us who care about our DVD drives will now be able to experience what is said to be a truly excellent game.
PS: Kudos to Steven for letting me know about this.
There are no doubt lots of you out there who like the look of the Trackmania games. However most people (who are bothered about their system crashing and being hacked, and their DVD drive breaking) have held off on buying them because they are infected with a particularly vicious piece of malware known as StarForce. The game is getting a release on Steam, but unlike every other game on the platform (which have all remained uncopyable by using Steam’s copy-protection), the Steam version of TMU will still come infected with StarForce. As good a game as TMU no doubt is, I will not install a virus on my computer just to get playing it. Until they stop using such malware, no sale!