Well, I finally took the plunge and purchased Beyond Divinity at its outrageous $50 DSRP price tag, and fortunately, I was able to return the game to the store. The store owner commented that all of his customers that purchased Beyond Divinity were returning their purchases as well. Why?

Starforce Purchase Prevention!

After doing some research, I found that Starforce, especially the latest version, causes many problems on NT/2000/XP systems including but not limited to constantly random reboots. These problems have pushed indie programmers to develop software that removes Starforce from a system completely. What's neat is that the removal software is called Starforce Cleaner, which enforces the view of the people in the disc storage and duplication industry that Starforce is like a computer virus.

While many active Larian forum members have not suffered the same issues, many Larian customers have, and like many of them, I've sworn never to buy any product that assumes I'm a criminal.

Unfortunately, I'll never be able to play Beyond Divinity unless Larian wises up and removes (or replaces) the Starforce Purchase Prevention scheme. I thought the game looked like a lot of fun from its screenshots... oh well...