DRM on Bioshock already locking out legitmate purchasors

Admission tickets to an event? I know, it's a stretch... then again maybe not, "software" is not much less virtual than the concept of admission.

 

I have to roll my eyes any time i see this silly excuse turn up. Firstly its the publisher that controls the games rights so if 2K magically shut down tomorrow your games wouldnt just simply no longer function. And second, by the time you may actually have to worry about an authentication server being no longer existant in say, 5 years, how much honestly do you think its going to burden you to simply pick up the $5 DRM free bargain bin platinum release version, or quickly search for one of the many patches/cracks that totally removes the requirement of authentication through the internet. That same silly comment was brought up for HL2, and frankly it holds no water. Worry about it when you have a reason to, not before.

 

Epic tried to close down the UT master servers a couple of years back, just because they didn't want to maintain them, and to force people over to their newer UT games - there were massive complaints and Epic were forced to reinstate their servers. This was for a game that requires online authentication every time you play the online game, and the only real way to find game servers. How long do you think companies are going to keep servers going for games they no longer get any money for?

Fact is, developers and publishers do go out of business, and patches and fixes get lost as the plug gets pulled. Rights over IP get hoarded or sold on, without any of that messy business of liabilities to customers or fixed versions being released. Customer rights get erroded, and with systems like this, it would be no problem for publishers not only to kill your online play, but also your ability to play offline if they so desired.

The most ridiculous thing is the more they do this, the more they drive regular paying customers towards the hackers who will provide "fixed exes" that will take away all this hassle. The publishers are the guys who give you grief and hassle, and the hackers are the people who help you out of those hassles.

 

...I'm actually quite pleased that 2K is keeping the game locked until a set release date. It seems that this has cut down considerably on the chance of me going into a forum or news site and running into the Bioshock equivalent of "Snape kills Dumbledore!!!11!one!".

The next 24 hours are going to pass sooooooooooo slooooooooooooowwww...

 

I agree with Bouncing Zabaglione Bros, as it happened to me already, in one extreme case, an adventure my dad bought (it was cheap, but wtf) had the mind blowing idea to make the game connect to a server on the net and integrate the web site in the game, of course the site doesn't exist anymore and now the game he bought isn't even good as toilet paper.

I really hope this isn't going to become mainstream, one thing is the game being unlocked on 21 aug or whatever, i can understand that, but if the game isn't completely unlocked after you registered on the server that's pretty annoying.

 

They are not bugs !!!

According to the publishers you get 2 activation "lives", if you waste them ,as the picture indicates, then tough - you get passed from pillar to post between securom and 2k as to whether you are still allowed to play the game.

Add to that the fact the disk also features physical protection as well , as I found out this morning when my less than a year old DVD rewriter refused to even read the disk (despite being happy with other recent titles like STALKER and TR:A which both also use securom I think) and i had to spend 20 minutes ripping my machine apart and transplanting a plain DVD drive from someone else before I could be greeted with the message that the game could not be activated due to the servers being down.

It all adds up to one unhappy legitimate pc game buying customer

I have the 360 version on its way to me as well and to be honest I think I'm just going to return the PC version as faulty and get my money back.

 

I bet you this person ends up getting the issue fixed with a cracked exe from pirates before they get it fixed through the Securerom/2K fingerpointing. And they'll remember that next time it comes to buy any game, let alone another 2K game.

 

That's ridiculous. I've sometimes had to reinstall games more than that just because I couldn't find incremental patches, and could only get the full patch designed to work with a fresh install. It's faster to uninstall everything, reinstall and then apply the full patch. If you do that twice with Bioshock, you get locked out of your game.

What happens if you upgrade your rig and want to play it again with better hardware? Out of luck you've activated too much, and a year down the line neither Secureom nor 2K will care about helping you.

Nice work 2K, I guess I'll be picking up this game next year when it cheap (if you still have your activation servers up), or when you remove this anti-customer "protection". I don't have any SM3.0 hardware anyway, so it's not a hardship to forget about BS and it's BS protection for six months.

 

Basically at the moment that seems to be the case - you are meant to get an activation credit back if you un-install first however those that have run into this seem to indicate that the servers run by securom which track your installs do not seem to be as eager to give the credit back as they are to accept it in the first place.

It seems that the protection makes a hardware fingerprint of your system , transmits it to the activation servers and stores it in a database . You are allowed a maximum of 2 entries but the whole system is just going to be a joke if the credits aren't returned.

And from others posts installing on a dual boot system under both XP and Vista is enough to use both your credits as it seems to class the OS as a different machine even though the hardware is the same .

 

Big mistake by 2K to entrust the servers to Secrurom. I find these "protection" companies to be less trustworthy than pirates!

 

Rather off topic, but that game wouldn't happen to be 'In memoriam', would it? If so, try this patch. From the English webpage (which is no longer linked from the front page of the original French site).

 

Well this sucks, I'll definetly postpone buying BS.

 

Count me in with the group who can no longer play. You get to install it 2 times and then it won't let you do it again. Either they patch it out or I get a cracked exe I guess. Insane to have activation like this.

Well I do still have it working on my laptop at least. But the 8800GTX gets to sit idle courtesy of evil draconian idiot publisher crap. The cracker folks are going to rip this nonsense wide open in days anyway. It just proves the suits at 2K are morons, thinking otherwise.

 

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows?

 

ooo I was able to activate now. So they either did something to my key or they maybe turned off activation limits entirely?

 

I have a question what happens if you contact 2k/securerom and say ive just bought the game 2nd hand and the activations are used up ?

ps: out of interest would someone try it ? just to see if they are willing to help
use a hotmail account or something (dont give them anything which could stop your game working of course)

 

They don't know I was the original buyer. So I'd imagine they would help you. It's all very ambiguous tho, they didnt email me and tell me they fixed me up. It just activated when I tried this evening.

 

False alarm. Rationally, Irrational games didn't put a "2 installations" limit on the game at all. Rather, some people were trying to install the game to a different machine without having uninstalled it from the first machine--well, sort of. The activation routine actually allows you to install the same copy of the game to two machines simultaneously, but apparently no more than two. I guess that's where the install-twice-and-afterwards-you're-busted rumor came from. Par for the course with rumors in general though, isn't it?

Here's the scoop:

http://kotaku.com/gaming/more-bioshock-shock/bioshock-pc-+-you-only-install-twice-292222.php

(Be sure and read the "update" section.)