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Bioshock: DRMShock
Previous in Video Games: Game Reviews: Reviewed | Next in Video Games: Bioshock: DRMShock, Bad to Worse |
Thanks to Taffer for the link to this news item. It’s swiped from the PC Gamer Blog, but I’m linking to Taffer and not the original source because the PC Gamer blog doesn’t have permalinks. (Come on guys! I KNOW you can do better than that. Blogs are not mysterious devices. The functionality is well established and easy to comprehend.)
The upshot of the article is that:
- You must activate the game on-line to play it.
- It can only be activated on one machine at a time. I hope you weren’t planning on playing on your home computer AND laptop, or your home AND work computers.
- You can only activate the game twice.
In order for the following to have the proper impact, I should establish my love for this series. The original “Shock” game – System Shock – affected me so strongly that I wrote an entire novel based on the game. The sequel is one of my all-time favorites. I’ve been waiting for this one for the better part of a decade. I’ve been following the story since the first hints of it dropped way back in February of 2006. I’m not just a fan of this series, I’m an avid, nearly rabid fan of this series.
Dear 2kGames. I’ve got sixty bucks right here. And you guys will never see it. Never. I don’t care if I see the game in the bargain bin two years from now for $5. I don’t want it. I also don’t want to hear your crying about pirates ripping you off. You started it. Your box claims “This game requires Online Activation to play”, but if you were honest about what that really means – if you let people know what you were really selling – it would demolish sales. And you know it. I don’t use pirated software, but my fond hope is that the pirates give you the quick humiliation you deserve.
Activating the game twice? I picked up Doom 3 a couple of years ago, and I’ve reinstalled it four times since then as I’ve shuffled games around or upgraded my computer. There is no excuse for thinking like this.
And this just backs up my earlier post on the uselessness of game reviews. This should be the first thing mentioned in every review. PC Gamer talked about it on their blog, but I’ll bet this never makes it into print. It is my hope that gamers pass this along, so that nobody buys this game without knowing what they’re getting into.
EDIT: More here. Looks like you get an activation “back” when you uninstall? How magnanimous of them.
EDIT: More here on the 2k forums. They have flatly claimed that secuROM isn’t a rootkit. That announcement is followed by about four pages of angry responses from users talking about how it is exactly that. I can’t say one way or the other, but if they have added lies to the mix then I think it ought to act as a Tony-Hawk style multiplier on the negative feedback and publicity they might be experiencing.
In the comments below someone points out that the number of installs has been upped from 2 to 5. I will admit that 5 is indeed larger than 2, although it is less than inifinity, which is the number of installs most games permit.
EDIT: More on this at other sites:
The Daily Jump
consumerist
Completely Random Thoughts
hylomorph
Kotaku has a response from Ken Levine
And even the demo installs the rootkit.
EDIT: Looks like The Rampant Coyote is giving the game a pass as well.
Previous in Video Games: Game Reviews: Reviewed | Next in Video Games: Bioshock: DRMShock, Bad to Worse |
77 comments. (Seventy-seven is the smallest positive integer requiring five syllables in English!)
Rat socks. I was looking forward to playing that game, you know, in a year or two when I could afford the required video card. Tough luck, 2kG. It’s your own fault that I won’t be hawking up $30 to play your game.
I think this is 2kGames actively trying to undercut the PC platform. They must be thinking “Wow, we’d make a ton of money if only we didn’t have to develop for multiple platforms.”
My understanding is that the website was also down for much of wednesday, so nobody who bought the game that day could even install it. It went through the entire installation routine, but if you couldn’t activate online, then it uninstalled the WHOLE GAME until you could re-activate.
DRM makes me crazy. It serves no purpose except to infuriate legitimate consumers. The pirates were never going to buy the game anyway. Anything over free is too much for some people.
2kGames has permanently lost me as a customer. Not that they ever really had me, what with their traditionally craptastic lineup of awful games. Bioshock not included.
I have to say, this is quite disappointing. Nobody would willingly buy this game if they knew what kind of hoops they had to jump through to make it perform. As Shamus once said in relation to STEAM,
“Let’s see: You can’t sell it, you can’t loan it out, you can’t return it, and you can’t use it without the blessing of the maker. I suggest that you don’t even own the TV. You paid for the right to keep someone else’s TV in your house and watch it as long as they allow.”
That said, is it really a legitimate doubt that sales of Bioshock will be enormously high for at least a few days, maybe even a week, from buyers who simply don’t know about the DRM restrictions on the game? High enough to at least justify this kind of harsh anti-piracy treatment on the part of Sony and SecuROM.
After that golden period has expired though, especially judging just from what I’ve read in the comments here, the more tech savvy and learned consumers will be the ones Sony has to count on to keep sales afloat in the long-term. Word will have spread significantly further by then, and almost anyone who’s interested in the kind of next-generation game Bioshock is, will either have done their homework or found out from someone else what these problems are.
Of course we already know that, barring a miracle or some future act, this what’s going to happen. But I’d also like to address a few other concerns. (next post I think)
Why is this server not letting me submit my next comment?
Sony’s (and other’s) defense so far is basically to say “DRM is not that bad” and “You can always play it on the XBox.”
Regardless of whether the DRM may or may not be a rootkit, it’s still something that is installing on my computer when I didn’t ask it to, without my permission, and can’t be deleted once it is. Whether it has the processes of a rootkit or not is irrelevant, software that behaves in such a way should be avoided on general prinicples of safety.
As for just switching to an XBox, that’s only a viable option for those of us who have or can afford one, which most people can’t. Otherwise, more consumers have computers than consoles. I concur with Shamus. While Bioshock looks to be an awesome game, I will not be spending money on it, and I don’t recommend anyone else do so either.
True, non-transferable licenses is a pain. I’ve really only been on the buying end, not the selling end, so I never really thought of it much.
There are too many good games out there that do NOT have the publisher using mechanical restrictions to curtail your legal right as a consumer.
I’m anti-piracy. I write video games for a LIVING. I am disappointed in those who say they will be pirating the game. But I am even more disappointed in Take 2 for making legitimate consumers feel like they are EXPECTED to pirate software.
For those who are hesitant to play it on an X-Box because you prefer the keyboard/mouse combo, I stumble across this today using the StumbleUpon extension in Firefox.
Q
Looks like I may have borked that link. Let me try that again and I will provide it just in case: http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/12316/Connect-a-Mouse-and-Keyboard-to-Your-Xbox-360/
Q
We’ll out of curiosity I bought the game… don’t hate me. However I am dumb… the system requirements want you have have a duo processor… I have everything else, but it shows in the game play. It is a beautiful game, with nice game play. The creepy sounds along with the Fallout style world and old record music is nice. And you need DX10… which is no surprise.
I’ve run into an issue with one of the Star Trek games as of late. IT was a bargain bin special and it’ll let you play without registering, for a little while, then it crashes your computer.
When I went to register the game? The server hosting registration had been taken down.
Yeah, DRM sounds like a Real winner
Copy protection is annoying, yes. But not buying a game because they don’t want people to steal their intellectual property? That’s like going into a jewelry store and refusing to buy any of their stuff because they have security. By the way, you’re missing out on an extremely good game.
If that’s what people were suggesting, and if that’s what was actually happening, you might have a point. It’s not their desire not to have their property stolen that’s ticking people off, it’s the ineffective, insulting, and intrusive measures they’re using. It’s, as someone else pointed out, like having the guards follow you home and tell you when you can and can’t wear the items you purchased.
Guys, this is SOOOOO not a story. Nor is it something to be worked up about. Even if you DO run out of installs (presumably because you forgot or couldn’t uninstall first) the error message that pops up has a phone number to call so you can open your license back up. Big deal.
Actually, yeah, it is a big deal. I purchased the bloody software, why should I have to call and get someone else’s permission to reinstall it regardless of why I’m doing so? That’s the whole point of purchasing things- so that you can use them at your leisure. And, the idea that it’s okay for them to install unwanted software on my computer without asking me and without my permission? That’s shite.
You know what I hate MORE than that “inconvenience”? Sticks on the side of jewel cases that force me to somehow keep track of where each and everyone is. That to me is inconvenience.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about. What sticks?
And finally, playing this on the 360 completely circumvents this entire non-issue if it is that big of deal to you.
I shouldn’t have to drop several hundred dollars on a console version of a PC game (and use a control scheme I’m not fond of) to get a usable copy of the software that doesn’t have restrictive and insulting software restrictions on it.
In fact the majority of this blogs complaints about the trials and tribulations of PC gaming can be solved outright by adopting console gaming….. I don’t even care which one. Rumor has it Bioshock will be on the PS3 sometime in 2008 anyway.
Well then, it wouldn’t be PC gaming, would it? I love my consoles, but a console is not a PC, and I don’t see why that’s so hard to understand. If I wanted to play this on a console, I’d have picked up the console version.
BTW
The 360 version is bugged, after about 8 hours of total, not consecutive, gameplay on 75% of systems the game begins to hitch and load every few feet. The game also has no REAL widescreen, they zoomed in and cut the top off the top and bottom to make a widescreen image….
Tylhandrias wrote: “And to the person who was turned off by Half-Life 2’s product activation, it was relatively simple and straightforward. You had to have a live internet connection to connect to Steam…”
Which means that the game is only useful for as long as STEAM exists. Which means it lasts only as long as Valve survives as a company. Or, of course, until Valve decide to pull the plug on STEAM.
That’s the fundamental problem with DRM: It makes my ability to use the software or video or PDF in question dependent on the continued existence of the business I bought it from. I could spend $500 on a suite of professional software, have the company I bought it from go out of business the next day, and be left with nothing but useless plastic coasters.
Of course, the other problem with STEAM is that it loads at start-up and chews up system resources. “But it’s not that much!” That’s not the point. And even if STEAM only chews up a few MB of RAM and CPU time, it set a precedent which everyone else in the industry is now following. I’ve seen computers where you’ve got STEAM and you’ve got NCSoft’s equivalent and you’ve got Blizzard’s background downloader and another three game-related programs begin loaded at start-up, all of them chewing up system resources.
I am, frankly, amazed that the propaganda of the media companies is working to the degree that people are actually SUPPORTIVE of DRM.
About a decade ago now, when DVD was coming out, there was a competing format: DIVX. (Not to be confused with the codec.) With DIVX discs you bought the movie at full price, but every time you watched it, the DIVX player would dial up the movie studio and charge you $2.50. It was touted as “renting the movie without having to return it”, but it was basically Hollywood’s first attempt to make you pay the same price for licensing a movie as you would for actually OWNING a movie.
At the time, people saw right through that bullshit and the market rejected it. Today I suspect there’s a lot of people who would lap it up.
Here’s the reality of DRM: No matter what the scheme, it will be cracked. It always has been and it always will be. It’s fundamentally impossible to protect any kind of encryption scheme when the end-user has the key (and the end-user has to have the key because they need to be able to use it).
So DRM does nothing to prevent piracy. The only thing DRM does is inconvenience or cripple legitimate customers who actually paid for the software.
Corsair wrote: “But not buying a game because they don’t want people to steal their intellectual property? That’s like going into a jewelry store and refusing to buy any of their stuff because they have security.”
No, it’s like going into a jewelry store and refusing to pay for a diamond ring which requires you to call the jewelry store every time you want to wear it. Also, you can only wear it on one of your fingers — don’t try to wear it on a different finger, because that obviously means you’re a thief trying to steal the diamond ring.
Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net
I think possibly that the reason why people are so keen to pirate games is because the publishers of games are always so keen to screw us over. Given the choice of buying a game that will do things to my system that I didn’t ask it to and for which I’ll have immense troubles in the event that I need to do an emergancy reformat, or simply pirating said game to avoid all those troubles… “Arrrgh matey! Hoist the sails!”
To all the people that have said “just get the console version”, that’s really kind of offensive. Consoles are massively over-priced for what they are, lacking the innate versatility of a PC. And since various games are designed for various different consoles, it’s not a matter of buying ONE console. It’s a matter of buying several.
And console GAMES are massively over-priced too. PC games are as well, of course, but around here, on average you pay double the price to have the game on a console.
That would, of course, be the other reason why piracy is so popular these days. The more over-priced something is, the more likely people are to try to find other ways to get their hands on them. I’ve pirated games before because I didn’t want to shell out vast amounts of money to buy them when I wasn’t even sure I’d enjoy playing them. Some of them I’ve later purchased legitimately, some just get deleted…
Nanja Kang Says: “And you need DX10… which is no surprise.”
So does this mean you must have Vista?
I hope that the guys behind this blight on computer gaming will realize how stupid they are.
I think that extreme copy protection makes it even MORE likely for someone to pirate the game. Example scenario: “Let’s see, I can either buy the game and only be able to install it twice, (five times?) or I could pirate the game and install it however many times I want… Arr, hoist the sails, mateys!”
Now, I’m not saying that I’M going to pirate the game, (certainly not,) I’m just saying what would go through the mind of a lot of people.
In my case, I’m not going to buy the game, or pirate it. I’m going to have nothing to do with it. (If they get their act together, maybe I’ll look around in bargain bins.)
Nanja Kang Says: “And you need DX10… which is no surprise.”
You don’t need Vista and DX10, though I imagine it does enhance the prettiness.
Unfortunately project Alky doesn’t cover the August revision of DX10, so I couldn’t try DX10 in XP (which I’ve been using since my Vista install kind of blew up a few days before bioshock came out) and it still looks quite nice. I’ll have to get around to installing Vista just to see how it looks on DX10.
I’d like to revise my statement from yesterday (see first post^). It’s the guys at SecuROM that needs a good hard kick in the rear.
@Justin Alexander.
Wait, what?
Saying that a great game is worth a minor amount of hassle is ‘supporting DRM’ and being brainwashed by the media and propoganda?
And what exactly of buying it on the 360? I prefer the 360 experience for games like that – more efficient controls (just get used to ‘em), better audio / larger screen, unified hardware setup (really, who wants to spend $250 on a video card to play a $60 game, then have to reinstall drivers and go through all that hassle?) In my opinion, there’s no real reason to say that the experience would be ‘inferior’ on the 360. And to the person that said a 360 costs too much, how much does a desktop that can run Bioshock smoothly cost? Probably 1.5 to 2x the money.
Anyways, I think this is a whole lot of drama over not much. People got up in arms the same way when Half-Life 2 came out, with Steam’s DRM. And when the next-gen consoles came out and the pricetag was $59.99 for new games. But neither of these things changed.
And Steam and Valve going under? Unlikely, unless Bioshock has a longer lifespan than Starcraft.
Damn! I was going to get the demo. I do understand why they put that shit on a demo, you basically have to if you are already infecting the complete game, but it sure is a great way to stop me trying new things.
In response to Tylhandrias:
That is certainly one way to view it, but it doesn’t seem like an issue over how much it will ultimately cost to play the game, as much as it is over the intrusive, greedy, and underhanded methods being used to “protect” the game. A desktop capable of running Bioshock WOULD be expensive, more so than an XBox, of that I don’t think anyone can doubt.
Having said that, most people who have said setups, have established them over the course of months, or even years. I don’t know of too many people who have, or are willing, to go out, and spend the $1,000+ all at once, right now, for the sake of this game. The point is, people who have the requirements necessary, expect (and rightly so) to be able to pay for this game, own it, and play it without trouble or harassment. Just because someone has an expensive computer is no reason to tell them “Well you shouldn’t mind spending a little more for a game that SHOULD behave for you anyways.”
And, by telling someone in whatever way, that they should not bitch about feeling forced to spend more money on an XBox, just to freely enjoy a game they’ve already paid for, is basically saying just that.
People were in arms about STEAM as they should have been, and Shamus runs the gamut of reasons why under the Video Game rant “STEAMing pile of Filth.” This operation is no less than the same thing, just dressed and designed differently.
A great game is worth a little hassle, true. Serial keys, needing the disc in the drive, that’s a reasonable compromise, and I don’t think anyone should suggest boycotting a game on those methods alone. But there is a line, let’s call it the Half-Life 2 line, where NO degree of greatness or innovation can justify the pervasive, restrictive, and surreptitious methods of control being applied.
Case in point: Bioshock.
First thing that came to mind the other day when hearing all of the accounts of friends who were unable to get the game to play at all — This is why PC gaming is dying. It’s just shockingly clear to me that the PC is seen as the substandard gaming platform and they want to push people towards the 360.
Kind of sad, really. I’m much more of a PC person, and since I do all kinds of development on PCs, it’s much easier to justify spending money on improving it.
Starcraft did the need the disk in the drive and the serial keys, which were all a minor problem, but bioshocks protection seems to suck, and has been broken, so it only hurts the honest people.
What would interest me more is what happens if your PC suddenly crashed and you can’t uninstall it, make that happen twice and, hooray! You wasted 60 bucks for nothing and now you can’t use it ever again.
Tylhandrias wrote: “…really, who wants to spend $250 on a video card to play a $60 game…”
So you’re arguing that, because you don’t want to spend $250 on a video card to play a $60 game, it makes more sense to spend $280 or $350 or $450 on an X-Box 360?
I’m trying to follow the logic there, but I’m not having much success with it.
Tylhandrias wrote: “And Steam and Valve going under? Unlikely, unless Bioshock has a longer lifespan than Starcraft.”
I was playing ULTIMA IV last week. Yesterday I was watching STAR WARS. This afternoon I was reading HAMLET.
You can’t tell me with a straight face that companies have any guarantee of lasting 10 years or 20 years or 30 years or 400 years. And IP that I paid for should not become useless based on the successes and failures of the people I bought it from.
If I buy a chair from a furniture store and the furniture store goes out of business, I’m still able to sit on my chair. I find it an unreasonable expectation that I, as a consumer, should be expected or required to research a company as if I were intending to buy stock in them when I simply want to put down my cold, hard cash and walk off with a copy of a movie, song, or video game.
And, even then, there’s no particular guarantee of financial stability. ENRON was one of the largest and most successful businesses in the world… right up to the point that they declared bankruptcy.
You say that Valve is unlikely to go bankrupt tomorrow. But, unless you’re secretly their CFO, there’s no way for you to actually know that. Apparent success is not guarantor of stability. TSR, Inc. — the original owners of the Dungeons & Dragons IP — gave no indication of their instability right up to the point where they shut their doors.
For customers like you, the media companies are the camel: They stuck their nose in the tent and you said, “Well, that’s not so bad. It’s just installing STEAM, right?” Now they’ve come all the way in and they’re starting to munch on the nice dinner you’ve laid out and your response has become, “Well, they may be eating my dinner, but I still have some food over stored in my X-Box 360 cooler. So that’s okay…”
Personally? I want the camel out of my tent.
Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net
Give me a break, people!
Game designers (the real ones), expect you to break the stupid copy protection!
Therefore, no problem, about later use.
a $20 pc game is probably pretty close to “at cost”
They only make money off the early-adopters.
Which makes me ask, “why drm anyway??”
>Well, here I am in Ubuntu Linux, and the good thing about >Linux is it doesn’t have the HOLES the Windows OS does.
>I asked it to delete the offending SecuROM files, and it >said, “What files?”
and I love Knoppix! For all those times windows decided that yes, it really does love eating critical parts of itself!