{"id":1290,"date":"2007-08-27T14:00:11","date_gmt":"2007-08-27T19:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=1290"},"modified":"2007-11-03T08:43:02","modified_gmt":"2007-11-03T13:43:02","slug":"bioshock-miss-misinformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=1290","title":{"rendered":"Bioshock: Miss Misinformation"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s amusing following the 2kGames forums in this BioShock DRM fiasco<\/a>. The main spokesperson for 2kGames in the forums is “2KElizabeth”, a woman who has been sent out, unarmed, to face the pitchfork-wielding crowd currently beating on the gates of the 2kGames castle. She doesn’t understand the principles behind the fan backlash, she doesn’t know what SecuROM really is, and she doesn’t have the power to fix anyone’s problems. She just repeats what she’s told, and some of the things she’s been told are (at best) misinformation or (we hope not) outright lies<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Witness the thread where she flat-out claims that the BioShock demo does not contain SecuROM<\/a>, to which someone replies:
\n
\n
securom.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

That isn’t the only screenshot of this sort in the thread<\/a>, either. And that thread is one of dozens. (On a further note, this<\/a> and this<\/a> are hilarious.)<\/p>\n

At another point she says<\/a> of SecuROM:<\/p>\n

securom is not spyware, either. it is helping finish the install of your game<\/b>, and so it is putting the exe properly on your computer, which is raising a red flag from your anti-virus software, but this is NOT a rootkit. we do not open your computer up to viruses nor are we looking for secret information or a backdoor to your admin settings.<\/div>\n

(Emphasis mine.) See! It’s just helping! Nothing to worry about. Although, if it is just “helping” with the install, then one does wonder why the program wouldn’t just run once during install, instead of running 24\/7 forever after. <\/p>\n

It’s amazing to witness a situation where the publisher seems to know so little about what they’ve published. <\/p>\n

EDIT:<\/strong> In the 2K forums and in the comments below there are links to articles describing why SecuROM isn’t a rootkit. But most of the people throwing the word “rootkit” around (myself included) don't have the technical savy to truly understand what secuROM is doing.<\/p>\n

People are using the word “rootkit” to mean, “software which is installed in secret and which gives itself special rights and which can't be uninstalled”, because that sounds a lot like the last “rootkit” scandal. SecuROM does indeed do all of these things, even though it isn't a “rootkit”.<\/p>\n

So, this is more of a problem of misunderstanding the term “rootkit”, not a problem with understanding what SecuROM is doing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s amusing following the 2kGames forums in this BioShock DRM fiasco. The main spokesperson for 2kGames in the forums is “2KElizabeth”, a woman who has been sent out, unarmed, to face the pitchfork-wielding crowd currently beating on the gates of the 2kGames castle. She doesn’t understand the principles behind the fan backlash, she doesn’t know […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[29,30],"class_list":["post-1290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-bioshock","tag-drm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}