BioShock publisher 2kGames has embraced the role of clueless, careless leviathan and the people running the show over there are making sure they play that role to the absolute hilt<\/i>. <\/p>\n
Several days ago 2kGames employee 2kElizabeth claimed that SecuROM wasn’t in the demo<\/a> and then had proof to the contrary thrown right back in her face. She went quiet on the subject for a few days, and finally responded…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n i’m sorry for the delay in responding. i’m currently moving and working out of airports and coffee shops and hotels. <\/p>\n securom is, indeed, on the demo, but it isn’t activated like it is on the full game. <\/p>\n i’d go into more details about it, but again, i’d probably get it wrong like last time. i’m working on getting an official statement about securom on the demo for you guys, if possible.<\/p>\n but for now, here’s an article about how securom is not a rootkit:<\/p>\n http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/news.ars\/post\/20070826-clearing-the-air-bioshock-does-not-contain-a-rootkit.html<\/p><\/div>\n She’s the only 2kGames person I see posting in there, which means in the midst of this great backlash from customers they have one person sort of half-watching the forums while she bounces around the country, and who doesn’t know what she’s talking about even when she does manage to log on. <\/p>\n Ken Levine stepped into the forums a few days ago and left some comments. I wish I could link to them, but they were deleted.<\/a> (Link goes to a saved copy.) Our friend 2kElizabeth<\/a> claimed that his posts were taken down due to the fact that some posters threatened him personally. She says<\/a>:<\/p>\n i just want to say that no mod, nor anyone here at 2K would EVER delete anything of ken’s intentionally.<\/p>\n we love ken.<\/p><\/div>\n Sounds reasonable enough. Except, why nuke the entire thread, instead of just the offending comments? I have never seen them delete any other comments, even profanity-filled promises to pirate the game. But then someone “threatens” Ken and they nuke not just offending comments, but entire threads? It doesn’t make sense. More to the point, why do ALL of his posts seem to be gone? Why hasn’t he posted since? You don’t have to look all that hard to see that this is a lie. A poor, halfhearted, dismissive lie from people who couldn’t be bothered to come up with something plausible. My guess is that they became upset when Ken pointed the finger of blame for SecuROM at the people at 2kGames. Which, to be fair, is exactly where blame belongs. Ken was getting a lot of “u betreyd us ken how could u lie 2 us??!?!!”<\/em> static in the forums, which may have enticed him to post. I’m sure they simply nuked his comments and told him to be quiet. (Most people underestimate the tremendous power the publisher has over a developer. They control all the money, and Ken needs them more than they need him, particularly now that the game is doing so well. They could hand BioShock 2 off to the lunatics at Obsidian and still have a best-seller, no matter how bad it was.)<\/p>\n The other great thing they have going is the policy of telling everyone to post all of their SecuROM issues into one gigantic thread. SecuROM could be broken down into a dozen or so topics, from technical issues to personal objections. Users keep trying to do exactly this, and end up getting locked. The SecuROM thread is huge and more or less useless at this point, since at any given time there are a half dozen conversations going on, most of which are flame wars. The idea that anyone could get “technical support” or useful information in that thread is pure fantasy. 2KGames obviously wants all of the SecuROM complaints (which is probably more than half of all complaints) in one box where they can be easily ignored. <\/p>\n It kills me to see new poeple sign onto the forums and leave these earnest pleas to 2kGames for help or for the removal of SecuROM. Their comments are never going to be read by anyone inside of 2kGames except for perhaps 2kElizabeth. Even if she reads it, and even if she doesn’t lock it, she doesn’t have any power to fix it and certainly isn’t going to go to her boss and say, “The users – the ones who have already paid us<\/em> – think our SecuROM idea is crap and we should dump it.” <\/p>\n The sad truth is that the angry masses are being shoved into a soundproof closet where they can do all the screaming they like without offending the ears of any 2kGames decision makers. Add to the mix the usual assortment of “STFU amd get and XBox PC Luser LOL!”<\/em> with a couple of “There’s nothing wong with SecuROM I haven’t had any problems” <\/em>and even the occasional “You have only yourselves to blame for being a bunch of pirates”<\/em> and you have a recipe for a truly spectacular, multi-sided flame war. (Which is allowed to rage on without moderation as long as they stay in their designated thread.) Now the SecuROM threads are brimming with hate, profanity, threats, and some of the most appallingly bad spelling I’ve seen in ages.<\/p>\n I don’t forsee any concessions from 2kGames. Why refrain from pissing in the well of PC Gaming when people seem happy to drink from it anyway?<\/p>\n Alas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BioShock publisher 2kGames has embraced the role of clueless, careless leviathan and the people running the show over there are making sure they play that role to the absolute hilt. Several days ago 2kGames employee 2kElizabeth claimed that SecuROM wasn’t in the demo and then had proof to the contrary thrown right back in her […]<\/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-1298","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\/1298","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=1298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}