Saturday, August 25, 2007

Worst. Launch. Evar.


So almost a week into the launch of BioShock, and all is not Rapture in the underwater city (heh heh, you see what I did there? Gawd I'm clever).

Turns out the DRM/Copy protection on Bioshock makes HL2 look like that copy of sopwith you gave to all your friends back in middle school on 5 1/4" floppies. First of all, the thing *infects* you with SecuRom, probably the most odious corporate rootkit ever. Then it insists on checking in over the internet with every installation. If you're not on the internet, you're just hosed, fyi. No Bioshock for you... even though the game is exclusively single player. Then to add insult to injury the damned thing tries to keep track of how many times you install it, and if it exceeds TWO installs, you're out of luck and can't install any more. Oh sure, they claim all you have to do to get an "install token" (what a putrid word, having to invent an imaginary coin to represent how many times you're allowed to install software you bought) back is to go through the uninstall... but show of hands out there... who's ever actually gone through an "uninstall" process all that often? Anyone? No? Of course not. You just head on into c:\program files and delete the sucker out. But that's a one-way ticket to Bonedville with Bioshock.

But wait, there's more!

Most people like widescreen monitors because they show you more of what's to the sides, right? Because every single game in existence that supports widescreen does that... takes the standard 4:3 ratio and adds more to the sides, yes? Not so with bioshock. To adapt the 4:3 ratio to widescreen, 2K Games apparently decided to TRIM OFF viewable area from the top and bottom of the 4:3 screen and then enlarge the remaining letterbox to fill your widescreen monitor.

Let's get back to the DRM for a minute though... would you like to know what you have to do if you somehow screw up and lock yourself out of your copy? Would ya? Huh? Well, it's simple...



Read up on the matter -
http://kotaku.com/gaming/pc/bioshock-widescreen-+-the-sad-conclusion-292269.php
http://kotaku.com/gaming/son-of-sad-panda/levine-responds-to-bioshock-copy-protecton-woes-292834.php
http://kotaku.com/gaming/xbox-360/levines-replies-to-bioshock-widescreen-cropping-292071.php
http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6750

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What the hell is that picture from?

Gas Bandit said...

It's the new Breathe-Easy Toilet Snorkel!

Anonymous said...

Dude I spent the last half of my work day going through that website!

The govt lost 3 hours of productivity from me, thanks to you.

Anonymous said...

But how many hours of wasted time did the patent office spend on these things?