Are we ready for some sensationalist reporting? Let’s press onward!
Tuesday’s release of BioShock on the PC ruffled quite a few feathers, as one can tell by looking at just about any gaming news website. Most of the fuss is over the game’s DRM activation feature, which implements a 21st century version of SecuROM, the copy protection software that does all in its power to prevent software piracy. As it turns out, the software also is preventing some legitimate users from even playing the game, coughing up activation errors and denying players’ entry into Rapture.
It’s expected of publishers to include copy protection in retail titles, but 2K has taken things one step further. Or, to be more precise, two steps forward. The copy protection in BioShock requires Internet authentication via SecuROM, and was limited to just two activations at the time of release (which has just been increased to five). This is reminiscent of the launch of Half-Life 2 in 2004, where one was required to activate the game with Steam before being allowed to play the game.
The fact that BioShock is available on Steam is a problem all unto itself. 2K somehow came to the decision that Valve’s protection built into Steam was not adequate to protect their game, so they piled SecuROM authentication on top of Steam’s. Now, the game is subject to the exact same installation restrictions as its retail counterpart, and instead of having an application that phones home once, it does so twice to two different entities somewhere out there in the cloud. Somehow, Steam now has a game that is even more encumbered than retail, which was one of the founding reasons for Steam to exist in the first place.
There are dozens upon dozens of pages of discussion covering the topic, but the overall consensus is that the DRM “solution” used in BioShock is far too imposing to be of any rational benefit. Certainly, adding additional protection on top of Steam is overkill, since the activation limit nulls one of the largest advantages to electronic distribution, which is to be able to play games on any computer connected to the Internet. To add insult to injury, 2K games insisted the PC version would be given equal attention as the Xbox 360 version, except as far as anyone can tell, the Xbox version does not treat its players as potential pirates.