BioShock DRM, Continued

Thursday, Aug. 23, would prove to be an eventful day in the BioShock DRM saga. Two days after the launch, Tobey posted the following message on the Cult of Rapture, the community site for BioShock, regarding the incorrectly listed support numbers in the game's manual:

"It has come to my attention that the support phone numbers were incorrectly printed in the BioShock manual. If you encounter an issue with BioShock, please refer to these numbers for all your support needs: US Support Phone: 1-866-219-9839 Email: usa@take2support.com Canadian Support Phone: 1-800-638-0127 Email: canada@take2support.com"

Again, the message proved to be little more than a Band-Aid on a gushing, life-threatening wound. We discovered at THG that contacting 2K Games' U.S. support line regarding installation issues proved to be more problematic, as 2K support staff simply redirected us to SecuROM. However, after contacting SecuROM about the uninstall problems with BioShock, the company informed us that we needed to take up with issue with 2K Games. Soon, forums were swamped with similar tales of frustration and misdirection.

However, there was a glimmer of hope. Ken Levine, the creator of BioShock and lead designer at 2K Boston/2K Australia (formerly Irrational Games), issued a statement the same day on the 2K Games forum in response to a thread titled "2K is breaking their own license agreement" that claimed the SecuROM DRM violated BioShock's software license. Levine's message read as follows:

"I've followed up on the circular email with SecuROM and we are working on this issue. I agree, it sucks, and we need to get that sorted. I've been told by 2k that we will."

And finally, 2K Games updated its technical FAQ on the Cult of Rapture in response to the SecuROM issues. First and foremost, the new FAQ announced that 2K had upped the maximum installation limit from two to five. The FAQ also stated that game's activation server crashed on Thursday, but that the problem had been corrected and the server was back up. According to several reports, the server crash hampered the BioShock launch in Australia, and 2K Games' official Web site was timing out on Thursday because of the massive amount of traffic congregating on the site in search of answers regarding the copy protection fiasco.

But perhaps the most important and welcomed bit of information in the FAQ was that 2K is preparing a new "revoke application" that will allow users to de-authorize computers so that they can uninstall the game successfully from one machine and install in on another without using up one of the five activations. "This increase in the limit will cover most users' issues, and the revoke application should alleviate remaining concerns. Of course, if you still experience any issues, please feel free to contact support," the FAQ reads.

But the new FAQ did little to alleviate those concerns. Many BioShock customers were still experiencing problems and did not feel the five install limit was fair. In addition, the new FAQ stated that install limit for a single PC had been increased from three to five. Still, for customers that were incurring problems with their systems and needed to re-install the game several times, five installations per one machine seemed still seemed low. And to make matters worse, customers that have already purchased the game and used their two installs were put at a significant disadvantage; the "revoke application" will not work a customer has already uninstalled the game several times. Therefore, the "revoke application" is virtually useless for the very people that need help, i.e. the customers that bought BioShock at launch. Instead, those customers must contact SecuROM (and reportedly submit a photo of the game DVD and activation key on the manual) to get the company to deactivate the previous installations and/or receive a new activation key.

The controversy continued over the weekend as 2K Games scrambled to resolve the chaotic mess. But again, it seemed that many statements proved to be false or misleading. For example, Tobey posted a message on the 2K forum Sunday that stated "SecuROM is not on the demo at all," which is entirely false. This of course led to many outraged gamers who downloaded the free demo of BioShock and were unaware they were also activated SecuROM DRM on their PC. Why was SecuROM used on the demo, given that it was circulated for anyone to download for free? 2K Games hasn't answered that question, which isn't surprising given that a number of people within the company obviously did not know the demo was carrying the copy protection software. My only guess is that the powers that be at 2K or parent company Take Two Interactive decided to use SecuROM on the demo to prevent people from using the program to help crack the full version of the game.