A lot of people have been ranting online recently about the copy protection the PC version of Bioshock comes with. Now, I’ve done my fair share of ranting about dodgy copy protection before on this blog, but I now find myself in the rather surprising position of being on the opposite side of the argument on this occasion, to a certain degree anyway.
Let’s get the hard, unpaletable facts out of the way - Bioshock has copy protection on it. Yes, it sucks that it’s deemed necessary, but I knew this before I bought it anyway, and here’s the deal - it’s actually quite a proportionate copy protection scheme, if there is such a thing. Yes, that’s right, proportionate - in that it doesn’t really inconvenience you as a valid purchaser, but is a pain in the ass if you pirate it. Here’s the deal:
- You have to register online once when you install the game
- That generates you a unique key based on your serial number and a hash of your hardware, which is stored in your registry. Like XP this remains valid unless you make major changes.
- You can generate keys like this 5 times (it was 2 but they increased it because some people hit the limit) before having to call customer support. Yes, that means you can use the game on 5 different PCs if you want.
So this is actually closest to iTunes in nature, with one exception - it’s missing the ability to deregister PCs right now. This is a major oversight but they say they’re resolving that. I doubt anyone will have any issues with that in the short term unless they’re a) reinstalling an unfeasible number of times or b) pirating it.
Let’s set aside for the minute whether any sort of copy protection is necessary, and compare and contrast it to alternative schemes.
- Physical media protection
Doesn’t work on PC - copying media is easy and trying to use ‘extended’ features of drives (out of range tracks, tracks readable only by direct access etc), just causes the media not to validate properly on some hardware - something I’ve personally experienced more than once, and cursed about it. Give up on physical protection, leave this to the consoles. - Rootkits
Often used in conjunction with 1. to validate media, need admin access to perform hacky hardware tasks. Nasty, horrible things. Some overexited people claimed that Bioshock included one of these but were soon shown to be completely mistaken. They relied on a tool called RootkitRevealer which identified Bioshock’s SecuROM protection as a rootkit purely because of the fact that it installs a registry key with a NULL in it, which makes it harder to remove. They actually did this so that some muppet didn’t click ‘delete’ in a containing registry folder and lose their auth keys in fact. It IS possible to remove them manually if you really want to.
Other people have reported that it installs a service on their machine which interferes with their machine and uses resources. Personally this sounds exaggerated and more educated people seem to quantify said service as harmless - SecuROM say this is to allow the initial authorisation to proceed for non-admin users. I’ve checked my system and don’t appear to have this service anyway, not in any process explorer, service list or in the registry. - Steam
I haven’t used it in a while but I believe this is still the case - that to play Steam games you have to be logged on to Steam, every time you want to play the game (or at least regularly). This is much worse than a single PC registration because you need to remember your Steam password at all times. More than one person I know of has forgotten it and lost access to their games, which is terrible. At least with a once-off registration all you need is a serial number. [edit]Correction: it appears Steam is one-off too now, according to comments, that’s good[/edit]
Now, that’s not to say Bioshock’s protection is at all something to treasure and hug to your chest, but in terms of genuine customer inconvenience it’s very low key. There are edge cases - like if you have to reinstall 5 times before they make the deregister option available, or if they decided to stop offering the registration service at some point 10 years down the line, but overall, right here and right now, it’s a pretty light touch. If you accept that some form of copy protection is required on PC because BitTorrent has rendered all unprotected content essentially free for all, then this one is actually not such a bad choice.
All the ranting about this on the internet has just revealed a lot of inaccurate information (like the rootkit claims) and disproportionate and poorly considered "I won’t buy this game because it has copy protection" attitudes, which is a shame. A large number of the ranters haven’t even played it, and the majority of those that have haven’t even had any issues with the copy protection (apart from the 2 registration limit, which was ill-considered but now changed) - instead most of the discourse has been of the ‘I heard this on a blog so now I’m (not going to buy it / uninstall it / mail a parcel of poo to 2k)’ type. I could understand it if people had genuinely found a rootkit, or had found that the copy protection genuinely frigs with their machine in nefarious ways, or found that the game they bought wouldn’t run because it didn’t like some hardware etc, but if you really look at it sensibly, there’s none of that. There’s a lot of people getting hot under the collar over relatively little substance (but lots of inference and supposition), as I see it. ‘Regrettable but measured’ is how I’d rate this copy protection scheme. [edit]I do take the point that if the activation servers were taken offline in a few years and you had to reinstall the game, that would suck. But for God’s sake, you’re going to deny yourself the experience of one of the best games of this decade just because of some theoretical problem that might occur in a few years, if at all? Talk about cutting your nose off to spite your face. I’m happy to enjoying playing it right now and to hell with what happens beyond 2010.
If there’s one way to prevent an absolutely fantastic game like Bioshock being made available on PC again, and to encourage more games to become console-only in future, it’s the disproportionate furore that has been raised here. Yes, lambast publishers when they do something genuinely disrespectful like use rootkits or copy protection that just barfs on some hardware. Yes, provide practical criticism when something mostly works but has kinks (the 2 registration limit and the inability to deregister). Yes, keep up the debate as to whether any kind of copy protection is necessary or worthwhile. But for goodness sake keep some level of perspective, and don’t just repeat ‘facts’ without actually checking them, and certainly don’t punish Irrational - we need developers like them. If you wanna miss out on Bioshock because of something you heard, or because of some deep-seated principle that defies the practical reality, you go right ahead, it’s entirely your own loss. Or, get it on 360 (and pay almost 50% extra in ‘console tax’ of course) - it’s one game that’s worth buying a console for if you’re ready to give up on your PC as so many seem to be doing now.
August 30th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
I disagree.
” in that it doesn’t really inconvenience you as a valid purchaser, but is a pain in the ass if you pirate it”
Pirates experience no inconvenience whatsoever. The cracking groups have a bit of fun, and a bit of pain… and they’re done. The pirate simply runs an executable after installation and voila! Cracked. No online registration, no worries about how many times you’ve tried to install it.
I’ve heard there’s a keygen for this one, though… So the person has to actually type something. Oooh, how horrid.
On the other hand, besides worrying about reinstalls and such, the PC user has safedisc installed on their PC and running in the background. It’s apparently nearly impossible to remove, as well. This even applies to the demo version!
I bought it for the 360, and I’m glad I did. I detest the copy protections on PC games and the mess they can leave your computer in.
The turning point for me was when I bought NWN and couldn’t play it without a crack because it didn’t like my (new and expensive) cd drive. Since then, I have downloaded the crack for every single copy-protected game that I’ve bought. They almost always work better cracked. (No CD required, no ‘random’ crashes when it thinks you’re a pirate, etc.)
At this point, I’m almost completely out of PC gaming except for online games, which have no need for potentially dangerous copy protections.
Consoles have protection, too, but it never bothers the user. That’s acceptable.
August 30th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
You’ve just proved my point.
I’ve experienced my fair share of problems with SafeDisc, StarForce, and other physical media schemes too. I honestly find that this scheme is far lower profile and far less hassle - but people assume (like you have) that it’s the same. It’s really not.
Yes, I’m aware of the futility of trying to stop the crackers, I wasn’t trying to address the question of whether copy protection should be used at all (and perhaps I should have said ‘casually pirate’). I was merely trying to refute the myth that all copy protection schemes are the same. This one didn’t inconvenience me one bit. And I can play at higher resolutions than 360
Consoles can have it both ways because they can use physical media protection, because the hardware is fixed. Wait until full-price games start being distributed electronically, I bet the content will be locked to some hardware ID.
August 30th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Steam has an offline mode, its enough to register software once, then you can play it without active internetconnection. I bought HL2 at release for a friend how lived in Alaska. You can probably guess that he had no internet over there, and he brought his Laptop over, installed and registered it and never had trouble.
Personally, I really like the Steam model. It was buggy at start, but now its quite mature. Its nice that games are registered to an account, so when i format my PC, I do not need any DVDs or stuff. I just download the games I have bought from Steam.
August 30th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
Another thing to note regarding piracy, is that it’s most important to the developer to prevent cracks within the first couple weeks of launch, during which time a large portion of sales happen (especially for AAA games without the “long tail” sales that occur over a long period of time). Oh, Bioshock will continue selling well for a long time, but it has hit the top of the sales charts for 360 and is doing very well for PC also. This means lots of sales right away.
If their copy protection can hold off crackers for a few weeks at least, then casual pirates who might have been sitting on the fence about buying the game might say “well damn, if there’s no crack out yet I’ll just go buy it”. Those who aren’t on the fence at all and are willing to wait for a crack to download illegally probably weren’t going to ever buy the game anyhow.
August 30th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Unfortunately the more popular a game is, the less time the copy protection lasts
But yeah, even a day or two can be worth it. I actually feel it’s ok to copy protect things so long as it doesn’t inconvenience genuine users. The process was easy, fast, didn’t blow my computer up and I know I can put it on 5 machines if I want, which is pretty reasonable. Completely different to my SafeDisc / StarForce experiences which were awful. And not to mention those bloody LensLock systems you got on 8-bit titles. I’d like to see some of the people bitching about Bioshock have the patience to squint through one of those every time they wanted to play a game. Bah, kids today.
August 30th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
The hostility from fans over minor problems is just insane. Like the people who were pissed off that full screen users get to see more vertically than wide screen users. The rootkit claims were from a website which admitted it put the work rootkit in the title just to get more hits, but of course everybody jumped on it without reading all of the page.
I bought a new harddrive and reinstalled my failing XP on saturday, so I went to buy Bioshock on monday. No store had it. Everywhere was sold out. I asked about collectors editions, the preorders had sold out 4 weeks earlier. Eek.
So I went home empty handed, logged into steam and bought it. It works out to something like $15 cheaper on steam than the store version. Took about 22 hours to download (should have taken 3, damn steam servers didn’t like me). Usually I’d prefer a real box and disc, but I didn’t feel like waiting for stores to get new stock.
(Collectors editions are already up to $270au on ebay apparently)
On the other hand, I tried to play Armed Assault last week (haven’t touched it for ages). The copy protection kept failing (yes, I had the original dvd in the drive). When I reinstalled XP, I decided to stick Armed Assault on too, see if a reinstall would work better. But I’ve lost the tiny paper sleeve the dvd came in which has the cd key, so I can’t install it. Argh!
I really need to keep a log of these numbers as I get them.
September 1st, 2007 at 11:58 am
The widescreen thing is nonsense. I played the demo in 4:3 because I was still on my 6800 and it couldn’t handle better, I’m playing the main game in 16:9 now that I have my 8800. I haven’t noticed a damn thing except the crisper visuals now that I’m running native. I don’t miss the little sliver I get on the height, and I imagine it’s done that way because invariance in the width of view was deemed more important than invariance in the height. To be honest, that sounds like a valid choice to me, considering that in most cases width is more important in an FPS. Given that this was a PC (4:3 or 16:9) and 360 (always 16:9) title I’m not surprised they decided to lock the width and not make 4:3 players lose their lateral peripheral vision, at the expense of giving them extra height (and I would look at it as 4:3 players being gifted a little extra height which is not a big deal, rather than 16:9 players losing it). As a design choice it seems the most sensible thing to do, but I guess people will always find something to bitch about.
September 1st, 2007 at 7:09 pm
I’m not trying to trivialize your opinion here at all, but do you think that there exist a psychological tendency to defend that which is percieved by most as “great” or “good”? I mean, Bioshock’s DRM is just as bad as any other game, but if it doesn’t affect you, and if your gaming experience is wonderful, you’re going to be prone to defend it. Myself, I wish they did what was done with Oblivion, that game proved irrevocibly that people will pay for a good game without DRM.
BTW, most 360 owners don’t have a widescreen TV, and visits to 2k’s development house showed 1-2 screens that were widescreen. From a purely developer perspective I think it’s obvious which route they went, but I’ll shut up about it (I’ve had too many online arguments about this).
September 1st, 2007 at 7:45 pm
Really? I assumed most 360 users would have a HD TV. Interesting.
You’re right that I’m naturally inclined to defend Bioshock and that no doubt affects my opinion - no-one lives in a vaccuum
However, I have noticed that apart from the registration count, no-one has actually been reporting the sort of major issues SafeDisc and StarForce have caused (like refusing to work on hardware), but a huge number of people have made the assumptive leap from ‘DRM == massive pain for many valid users’, and I wanted to challenge that. Not all DRM is a huge pain - sure I’d rather be without it but it’s not all of the same grade.
September 6th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Let me add my .02c here…
There is a fine line between COPY PROTECTION and MALWARE.
Copy protection should (obviously) prevent copying. As soon as it starts interfering with the other tasks you perform, for example:
1. running debugging sessions on your own software
2. using Nero to burn your own data or music CD/DVD
3. copying files from CD/DVD to your hard drive without slowdown
4. being able to stay offline while you play
5. being able to completely uninstall it without leaving keys and services behind
Tthen it is no longer copy protection — it is malware and it should be treated as such.
In my opinion services are already too big of an intrusion for a game. Service is running all the time consuming resources and call me a control freak, but I like to know what my CPU is executing in background.
I don’t care how little resources it actually consumes, in my opinion it is not justified to install a service since 99% of the users (XP still makes a majority) run with admin rights anyway.
Not to mention installing three services like Starforce does which prevent removal of each other.
I would never pay to get that crap shoveled into my system.
And even if I would pay, I would still download a crack to play it and I believe so would many others.
I think that says it all about the “copy protection is preventing piracy” myth. I would rephrase that as “the more protection the more piracy”.
September 7th, 2007 at 7:53 am
I agree with that, and StarForce and similar are guilty of all of those, hence my derision for them in many previous posts.
But Bioshock’s protection doesn’t do any of 1-4 and although there are reports of 5 (a service), I don’t appear to have one. Hence why I made this post, because a large number of people seem to think that like StarForce et al it does all of the things you mentioned, but I don’t believe it does, because it’s not relying on physical media protection. Rather than the knee-jerk reaction of ‘copy protection, it must be like StarForce / Sony rootkit!’ that I see in all the forums by people who haven’t even tried it, I was offering an alternative view based on what I actually see.
Copy protection sucks. We know it doesn’t stop pirates, but as Falagard says, for titles that rely on the first week’s sales it can be useful in delaying them. If we must have it (and we haven’t convinced publishers yet that we don’t, and somehow I doubt that we ever will), I think it’s worth recognising when one style is better than another, and Bioshock’s is definitely better than StarForce or others that I’ve encountered. Just generalising and saying they’re all the same doesn’t inform the debate at all. If all we ever do is say ‘all copy protection sucks, it’s all the same, and I won’t buy games that use it’, then major publishers will either just ignore you, or just release on consoles and ignore the PC (even more than they already are), which I don’t think is a positive thing. People seem to think that not buying PC games will somehow make publishers drop the copy protection, but I think it could just make them cut their losses. If however you can say ‘THIS copy protection sucks more than THIS one, and here’s why’ at least you might have a chance of getting a copy protection regime that doesn’t have the bad characteristics.
May 12th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Welp, I’ve been looking around on the internet for a legal way for me to play this game. I purchased it on release day, tried to play it and couldn’t because I didn’t have a shader 3 video card.
I’ve since upgraded my pc and would like to play it. I still have the box and disc so I try to install it. Can’t. Apparently I REALLY need that manual to get the serial number.
I contacted 2k games (already this is more work than I’d have to do if I just stole the damn thing) and we go back and forth, in my initial ticket I tell them I don’t have the manual, but I have the original box and disc. They go back and forth with me, one reply per day (it’s been about a week now) and finally they realize that I don’t have the serial because no, it’s not on the back of the box like they kept claiming, it’s on the manual.
So today they tell me there’s nothing they can do for me. I’ve just replied back with an offer to upload a video of myself with the original box and disc if they’d just let me play the stupid thing.
Argh. I guess I’m just a rare problem, but boy is it irritating. I’ll update here when I receive a reply.