We’ve been hearing all this fantastic sh*t about how we omg, totally have to get Bioshock right now. Well, it seems that although the game is cool, the DRM is a huge pain in the ass.

From boingboing:

The PC version of the game is packaged with SecuROM copy protection, a piece of third party anti-copying software that phones home and prevents installation on more than 2 PCs.

The PC demo of BioShock causes AVG to go nuts at it for containing trojans. It wouldn’t install or load on a winXP partition until AVG antivirus was completely uninstalled. *Presumably* this is due to SecuROM, which also demands that other perfectly legit processes stopped

Fun. Kotaku has been following the issue as well. It seems that 2K’s response is to contact SecuRom and SecuRom’s reply is that you should contact 2K.

What a mess!

Reader Andrew writes:

I’ve been looking forward to this game for ages, it finally came out this week. I went to lunch and picked it up, of course. When I got back to work I just had to install it on my laptop, couldnt resist. I got home and installed it on my main PC for the second install, only to find out that you can only activate this game twice. One, two already gone. Everything seemed fine after 2K Games commented that uninstalling the game for a PC would deactivate the install, allowing it to be installed and activated again.

Apparently, this doesn’t work. I payed $50 for this game, and I unknowingly reached my activation limit. There was no warning anywhere in the documentation or anything that I would be limited to two activations. Nobody knew there was an activation limit when they bought the game, if they ever knew there was forced activation needed to play the game in the first place. This is supposed to stop piracy, instead it punishes only paying customer.

Thank you,
Andrew

BioShock CP Hassles Continue [Kotaku]
BioShock game bundled with DRMalware [boingboing]
Angry Thread Of Bioshock Customers [2K]

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.