One of the most hyped games to come out recently is BioShock. It’s being treated as the Doom3 of 2007 as it brings with it the Unreal Engine 3.0 and was touted as having amazing water effects. I, like many other gamers, was very excited and saw this as the first next generation game we could finally play which would utilize our DirectX 10 hardware (I don’t count Lost Planet as it has shown almost no visible difference, if not worse graphics, when using DX10).
Like many other gamers, I also own a couple game consoles. One of these being the Xbox 360, which Bioshock was also being released on. I figured since I’ve spent good money upgrading my PC with a GeForce 8800GTX, 2.16ghz Core 2 Duo and 4GB of DDR2-800, I might as well FINALLY get my moneys worth out of all this hardware and purchase the PC Version of BioShock.
After purchasing the PC-DVD version I headed home and thought I’d do a little reading up before I tried to install it as I had heard beforehand that a few stores had surfaced that people have had issues while trying to Install or Play BioShock. Well, I didn’t have to look far as my own friend Nick wrote in his blog about issues he ran into about his on-board sound not working in 5.1. Further reading pointed me to articles about SecuROM and how it installs its copy protection software into your PC, which is not optional not can it be uninstalled.
Now, I’m by no means a paranoid computer user and I understand that some programs have required components that are needed from them to operate properly, but, to install anti-piracy software on a computer without the option for uninstallation is unconscionable. I’m not sure who over at 2K games thought that this was the best way to go with BioShock, but shame on them for their lapse in judgment.
The unfortunate part is that this is the trend now for games which do not require online play. Titles such as Warcraft 3 or Command & Conquer 3, which do feature a single player campaign, still use online key validation before a user is able to sign onto the multi-player service. Where this leaves games such as BioShock which are solely a “single player campaign” type of game, is that they have to decentralize their copy protection schemes and rely on client software to prevent piracy, treating every user as if they were a common software pirate.
I was so put off by what I was reading that I returned my unopened copy of BioShock to Best Buy and got my money back.
Where does this put me? Well, I could pay an extra $10 and purchase a copy for the Xbox 360 (which I will probably end up doing anyway), but as a consumer, what really are my options? Basically 2K games is saying my options are:
- Play BioShock on the PC, BUT, you will install OUR software on YOUR computer to ensure that you will not pirate the copy of BioShock that you purchased. Because Windows does not have any copy protection built into it, it’s on OUR head to keep the software safe and because it’s not an online game, we can centralize our copy protection.
- Play BioShock on the Xbox 360, BUT, you’ll have to pay $10 more and are OK with the fact that the Xbox 360 has adequate copy protection methods in place so we need not concern ourself with it.
Do you see the flaw in this logic yet?
It’s bull flop! If you have a modded Xbox 360 (which isn’t too hard to do), copying the game is as simple as firing up your preferred DVD cloning software and hitting go. So why the big emphasis on copy protection on the PC? Because the fine folks at 2K games don’t want the piracy of the PC version to be on THEIR heads. The XBox 360 version susceptible to piracy? Well, that’s a failure in MICROSOFT’S copy protection scheme.
All this copy protection on PC games is really the game industry trying to cover their asses because they lack control over the platform. So it begs the question that was asked over at PC Perspective, Is PC Gaming dead?
In my opinion, I think so.
The fact of the matter is, because the operating system will never lock a user out from accessing their systems (as Game Developers wished they would), the only platform Game Development companies can develop on without a care in the world as far as piracy is concerned would be consoles.
Who would have thought that a PC’s flexibility and openness would be it’s downfall as a gaming platform?
