I have been actually pondering posting about what I have taken to thinking of as the Bioshock Disaster of 2007. Bozanimal posted this blog, which inspired me to make a lengthy response that I thought I'd repost here, because frankly, I'm having a Howard Beale moment over my inability to play a game I eagerly anticipated and have now spent 4 days attempting to run. Heaven only knows what I've done to my poor beleaguered PC while attempting to manipulate its settings to accommodate Bioshock's twitchiness.

Bozanimal's blog was about his boycott of Bioshock because of the copyright protection software (aka Securerom, DRM, crapware) the game secretly installs on your PC in an attempt to thwart pirates and limit the number of installations the rightful owner who paid for the game may undertake.

(And do kindly spare me the lectures on console fanboyism. I have heard the debates. I'll save that one for another day. And read on, because it's not just about games anymore.)

My response to Boz's insightful and righteous post went thusly:

PC developers for all software, not just games, have spent years trying to make discs that you can't copy or pirate somehow in order to protect and control their intellectual property, business interests, economic profit margins, etc. They should absolutely do that and have the right to do so. By the same token, however, they do not have the right to secretly install crapware on my machine--then tell me I can't install it but once more ever. Horsepuckey.

I installed Bioshock, retail edition, on a hard drive in an enclosure, and was wondering if maybe it would run better (I suffer from crappy framerates and severe mouse lag) if I reinstalled it on the totally internal drive. After haunting GS and 2K forums for tech support because the game is bloody unplayable (and I got it on release date, so that's 4 days of this now), I found out about the rootkit thing and the installation limit, which, according to 2K, will be eliminated in a forthcoming patch.

I'm hoping 2K, the Take-Two empire, and the entire gaming industry at large come away from the high-profile Bioshock disaster (because it really is, however potentially salvageable) with a lesson in ethics, as well as a mandate to improve and collaborate upon new and better ways to protect their IPs while not violating public trust. Meanwhile, grand sentiments aside, I also hope they all stop rushing potentially great games to market to meet esoteric, self-imposed deadlines--before they're playable. I actually beat a splicer to death with the wrench and missed the whole damn thing because it took that long for my mouse/screen/framerate/whatever to catch up. I am hugely disappointed because I've been looking forward to this game for ages--I even preordered--and I can't play it. I'm now crossing my fingers for a useful patch so I can play it before Crysis arrives.

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The other disturbing thing is, not everyone has or even wants Internet access. Some people surf on one computer and game on another so the gaming computer doesn't have to run virus protection background processes that interferes with running a game. So you now are required to have internet access? Suppose you get it free at school or work or a library, where you research games. Requiring net activation is a bit premature, even for 2007. Hello, Big Brother.

And if EA starts this copyright crapware too, I'll probably have a Crysis. I spent years enforcing copyright laws and regs in a research library, so I understand that part of it, but protecting the developer's rights should not and cannot (ethically, legally, and perhaps constitutionally) come at the expense of the consumer's.

But honestly, principle aside, I am right at this moment mostly annoyed about Securerom because if I have to uninstall the game in order to reinstall clean to fix it at some point so it's playable, I may use up its pitiful two lives and render it useless anyhow. Biosucks is more like it. If I ever get to actually play it, I'm sure I'll change my mind. But that's looking like a big if.