Comments on: Beating The BioClock

By: Pod

Pod — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 16:40:25 +0000

Oh no! You might actually not be the first person you know to play this game. Infact, you might be the last! Face it, your life is over, you might as well kill yourself now.

By: tjeu

tjeu — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:08:05 +0000

Actually, after I found it in a store yesterday here in Holland, it installed and activated without a hitch.

By: Homunculus

Homunculus — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 08:13:09 +0000

Just to be insufferably smug for a moment, I was able to play it yesterday evening, as Play and a blisteringly efficient Royal Mail conspired to deliver it Thursday morning. The first two attempts to install it failed, though, as I received a corrupted download of the final chunk, which I guess was withheld as an anti-piracy measure (which, annoyingly, causes the entire umpteen-gig installation to be deleted if you choose to cancel the download process). Third time was the charm, though, and, astonishingly, the activation process worked despite it being before the publisher-sanctioned release date.

I have to reflect that if this sort of shenanigans had been applied to System Shock 2 when it was released then in all likelihood I wouldn’t have been able to play it this week as an appetiser. I would find it disheartening to be part of the Irrational team, working for years on what is being hailed as their Magnum Opus, only to have the team’s identity, and all of the credit for Bioshock, subsumed by the publisher that is also responsible for sullying the sublime experience with all this draconian digital rights management malarkey.

By: The Sombrero Kid

The Sombrero Kid — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 07:50:53 +0000

actually the pc pirated version isn’t working just now, the only people who can play it is XBOX 360 owners & folk in the US

By: Martin Coxall

Martin Coxall — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 07:00:35 +0000

Got my game! Yay!

Activation doesn’t work! Yay!

YOU IDIOTS. YOU ENORMOUS GAPING DOLTS. ARE YOU MENTALLY ILL? THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO CAN PLAY THIS GAME NOW ARE THOSE WITH PIRATED COPIES.

It’s no wonder PC gamers resort to piracy to get around this sort of ‘activation’ idiocy.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 02:20:54 +0000

Even more bizarre is that here in NZ, the Steam version was “unlocked” at the same time as the US release, but the official release date was the Euro date of August 24 (today, here), so you couldn’t buy it at retail for an additional 3 days. Who says publishers don’t add value?

By: jpr

jpr — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 00:17:15 +0000

Actually, if it works like it did in the US, even when the game is unlocked, they are withholding the last 20%. We still had to download for 20-60 minutes after unlocking.

By: dr_demento

dr_demento — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 22:57:03 +0000

Oh – forgot to mention the only relevant part of that, which is that Game delivered it today. Yay.

By: dr_demento

dr_demento — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 22:56:01 +0000

I cunningly avoided the copy-protection/Steam debacle by buying the Xbox 360 version. Not quite as pretty but at least it’s guaranteed to run smoothly, which on my computer is a pretty even bet.

Oh, and I’m with jamscones – not over the moon on the quality of the figure, although Warhammer paint’ll make it much prettier, and three Moby remixes isn’t even close to being a soundtrack. Why not just stick the levels’ audio tracks on a CD and throw that in? It’d hardly be difficult.

By: jamscones

jamscones — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 22:34:42 +0000

Oh, and I’d just like to complain about the Collector’s Edition “Soundtrack CD”, which plainly isn’t. I was expecting a “Soundtrack CD”, not a Moby single. What the fuck does Moby have to do with Ayn Rand, or Art Deco for that matter?

I hate Moby.

By: jamscones

jamscones — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 22:30:32 +0000

Is the retail version any more efficient?

I have heard conflicting stories about the activation servers for the EU – are they online yet, and if not, when? My copy arrived today, but I can’t get it until tomorrow morning. I have no idea when I’ll be allowed to play it.

The whole activation thing has been very poorly handled. They would have been far better off going for a simultaneous global release, since they were releasing it digitally anyway. It really didn’t hurt Half-life 2′s sales (notwithstanding Steam’s falling right the fuck over within minutes, but that’s yesterday’s lesson, right kids?).

By: OTI

OTI — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 21:45:00 +0000

I’d say that it’s akin to being penalized for making a loan to the company. When this sort of thing occurs in large financial transactions, you would expect to get interest on your down payment; here, 2k treats you like a second rate customer for making their lives easier.