By Kieron Gillen on January 20th, 2010 at 7:37 pm.
Okay. Let’s keep this just the facts, as everyone knows what they mean. The tech specs for Bioshock 2 are out. They’re reasonable enough. There’s also some fun DRM. Online verification via SecuRom, with an install limit (15 machines, admittedly). To save the game or play online, you need to be logged into Games for Window Live. This still applies on Steam – so SecuRom and Games For Windows Live are needed in addition to the Steam client. Hmm.
UPDATE: 2K Community Manager Elizabeth elaborates over at the forums. In short, it will be doing the standard Games for Windows Live activation – as in, you can play and save games offline without achievements. SecuROM is only a disc-check method for the retail copy. While final details of Steam are forthcoming, that may imply it won’t be there. Hmm.
Comments thread… go. Let me and Edwin Starr provide the soundtrack.
20/01/2010 at 19:38 Psychopomp says:
Oh, god damnit.
20/01/2010 at 19:39 Lewis says:
I suspect a lot of people who play multiplatform will be forking out an extra tenner for one of the console versions…
21/01/2010 at 04:25 Y3k-Bug says:
Good guess, I just shelled out for the PS3 version.
21/01/2010 at 09:39 Richeh says:
Which thinking about it, is probably playing right to Microsoft. I wouldn’t imagine they want people playing games on Windows, they want them buying their proprietal system.
I wonder if GFWL is designed to specifically scupper the PC as a mainstream gaming platform?
20/01/2010 at 19:40 Red Avatar says:
*sighs* 15 is better but it still doesn’t remove my main worry: that in 5 years, Securom will say “screw the old activation servers” and suddenly several of our games will refuse to install because this crap DRM. Look at Starforce games: they were bad enough at the time, wrecking CD/DVD drives left and right, but the moment you go to a 64 bit OS, you’ll find the games refuse to run because there’s no 64 bit Starforce drivers. Most games that didn’t work in Vista were exactly Starforce games. I guess they don’t care once they got our money …
20/01/2010 at 20:27 Bonedwarf says:
I have DVD’s with encrypted digital copies of movies on them from 2002-2003 that now won’t play as the servers to authenticate are gone.
A lot of people (I call them “idiots”) dismiss the claim of servers being gone down the line seemingly believing they’ll always be there.
Anyone who thinks that is delusional. I actually wrote a post on my blog about this whole issue. *shamless self promotion coming up*
http://videogameinvective.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/copy-protection-and-why-we-should-thank-pirates-not-curse-them/
20/01/2010 at 19:41 CMaster says:
Why do publishers hate the people who buy their games?
They know GFWL is unpopular, but use it over popular steamworks.
They know that pirated versions just remove all the DRM, but distribute with it anyway (although the worst experience I’ve had so far was with Fallout 3. It insisted I had CD mounting software running (I did – it’s called Windows XP as it comes with built in ISO mounting) and hence wouldn’t install. I had to download a seperate installer exe from a website. Irritating, but hardly a disaster (for me. For a lot of people, it would be “right, back to the 360 then!”).
Seriously, I don’t understand all this shooting self in foot business.
20/01/2010 at 21:19 dancingcrab says:
I’m going to defend Fallout 3 here if only because they at least tried to do the right thing (obviously you had a back experience and that sucks): Fallout 3 only shipped (at least in the UK) with a basic disc check, and even then it only checked the disc when launching the ‘launcher’ – if you lauched the fallout3.exe manually, no disc check. It is truly sweet.
This applies to both the original release and GotY edition (owned both).
21/01/2010 at 04:26 Y3k-Bug says:
I think Steamworks is way better than GFWL, but it is in no way more popular.
Also, there are things like server matchmaking that Steamworks doesn’t do yet.
20/01/2010 at 19:42 Drexer says:
Bioshock 2 was actually on the top of my wanted games for the beginning of this year. Now I guess I can wait some months.
20/01/2010 at 19:42 Gpig says:
I wouldn’t worry, 2Kgames can still backtrack on this later unlike players in the game.
21/01/2010 at 00:51 DrazharLn says:
I see what you did there, very clever.
20/01/2010 at 19:43 Wilson says:
Games for Windows Live is a pain. When they say you need to be logged in, do they mean you actually need to be logged in and online, or just that you need an offline account? Since Dawn of War II uses GFWL, but you don’t need an online account unless you want to play online, which is just about acceptable. If you have to be logged in to the latest version of GFWL though, I very much doubt I’ll bother with this, though I liked the first one.
20/01/2010 at 19:43 Arsewisely says:
GFWL eh? At the risk of sounding lackadaisical – oh well, fuck it then.
20/01/2010 at 19:44 Azradesh says:
Sigh
20/01/2010 at 19:47 Wooly says:
15 activations seems pretty reasonable to me, but if you’re going to give the copy to 14 other friends, doesn’t that defeat the purpose of limiting its activations?
The activation limits aren’t what bugs me. It’s GFWL!! Not necessary on top of steam and securom!
20/01/2010 at 19:48 Velvet Fist, Iron Glove says:
SecuROM and GFWL? It seems Bioshock 2 has just fallen down to my “I’ll get it if it’s a fiver or less” list. GFWL is stupid and useless to me as a player, SecuROM an inconvenience at its best. Do not want.
Red Avatar said, “I guess they don’t care once they got our money”, so they won’t be getting my money for a long time, and not much even then.
My GWFL “gamertag” is GFWLSUCKSARSE. Read into that what you will.
20/01/2010 at 19:49 Drakkheim says:
ah.. man .. dangit I wanted to play this. but seeing as we’re living off of netflix on the 360 and GFWL for all the tv we watch, the fact that I cant be signed on the pc & 360 at once kills this.
pity, it looked interesting.
21/01/2010 at 04:28 Y3k-Bug says:
Wow, really? That is insanely poor on Microsoft’s part if that’s true.
20/01/2010 at 19:50 jsutcliffe says:
I have strongly disliked SecuROM since I discovered it was responsible for killing my Windows right-click context menu (which would kill explorer). That said, I also lack the willpower to do without a game I really want even if it uses SecuROM.
Fortunately I’m not all that excited about Bioshock 2, but this news has changed it from a maybe-purchase to a non-purchase.
20/01/2010 at 19:51 Vinraith says:
GfWL having control of my save games is reason enough to stay away, I already lost 10 hours of Red Faction: Guerrilla progress to that stupid system. The install limit thing is obviously also unacceptable, and the two together make this a definite no-buy, despite the fact that I was looking forward to it. If they drop the install limit down the road (as Bioshock did) and if, say, xliveless is updated to work for it, then I might buy it for cheap. If not, not.
Speaking of xliveless, for anyone that doesn’t know:
http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=388658
The xlive.dll file, placed in the base game directory, disables GfWL integration and leaves you free of the nonsense. Right now it only works on GTA 4 and RFG, but I’m hoping it’ll continue to get updated to work with more games. Personally, after the mess GfWL caused with my Red Faction saves, I wouldn’t play a GfWL game without it.
21/01/2010 at 00:08 Edawan says:
“GfWL having control of my save games”
So that’s where my GTA4 saves were !
I had backed up every folder that looked even slightly related to it when I formated my PC, but when I reinstalled was unable restore my progress.
I never finished the game because of that.
Not a big loss…
20/01/2010 at 19:52 Archonsod says:
Activation limits don’t bother me. I’d be fooling myself to even pretend I’d have any interest in playing Bioshock 2 in five years (I played through Bioshock once, never really went back. Didn’t seem to be any point).
The idiocy of requiring GFWL login to save does piss me off however. For that reason alone, I’ve demoted it from “maybe if I’ve got nothing better to spend the money on” to “maybe if it’s in a really good weekend deal”. Yeah, can’t say I was that excited by it in the first place.
20/01/2010 at 19:54 Makam says:
Im a bit unsure about the bit which says “Ability to save game, earn achievements, receive title updates and online play requires log-in to Games for Windows LIVE; “, in particular the save game part. Does that mean you need to be online with GfWL, or can you have an offline account, like on xbl? Can anyone clear that up for me, cos im currently wondering if i should cancel my pre-order.
20/01/2010 at 20:01 Vinraith says:
@Makam
If you have an offline account, make very sure you never create an online one, that was my mistake. Creation of an online account DELETES ACCESS TO YOUR OFFLINE ACCOUNT , which has the effect of locking you out of any save games associated with said offline account.
Better IMO to just steer clear of GfWL entirely, or disable it with xlive.
20/01/2010 at 20:14 Blather Blob says:
Yeah, it probably means the standard GFWL online/offline dichotomy. Apparently it’s possible to import offline saves into an online profile by copying the save files around, but not the other way around, not at all. So if you want to be able to play multiplayer, you’ll need to use an online account, and if you use an online account you must always use that online account to get at your save games.
The annoying part is it isn’t even backing up your save game to their servers when online or anything, it’s just putting some weak “encryption” on them so you have to always use the same online account in order to be allowed to load them, and can’t ever switch back to an offline profile, not without losing your saved game. Unless, as Vinraith says, xliveless gets Bioshock 2 support.
20/01/2010 at 20:43 Jad says:
Apparently it’s possible to import offline saves into an online profile by copying the save files around, but not the other way around, not at all.
That doesn’t even make sense. I can understand why they would want save files encrypted and linked to a single online account, so as to protect the integrity of those oh-so-important achievements and that vital XBL gamerscore. But if what you say is true, then it doesn’t even do that! This would mean I could still get 100% complete save file from a friend’s offline account and then load it onto my online account, right? Or do offline-to-online saves not add to your achievements?
Vinraith: thanks for that explanation. Now I know why I lost my Gears of War saves after attempting to set up an online GFWL account. I was having other issues with my computer at the time, and I figured I just somehow erased them.
20/01/2010 at 20:46 Vinraith says:
@Blather Blob
“Apparently it’s possible to import offline saves into an online profile by copying the save files around”
Sometimes, it seems to depend on the game and some other unknown circumstances. I know in the case of my RFG saves that trick didn’t work.
20/01/2010 at 21:25 dancingcrab says:
I generally haven’t been bothered by GfWL, except with Gears Of War – it completely obliterated all traces of my progress upon updating.
Fail.
20/01/2010 at 22:36 Urthman says:
Keeping your GFWL in offline mode is all fine and good until they release the inevitable DLC expansion pack which requires you to go into online mode to download and install it, which will probably screw up access to your save games.
That’s the problem people reported with Fallout 3.
20/01/2010 at 19:57 Rocky says:
I could deal with Steam and Securom, but for the love of god not GFWL!
20/01/2010 at 19:59 Jacques says:
Guess I’ll be buying it for the cheap in a couple of years and playing a pirated copy until then.
20/01/2010 at 20:00 Jon says:
Good grief. Somehow you’d like to think that game developers who presumably understand the game industry would be smarter than this.
GFWL *and* SecurROM even via Steam?!?!! I suppose why put one nail in the coffin when you can use two? That’s a deal-breaker for me. But I’m sure enough will buy it despite this stupidity which will of course just egg them on to continue this unbelievably irritating behavior.
Sigh and double sigh… :-(
20/01/2010 at 20:01 Lightbulb says:
Buy and pirate – the convenient way to play PC games.
Hmmm theres a flaw in that… Why bother to give someone £5 for a second hand copy in 2 years time (netting the dev a grand total of £0) when i can just pirate it now (and give the dev the same amount – £0?)
Its not gonna stop piracy. Its gonna piss people off. Why bother?
20/01/2010 at 20:07 Jacques says:
I wasn’t talking about buying second hand, merely buying when it’s reached a reasonable price for trying to dick me around.
20/01/2010 at 20:03 Stupoider says:
Uh oh. This might start a.. y’know.. the ‘b’ word?
20/01/2010 at 20:08 robrob says:
bioshock?
20/01/2010 at 20:03 Duncanthrax says:
Sounds like a strong bittorrent candidate.
20/01/2010 at 20:05 Calabi says:
I bet the reason GFWL is used because Microsoft keep paying them, or some kind of behind the scenes delio’s are going on.
Microsoft will rule by hook or by crowbar.
20/01/2010 at 20:10 Velvet Fist, Iron Glove says:
@Calabi by crowbar? I sure hope Microsoft never get their hooks deep into Valve.
20/01/2010 at 21:10 DeepSleeper says:
Microsoft pay -them- for GFWL? I’m pretty sure THEY pay Microsoft for it.
I like GFWL, but I support being able to get rid of it if you don’t want achievement tracking and that sort of thing. I like the program, don’t like that it’s mandatory.
20/01/2010 at 23:19 Bret says:
And I once again remember Valve’s response to rumors of an EA buyout.
I don’t think Valve wants to own Microsoft either.
20/01/2010 at 20:07 Joey says:
*mistake
20/01/2010 at 20:08 Joey says:
I really enjoyed the first game, I was saddened when they decided to add multiplayer (thinking it was a crappy way to ensure people bought the game). Love the world they created, but I’m thinking I’m finally going to pass on this one. 15 install limits seems ok, but everything else makes me want to puke. As someone who used to pirate games but in recent years has decided that pirating games just makes fewer pc titles, it makes me sad that I am getting punished for purchasing my games. It just seems illogical at this point. I guess I’ll just stick to gog and replay some classics I’ve been meaning to.
20/01/2010 at 20:09 itchyeyes says:
This is the part I just don’t get. I mean, I can understand that developers are wary to just put their product out there without any protection at all. That’s fair, it’s their product and I can make a few concessions if it means they stay in business and keep making money. Fine. But not one, not two, but three methods of online authentication? Are you f***ing s***ing me? Do you really hate your customers so much?
I’m not usually one for boycotts, but this pretty much seals it that I won’t be buying Bioshock 2. I have enough headaches just getting STEAM and GFWL to play nice together half the time. No way I’m going to spend money on a product that’s only going to add to my frustration, especially when there are so many other publishers/developers out there making products that don’t include these kinds of hurdles.
20/01/2010 at 20:10 itchyeyes says:
I meant to say “stay in business and keep making games”.
20/01/2010 at 20:10 Dean says:
Yeah, it’s utterly mental.
I’m not hugely anti-DRM, I get annoyed at the idea I might not be able to play a game in five years time but then I know realistically there will always be a crack out by then.
The problem is when buying the game gives a worse experience than pirating it. GfWL is seen by the entire PC gaming community as an inconvenience. Not one person in this thread is going to say “Ooh, GfWL, cool, I’ll get achievements and gamer points”. But for some reason some developers still think GfWL is value-add, rather than something that will put people off.
20/01/2010 at 20:51 Jad says:
@Dean
Well, no one in this thread is going to say that, but believe me there is a surprisingly large number of XBL gamerscore-obsessed people out there who will get all the achievements for the game their 360 and then go buy the PC version so they can farm them all over again. Simply putting “GFWL” on the box will net you tens of thousands of extra sales. It might lose you some sales from the well-informed PC enthusiasts, but with all the other garbage Take-Two is throwing into this package, they clearly gave up on that market long ago.
20/01/2010 at 20:11 Taillefer says:
Hurrah! I love all of those things!
20/01/2010 at 22:32 PleasingFungus says:
Hooray for people who are on the internet and, yet, not angry!
Or at least being sarcastic about it so that it’s hard to tell!
Hooray!
20/01/2010 at 20:11 VHATI says:
GFWL is ther because of DLC.
I would rather have GFWL than Steamworks. We all know which one is online more consistantly. I see Steam authorization servers go down on a daily basis.
20/01/2010 at 20:39 Bonedwarf says:
I’ve only ever had a problem with Steam during a big sale. Like I bought The Witcher this Christmas and it took me ages to download it. Had the same problem when I bought Stalker last year too.
You don’t need GFWL for DLC. That’s bullshit. Multiple games on Steam have DLC and don’t need this ridiculous Microsoft malware to handle it. I own quite a few games that have had DLC released.
Steam is a perfectly acceptable platform. GFWL has no reason to exist.
20/01/2010 at 21:38 Psychopomp says:
“I see Steam authorization servers go down on a daily basis.”
Fix your internet.
20/01/2010 at 20:12 Tei says:
I made this 26000x3053px image about the topic.
http://zerror.com/zoo/fuck4.png
This is the low-resolution version. My computer is still proccesing the high resolution one.
20/01/2010 at 20:25 Demon Beaver says:
I hope the High Rez version is big enough to get their attention…
I’ll enjoy buying and playing other games. Sayonarapture
20/01/2010 at 20:33 deanimate says:
How did you get the image so sharp?
20/01/2010 at 20:55 the wiseass says:
Tei, it’s not big enough ;)
20/01/2010 at 20:17 Pardoz says:
Securom + GFWL? Just moved it from a ‘maybe consider if when Steam offers it for a fiver’ to ‘not if they pay me to install it’.
20/01/2010 at 20:17 fishyjoes says:
Lets someone positiv: Thank for reminding me of that great song.
20/01/2010 at 20:18 redrain85 says:
Precisely when many of the publishers were starting to abandon SecuROM, Take-Two turns around and starts embracing it again.
Good show, Take-Two. No, really. What a brilliant way to guarantee lost sales. Then add mandatory GfWL live, and the fact that all of this is still included in the Steam version . . .
Did they not learn a thing from GTA IV?
20/01/2010 at 20:20 J0J0 says:
they can go …. themselves. I ain’t getting this game.
20/01/2010 at 20:20 Shadowmancer says:
I’ll wait till its pirated, at least STALKER; Call Of Prypiat should be fun this year.
20/01/2010 at 20:20 ChrisAsmadi says:
According to the Steam store page, it’s a five machine activation limit, which is even worse.
Well, that’s a no buy for me.
20/01/2010 at 20:20 bookwormat says:
If this offer is good or bad heavily depends on the price they are going to charge. If the game is as good as its predecessor, I would personally gladly buy the 15 activations for 10 Euro. A single activation for 5 bucks sounds like a good deal too.
Game quality, Digital Rights Management and service agreements are only interesting in context with the price.
20/01/2010 at 20:45 bookwormat says:
holy shit, they are selling it for $70. And it is on top of the steam sales page.
I hope these people are simply rich, not uninformed.
20/01/2010 at 20:23 pignoli says:
Maybe the idea here is that there is ‘no bad publicity’ and they’re hoping the inevitable shitstorm over this will lead to increased sales? Unlikely, I know, but it’s hard to come up with rational explainations for some of this crap.
20/01/2010 at 20:24 Dave says:
ROFL EPIC WINRAR
XD
20/01/2010 at 20:24 clippa says:
HATE GFWL but all the rest doesn’t bother me.
20/01/2010 at 20:28 Azradesh says:
Yeah they’ve added something for everyone to hate, yay!
20/01/2010 at 20:29 Walsh says:
GFWL isn’t that bad.
20/01/2010 at 20:29 Vinraith says:
Well, since Bioshock 2 is a wash, anyone know what the DRM is going to be like on Mass Effect 2?
20/01/2010 at 20:46 Azradesh says:
Just a keycode and disc check according to PC Gamer UK.
20/01/2010 at 20:47 Azhrarn says:
That’s something to be found on the ME2 forums if I recall correctly, just a disc-check for the game itself.
Although for the DLC you will need a Bioware account, just like Dragon Age used.
So technically there is an online check, since the DLC will probably use authentication like DA:O does.
20/01/2010 at 20:54 Vinraith says:
@Azradesh and Azhrarn
Thanks, I appreciate the info. While I’m not wild about Bioware’s DLC system, if the game itself only has a straightforward disc check that sounds like good reason to go ahead and order a boxed copy.
Does anyone know if ME1′s boxed copies ever got rid of the limited install thing? It’d be nice to have a non-Steam version of that one.
20/01/2010 at 21:32 dancingcrab says:
They didn’t get rid of it, per se, but they released a tool to ‘deauthenticate’ an installed copy from your hardware. This happened after my first round on my old PC, so I’ve permenantly lost one of my five activiations, but have since happily installeld, activated, played, deactivated, moved on.
http://activate.ea.com/deauthorize/
Interestingly, they list Dragon Age in the titles you can deauthenticate… despite it alledgedly only using a disc-check. Must be something to do with the DRM.
http://activate.ea.com/deauthorize/games.html
20/01/2010 at 22:16 Vinraith says:
@dancingcrab
Thanks. Well, I’ll see if I can find a copy of the first one for cheap, then. I really hate having a game I might actually want to replay tied to Steam.
20/01/2010 at 20:29 wyrmsine says:
Damnit. GFWL-required saving puts this on my “Do not buy” list. I’d really, really like to know why publishers are using that system, on top of SecuROM and (possibly) Steam. Any (rational) ideas?
20/01/2010 at 20:36 Tei says:
I suppose that Microsoft want to push GFWL to dominate the digital shop market on the PC.
In one word: Corruption.
Microsoft bribe these people to put the garbage that is GFWL in his games. He…. disclosed documents shows that Bill Gates calls these things “donations”.
Is disgusting that these people (MS) has soo much influence on the software market.
20/01/2010 at 20:39 Walsh says:
I seriously do not understand the whining about GFWL saves. It messed me up one time in Fallout 3 and I learned not to login to GFWL since I had started the game with an ‘offline’ profile. Later I started a new game and used my GFWL for the achievement tracking.
It worked fine in Dawn Of War 2 and Battlestations Pacific. I don’t understand the crying about signing into GFWL when other plenty of other games require you to sign in first to their proprietary system.
The only real issue with GFWL is it looks like crap and the extra features that exist on XBOX Live are nonexistent.
BTW Who seriously needs to install a game more than 5 times and has been unable to due to DRM? Did you not know about a deactivation feature, chronically screwing up your system or what? The principle of it isn’t a valid argument.
20/01/2010 at 20:42 redrain85 says:
Two words: Laziness, DLC.
Since the PC version is a port of the 360 version anyway, by using GfWL they don’t have to do a major recoding job by implementing Steam’s multiplayer features instead.
Then, on top of that, they can use GfWL to sell DLC using that stupid MS points system that ties you down to buying more future DLC, because you always end up having leftover points.
20/01/2010 at 20:50 itchyeyes says:
@Walsh
The problem is that GFWL is completely unreliable. For instance, in RF:Guerrilla it won’t log in unless the game has been updated (an update which is only available through GFWL). Problem is, the RF:G update install is completely broken. So unless you feel like diving into your command line and editing your registry you can’t save your games, which more or less means you can’t play the game.
Another problem is that you can’t be logged into one GFWL account in two places at once. So, for instance, when I’m playing Fallout 3 and my wife turns on the Xbox 360 to watch netflix you’re sol
20/01/2010 at 20:53 bookwormat says:
@Tei:
Compared to the 90ties, MS has become pretty impotent compared to then. They are still huge and make a lot of money, but they do not have that much influence anymore. Or, as Paul Graham overstates it: Microsoft is dead.
As a developer I’m more concerned about Google or Facebook than Microsoft.
20/01/2010 at 21:03 wyrmsine says:
Walsh, it’s hardly whining. In my case, it’s a reality that I’m not always connected to the ‘net. I’d like to be able to play a singleplayer game irregardless of whether or not I’m online. Removing that functionality reduces the value of the product for me, ergo, no sale.
I’ve had 2 bad experiences with GFWL saves, one of which wiped out all my savegames, and I don’t trust the product. I try not to buy things that have proven to fail on me.
As to the activations, well, I expect I’m not that target market here, as I tend to juggle a lot of hardware. I’d like to install a game on both my laptop and desktop, and I expect that I will uninstall and reinstall the game several times over the next few years (assuming it’s good). Probably not the norm, but it doesn’t help convince me to buy a game with limited activations.
Believe me, if you’d had to travel 50km into the middle of nowhere’s frozen north to spend a week with your relatives, being able to play a video game without constant net access would seem like a reasonable expectation.
20/01/2010 at 20:29 jsutcliffe says:
Two observations:
Why so much open discussion of piracy? That is done by shadowy men in darkened rooms, in secret. Also, naughty!
To how many people is a fifteen-install, five-machine honestly a limit they’ll want to break?
20/01/2010 at 20:38 Vinraith says:
@jsutcliffe
1) Because, between the encrypted saves with online account integration, the online activation and its inevitable failures, and the install limit, the pirated version of the game will be the collector’s deluxe version. It’ll be worlds more functional, with worlds less hassle, and that it’s available for $50 less than the borked version makes it all the better. Personally, I don’t pirate PC games, because I think if it’s good enough to play it’s good enough to pay for. Still, on this one, I can’t exactly blame the folks that choose the superior version of the game. Any sane, responsible person that just had to play this game would buy a legal copy, then get and install a pirated version to save themselves all the associated hassles of the “legitimate” version.
2) Why should I have to keep track? Why should it even be an issue? Maybe I won’t ever need that, maybe the game will be so mediocre I’ll only want to install it the one time, the fact is it shouldn’t be a factor at all. I lost 7 hard drives in one year, once, as a result of a combination of manufacturing defects and what turned out to be a faulty power supply. 15 is a lot, but it’s still very much a finite and reachable number, and any number is too few in the lifetime of a truly great game. Limited installations says to me “the publisher thinks you won’t want to play this one in the future,” who am I to argue with a review like that?
20/01/2010 at 20:46 Bonedwarf says:
In the last two years I’ve had 4 complete OS failures with no way to claw an activation back.
I know people who with Spore’s five activations lost them all on release day due to the DRM not working properly and them trying to install on other systems.
So don’t come that old “Oh how many people are going to reach this limit?” nonsense as you’ll be surprised how easy it is to burn through activations.
And of course let’s not get onto GFWL and the BS that causes.
20/01/2010 at 21:00 Jacques says:
For me, it’s more a case of GFWL than the activations.
20/01/2010 at 20:33 Lambchops says:
I understand the multiplayer being run through Games for Windows live but why oh why the save games. It’s just an irritation. It wasa pain in the arse for Arkham Asylum and I imagine it will be a pain in the arse again.
20/01/2010 at 20:40 MadMatty says:
Well i have never had any problems with drm to this date (lucky i guess) (although my friend did smash his HalfLife2 disc when he found out he needed to be online to play it), but i can kindof see the problem now.
Its completely 100% useless as piracy prevention, the copy protections are still broken in a matter of days after release anyways- check some of the torrent search engines if you dont believe me!
If i´d bought a game and had any nonsense with the DRM, i´d just go and get a pirated copy… it might not be Kosher in some households (or legally, which is bullshit) , but whats wrong with getting a working copy of your game running once youve allready paid for it?
20/01/2010 at 20:41 Yargh says:
I guess that means I’ll be getting Solium Infernum then. I’ve suffered through far too much just getting Dawn of War II and Red Faction: Guerilla to let me play them for me to be willing to go through it all again. No wonder the Steam pre-order is at a reasonable price.
This one can wait until next year’s Steam Christmas Sale, I won’t mind so much then I suspect.
20/01/2010 at 20:42 Cam says:
Not only the drm to screw us Aussies over but 2k has also decided that they want 79.99 usd for it via Steam!
Sadly that’s still cheaper than retail but it was nice to see retail pc games come down in price for a while in the physical stores, lately they’ve gone back up again.
I won’t buy 2k, Activision, or Sega games via steam unless they are the same price in usd as the yanks get. For an evil empire EA keeps all their prices the same on steam.. Even though their local online store is stupidly inflated (they prob get more aus sales from steam than their own retail store).
I love reading comments on rps where people won’t pay more than 30gbp for a game, we routinely pay over three times that.. Does not compute.
20/01/2010 at 20:47 Lambchops says:
So you routinely pay 50 quid for games?
That’s ridiculous – the only game that has ever gone quite that high here has been Modern Warfare 2 and that almost didn’t count as high street retailers were very aggressive in slashing the price of it.
I completely agree with you that there should be a level playing field with the prices on Steam and, indeed, elsewhere.
20/01/2010 at 23:04 luminosity says:
Yeah. $30 more than the Americans get charged, stupid save system that has lost my saves in the past, limited activation DRM. Gee, they’re really going all out to get us to buy this one. A pity, too, I wanted to see what Jordan “The Cradle” Thomas would produce in charge of a team.
20/01/2010 at 20:47 kikito says:
Arrrrr
20/01/2010 at 20:48 phuzz says:
@RPS Hivemind Overlords Could you please find out who is responsible for deciding to go with a system like GfWL, when clearly their customers don’t want it.
If it’s because microsoft are paying them money then I’d happily pay a £5 more for a game if I didn’t have to bother with it.
In fact, someone tell valve to start paying people to use Steamworks, if I’m going to be chained to an evil monopoly I’d rather it was Gabe on balance.
20/01/2010 at 20:50 Horatius says:
If you pirate a game from a smaller company that doesn’t implement any annoying DRM, you feel bad. If you pirate a game from a giant company that adds three layers of DRM irritation, you feel kinda good.
If you purchase a DRM-free game from a little company, you feel great. If you purchase a DRM-laden game from a big company, you feel kinda bad.
I wonder how many pirates will think fondly of Bioshock 2.
20/01/2010 at 20:52 YachmenevSWE says:
This is a couple of the reasons that I enjoy indie games more and more. The developers care about their customers and Microsoft have no interest in them on the PC.
20/01/2010 at 20:52 Pinkbeard says:
I want BioShock 2 (Should it be shortened to B.S.2, it think it may be apt) but I’m buggered if I’m going to pay to have what I consider malware installed on my machine. So screw them and their securom and Greatly Failing Windows Lameware crap.
Any PC gamer worth their salt knows of ways and means to avoid DRM and still play the games they want to.
Read into that what you will.
20/01/2010 at 20:55 LintMan says:
Bioshock 2 was one of the games I was looking forward to. But 3 activations, 15 activations or 100 activations – I still don’t like activations. You’re screwed if they stop running the servers in 3-5 years.
Leaving activations in on the Steam version plus GFWL dumps a stinky brown “icing” on the cake. Maybe in a year or two I’ll pick it up for $5 in one of Steam’s blowout sales.
20/01/2010 at 20:56 Jaedar says:
How can the games industry completely fail to learn anything?
When will they realize GFWL is horrible?
That Install limits just leaves a bad taste in gamers mouths and accomplishes nothing?
20/01/2010 at 20:58 Aemony says:
Hell no. I have already had enough of GTA IV’s protections so I’m definitely not going to buy this shit until either A) a good crack has been released that removes every annoyance or B) they get their heads straight and remove at least some layer of “protection”.
Why do the PC gaming industry still use DRM? Haven’t they understood that they are in the same predicament as the music industry? DRM only hurts honest buyers and doesn’t slow down or stop the piracy at all.
20/01/2010 at 20:59 yhancik says:
Why did I think of Ceiling Cat when reading the title ?
20/01/2010 at 21:00 Blackberries says:
Oh for the love of.. Well, despite not adding any new thoughts, I’ll add my outrage. Steam AND SecuRom AND Games for Windows Live-tied saving AND limited installs. That is complete crap. This will still be pirated. Massively.
While it must grate for those who don’t get along with it, I don’t personally mind needing to use Steam too much. And I’ve even a few games which do indeed require SecuRom (not strong enough to resist certain titles). But both of those, plus a requirement to be connected to GFWL to save? Oh no. No thank you.
I was even maybe considering getting this. Now, however, they’ve lost a sale.
If it comes up for cheap somewhere down the line, I just -may- consider purchasing it, then using a pirated copy to free me from all that DRM.
20/01/2010 at 21:01 Hmm says:
What’s Microsoft’s involvement in the PC version beyond GfWL, how do they make money from it? Do they pay for devs to use it then get a percentage for each sale?
20/01/2010 at 22:08 Koozer says:
As I understand it devs have to buy the right to use GFWL, need to have all their output verified by Microsoft, are obligated to include 2000 pointless gamerscore points, usually in 50 achievements, oh and also have to pay Microsoft for every patch they want to release. In return they get…actually, I can’t think of anything.
20/01/2010 at 22:23 Jad says:
However, for any game that also comes out for the Xbox 360 — and that is most of them these days — the developers already have to deal with all those issues. If you already have made up 50 achievements for XBL (and trophies/PSN), have already dealt with Microsoft’s matchmaking system, profiles system, etc, then doing the same in GFWL is probably easier than re-doing all that in Steam, or Gamespy, or doing your own system.
Which is why that statement Infinity Ward made during the dedicated servers fiasco, “But we put all this work into IW.net!”, made slightly more sense than many made it out to be — because it did require more work than many other companies put into their PC version. (Not to stir up the controversy again, but that still doesn’t mean they couldn’t have had dedicated servers alongside matchmaking, all within the IW.net profile system. All I’m saying is they did put more effort into MW2:PC than 2K is putting into Bioshock 2:PC)
21/01/2010 at 00:46 Hmm says:
Oh wow, so I totally fell for propaganda about MS paying off devs then. Except the other way around is worse. :/
20/01/2010 at 21:01 bitkari says:
What worries me about this is that Take Two might do this to a game that I give two shits about:
Civilization.
And that, ladies and gents, will be a dark, dark day…
20/01/2010 at 21:09 Vinraith says:
@bitkari
Now there’s a horrifying thought.
20/01/2010 at 21:03 Heliosicle says:
Well I’m not getting this then.
20/01/2010 at 21:05 Legendary Teeth says:
Well, if they want to make the game a rental, I’ll buy it at rental price when it goes on sale on Steam in a year or two. Whatever. Not like there aren’t a billion other games coming out, or that I have from Steam’s Boxing Week sale that I have to play.
20/01/2010 at 21:05 rocketman71 says:
Wow, two of the biggest turds of the industry combined in a single game. Only Rockstar Social Club missing.
Well, if they don’t want my money it’s their loss.
20/01/2010 at 21:06 valli-r says:
I won’t buy this game because of all that, but you can be sure I am gonna play it. (I usually buy games I love)
20/01/2010 at 21:09 Crusoe says:
Pass.
20/01/2010 at 21:09 Vhati says:
Consider this.
They are developing for 3 different systems. Since they already use Xbox live for match making. It is alot easier to keep it for GFWL for match making, than spending a ton of extra money making it use steamworks, or using Gamespy.
In the case of this game. Steam is the culprit that doesnt need to be involved in the process.
Gotta love all the ragers that cant actually think something out.
20/01/2010 at 21:13 Crusoe says:
I spy with my little eye, not a lot of rage, just a lot of disapointed gamers, and with good reason.
20/01/2010 at 21:20 hoff says:
We’re not raging about why they did what they did. We are just annoyed they didn’t take the small effort of making the experience for PC gamers a little less nerve-wrecking. It’s not like Bioshock made half of its sales from PC gamers… oh wait, it did!
20/01/2010 at 21:25 Vinraith says:
@Vhati
Most GfWL hate centers around the save game account association nonsense, not the matchmaking. They could have used the latter without implementing the former.
20/01/2010 at 21:29 Shalrath says:
Wait, if it’s on Steam already, isn’t Steamworks FREE? How would they be paying ‘tonnes more’?
I’m not really disappointed at all, because come on, who is looking forward to Bioshock 2 more than virtually anything else coming out in 2010. I’ll be playing Mass Effect 2, probably going back to Dragon Age, etc, long enough to not even need to bother with this game.
So really… meh?
20/01/2010 at 21:37 Vhati says:
Yes, steamworks is free, you dont have to pay for the time required to develop match making for it, or the net code, nothing like that. Considering you already have it basically done and finished because you designed it for xbox live already.
The small amount of people in multiplayer wont be affected by peer to peer.
20/01/2010 at 23:25 Lilliput King says:
“Considering you already have it basically done and finished because you designed it for xbox live already.”
I’m a consumer.
I don’t give a shit what’s best for them. I want what’s best for me. Steam is functional, GfWL just isn’t. Every bloody game I’ve played online with it has the same problems. I wait ages to get into a server (DoW2 being the worst culprit), from then a third of the games will lag horrifically due to poor networking and another third will lag due to frame rate loss. In both situations the end result is usually my opponents or allies quitting and trying again. Then you have the pathetic attempt at steam’s friends list that for no adequately explained reason can’t handle instant messaging, instead using some kind of weird email system, and literally the worst integrated VOIP I have ever come across, which succeeds only in making everyone sound like someone farting in the bath.
And then you have all the save game palaver, on top of a frankly dire update and log in frontend that steam handles better on both fronts, and which has in many cases for me and others made games unplayable.
I can work it out just fine. I can also work out that what’s on offer here isn’t worth my money.
20/01/2010 at 21:12 bwion says:
I’m not one to get up in arms about DRM and such, but for me, it’s quite simple. I can put up with a bunch of hassles to play a game I kind of want to play. Or I can play the three dozen other games I also kind of want to play that don’t require those same hassles.
20/01/2010 at 21:19 Ragabhava says:
GFWL needs to be shoved down our throats really hard and quickly or else it dies they figured at MS.
Also, this probably is a test run to see how much DRM the market can bear as of now.
Or else there really are idiots running the show.
20/01/2010 at 21:23 VHATI says:
What do you kind sir, suggest for we use for match making if not GFWL?
20/01/2010 at 21:36 Psychopomp says:
A server list.
20/01/2010 at 21:36 RobF says:
Something which isn’t shit would be a nice start.
20/01/2010 at 21:39 Shalrath says:
Anything (no gamespy!) Seriously, other than a name I won’t mention (gamespy, which sucks) you’d be hard-pressed to find a WORSE option to use.
20/01/2010 at 21:39 Vhati says:
a server list. so who is providing the servers? who is providing the server list? gamespy? Gimme a real answer.
20/01/2010 at 21:45 Psychopomp says:
Players provide the servers. Steamworks provides the rest. The idea that they need GFWL for matchmaking is ludicrous, as most pc gamers hate matchmaking, for good reason.
20/01/2010 at 22:21 VHATI says:
Thats exactly what GFWL does, players provide the servers, and GFWL provides the server list, or match making.
I am pretty sure as many people like matchmaking, as there are that dislike it.
You cant effectively have a ladder or any sort of statistic tracking without it. If you attempt to, all you get is padded accounts.
20/01/2010 at 22:34 Psychopomp says:
GFWL is P2P. Bioshock 2 is a shooter. You do the math.
Not only that, GFWL is really bad at its job. Lag everywhere.
20/01/2010 at 23:30 Lilliput King says:
“Thats exactly what GFWL does, players provide the servers, and GFWL provides the server list, or match making.”
In the words of Noel Edmunds from the quiz box in my local – “No you’re wrong there.”
“You cant effectively have a ladder or any sort of statistic tracking without it. If you attempt to, all you get is padded accounts.”
Wooo, stats.
20/01/2010 at 21:22 Smurfy says:
I thought everyone stopped using SecuROM after the DRM Wars of 2008.
20/01/2010 at 22:02 Heliosicle says:
The war never ended, they just stopped using DRM for a while so to lure us into a false sense of security..
20/01/2010 at 22:25 Driadan says:
dragon age for mac does use securom, also blood bowl uses securom if i recall correctly
20/01/2010 at 21:22 Crusoe says:
Mmm and Kudos, KG, I for one lol’d at the supplied soundtrack to this particular thread
20/01/2010 at 21:24 Riesenmaulhai says:
War! Hu!
What is it goohood for?
20/01/2010 at 21:24 medwards says:
I was interested in Bioshock 2 until I heard about GWFL. Don’t even really care about the DRM, had bad experiences with Dawn of War II (excellent game, terrible GWFL)
20/01/2010 at 21:26 VHATI says:
I am on the otherside of the boat. Never ever had a problem with GFWL in Dow 2. The only problem ive had with it involves steam. Whenever it decides to drop the authorization servers and cause any game you are in to be disqualified and then everyone is kicked out, you then wait for 20-30 minutes to see if the auth servers are going to stay up so you dont launch back into another match only to have it drop again and kick you out of another match 5-10 minutes in.
20/01/2010 at 21:28 Plinglebob says:
While I don’t mind SecureROM too much as I’ve never really had a problem with it and you can easily find a crack if necessary, I’m against it because its completely pointless as its worked around within 24hrs. However, GfWL is the biggest pain in the arse since I last had hemmeroids. Had to restart games multiple times to get it to log in offline and even then you can use a fake account code. Never had any problem when I bought Fallout 3 after playing a less then legal version.
If Steam had also been required, I wouldn’t have bought it as I’ve not liked Steam ever since I had authorisation problems which meant I couldn’t log in and play my legally bought games for 6 months.
20/01/2010 at 21:29 Miker says:
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but GFWL in Bioshock 2′s multiplayer means that it’ll be peer-to-peer lobbies like the console version. I can’t see this improving the multiplayer experience, and I’m surprised more people aren’t in rage about this — probably because not that many people are that excited about multiplayer?
20/01/2010 at 21:30 jokermatt999 says:
Well, so much for any shot of me giving them money.
20/01/2010 at 21:30 Nimic says:
Good chances I’ll be pirating this one, then.
And yes, that’s the reason.
20/01/2010 at 21:32 l1ddl3monkey says:
Securom, Steam and GFWL? Previous games I’ve tried with a combination of any two of those have been catastrophic fail.
I don’t have a problem with DRM, I have a problem with DRM which renders something I paid my money for unusable.
20/01/2010 at 21:35 MadTinkerer says:
“To save the game or play online, you need to be logged into Games for Window Live.”
What.
I have to be logged on to GFWL to SAVE MY SINGLE PLAYER GAME IN BIOSHOCK 2 !?!?!
This… can’t be true, can it? I am SO glad I didn’t preorder it yet. GFWL was annoying enough with DoW2, but that was just multiplayer. This is an insult.
I didn’t have any problems with Bioshock’s DRM because I waited until they cut it down to the “can’t tell it’s there unless you look hard for it” version. THIS is obnoxious. Yeah, I think I’ll pass on Bioshock 2 until it’s on sale AND they fix it.
20/01/2010 at 21:50 phuzz says:
With Batman:AA that was exactly the case, so I guess it will be with this as well.
And yes, it was exactly as crap as you’d expect, I lost my first hour or so in the game twice, and had to replay through before it deigned to actually save my progress when it said it was.
I could kind of understand if your savegames were being backed up to their servers or something useful, but as far as I can make out it’s just to lock you in to using GfWL, which surely is a monopolistic practice? From M$, what a surprise :|
20/01/2010 at 22:09 MWoody says:
They lock down your saves in an attempt to prevent cheating on your gamerscore, since GFWL games can combine their achievements with 360 ones. It’s not really “monopolistic” since games that use GFWL only use GFWL regardless of save-game issues; it’s not like you could use some competing game-matching service if it weren’t for that facet.
Now, don’t get me wrong: this is still fucking stupid. It’s just get-achievement-whores-to-buy-our-games stupid, not woo-hoo-we’re-locking-you-out-of-gamespy stupid.
20/01/2010 at 21:37 SheffieldSteel says:
Wow, DRM and GFWL too? And I thought the PC was an open platform.
Never mind, there are plenty of other good games out there.
20/01/2010 at 21:38 Serenegoose says:
Are the installs refundable? Otherwise it’s a rental, and they should be advertising it as such.
20/01/2010 at 21:40 Harbour Master says:
Man, and everyone bitched about the DRM on Bioshock. Who knew it could get any worse? I guess they really have amped up all the product features in the sequel. Sad that the bright, burning shiny DRM lighty of DRM has blinded me to the anything else.
20/01/2010 at 21:41 Flakfizer says:
Fuck DRM and all who sail on her. Can’t decide if it’s incompetence or evil but it’s this shit that’s killing PC gaming.
The tech specs don’t mention keyboard and mouse support. Will they be paid DLC ?
20/01/2010 at 23:36 Lilliput King says:
PC Exclusive Features.
I hear in-game text chat will be patched in after a couple of months free of charge.
20/01/2010 at 21:52 The One and Only says:
I can only assume and hope that the bit about having to be logged into GFWL in order to save is some kind of misinformation because that is really absolutely unacceptable.
I’m usually not one to pass games due to DRM unless they really overdo it (GTA IV for example I wouldn’t have bought, had I known beforehand about the annoying login procedure each time I just wanted to start the game). And this sounds like overdoing, if implemented as reported.
I don’t see that happening with Civilization, btw. Not mainstream enough. Also, I doubt they can actually top Civ IV in terms of gameplay so I don’t expect Civ V to be worth it anyway. Unfortunately. I hope they prove me wrong.
Anyway, back to topic: I won’t get Bioshock 2 if it really comes with these limitations. It’s good that Bioshock wasn’t that good anyway (compared to, e.g. System Shock), so the loss is not too bad. I’d still like to play it, though.
21/01/2010 at 09:44 bill says:
See: Arkham Asylum saves.
20/01/2010 at 21:52 cliffski says:
wow, you go away for a few hours to writwe some code and come back to this.
I never finished bioshock 1, so won’t be buying this, but this is great news for anyone who doesn’t use DRM as it just means less competition for the anti-DRM gamers attention :D
20/01/2010 at 21:54 qwertylicious says:
Spent a while trying to find an email address of someone at 2K Marin to politely tell them why they will be losing sales. Could find no forms of contact for anyone appropriate. So skipping the politeness; they can go fuck themselves if they think gamers like me will buy into this shit.
20/01/2010 at 21:55 Optimaximal says:
Interestingly, why aren’t they using the new ‘anti-piracy’ features of GFW:L 3.0?
Whilst it isn’t necessarily the lesser evil in the equation, surely it would be more advisable than implementing SecuROM, which has singlehandedly killed off many a games sales through review manipulation of Amazon et al.
Personally, I haven’t had much problem with Games for Windows: Live since they actually decided to make it a PC app and not just a half-arsed attempt at the Xbox blade system w. mouse support.
20/01/2010 at 22:03 Chris says:
Still buying it.
20/01/2010 at 22:03 Valentin Galea says:
I don’t understand this hate for GFWL – I never had any problems with it – lately i’ve played Resident Evil 5 with 2 profiles active and was smooth as silk.
21/01/2010 at 00:00 Nick says:
Sadly your personal experience does not account for other people.
20/01/2010 at 22:03 MWoody says:
Preorder canceled.
20/01/2010 at 22:06 Fell says:
What a joke, it will be cracked within a week. The cracked versions will not have to go through any of these annoyances. However, anyone wanting to legally play this will.
Little ironic that protective measures, such as these, are only in effect if you buy the game.
20/01/2010 at 22:06 jackflash says:
GFWL = no sale at a price point of above $9.99.
20/01/2010 at 22:06 c-Row says:
I was looking forward to the collector’s edition, but not for the price of bending over and getting ***ked up the ass. So to speak. Neither did I pick up GTA4, even during the Steam holiday sale, just because they totally pissed me off with all this crap as well.
20/01/2010 at 22:06 DarkNoghri says:
I’m kind of laughing here. It seems most people here would have been fine with one or two out of the three (not necessarily the same one or two), but the fact that it uses all three has EVERYONE up in arms.
20/01/2010 at 22:10 Vinraith says:
@DarkNoghri
Steam’s only required if you’re dumb enough to actually buy the game on Steam. A lot of people seem to be misreading the article in this respect.
20/01/2010 at 22:08 Apex says:
Welp. Console version for me then.
20/01/2010 at 22:11 Orange says:
“To save the game or play online, you need to be logged into Games for Window Live”
Deal breaker for me unfortunately, just had so many problems with GFW on my PC and never able to get it fixed. The only programme I’ve ever had that of kind of trouble with.
20/01/2010 at 22:16 Hi!! says:
I don’t care about the activations, but not being able to save without being logged into GfW Live?
Fuck.
I was so looking forward to this.
20/01/2010 at 22:20 Evernight says:
I find it sad that companies like 2K are contributing so heavily to the death of PC gaming. I am pretty sure this is a backhanded attempt discourage gamers with both a console and a PC from buying the PC version.
I use Steam almost exclusively right now and is there some problem that people buying from Steam are hacking games? No. So why in the hell do we have to go through so many hoops to play when we use Steam? Publishers are just retarded.
20/01/2010 at 22:23 peter says:
NOT BUYING THIS ANY MORE.
FUCK YOURSELVES 2K
20/01/2010 at 22:28 Kirrus says:
Someone mentioned they couldn’t find an email address for 2K. Here is one:
take2@europesupport.com
Have fun!
20/01/2010 at 22:28 bhlaab says:
Attn: Games for Windows Live
STOP. IT.
20/01/2010 at 22:29 Grey_Ghost says:
Games For Windows Live? Thank you! I’ve now lost all interest in your game, and will now be able to spend my money elsewhere.
20/01/2010 at 22:30 Tom says:
Oh my God, the madness.
20/01/2010 at 22:32 d. says:
Well screw this and let’s play some more System Shock 2 (which will probably turn out to be superior anyway)
20/01/2010 at 22:32 Spacegirl says:
I dont really care about install limits or crap like that. I plan on getting Bioshock 2 the day it comes out.
I will say tho….GAMES FOR WINDOWS LIVE SUCKS TERRIBLY BAD. IT IS HORRIBLY LAME. THERE IS LITERALLY NOT ONE GOOD THING ABOUT IT. MICROSOFT IS ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE AT THAT STUFF. THE INTERFACE IS JUST A JOKE.
JUST USE STEAM, PLEASE. GFWL IS A PIECE OF CRAP.
there…
20/01/2010 at 22:32 Carra says:
Bah, I’ll wait for the patch half a year later that removes all that crap.
20/01/2010 at 22:34 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
I’ll wait for the holiday sale next year, when it goes on sale for a price that compensates for needing Games for Windows Live.
20/01/2010 at 22:35 Forscythe says:
DRM Sucks!
Anyway, to go off topic for a moment, can I ask a question of those of you who are subjects of the United Kingdom? Periodically in these comment threads somebody (today it was Lambchops) brings up something called the “high street retailers,” stores, or shops.
Is there some specific “high” street that you all go to to buy your games? Or is it some more general term for a specific sort of store?
Just curious, thanks!
20/01/2010 at 23:15 Azradesh says:
The “High Street” is the the general name for the street in a town/city that all the main shops are on.
21/01/2010 at 00:30 kupocake says:
So I suppose the American English term would be ‘Main Street’?
21/01/2010 at 00:47 Count Elmdor says:
No, the American term would be “Wal-Mart” or “The Mall” because we’re lazy fucks who prefer to drive and have endless parking lots in all directions rather than actual streets with businesses along them and sidewalks that you can walk down from place to place.
21/01/2010 at 14:02 SheffieldSteel says:
Subjects? Maybe in The Falkland Islands… there was a time when you could find plenty of British Subjects in Hong Kong but not any more.
The vast majority of legal residents of the UK are British Citizens.
20/01/2010 at 22:40 Troy says:
another game that will not be in my library less a game for windows live removal tool is made for it.
20/01/2010 at 22:41 Ogg says:
One thing is sure, they won’t have my money.
20/01/2010 at 22:43 mikebiggs says:
basicaly highstreet is just a word to describe the sort of street that’s part of the main shopping area of a town or city, so you’re talking the main chains as opposed to smaller back alley shops. Ish. However these days i’d say it’s basically just a term for a brick and mortar shop instead of an online retailer.
Never really thought about it before though, just one of the terms you grow up with.
20/01/2010 at 23:49 Lambchops says:
It’s a shame but there hardly seems to be any little independant game shops anymore. I can only think of one or two off hand in Glasgow and the only one near Glasgow University, which was a great little shop, closed over a year ago now. As much as Game and GameStation are decent for second hand and have some good deals there was just something a bit more satisfying about buying from the little guy and I tended to take their recommendations much more seriously.
20/01/2010 at 22:51 Alex says:
Forscythe,
A high street retailer is a term used in Britain for common chain stores expected to be found on many “high streets” (I believe the US term is main street) throughout the country, like Subway, McDonalds, Starbucks, etc.
Britain’s high street game retailers are GAME and GameStation (owned by GAME, so they’re practically similar). Blockbusters and HMV also carry games.
20/01/2010 at 22:51 Jahkaivah says:
“What is the difference between a man and a pirate? A man builds games. A pirate asks ‘Where is my share?’ A man creates DRM. A pirate says, ‘What will the neighbors think?’ A man invents DRM. A pirate says, ‘Watch out, or you might tread on the toes of God… ‘ “
20/01/2010 at 23:37 Alastayr says:
someone give this man a beer
20/01/2010 at 22:51 Nameykins says:
Games for Windows Live is a really, really huge negative thing for the game, especially if the online matchmaking is done by it. I honestly wasn’t all that exited about the game to begin with and this pretty much nails the last coffin in the game for me.
I’ll wait for a discount, kthx.
20/01/2010 at 22:55 Urthman says:
So basically, the developers for Bioshock 2 took a look at games like Deus Ex, Planescape, KOTOR, Grim Fandango, Diablo 2, and then looked at their game and said to themselves:
“Did we just make a classic game that people will still be playing 10 years from now?”
“Nah, Are you kidding? No one’s gonna want to install this 5 times, much less 10. So 15 installs is more than anyone could ever possibly need.”
20/01/2010 at 22:58 leeder_krenon says:
can’t wait to see all the reviews giving it a one on amazon. zzz. shit, it’s a game dudes. who cares? if it’s awesome, they could insist that i play it whilst being repeatedly kicked in the nads by a a lion. DRM – the most overblown, overthought, yet entirely irrelevant issue in the history of the world. if only people gave so much of a fuck about something that mattered.
20/01/2010 at 23:00 Psychopomp says:
See you in ten years when you can’t play your game anymore.
20/01/2010 at 23:03 Dominic White says:
Given that 95% of DRM is cracked within a week, that hardly seems likely. On a more legitimate note, some publishers remove most of the DRM after a year or two of sales, and Securom, while giving you limited activations, will give you more if you just email them and ask.
It’s a minor annoyance, but I’d mark it far below things like poor multiplayer support or lack of moddability.
20/01/2010 at 23:04 Serenegoose says:
Actually, I can best you Krenon. Check -this out.
Angry reactionism to anti-DRM people. The most overblown, overthought, yet entirely irrelevant issue in the history of the world. If only people gave so much of a fuck about something that mattered.
I mean really. What’s more sad. the people who dislike DRM, or the people who get SO MAD by people who don’t like DRM that they have to SCWEAM AND SCWEAM.
DRM is unethical. It’s worth getting angry about corporations screwing us over, even if they are doing it with videogames, because NOT getting angry about it gives the impression they can do whatever they want.
20/01/2010 at 23:38 Fede says:
The funny thing is that the biggest drawback is Games for Windows Live, not the rather resonable DRM
21/01/2010 at 00:26 Maltose says:
I don’t care about whether or not DRM is right or wrong. What I do care about is that DRM restricts what I can do with a game, which means the people who pirate the game actually get more than I do. This doesn’t apply so much to games with a multiplyer component like Bioshock 2, but you can use the first Bioshock as an example. What did the people who bought the game get? Limited activations, CD checks, the works. What did the people who pirated the game get? No need to activate, no need to insert a CD, and an extra $50 in their pocket.
I have no problems paying for a game with DRM. I do have a problem paying $50 for a game, and the seeing that a week later, the pirates get everything I get and more for the lovely sum of $0. Example: Dragon Age. I buy the collector’s edition for $70. A few days later, pirates get the same game, for $0, except they no cd checks and all the DLC, including every piece of preorder DLC (each store had its own exclusive preorder DLC, which means that most people who bought the game could only get one piece of preorder DLC). Why the hell should I buy a game when the stupid DRM ends up treating pirates better than a legitimate purchaser?
20/01/2010 at 23:03 LionsPhil says:
GENTLEMEN,
I SUSPECT THAT ONE OR MORE PERSONS AMONG US HERE TODAY MIGHT POSSIBLY BE TROLLING.
USE THIS INFORMATION WISELY.
YOUR FRIEND,
GREEN SPY
20/01/2010 at 23:03 Stabby says:
I fucking hate GFWL. What has it ever done for us but cause grief?
20/01/2010 at 23:04 SpakAttack says:
GFWL is a deal breaker – will not buy.
20/01/2010 at 23:04 TheSombreroKid says:
pre-order cancelled, problem solved.
20/01/2010 at 23:06 Stupoider says:
GFWL, huh, yeah,
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothin’,
Uh-huh.
20/01/2010 at 23:08 Forscythe says:
Thanks, mikebiggs and Alex! Mystery resolved.
20/01/2010 at 23:13 impar says:
THE ARTICLE IS WRONG!
Its not 15 limited activations, its 5 limited activations.
Check Steam store, botom left:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/8859/
Correct the article ASAP before it gets linked elsewhere.
20/01/2010 at 23:48 Blather Blob says:
@impar: I’m pretty sure the steam page has been updated a few times today. After starting out with a mention of requiring an internet connection to activate at install, and requiring the installation of “SONY DADC SecuROM” down in the “Other Requirements” small text at the bottom hinting at limited Securom activations, it then got updated later with the “15 machine activation limit” text; everyone else is reporting that number too. It now says 5, but I like the way they phrase it down at the bottom of the page “SecuROM offers unlimited activations on up to 5 PCs”. Which of course is the same thing as 5 activations.
20/01/2010 at 23:22 TheSombreroKid says:
to be clear i cancelled my pre-order because of the Insall Limits, not GfWL which i’m not quite ready to boycott yet, i’ve only had issues with it with Batman.
20/01/2010 at 23:26 Marty Dodge says:
Excellent, don’t need to spend the money to get that game at release now. What an idiotic move… yeesh.
20/01/2010 at 23:28 Magnus says:
Well, I wasn’t sure whether I was going to buy it. Now I know that I’m not gonna bother.
And knowing is half the battle!
Plenty of other games to take my money without massively stupid DRM measures.
20/01/2010 at 23:29 DJ Phantoon says:
So I’ve heard one of the reasons GFWL exists is to combine achievement points from the PC and Xbox.
What do achievement points actually do?
20/01/2010 at 23:39 TheSombreroKid says:
are you joking, they’re marvelously usefull they mean that instead of not achieving anything when you are being entertained, you now achieve something! i wish movies and music and books could have microsoft achievement points, as i feel like the time spent on these mediums of entertainment is time lost compaired with hunting down every secret trinket in ‘modern minority masacre 6′ over a period of 18 hours.
21/01/2010 at 00:25 Hmm says:
Put them on your resume.
21/01/2010 at 01:32 elyscape says:
@Hmm
I want you to know that I am seriously considering doing that thanks to you. I hope you’re happy with yourself.
20/01/2010 at 23:35 the_magma says:
i saw edwin starr play to 4 people in chambers nightclub sunderland the day i passed my a-levels – FACT
21/01/2010 at 03:22 Gnarl says:
@the_magma
And yet war is still so popular. So sad.
21/01/2010 at 03:23 Psychopomp says:
War…
War never changes
21/01/2010 at 10:39 the_magma says:
@gnarl war is definitely popular in the nightclubs of sunderland
20/01/2010 at 23:44 Bonedwarf says:
I would SO pirate this if I actually gave two shits about it and felt the first Bioshock was just a slightly above average shooter and not Jesus recreated in FPS form.
20/01/2010 at 23:46 Forscythe says:
This seems like a good opportunity to repost my comprehensive, frequently updated anti-GFWL rant:
Despite various technical problems I have encountered, GFWL has been, overall, relatively stable for me. Nor do I have any objection to the concept of the service. The problem is that, as it exists now, GFWL simply sucks hard.
First off, GFWL inexplicably makes it impossible to copy or preserve savegames. This alone makes it a nonstarter for me.
The “community features” like messaging and chat are so laughably primitive and clunky they make Steam look like the ultimate collaboration tool. It takes upwards of one minute to manage to receive and read a message from a friend and then reply that you are in the game and can’t chat right now, by which time you aren’t in the game anymore, because you just got killed, respawned, got killed again, respawned again, and then got kicked for being idle too long.
And of course, worst of all, you can’t even use GFWL’s miserable communication services unless you are already in the game – yes, there is still no out of game chat client after more than two and half years.
The multiplayer matchmaking has never even come close to working well for me in any of the GFWL games I have played (Universe at War, Lost Planet, and Red Faction). The presence of GFWL guarantees a game will have a dead, uninteresting multiplayer with no community (even if the multiplayer in the game is actually quite fun, as it is with RF:G). You will find more people online playing C&C Red Alert 2 on Westwood Chat than you will find playing any GFWL game.
The only potential advantage that GFWL can offer us is the XBox Live integration, which makes it surprising that the integration with XBox live is also embarassingly bad (even forgiving the unfulfilled promise of cross platform play). You would think that, since GFWL and Xbox Live are the same network, I could compare my achievements in a game with my XBox friends playing the same game, right? Wrong, because the “PC” version of the game is considered a different game by Live, so the achievements can’t be compared.
Using GFWL involves being reminded every time you play that MS considers the PC an inferior second cousin to the XBox. The examples go on and on. On the XBox, if you gain an achievement while playing offline, that achievement will be uploaded to your live profile the next time you log in. With GFWL? Sorry, you just won’t get that achievement, period. Play the game again if you don’t like it.
Perhaps the best example of this lousy integration (and of what an amazingly bad fit GFWL is for the PC) is the fact that, astonishingly, it costs $10 in Microsoft Silly Money just to change your Gamertag, and that, surprise surprise, this can only be done from an XBox 360.
Despite allowing you to pay actual money for full games, the DLC can only be purchased with the ridiculous MS Points, which are designed to make sure you spend just a little more than the DLC actually costs.
I could write a whole essay about how the supposedly “PC Friendly” in-game overlay GUI is an unusable disaster, but that will wait for another time.
Add on to all of this this the myriad limitations and costs that GFWL imposes on game developers, the unwelcome control it gives Microsoft over our game experiences and purchases, and the availability of dramatically better alternatives, and I do find it insulting that any developer would subject us to GFWL. I don’t boycott games that use GFWL, but I do find them significantly less attractive.
20/01/2010 at 23:56 malkav11 says:
At least two items of your long list are flat out wrong. I have specifically copied and preserved game saves in Fallout 3, which ties them to your GFWL profile, and achievements earned offline are uploaded when you go online with any GFWL game. It sometimes takes a bit for them to show up, but they definitely do.
And I suspect that vis-a-vis multiplayer community, you have picked three games that were never particularly popular in multiplayer and have fallen off since release. The only one that I would expect to have any significant multiplayer presence is Red Faction: Guerrilla, and I suspect most people that are interested in that game’s multiplayer are doing so on a console, especially since the PC release of same was delayed by months. By contrast, on a PC only title – Dawn of War II – I have had no trouble scaring up people to play the Last Stand multiplayer mode and I believe the traditional multiplayer is still thriving.
21/01/2010 at 00:01 Vinraith says:
@malkav11
I have specifically copied and preserved game saves in Fallout 3, which ties them to your GFWL profile
Fallout 3 is friendlier about that than a lot of other GfWL games. I tried that trick in RFG and it didn’t work, cost me about 10 hours of play time.
21/01/2010 at 00:26 Forscythe says:
malkav,
Thanks for pointing out my mistakes. Like I said, I don’t object to GFWL in principle and I don’t want to make it sound worse than it is.
You’re quite right about Dawn of War 2 – it certainly does have an active community which I forgot about, although I’ve never actually talked to anyone in that community who is happy about GFWL. I was wrong, but I do stand by my overall point that GFWL does significant damage to the online multiplayer popularity of any game that uses it.
Apparently GFWL does have the capability to earn achievements offline, as you said, although that feature certainly hasn’t worked at all for me in Red Faction. I guess that’s just a technical glitch in my case rather than a missing feature.
On the savegame thing, though, I do think it really is just as bad as I said. If you google “GFWL saves” (or just browse this thread) you will find a staggering amount of savegame problems people are having with every single GFWL title, old and new, including Fallout 3. I’ve experienced serious save game problems myself with every GFWL title I’ve played. I’m glad it worked out for you, though.
Overall, I think my long list still demonstrates that GFWL in its current form is complete trash.
21/01/2010 at 02:28 malkav11 says:
I really don’t think you’ve presented any sort of evidence to support the idea that GFWL damages a multiplayer community. I’m not even sure it’s possible to do so. It’s not the best matchmaking system out there, certainly. Steam would probably be better. But it’s been fairly painless the few times I’ve used it. The system that deserves true vituperation, as far as I can tell, is Gamespy, which is a horrible mess of a system that’s given me severe (and recurrent) issues in both Saints Row 2 and Borderlands without even the consolation of achievements.
20/01/2010 at 23:47 FunkyLlama says:
I should point out, the steam page did say 15 earlier.
20/01/2010 at 23:47 FunkyLlama says:
Bah. Shitty reply system.
20/01/2010 at 23:52 DJ Phantoon says:
The comments system must be made by the people that made GFWL!
BOYCOTT IT!
20/01/2010 at 23:52 Bkevin says:
Whats the point of having DRM?!
i mean cmon basically its saying u dont actually own the game once u buy for full price alright 15 installs later omg i cant install again! but i bought the dam game for full price!
20/01/2010 at 23:53 Colthor says:
I feel sorry for 2K’s poor community manager. The Powers That Be at Take Two must really hate her.
20/01/2010 at 23:53 invisiblejesus says:
Wow, I wasn’t especially excited about this game anyway but now it’s gone from a “probably not gonna buy” to “totally out of the question”. Nice job, Take-Two!
20/01/2010 at 23:57 malkav11 says:
I don’t care about (actually rather like, if only for achievements) the GFWL integration, but server check / activation limit DRM is an absolute no sale. I’m only glad that I heard about this in time to cancel my preorder.
20/01/2010 at 23:59 terry says:
GFWL is a worthless crapfest. Not interested in buying this anymore.
21/01/2010 at 00:03 somnolentsurfer says:
WHY, OH GOD WHY?
At least it’s the purchasing decision solved. Not a boycott. GWFL just slows Dawn of War 2 to a crawl on my two year old laptop. Maybe when I’ve a new computer and it’s £3 on Steam.
21/01/2010 at 00:08 AsubstanceD says:
What a load of Bollocks! No intelligent debate can be made of this shit! Only forum style anger may be expressed! Fuck em, good job I didn’t want this game.
21/01/2010 at 00:09 CalmHorizons says:
GFWL is why I can’t be bothered to play GTA 4. Bloatware ahoy.
21/01/2010 at 12:28 Malibu Stacey says:
Because it’s shit is the reason I can’t be bothered playing GTA4. Friend lent me his PS3 for a couple of weeks when we was on holiday (mainly to watch his Blu-rays). I had a pretty long play of it which was enough to convince me it isn’t worth wasting my gaming time on it even when it was £5 in the Steam Christmas sale (same goes for Assassins Creed).
I have GTA3, Vice City & San Andreas for the PS2 & have played them to completion & beyond.
On topic, I have BioShock, enjoyed it thorougly (not quite finished it yet, stuff like TF2, L4D2, AI War etc keep getting in the way) but won’t be buying the sequel as GFWL puts it in the list of “Games to never buy but I’d quite like to” along with DOW2, Batman, Fallout 3 to name but a few. Thankfully some of these will be console releases which I’ll be able to hunt down when I get around to buying one of the current gen of consoles (I often buy used console games & may make a point of it for games like these so the publisher/developer get no extras £s from my purchases)
21/01/2010 at 00:13 Nimic says:
Don’t say it here people, say it there ;)
http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=596875
21/01/2010 at 00:20 WoopShoop says:
GFWL means I will not be buying this game.
I went through that horrific experience with FO3 DLC and later GTA IV – never again. In the case of GTA IV, not only did it bitch at me to login before I could save my games, presenting some annoyingly slow, distracting and cumbersome pop-ups in the proccess, but it then decided to corrupt all of my save game files.
What a useless pile of utter shite.
21/01/2010 at 00:26 Wulf says:
Augh, Games for Windows Live and limited installs? Blech.
* bonks idiot developers/publishers on the head.
If they have to use something, couldn’t they at least use Steamworks? Lesser evil and all that?
I can’t say I really have any interest in this though. Since I saw the picture on Steam of the new Big Daddy, I’ve just been put off it. The new guy looks like a steampunk spaceman, and it loses the diving suit aesthetic that previous game had. The aesthetic was 98.5% of the reason for any of the love I had for BioShock, it was so well done in general.
This new entry though, eh… it looks like the team of artists they have working on it just don’t really get what made BioShock… well, BioShock, at least visually.
So this one’s off my list.
21/01/2010 at 00:29 Serenegoose says:
Wait, -and- it’s £39:99 (unless you pre-order)? I knew that Modern Warfare 2 would do this to gaming. I seriously despair sometimes. £.99 for the game, and £39 for the advertising, no doubt. Wowie. It’s really almost like they don’t want people to buy it. I mean I was on the fence about sinking £15 into this game when it came down in price low enough, but yeah. Ridiculous. I really do think it’s developers with a share in the console market that are trying to kill PC gaming, not the pirates. (not that I’m going to pirate this, because that would be only add weight to their diversion.)
21/01/2010 at 00:51 Colthor says:
@Serenegoose:
It can be had for £24 from Coolshop and £25 from Amazon etc., so that’s probably just 2K’s digital pricing squad
smoking crackbeing hopelessly optimistic.21/01/2010 at 00:32 Lambchops says:
I have to say that although on principle I’m against it, in practice limit activations isn’t a problem for me. I can count on my fingers games that I’ve installed multiple times and they are either pre DRM or so small that I can keep them installed (I also don’t updgrade regularly and have fortunately avoided technical problems with my laptop so far). However being against it in principle (because it is pretty stupid I can’t play something I’ve bought) isn’t quite enough to stop me buying something I want – it’s not something I quite feel strongly enough about.
Being a shit system for multiplayer; while a legitimate complaint, isn’t anywhere near the same scale of stupidity as the implementation of limited activations or the inability to save a game.
Although on the basis that i got it working eventually I’ll probably buy Bioshock 2 – but I’ll wait till it’s discounted as i’ve got plenty to be getting on with.
21/01/2010 at 00:33 Leperous says:
These are all exactly my sentimonies.
21/01/2010 at 00:36 Jason Moyer says:
Once I managed to get it fully updated and working in Arkham Asylum, GFWL stopped giving me problems. Unfortunately, getting the latest version involved more than just going to the GFWL website and grabbing the latest version for some insane reason.
I wonder if they’re going to add a disk check again. That would put them one form of copy protection shy of GTA4′s all time record. I can deal with S-Rom the way EA was using it (one time activation, no disk check) but if they do all of this and still insist on using my optical drive as an expensive dongle I may have to re-consider picking this up.
21/01/2010 at 00:42 Vanderdecken says:
Sounds like a certain developer didn’t learn any lessons from the original BioShock. How pig-headed can you get in the corporate world?
21/01/2010 at 00:45 po says:
I bought 3 copies of DoW2 so me and my friends can play it together.
I made myself a GFWLive account, and for me it works fine.
One of my friends tried to make one, but when he tried to use it to log in through the game, it told him his username or password was not recognised.
He tried recreating the account, but it told him the email address was already in use.
He sent a password reset request, and followed the instructions he got in the email. Part way through the process it told him the password he’d entered was the same as the existing one.
No change, and all M$ can suggest is to turn of all the firewalls, open a bunch of ports, and then it will somehow miraculously work.
Meanwhile my account can log in fine from the same computer.
So basically it comes down to a ‘F*** you M$’, me making a couple of fake accounts using my endless email address supply, b******* to M$’s terms and conditions, and all 3 of us avoiding GFWL games in future.
Looks like a really good excuse to leave Bioshock 2 until it’s in a stupidly cheap Steam sale, like next years xmas sale.
21/01/2010 at 01:03 abhishek says:
The Steam page has been updated. The activation limit has been reduced from 15 (which I presume was a typo) down to 5.
Brilliant :|
21/01/2010 at 01:08 dragon_hunter21 says:
Personally, I don’t give a rat about the limited installs. However, let’s look at the DRM setup here. First, STEAM. Very effective in and of itself. Second, SecuRom. I’d just like to go on-record here by saying that SecuRom can go suck an egg. That’s two different kinds of DRM right there, and it’s totally unnecessary. Then, GFWL on top of that? STEAM provides achievements AND community support. Why both? As it is, I’ll be abstaining from ordering Bioshock 2 until such a time as they reverse this decision, or until the next Holiday sale.
21/01/2010 at 12:43 Malibu Stacey says:
1 – Steam is only if you buy it through Steam. One assumes if you buy it on DVD or any other digital distribution system you don’t have to use Steam at all for this game.
2 – They’re using GFWL because the PC version of this game is a lazy Xbox 360 port. Adding in something like Steamworks support for example instead of GFWL would require extra development time & extra QA time. They don’t want to do this, it’s cheaper for them to simply replace the relevant DLLs, ship it & fuck the consumer.
Everyone bitching in this thread about DRM is missing the point. The DRM is a symptom of the problem not the problem itself. The actual problem is lazy “PC porting”. It’s not even really porting when you develop a game using the DirectX API for XBox 360, all they’re really doing is making an installer for the PC version & if we’re lucky they’ll make a decent attempt at implementing some PC specific control systems.
You can thank Microsoft’s Games/Xbox division for that.
21/01/2010 at 01:18 Andrew Wills says:
Shame, I was all set to buy this tonight, been saving up for it. But GFWL forced saves and SecuROM? No thanks, at least they were a bit more generous with the activation limits this time, but its not enough to warrant my credit card details zinging their way over the Steamwebs. No buy.
21/01/2010 at 01:22 Little Miss 101 says:
Like Nimic said up there, this –> http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=596875 <– is the place to let go all this indignant bile, guys. Come join us, it's fun! =D
21/01/2010 at 01:31 Collic says:
Securom I can deal with, games for windows live is a real barrier to me buying. I hate it. It’s pointless, obnoxious bloatware. I own a PC, not an xbox, and I have no interest in GFWL.
Steam is DRM too, of course, but its DRM that at least provides some functionality (even if that isn’t consolation enough for everyone). Dawn of war pulled the same GFWL and steam combo, and that did factor into my decision not to buy it.
Moved from will probably buy (reviews pending) to will likely not buy unless it has a multi-player so brilliant I can’t stand to miss it. That seems unlikely since most of my friends will likely steer clear because of the GFWL thing.
I bought the original, by the way.
21/01/2010 at 01:51 Rick says:
Well, no BioShock 2 for me then. I’ll spend my money on a developer that at least attempts to give me the benefit of the doubt that I’m a decent person. Plus, Games for Windows Live just plain sucks, for the many reasons already given in this discussion. That thing should have been shot in the head ages ago, but Microsoft simply aren’t prepared to admit they’ve designed a piece of utter crap.
21/01/2010 at 02:03 Phinor says:
The GFWL team must have done one hell of a job. GFWL was supposed to if not save, then at least improve PC gaming and make it easier for everyone but instead, it did exactly the opposite. People have encountered countless of problems with GFWL and there’s literally no support to be had. I have personally lost saves of GTA4 and Fallout 3 and am currently not sure if I should keep using my online or offline account. If I use online account, GFWL has the ability corrupt/delete my saves in some cases when I don’t have Internet access or my Internet connection drops out while playing. On top of that, if GFWL as a service ever goes down, I no longer have access to my saves. Meanwhile if I use offline accounts, backing up those saves is not properly documented and Windows does NOT keep the save files safe during a re-install. GFWL games seem to plant important files into different places and I should not be forced to google to save my save files. That’s why Microsoft created the folder called ‘My Documents’, to keep my files organized!
The main gaming platform is without a doubt Windows and they (Microsoft) have been doing software for several decades now, yet when they decided to improve gaming on PC, they managed to create something so bad there’s now 240 posts in RPS within 6 hours of this news being posted. Ok, some of those are about the activation limits but still, very few people have had completely problem free experience with GFWL when in fact everyone should be problem free, it was supposed to IMPROVE our gaming experience. They should be constantly updating GFWL to fix bugs and to add features since they decided to release GFWL in alpha form. Also having a place to look for help for problems might be a good idea.
Oh and I did have one problem free GFWL game. DoW2. Although I don’t like the matchmaking all that much but still, GFWL didn’t ruin the game for me and even the online saves still work.
21/01/2010 at 02:15 tapanister says:
A friend of mine was
honeststupid enough to put our country (Greece) as the country where he was playing from and couldn’t play online. There, now you’ve got DOW II covered as well :)21/01/2010 at 02:54 Phinor says:
I knew I forgot something. It’s the fact GFWL is NOT supported in 166 countries! AT ALL! If you register your game from within one of those countries, your license is lost FOREVER and you will NEVER be able to go online/play multiplayer with that copy EVER again. A quick google will show plenty of casualties.
It’s all fun and games unless you live in one of those 166 countries. Imagine that. Only 166 countries unsupported.
21/01/2010 at 03:57 pkt-zer0 says:
There was a pretty funny/sad thread of this sort on the GfWL forums. Guy locked himself out of the online part of Dirt 2 by associating his key with his newly created GfWL account (which forces you to use the same country as what’s in your regional settings). First reply from official support folks was, without the slightest hint of irony, the following: “Sorry, you seem to live in an unsupported country, so we can’t help.”
Yeah, screw you, too.
21/01/2010 at 07:31 Tei says:
“GFWL was supposed to if not save, then at least improve PC gaming and make it easier”
No, it was supposed to extend the domination of Microsoft on the PC gamming, and make more forced money for Microsoft. Use a monopoly to get another monopoly. And this is illegal against the anti-monopoly laws, but Microsoft try that again and again, is a multiple ofender of that law. Is almost his only strategy, prevail not because of software quality, but forcing himself on other markets abusing existing markets.
21/01/2010 at 02:12 tapanister says:
Pirates are gonna have a ball with this shit, cool. I was kinda looking forward to a good Mass Effect/Spore reenactment.
21/01/2010 at 02:30 Zerotime says:
I cannot wait for Shamus Young to get furiously indignant over this, again.
21/01/2010 at 02:31 malkav11 says:
Currently I am trying to decide whether I’d rather rent the 360 version or just skip the game altogether (absent a $5 or so sale much later). I suspect I’ll come down in favor of the former, but…bleh. I was really looking forward to the PC experience.
21/01/2010 at 02:40 dragon_hunter21 says:
Wait guys, new post from a 2K employee. Apparently, we don’t need to be online to save games. (But we still need to make an offline account, and if we want MP, we need to register- pleh) Also, SecuRom is only for the retail CD release of the game, so as long as you buy it on Steam, you won’t have that issue.
Of course, why they’d put it in the Steam blurb and not remove it is beyond me.
21/01/2010 at 02:52 vash47 says:
It’s like they’re trying their best to get people not to buy their game.
21/01/2010 at 02:54 Tarev says:
@Zerotime (in case the reply function doesn’t work) Well, at least he’s fairly entertaining while being furiously indignant.
21/01/2010 at 03:10 Psychopomp says:
http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55023
tl;dr Securom being listed as in the Steam version may just be a misunderstanding
21/01/2010 at 03:38 redrain85 says:
God, what a mess Take-Two is getting themselves into.
So now apparently the Steam digital download version does not use SecuROM, but the retail disc copy does. How does this make any kind of sense? Why not use Steam for both, and not add this kind of needless complexity?
And with the Steam version, GfWL is taking the place of SecuROM. They’re using its new activation feature that was recently added, with the activation limit is 15 times using the key they provide you with.
I think. Like I said, the situation is quite a mess.
21/01/2010 at 03:39 Psychopomp says:
http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=597383&postcount=45
Oh wait, they’re using GFWL for activation. Well, fuck that again.
21/01/2010 at 09:43 Optimaximal says:
Ignore any third-party sources – 2K PR have said that someone copied & pasted the bullet points from a retail box.
21/01/2010 at 03:24 Perry says:
I really like GFWL – I have bought 5-6 titles on steam that had it – no problems to date. No lost saves, no issues what so ever.
Steam is fine too.
Securom is a deal breaker though unless a revoke tool is confirmed (like GTA 4 and Batman had).
My only bad experiences with Securom were EA: Mass Effect, Spore and Crysis.
21/01/2010 at 04:24 Y3k-Bug says:
Why do publishers keep adding things that get in the way of me and my game.
I don’t want GFWL. I don’t need it in my life. It does NOTHING that I need it to do that Steam doesn’t already do.
I absolutely hate things between me and my games.
21/01/2010 at 05:13 Alaric says:
I was toying with the idea of buying it… not a chance of that happening now after I read these news.
21/01/2010 at 05:38 Baggie says:
2K, I am dissapoint. Especially seeing I’m buying it on steam.
21/01/2010 at 06:00 Kalayar says:
This downgrades Bioshock 2 from being a buy on steam to being a rental on my console.
Well done guys, you don’t get my money!
21/01/2010 at 06:55 AngryInternetman says:
“The Games for Windows Live key you get has 15 activations on it. If you reach 16, contacting Microsoft will get the key reset. ” That makes no sense. Having that many activations kinda removes the effect of well.. activations.
21/01/2010 at 08:08 ascagnel says:
You may never need 16+ activations, but I could see some foolish swashbucklers trying a key on that many different systems.
If the activation limit had been this high when it started, the whole scheme wouldn’t be looked down upon so much. While not the greatest, it isn’t as outright bad as BioShock.
21/01/2010 at 07:54 Ash says:
I can understand online registration. It’s a bit of a pain in the arse but i can understand it.
I’m not too big on install limits but at least it’s a higher number this time.
But having to be signed in to a useless service everyone abandoned years a go, especially when you’re already using a much better one (steam,) just to save? There was a reason Gears of War failed on the PC.
21/01/2010 at 07:54 Risingson says:
Another hater of GFWL here. And well, the activations thing is something I don’t like either.
21/01/2010 at 08:16 mesmertron says:
You know, I’d been on the fence about this game for a while. Maybe I read too much Ayn Rand in school (and that was only one of her short stories!), but Bioshock completely underwhelmed me. It was good, but in no way was it as great – for me – as the reviewers made it out to be.
Still, i was prepared to invest in a sequel, up until I realized that there were so many other games I actively wanted to spend my money on this quarter. Whenever I looked for a reason to buy bioshock, the only thing I could think of was ‘well, i paid extra for the collector’s edition last time and got disappointed…’
That’s hardly a reason.
This is the final nail in the coffin. I’m not overly fond of steam (it’s good, i admit that, but it’s just another layer of application that i can live without). Securom’s never bothered me, but i kill enough computers to cringe at even quite generous install limits. GfWL? You know what, I’d like to like it, i really would. I’ve never had any problems with it, but three minor nusiances taken together are somehow more than the sum of their parts.
Bring on Mass Effect 2 and Napoleon Total War. Bioshock 2 can go rapture itself.
21/01/2010 at 08:16 gandi_ginjaninja says:
Follow Kieron’s link to the tech specs and “Update #2: The “machine activation limit” has been lowered to 5.”
What a surprise.
21/01/2010 at 08:30 Simon Jones says:
6-12 months back there seemed to be a general, growing shift in the PC gaming industry away from silly DRM. At some point when I wasn’t paying attention this shifted back in the other direction. :/
I work for a (non-game) software company and DRM is often a topic of debate for our current/future software. The priority, though, is always to come up with some kind of solution that doesn’t inconvenience the paying customers. As soon as the proposed ideas cross that line, they get dismissed. It’s a shame Take-Two don’t seem tot have that attitude.
21/01/2010 at 08:31 Tobev says:
I wonder what you’re supposed to do if your country isn’t supported by GFWL? Seems like Steam does everything GFWL does anyway, and probably much better.
21/01/2010 at 08:35 UW says:
I think the biggest irony of this whole SecuRom shit is that pirates will have the easiest time of all playing the game. The only people affected by this are those who own the game legitimately. You can guarantee this game will be cracked and available online the same as the PC release date.
I wish PC games manufacturers would just accept it as fact that their game will be pirated easily, and acknowledge that the people who buy their games do so because a) They want online multiplayer b) They want to support the games industry or c) Somehow they don’t know how to pirate stuff.
21/01/2010 at 08:36 Asskicker says:
I don’t buy games that use GFWL.
21/01/2010 at 09:28 phuzz says:
Friends don’t let friends buy games with GfWL
21/01/2010 at 16:43 Alaric says:
I bought Dawn of War II… but I had no idea it needed GFWL or even Steam to run.
NEVER AGAIN!
21/01/2010 at 08:38 Guido says:
That’s it for Bioshock 2 then. I found the first one to be a bit overrated too, after I didn’t buy it for quite some time (and then not for full price) due to the already too strict DRM of the first part. Won’t miss much it seems.
21/01/2010 at 08:56 Agrajag says:
They just lowered the machine count to 5. Brilliant, it’s as if they actually want people not to buy it.
21/01/2010 at 09:20 Moot (at work) says:
The problem I have with all this wailing and gnashing of teeth is that the majority of gamers will still buy the game…then bitch about the DRM and GFWL all the way through playing it.
I very much doubt that this DRM news will make any discernible impact to sales – those who were going to pirate it will still pirate it and those who were going to buy it will, for the most part, do just that.
Is it any wonder that games manufacturers don’t often pay much attention to ENRAGED gamers? Most are all bark with no bite – just take a look back to the whole MW2 dedicated servers/boycott fiasco for a recent example.
21/01/2010 at 11:02 subedii says:
Well yes, let’s look over that again actually, and I’d say the issue has very much hampered IW’s efforts on the PC. The main problem is that the PC market is a tiny fraction of the overall sales.
Personally I’m not a huge fan of the whole “boycott” thing, but honestly, I thought those guys were stupid anyway. Oh right, the screenshot? Yeah I’ve seen that wheeled out in EVERY freaking conversation. Here’s the problem though, the Steam group had about 800 people in it, about half of which were online on release day. Steam groups all people currently playing games at the top, and so out of a group of 800 you had maybe 20 odd people playing MW2. Hardly spectacular, but it doesn’t really prove the point everyone thinks it does.
Getting back to MW2 in general though, let’s talk percentages. Previously FourZeroTwo (IW’s community manager and resident Twitterati) happily admitted that MW1 sold about 10%-15% of total sales on the PC. The numbers he was saying they were “satisfied” with this time around? 3%, the game didn’t even breach the top spot on the PC charts.
Yeah I’d definitely say the game was underperforming compared to what it should have been selling. However like I said, the PC version numbers are quite frankly a drop in the bucket compared to the truckloads it’s shifting on the consoles (still a chart topper there even months on).
Then you’ve got the actual multiplayer, which they really couldn’t have messed up more if they had tried. Hackers? Yeah they’re still there in huge numbers, only this time they can’t be kicked. What makes it a bigger issue is that PC hacks that have been programmed and spread in the wild on the PC as a result have ALSO started being modified and making their way onto the 360 version via memory injection (most recent being the XP hack which actually drains all your hard earned XP and sets you back to level 1). What’s far worse is that IWNet, despite being the company’s own system, allows PIRATED copies to play right alongside actual purchasers. Check the patch notes if you don’t believe me, the most recent patch from a few days ago was supposed to fix this issue, it didn’t.
Ultimately I can’t help but believe the whole thing has been a fairly souring experience for both IW and their PC consumers. Which leads to one of two possibilities: Either
a) The next product they’re going to make will take some of this into account and try not to be so stupid about everything or
b) The next Modern Warfare game won’t even be released on the PC.
Personally I’m expecting the latter to happen.
So maybe a counterpoint to all this. You’ve got companies like Bethesda and Bioware, who actually LISTENED to their communities and made the DRM simple disc-only checks. In the case of Bioware specifically, they’re only using a disc check for Mass Effect 2. This comes after Mass Effect 1 had install limits on it.
So are Bioware freaking drooling morons? Or did they actually LISTEN to community feedback on the issue and implement a form of DRM that made more sense and didn’t cause as many issues (don’t forget, verification issues are ALSO a problem for Bioware come release day. If the players can’t access the servers to verify, they can’t play)? Because as far as I can tell, if they weren’t listening to feedback from the community and instead were only listening to the people who wanted install limits last time around, the DRM would have been harsher if anything this time around.
21/01/2010 at 15:24 Anonononomous says:
On the other hand, I preferred the DRM on Mass Effect 1 as I don’t need the disc in the drive to play it.
21/01/2010 at 16:26 Psychopomp says:
“the game didn’t even breach the top spot on the PC charts.”
You may want to check the steam sales list.
21/01/2010 at 20:55 Lilliput King says:
That’s probably not quite fair, though.
Considering MW2 has to be activated on steam, no matter where it originated. So it’s a collection of every digital and physical purchase, anywhere.
I don’t think that actually happens often, and is certainly not common practice when compiling the normal sales charts.
21/01/2010 at 21:52 subedii says:
I was referring specifically to the UK retail charts. Which realistically, are still bigger sellers than DD at this point.
21/01/2010 at 09:29 jon_hill987 says:
Does anyone know if it has dedicated servers and a proper server browser or does it just use GFWL matchmaking and P2P? That would be a deal-breaker for me.
21/01/2010 at 09:31 jon_hill987 says:
Oh, and when I say I’m not going to buy something I stick with it unless they change something. I recommend everyone do the same or developers/publishers will continue the horror that is GFWL and P2P play.
21/01/2010 at 11:33 Triangulon says:
@ Jon_hill987
Amen brother. The only way we can make a stand is by sticking to our guns. And that means no pirating too! I didn’t buy MW2 and frankly I don’t feel like I missed out one bit. There are so many games around that it really doesn’t matter to miss out on a few (even so-called big titles). I won’t get Bioshock 2 now which is a pity as I enjoyed the first. I’ll be busy with Star Trek Online and the Mirror’s Edge time trials (another game I wasn’t bothered about originally but got in the steam sale – awesome!). I’m much more excited about Alien vs Predator anyways.
21/01/2010 at 09:42 Shadow Aspect says:
I like GfWL. There, I said it. I’m not much of a fan of how different games put savefiles in different locations. And occasionally migrating savefiles can go wrong. Moving my savefile for Halo2 from WinXP to Win7 resulted in the game telling me the profile had corrupted.
Securom, too, is a cause for concern. I have no way I know of to prove it, but after installing the retail version of Batman my DVD writer went on the blink and gives me a lot of trouble both reading and writing. Shall be buying a new cheapo drive in hopes of resolving that, as I was looking to get a second drive anyway.
21/01/2010 at 11:16 Sarlix says:
I’m with you Jon_hill987, you have to make a stand and not give in, it’s the only way they will learn. It’s all or nothing!
21/01/2010 at 12:27 Don says:
@Kieron: This still applies on Steam – so SecuRom and Games For Windows Live are needed in addition to the Steam client. Hmm.
But is this like GTA4? I ignored that when it first came out as the DRM sounded annoying but succumbed when Steam practically gave it away in the crimbo sale. I thought I’d always have to run the game via Steam but not so, it runs quite happily without it so one bit of DRM (albeit the least irritating one) out of the way. GFWL I set up a local account as I care less about their online community, DLC etc. so all I see of that is the logo appearing for a few seconds as the game starts. Even the Rockstar social club, which Bioshock 2 is not blessed with, can be ignored, I’ve never set up an account and just skip the login.
By and large I’ve found these ‘enhancements’ of no use whatsoever but in practice they don’t interfere with the game playing experience in any significant way. Of course if I was forced to setup an online account and login to that before I could save games etc. that would be annoying enough to cause me to skip the game and I’d much prefer it if they could just use Steam’s system for games delivered via Steam and keep the other stuff for retail sales.
21/01/2010 at 13:06 Beast says:
Cool, another game I can pirate and not feel even the slightest twinge of remorse for.
21/01/2010 at 14:01 subedii says:
How about you NOT pirate the game instead of making their point for them?
21/01/2010 at 16:28 Psychopomp says:
He’d just be proving the point that pirates will get a better experience than paying customers.
21/01/2010 at 16:45 Alaric says:
He can make any points he wants, but if it wasn’t for thieves, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
21/01/2010 at 17:29 Azradesh says:
Copyright infringement is NOT theft you drooling mouth-breather.
21/01/2010 at 18:43 Alaric says:
Yea, yea, whatever. Hide behind legal definitions all you want. As far as I’m concerned, a person who takes something that doesn’t belong to them is a thief, thief.
21/01/2010 at 18:46 Azradesh says:
I’m not arguing right or wrong, and it’s the English definition, NOT just the legal.
21/01/2010 at 18:49 CMaster says:
@Alaric
Fair enough. However a software pirate hasn’t taken anything, they’ve simply duplicated it. Not legally, ethically or actually the same thing. This isn’t to say it’s right – just not the same.
21/01/2010 at 18:54 Alaric says:
I’m not saying that to copy something or to move something is the same thing. Either copying or moving are merely the means by which the rightful owner is deprived of the profit associated with the sale of whatever it may be. It is essentially an equivalent of buying something, then picking the vendor’s pocket for whatever you just paid him.
21/01/2010 at 19:14 CMaster says:
@Alaric
And now you are making the assumption that
A) The pirate would have bought the product had they had to part with cash for it
B) The vendor has actually made it possible for the pirate to acquire it legitimately anyway.
Also “deprived of potential profit” is entirely different to “took something away you already had. Me beating you at a job interview would be me depriving you of potential profit. Me sneaking into your house and stealing your TV would be theft.
Note that I’m not about to argue that piracy is right. You can make arguments to that effect, but I’m far from sold on them. But this “piracy = theft” nonsense doesn’t help things get done sensibly.
21/01/2010 at 19:29 Alaric says:
@CMaster
One can glorify it and call it piracy.
One can read from the law books and call it copyright infringement.
One can contemn it and call it theft.
We are arguing semantics at this point. When an action takes place, which causes someone to unlawfully obtain something that they did not pay for, the problem does not lie in whether I, Alaric, call it theft or not. The problem is that it created the need for the owners to protect what is theirs, as as such made possible a market for all sorts of ridiculous DRM schemes that are criminal in and of themselves.
The point is, if a few criminals didn’t steal (I’ll just stick to my definition if you don’t mind) we would not all be treated like criminals, be in this mess, or argue over proper designations.
21/01/2010 at 20:05 Hmm says:
Alaric, your definition is correct. I am, however, using my own definition of the word “correct”.
Regardless, they’re not protecting anything, because it has never worked. Therefore one can only assume it’s inclusion is to annoy people who bought it. It’s like if they knew thieves were the only ones who wore heat-proof gloves, then heat every retail box up to 200 degrees to try and catch them out, who’s the one that gets hurt? (That’s quite an odd analogy, I know). Is it rational or sensible for them to take ineffective measures that punish the normal customer because of “a few criminals”?
21/01/2010 at 20:49 Alaric says:
Oh, I’m not defending DRM, far from it!
In fact I have as much venom for these “protection” schemes as I have for thieves. I’ve passed on quite a few games in the past due to DRM, and unless 2K drastically change their ways, I will certainly ignore Bioshock 2 as well.
Also, I never claimed that DRM works. Of course it doesn’t. And I don’t understand why publishers can’t realize it. Perhaps they feel that an action that is doomed to fail is better than inaction. Who knows.
Still, stupid or not, they make games. And criminals obtain these games illegally. Which is what causes the problem in the first place. So while we all rally together against DRM, (which we should,) let us also not forget that the people who created this problem for us were the criminals not the publishers.
21/01/2010 at 23:31 Azradesh says:
Alaric this is not a matter of semantics, it is a matter of fact. Copyright infringement is not and never will be theft, this is not an opinion Alaric, this is fact.
Copyright infringement is legally wrong = Fact
Theft is legally wrong = Fact
Copyright infringement in not theft = Fact
Copyright infringement is morally wrong = Opinion
You can debate that last line and that last line only, but all the wrongness in the world and Copyright infringement is STILL not theft. You can not simply alter reality to suit your opinions.
Final eg: You have a car, I want it. Either I…
a) break into it and drive off with your car, I now have a car and you do not. This is theft.
or I
b) use my amazing and awesome Star Trek replicator to make an exact copy of your car, now we both have the same car. This is copyright infringement
The rights and wrongs of doing the latter is not something I am discussing.
22/01/2010 at 02:39 malkav11 says:
No, I’m afraid the DRM problem is entirely the fault of the companies who use DRM. The pirates are not holding guns to their head and forcing them to do anything. It’s an understandable reaction, certainly. But it’s always been their decision.
22/01/2010 at 04:31 Alaric says:
@Azradesh
Very well. You’ve convinced me. (Not really, but I’ll just spare myself the annoyance.) I will no longer refer to people who steal software as thieves, even though I see them as such. From now on I will call them criminals instead.
I hope every criminal who reads this will a) enjoy this tremendous, overreaching victory and b) duly appreciate your hard work and dedication in standing up for their good name.
22/01/2010 at 07:30 Azradesh says:
I can’t argue with that Alaric. :P
Did you know that you’re quite possiblely a criminal on multiple occasions with out even been aware of it? :D
21/01/2010 at 13:57 CMaster says:
I’m always stunned that stuff like limited activations and so on are legal, especially when not clearly detailed on the box. (of course, perhaps they aren’t – it would certainly explain why apparently a phone call will always get you more activations). And this bullshit of just disabling the game because you live in the wrong country (like Greece, FFS!) sounds highly legally dubious, as well as just morlally way out there. (Imagine if you bought a fridge in France that didn’t work in Portugal. I think you’d have every right to your money back and an apology)
And so I turned to thinking – even if this stuff is legal, perhaps it shouldn’t be. Seeing as there is often no way of avoiding this kind of bullshit (if you want to play BS2, you’ll have to – that or break the law with a pirated version) and lots of people aren’t awrae of the problems until too late, voting with our wallets won’t work. Even more than that, even when people do express their dissatisfaction by not buying, the developers/publishers write it off as “piracy” or “negative media reception” or some other such nonsense. So perhaps voting with our votes is the best bet. Start campaigning for better consumer’s rights legislation for software. Contact elected representives etc. On this side of the pond, the most likley place for this sort of consumer protection legislation is at an EU level. Contacting MEPs may be a good start. So might the European Commission who actually write the laws. There are probably existing consumers rights organisations out there that can help us. Of course, EU legislation would have to get past the Sarkozy and Brown government reps in the Council of Ministers who have got into bed with the rights holders. But it really is the only way I can see this sort of thing every changing.
Thoughts?
21/01/2010 at 14:53 grevpt says:
The day every pc game is bloated with these drm implementations, its the unfortutante day that i’ll stop play on my pc (hope on continuing to play some indies though). But i probably won’t go to consoles for a substitute.
21/01/2010 at 15:13 Anonononomous says:
Because it came out a year late and was not a very good game?
21/01/2010 at 15:14 Anonononomous says:
That was a response to the “Gears of War failed on PC” post.
21/01/2010 at 15:16 PsyW says:
SecuROM is moderately irritating but I’ll live with it. GFWL is a dealbreaker. There are so many games coming out in the near future that I’d like to thank 2K for doing me the favour of downsizing the list of things I have to buy!
21/01/2010 at 16:29 Urthman says:
Even if you only want to play Bioshock 2 offline single player, is there any reason to believe you won’t run into the same crap John Walker did with Fallout 3 when they release the inevitable Bioshock 2 DLC?
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/01/27/fallout-3-new-content-adventures-in-gfwl/
21/01/2010 at 18:57 Nobody Important says:
Automatic non-purchase.
21/01/2010 at 21:55 suibhne says:
Well, at least that’s another game I won’t need to consider buying. Thanks, 2K!
22/01/2010 at 09:28 AbyssUK says:
So will there me a multiplayer demo I can play without GFWL so I can at least see if its worth the hassle? Also what about LAN support ?
23/01/2010 at 21:45 Frye says:
One or two people above mentioned it : Pirates get a better product.
BUT, you can crack software you bought to at least get the same.
I crack most of my software, just to get rid of the dvd check.
It can be a little frustrating right after a patch has come out, but I have gotten used to not being able to play certain games right away. Also I have been (wrongly?) banned from multiplayer games on occasion, despite having a proper key, but fair enuf, my client could have been a cheat. Some games I didnt dare crack because of the multiplayer bit.
But this is rare and far between. I can proudly say that NONE of my 19 currently installed games require a DVD or Tages or Securom. All my multiplayer games I buy on Steam.
On occasion I downloaded the very same DVD that I just bought hours earlier from a torrent because it has a crack in a subdirectory that i had difficulty finding
They make it very hard to set the right example for my household. And the crazy thing is, that I’m committing a crime. LOL!