BioShock PC activation fails to impress

PC News | Not quite rapture.

BioShock has received an impressive critical reception (currently at 97% on both Gamerankings and Metacritic). However, after being released in the US 2 days ago, unhappy consumers have poured into 2k’s support forums with a high number of technical complaints regarding the PC version of the game. Chief amongst these have been complaints regarding the copy protection software used by BioShock; SecuROM.

While SecuROM is not as invasive as the controversial StarForce, it has been known to cause problems that interfere with the normal operation of Windows. However, the main criticism of the activation has been that the game only allows 2 installation attempts. While users can release their old keys by uninstalling the game, this does not help people who have had to re-install the game after a system failure. Anyone who is locked out of the game as a result is forced to call a support phone line to obtain a new key.

In addition to these problems, many users have been reporting errors when attempting to connect to the servers required during the activation process, most likely due to the high load. During the US launch, there were reports on 2K’s forum that it was taking some people up to 5 hours to connect. More recently, the entire activation system seems to have been brought to its knees with no one able to connect at all to any of the activation servers for the past 8 hours. 2K's offical website is also currently offline. The outage seems to have started around midnight in the US and there has yet to be an official explanation for the failure. At this point, no one who has bought a copy of the PC version of the game and has yet to activate it will be able to play it at all.

BioShock officially launches in Australia and Europe tomorrow.

Update: The problem with the activation servers seems to have been resolved as of 10:30pm AEST. There has still been no official explanation for the outage.

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37 Comments

longarms

4 years ago

I got my copy off steam. and i didnt have any troubles what so ever

, and i got to play it on wensday.

oh and yeh its awsome

Bitchacho

4 years ago

EB: Where employees with little English skills are promoted to management positions.

What brilliant advertising.

...sorry, couldn't resist

Passa

4 years ago

A13x wrote

I didn't have to input any codes and there was no visible activation screen so not exactly sure about that.

Thats what it says on the 2K forums, and what has been reported. Otherwise I'd be downloading the game through Steam right now

VOOK

4 years ago

So guys I am buying the game tomorrow, 360 or PC I leaning toward PC but this Activation crap is it all sorted?

Fetidchimp

4 years ago

go the pc version, i don't know if it's just my copy on the 360, but after meeting dr. steinman it started jumping around like i was playing it on a bad server, felt like i was playing battlefield at some points, like going to stop behind a wall and it jumping, then finding myself out in the middle of a corridor getting my head blown off. Anyone know if that is happening with other 360 copies?

Edit: Googled it, and it seems other people are getting that, goddamnit, my 360 runs all my other games perfectly, hope they update that soon because it is highly annoying for a 1 player game..........
But i hear the pc version is buggy also

LeonJ

4 years ago

Fetidchimp wrote

I didn't see what you were experience with your console when I fought that dude.

Fetidchimp

4 years ago

i think it may be some dodgy discs getting around, it was in the level after steinman, and then further on. Resetting didn't help either, most people seem to be ok, but there also seems to be a lot of people who are getting that as well, could be the machine but i've had no other problems

Skiller

4 years ago

After many hours trying to activate last night (was up till 3am) and this morning (got up at 6:45) I still have not been able to load the game because of the activation that doesn't work, so far this is by a large margin the worst game I have yet to play, even starforce games ran on my computer (I just had to replace my burner afterwards).

If it wasn't the collectors ed with the figurine (which is very cool

) then I would certainly have returned it by now, this is just pathetic

uk_john

4 years ago

But at least on metacritic, there were 97 votes at 94% 5 days BEFORE the release of the game, so what does that tell you?!

Unless we actually have investigative reporters in the media looking at sites like metacritic and how they work, how can we glibly throw out statistics like this?

James

4 years ago

uk_john wrote

Metacritic does not use user votes in their metascore - they only use selected media outlets. Obviously those user votes before release were false.

Jaws

4 years ago

Skiller, you may want to check out your modem / firewall settings. Something's not right there.

Skiller

4 years ago

S.Jaworski wrote

Skiller, you may want to check out your modem / firewall settings. Something's not right there.

All checked, all fine, it didn't even try to access the internet to activate (although I can't be sure because it uses a rootkit, or more acuratly something very similar to a rootkit). The autopatcher connected fine and did it's thing no problems during the install so there's no reason why it wouldn't have worked.

Anyway I had to do a manual activation to get it to work which took a couple of hours to get a response to and i had to keep the activation window open the whole time

. VERY un-impressed, if it wasn't illegal I'd have just downloaded it instead of installing off the disc (I would still have bought).

doofus

4 years ago

So how long had the game been out in the US before people had already installed it at least 2 times to get to the activation limit?

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BioShock

Pre-order or buy:
PALGN recommends: www.Play-Asia.com

Australian Release Date:
  24/08/2007 (Confirmed)
Publisher:
  Take 2 Interactive
Genre:
  Survival/Horror
Year Made:
  2006
Players:
  1
System Requirements:
Minimum Requirements:
Windows XP (with Service Pack 2) or Windows Vista
Pentium 4 2.4GHz Single Core processor
1GB RAM
Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 128MB RAM (NVIDIA 6600 or better/ATI X1300 or better, excluding ATI X1550)
Sound Card: 100% direct X 9.0c compatible sound card
Hard disc space: 8GB free space
Recommended Requirements:

Intel Core 2 Duo processor
2GB RAM
Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 512MB RAM (NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT or better)
Sound BlasterÃ‚Â® X-FiÃ¢Â¢ series (Optimized for use with Creative Labs EAX ADVANCED HD 4.0 or EAX ADVANCED HD 5.0 compatible sound cards with BioShock E
AX patch)

Read more...