How many installs do we get ? Transfer of ownership ?

[HRahn]

My second harddrive just died an hour ago. it was the drive I installed all of my games on. I have now replaced it with a spare drive which unfortunately is as old as the broken one.
Hardware DOES fail. What if that happens and my Bioshock installation was on that drive? Call a darn technical support hotline, probably even having to PAY for the call? No, thanks, that´s no solution.
Microsoft got it right at least on that issue, at least no long distance fees for an activation call and a system that works around the clock. Like it should.
No silly activation policy, just some re-activations sometimes if you change too much (never happened to me though).

I pay hard earned money for this. I demand a satisfactory solution that lets me use it like any other piece of software in my collection. If that cannot be found then I´ll have to refund it (probably directly through 2K and my lawyer since shops here don´t take back opened parcels).
Afterwards you can be sure that I´ll vent my negative feelings towards this company policy everywhere the Internet carries me. I´ll keep everyone I know from buying 2K games and tell them to spread the word.
If every disgruntled customer here does this, it may well have an impact on sales. Bad for the developers, I know (I was one myself some time ago, though not in the games business).

But the failure here lies strictly with the management which probably has been bullied by venture capital investors to "secure their investions".
And then they had to go for this *censored*.

Why didn´t they think of something cool? Like a USB dongle which is encrypted on first use with the users serial and activated over the net in a one-way process (Eprom). That way you could install the software on X pcs, but only play on one (that with the dongle).
If that thing looked cool, one might even add a little button to it so that when you press it it launches the game ;-)

But alas, something like this would probably cost 2$ per game, too expensive for those penny-counters. (IDE->Sata adaptors cost 2€/piece in HongKong, including SATA and power cables so...)

[kharper]

Originally Posted by splitfinity

INSTALL IT. PLAY IT. IF YOU EVER RUN INTO ANY OF THE PROBLEMS YOU ARE ALL SO SPAZZING OUT ABOUT, THEN COME POST ON THE FORUMS, UNTIL THEN STFU AND ENJOY PLAYING THIS AWESOME GAME.

splitfinity, it has been 24 hours and people have installed it, played it, and are having problems. So they are here posting on the forums so that their voice is heard.

Like is said in my post a few messages up, I installed my copy on my Vista Partition and my XP Partition and I am already out of activations. One day and I am at the max. Knock on wood that nothing goes wrong, but I know I will have to reinstall again someday soon.

[Super Pancake]

I dont care about the DRM they got on the disk its 2K prerogative. I dont support DRM so I dont buy products with them. But what pisses me off the most is that they did not put on the box in big red letters that read.

WARNING WE HAVE THIS BULL**** DRM ON THE DISK.

It would have saved people time and money if they did not want to deal with this.

[PCDemo]

The game is already cracked, so....er...well done 2K you are causing all your customers a lot of grief for nothing

If you want to take your annoyance out on someone/something, feel free to ban me

[Amish]

Well I don't like how they did this but at the same time I know hackers will get a work around. Thats all that matters to me. I bought the game and I'm enjoying it. If I ever decided I need to install it again and I don't have any activations I will do one of two things:

call the number provided and give my hardware ID key that is also provided and have them give me a new activation key (just like Windows XP).

Or I'll crack it.

Either way works.

All you have to do is click the "manual" button and contact the support people for a new activation key. I'm sure they will ask a few questions and it's not convenient to have to do it but I figure if you own a legit copy that they will work with you.

If not then screw 'em and crack the game. I mean hell we all crack our store bought games anyway don't we? I know I do because I hate having to load the disc's.

[darklord88]

Pretty much:

Pirates = bypass this in a second and can play forever.

Honest customers who buy it = screwed over.

Thanks a lot 2k screw over the ones you should be supporting good job.

I bought the game I should be able to install it as many times as I damn well please! If I want to reinstall it 50000 times and install it on 10 computers I own then I should be able too!

Why would I keep an 8GB+ game on my hard drive when I don't play it anymore? What's the point of even owning it? I might as well just pirate it I'll get a better deal! I wont pirate it but I'm sure a LOT more people will because of this.

Ever heard of a little thing called starforce? PC gamers turned against it and it's nothing now. Same thing will happen with this anti-piracy.

Make it had to pirate, not make it hard for the honest people! ****!

[LeadS]

Originally Posted by splitfinity

LeadS, maybe if you wern't such a smarmy, sarcastic prick you would get your questions answered. jesus.

Maybe if you just get your b tongue out of the company, you could see that there are real and genuine conserns here.

Name 1 gaming company that has a 25hour international help line that speaks every god-damned language?

Well, EA had localized customer support. I don't know about their call centers as support was directed to web pages and the game I dealt with them DID NOT JUST REFUSE TO INSTALL if I updated my computer. If you direct vital support needs to call centers, they have to be able to deal with every caller.

Securom wont be out of business, sony is backing them. And sony LOVES security.

One of the major game houses just a while ago pulled a plug from their old servers and made several games worthless. It costed too much to keep those servers up and running. This WILL happend to securom activation servers too, if not sooner, then later. Simple solution is to tell players, that at some day in the future activation will be removed with a patch and everyone can be happy again.

rapidly installing would probably be best described as more installs than 1 person needs to have running at any given time. Jesus, are you installing this game on 15 pcs so everywhere you go you will never be more than 10 feet from it?

You are insulting other languages and yet you don't understand your own language enough to realise that 'rapid' refers to speed, not to amount. Resetting installation amount automaticly every two months or so, would ease a lot problems caused by this copy protection and secure ownership and resale values.

Just install it and have some fun. You people get all wound up about this crap for absolutly no reason.

No. Act now, not when you face the problem. Then it may be too late.

[Amish]

Originally Posted by darklord88

Pretty much:

Pirates = bypass this in a second and can play forever.

Honest customers who buy it = screwed over.

Thanks a lot 2k screw over the ones you should be supporting good job.

I bought the game I should be able to install it as many times as I damn well please! If I want to reinstall it 50000 times and install it on 10 computers I own then I should be able too!

wtf are you talking about? How are we screwed if we can use those cracked exe's to crack our games and install them 50000 times if we wish. How did we get screwed if there is already a work around? So let the hackers hack and we can still take advantage of it. I really don't see this as a big deal.

Maybe some of you are mad because you will have to crack it if you want to install it more than twice? Because the hackers didn't have to pay for the game? You did and still need their crack exe file? BIG DEAL.

It dosn't bother me in the least because no matter what I would be cracking the game anyway just so I can put my game disc away on the shelf and not have to pop it in the drive every time I want to play.

Plus I own my copy and I don't have to deal with burns of the pirated copies and all the crap that goes with it. I'll just have to download a small no-cd/activation fix. WHOA...

[Syvere]

Originally Posted by Amish

wtf are you talking about? How are we screwed if we can use those cracked exe's to crack our games and install them 50000 times if we wish. How did we get screwed if there is already a work around? So let the hackers hack and we can still take advantage of it. I really don't see this as a big deal.

The problem is that we should NOT have to resort to cracks and such to play our legally purchased game.

[Konn]

Unless securom has made a quantum leap in competence in the past couple weeks or so, this is very easy to disable.

Make a backup copy of the original .exe file (so you can revert it to original when applying patches), and then place a cracked .exe file in the install directory.

If you purchased a copy of the game there is nothing wrong with using a cracked version of the game (though it's advisable to be sure it's a properly made crack as inept groups have been known to create inferior cracks that can cause technical problems).