this is the reply i got from securom after my two activations on MY machine.
tried to manual activate.
Hello.
Thank you for your email.
You´ve activated your game too often. Please contact 2K Games regarding this issue.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.
Best regards,
SecuROM Support Team
SecuROM on the web: http://www.securom.com
or via e-mail: support@securom.com
That is a joke lmao.. this is what you get for buying a game
I washed my hands twice today. The third time there was no water, instead a plumber knocked on my door, he said the water company sent him to tell me that I wash MY hands too often. Now I gotta phone the water company and ask them if I may please eat my dinner with clean hands.
One thing I found about activation is that my linksys router firewall was blocking the registration service. I turned off the firewall and registered with no problem.
Software is considered a good under the Uniform Commercial Code in the US. 2K Games has no right to tell you what you can and cannot do with software after you purchase it.
and especially not if its such an unusual restriction and it was not clearly visible to everyone prior to removing the right of return (read opening)Originally Posted by damicatz
That sucks. Ah well. Looks like I'll be popping into Game this weekend with my pre-order to get a refund. Thanks for letting me find out about this before I opened the CE, though sucks to be you. I suggest a complaint to the better business bureau and whatever other consumer protection organisations you have in the US.
Wonder how many customers cancelled their orders in the last 15 hours while we were waiting for an official response? I wonder how many are going to cancel in the indeterminate time before we get an official comment from Liz or Ken Levine or someone at 2K?
Guess they really didn't want PC retail gamers. 2 lifetime activations. I have to admit, I didn't think it was possible to top starforce for a '☺☺☺☺ you' customer experience - looks like I was wrong!
*adds 2K to the steam and sony blacklist*
Steam is getting the same problem with only 2 activated copies aswell.
2k is really ☺☺☺☺ing over de pc crowd
Why do I even buy PC Games anymore, you continue to give us the middle finger when we actually pay, while pirates get NO limits. This is EXACTLY how my Lock-On Flaming cliffs game I bought turned out to be, I used my activation and still to this day I have not been able to play again. Ten bucks says eventually it will be the same with bioshock, they are already making excuses when asked for help.
And I don't even have a internet connection on my gaming pc (out in the middle of nowhere). So this should prove to be a bad experience. And this from a game that actually convinced me into purchacing. I havent bought a game in years, and when I finally do I have to rely on the pirates to give me a way around. I just hope they work fast. Thanks 2K for giving us a hell of a good game (haven't tried it yet tough), and one hell of a bug up the "hole".
Ive really gotten a good laugh after reading this thread. When will greedy publishers realize that they can make more money by NOT copy-protecting? The HDDVD/Bluray consortium spent millions investing in copy protection, but it was cracked before most consumers even bought a hi-def drive! (And now I don't have to, let alone upgrade all my hardware to HDCP compliant gear)
I was going to buy this game, but the demo has shown me it's way too buggy to be worth my money. Sorry 2K... I hope you learn your lesson.
There are some who realize this. Look at stardock. They have a hugely sucessful game without DRM or even caring about piracy. They make money and will tell anyone that developers steal more money than pirates ever could from them.
Replace "developers" with "publishers". The founders of Stardock got defrauded of a lot of royalties from their first game by their publisher (that was back in the OS/2 days). I guess that helped to put things in perspective and they decided to become self-published.
Honestly, publishers are a huge problem for the business as a whole, and a lot of crap gamers have to put up with just aren't really the developer's faults. No developer in their right mind would even consider putting crap like activation or "authenticity checks" in their code for reasons other than to avoid cheating. It's one more neverending source of bugs and problems. It's the publishers pushing that crap upon them.
The gamers are responsible for that by giving their money to publishers and thinking that anyone in charge would read the forums, which they don't. If you don't like it, the solution is simple:
Don't give them your fricking money!
Let me tell you a little story. As of now, my "favorite" crap publisher is THQ, with which I've had the joy to deal, also with a SecuROM issue. The game: Supreme Commander. The problem: SecuROM failing to recognize the disk. The solution: mail SecuROM support, which delivered an updated game executable(!!) within a few hours(!!!). Then GPG patched the game, which invalidated the updated exec, and the problem was back. Another mail to SecuROM. No joy this time. Apparently, someone decided that THQ was supposed to handle those issues, so I contacted their tech support. That was in March, and I'm still waiting for a reply.
Another example from THQ: Titan Quest. The addon has rather massive issues, but THQ decided to stop funding the developer.
I have now blacklisted THQ for future games. I'm giving 2K/T2 a chance to get Bioshock sorted out. My guess is that they will either move to an "activations per month/year" scheme, make it easy to remove activations via a web interface (see e.g. Alcohol Software), or drop the activation scheme as a whole within the next 6 months. If they fail to do so and I have problems, T2 goes on the list. Easy as that.
If you unistall this game, is the rootkit removed with the uninstall?
OR... does it stay there... and that is how it's not meant to count towards 1 of your 2 installs... despite it still not working like that.
That actually came with the demo.
The problem is, they now know when you install it. But there is no way of them knowing when you un-install it, or reformat your HD.
This is a very poorly thought out idea, I can see 2kgame's support line being flooded until they remove it.
I uninstalled the demo and that rootkit is still there.
To the OP > sorry to here that dude, it completely sucks. I know how pissed i'd feel in that position. I haven't opened my game that arrived this morning, it's being sent back later (DRM and WS issues) so i'm never going to have to go through this.
It's as if each of us as indviduals do not count (our money) and only the MASS of money from the general conumers who won't find a 'forum' to complain to or find info from are in for a bit of a shock over this issue... but we won't hear about it here of course and they will probably think they were alone in the problem.
It's not really a "rootkit", it's a license/key storage. The only things that could right now be considered bad are some weird characters in filenames and an incompatibility with the Sysinternals Process Monitor (after that's been run, you need to reboot the system). Copy Control Crap checking for some hooks in the system to avoid the dumbest crackers are nothing new. (May be obnoxious if you're trying to play the dame on a machine you're doing software development on.)
Demos coming with the same CCC as the release version have also been there for quite a while now, since in many cases the game executables or some libraries are the same, so a game could be "cracked" by just playing the retail version with the demo executable.
it IS a rootkit by definition.
Rootkit doesn´t neccessarily imply any harm done, just that it installs deep inside the system (in this case as a service), circumventing normal security procedures and/or hardening itself like some part of the OS (which it clearly isn´t) due to using its file protection mechanisms to prevent uninstalls.
The uninstall procedure provided by securom is - to say the least - complicated for many users, it should be a one-click-removal if so desired.
And, even worse, it doesn´t even remove everything.
A rootkit is a rootkit is a rootkit, sony got sued over crap like this.
And ironically enough Sony is behind this as well.
Some people never learn from their mistakes.
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