I stumbled across this on Kotaku today: apparently a poster on the 2K Forums installed Bioshock on his computer under an admin account, and then his brother tried to play it on a different account. It sounds like a pretty normal and safe thing to do, right? Well, the game asked for the serial number again, presumably for one of the 5 allowed activations the game gives you. (If you're not aware, Bioshock uses SecuROM for copy protection, and only allows 5 "activations" to be active at one time. The game will prevent you from installing it anymore than that.) Now, this is pretty ridiculous. He bought the game, and most PC games allow people to install them under an admin account for use under normal accounts, so why is the game forcing him to use one of his activations? You can buy a DVD and let other people watch it without them having to buy it. You can buy the 360 version of Bioshock and have other people play it without buying it. So why can't you do the same thing on a computer? Well, according to a moderator on the 2K forums:
"The other way to view this, is one USER has purchased the game. Not the whole family. So why should your brother play for free?"
I'm astounded. I'm astounded that someone at 2K even responded in this way. After all the DRM issues Bioshock has faced since it was released, and after all the ire 2K has raised among PC users...you know, I'm not even sure it makes sense anymore. Using the game in this way is clearly fair use. No one is copying the game illegally, and no one is trying to con 2K out of a sale. It's just that no one in their right minds would buy a game, a DVD, a book, etc. again if someone in their household already bought the exact same thing. Why? Because it's right there. The other person can just borrow the copy of the item someone else has, use it for a while, and then return it. Society as a whole has this expectation, and I don't think it's ungrounded: it's an inconvenience to buy something again that someone close to us already owns. Imagine if your brother bought a DVD, but the company who made it wouldn't let you watch it because your brother was the one who bought it, not you. Imagine how that would make you feel. I am aware that these are not direct comparisons, as we don't own PC games, the companies just license them to us. But we do own the physical media they exist on.
I've been reading the thread topic on the original forum, and there's definitely a lot of discontent with what's going on here. Some people are refusing to buy the game because of this, and a few are even saying that they won't buy any games published by 2K anymore. After all this trouble, I'm not sure I want to buy the PC version of Bioshock myself. You have to be careful with customers and make sure you aren't trampling on their rights too much. If you do, your company will gain bad press, and that's the last thing any publisher wants. Well, aside from their games selling poorly, but you know what I mean.
I'm not sure DRM works too well most of the time anyway. Even with protection like StarForce and SecuROM, someone is almost invariably going to pirate the game and post it online for people to download. The way I see it, if the game is good, and if it's publicized well enough, people will buy it. I'm not usually one to say "the free market will decide what will sell well," but in this case I think it holds true. If handled the wrong way, DRM can cut into legitimate sales of the product and could make some players pretty ticked off. I'm very interested in the way developer Stardock approached copy protection: they didn't use it at all in Galactic Civilizations II, and company owner Brad Wardell said that most people who play the game illegally weren't going to buy it anyway. Even Bethesda decided to have just a DVD check for Oblivion, and look how well that sold. All I'm saying is that publishers should just have faith that if their game is good enough, people will buy it, and that DRM, while intending to prevent piracy, often leads to discontent and animosity in consumers. I do think publishers have a right to protect their work from piracy, of course, and I am in no way advocating piracy (I think copying their intellectual property is wrong), but the copy protection we have in place now just isn't working out. Maybe we need to think this through a bit, before we lose the good will of consumers.
I should also note that the message the moderator posted on the 2K forums was originally deleted. Make of that what you will.
EDIT: Apparently I spoke too soon, it looks like the moderator who made the comment was an outside contractor, not someone who works at 2K. This is still inexcusable, but at least it's not as bad as it seemed before. And 2K is investigating the guy, so that's something.
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