When did companies decide they could afford to treat their customer like a criminal?

Recently, the long-awaited spiritual successor Bioshock hit the shelves. I was excited – until I learned what copy protection they’d used.

OK, first, they use SecuROM. Which places a bunch of unknown drivers etc in my Windows, and forces my DVD-rom to read damaged sectors. This is bad enough in itself, in that it punishes the regular consumer, without stopping anyone from making a slightly less legal download from isohunt etc.

Second, they use online activation. You can only activate the game online twice. What the fuck? Twice? Oh, yeah, their uninstaller connects to their server and resets the thing, yeah… So in short, every god damned time I need to uninstall the thing I need to make real fucking sure the drunken midgets running my ISP don’t press the wrong button? Bah, good luck with that. My internet connection is twitchier than a spastic on cocaine rehab. And what happens if Windows works its magic (crashes horribly) and I need to urgently format everything and begin anew? It’s been known to happen (and no, I’m not an ordinary user. XP, properly set up, almost never crashes for the normal user. But I’m not one, so just drop it). Then, my activation is lost forever!

This is so damn stupid I don’t even know where to start.

• It will only prohibit the legal users from accessing their copy, just as the only people who’ll need to have their game CD/DVD in the drive are the same legal users. Soo, a crack and keygen will come out, and then the slightly less legal community will have all of the benefits, and none of the hassle.
• Treating customers this way is so wrong it’s ridiculous. It’s practically driving people to illegally downloading the game.
• I don’t want weird drivers or rootkits on my computer. Seriously, I don’t. I don’t feel comfortable having that kind of crap sitting there, collecting data on my habits. Sure, I got a firewall – but hell, it’s the principle.
• I don’t want my DVD-rom ruined by forcing it to read damaged sectors. I paid good money for my computer, I put it togeather myself, and I don’t like it when companies thing they have the right to ruin my property. Property is theft, indeed.

When the game is old enough to be sold in shops specializing in used games, I’ll probably buy it. The graphics are astounding, and the aesthetics even more so. The game seems like fun. I really want to buy this one, helping the developers, etc – but by golly I Will Not Spend Money On DRM! I will not help these people justify their crappy schemes using my purchase as validation. And from what I heat, many others say the same thing: This aggression will not stand!

Hrrm. Did the last two parts today. Got my stone ring. Hooray for me. There were some difficulties along the way – such as me having missed the fact that if the absolute coordinates are both in the negative, one must ass 180 degrees to the resulting polar coordinate. I spent an hour figuring that one out – my sketches claimed I should go around 210-220 degrees, but my trusty OpenOffice Cals sheet claimed 32. 180 added to 32 is 212m which was right on the money.

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Found Frets on Fire a while ago, and loved it. Guitar Hero using a keyboard as a guitar? Incredibly nerdy, and I loved it. My old keyboard, already old and worn, was chucked for a new one which has the functions keys closer togeather (as F1-5 are used extensively in FoF). Logitech Ultra-Flat is a really neat keyboard. No flashing gadgetry or idiotic multimedia keys or whatever the heck people seem to find necessary in a friggin’ keyboard nowadays.

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