BioShock Activations Upped, Widescreen Patch Planned [Aug 23, 2007, 9:58 pm ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
The Cult of Rapture
has word that a couple of BioShock topics that have been getting a lot of
attention from the community are being addressed, as they are increasing the
number of activations allowed by the SecuROM software from two
(story) to five, and are at work on patch to address widescreen
issues (story). They are also creating a revocation tool to
deactivate a BioShock installation and have given SecuROM more leeway to
directly assist customers with activation issues. Finally, they have posted a
new technical FAQ
covering these and other topics. Word is:
We have been reading and listening to your frustrations over SecuROM, PC activation problems, and technical support issues since BioShock launched on Tuesday, and we've devised a plan to help.
Starting immediately, we will be upping the activation count to a 5 by 5 plan. We will be raising the maximum amount of computers a user can have BioShock installed on simultaneously from 2 to 5, and allowing a user to reinstall BioShock on each of those computers from 3 times to 5 times. Also, we have in the works a revoke tool which you will be able to run on your machine if you want to free up that key and move it to to another computer (this works very much like Steam or iTunes system). We are also working with SecuROM and 2K customer service, so that when you do need to call in support problems, you get answers to your questions faster, without much waiting or being bounced around. SecuROM has been given much more autonomy to help fix your problems quickly and effectively. I am personally sorry for anyone who got bounced around in the past couple days (I even think I contributed to this problem) and we're going to make sure that does not happen in the future.
As for other technical issues, we are bringing on a team of tech support that will be on the 2K forums 24/7 to help people resolve their technical issues. Our QA guys are in the offices and on the forums, too, reproducing issues and looking for workarounds and compiling information that they can put towards making you a patch and updating the knowledge base.
Also, we are aware that our activation server went down last night, stopping some of you from finishing your installs. The server is up and running now and we have corrected the problem that caused that crash.
Finally, we have released a FAQ, which you can view in full below (and will also be posted on the 2K Forums in the Technical Support area) that will help clear up a lot of questions and misinformation that has been floating around about SecuROM and PC activation.
And as for widescreen, we also want to say we completely understand a user's desire to augment their FOV. BioShock is a harrowing experience, but we don't want anyone to feel limited (or motion sick!). So we are in the process of working on an official PC patch to give widescreen PC users a choice to expand their horizontal FOV, and are investigating creating a similar update for the 360.
And finally, I want to personally congratulate Racer_S from the Widescreen Gaming Forums, and his awesome user patch to expand the widescreen FOV in BioShock. I'm currently tracking him down via email, but hopefully, he'll accept my gratitude, and maybe an Nvidia 8800 to boot.
Read the full technical FAQ.
Being able to see significantly more onscreen than other players is a bigger advantage that any of those other things.But having a bigger screen means it's easier for you to sport enemies; and 5.1 surround sound makes it easier to pinpoint people; and people that turn up the gamma or render games in DX7 mode have an advantage.
It simply means that Valve doesn't care if it gives those players an advantage.Nor does Epic Games, Crytek, Raven Software, Splash Damage... fuck, the entire industry apart from EA. Your arguement just doesn't hold water. Widescreen is the new accepted standard and it is people with 4:3 or 5:4 that are missing out, not 16:10 people that are gaining. Again you simply twist everything to attack Valve but this time it simply doesn't work - it is EA that are the odd ones out. If the most competitive FPS game in the world can support widescreen then that says it is legitimate. So EA have accounced they are lazy and don't want to incorporate it because of the effort - everyone else has thoroughly playtested and balanced their games and decided widescreen is acceptable.
EA and Even Balance simply feel differently on the issue.Actually, EA has said it will support widescreen once there is a large enough userbase. Plus Even Balance has absolutely no opinion on widescreen... it just supports whatever the game developers want and kicks everyone else. A developer could insist everyone have a physics card and be able to solve a Sudoku puzzle in 13 seconds and Even Balance would happily enforce that policy.
It's been awhile since I last played a Steam game online so some games may have an internal one too, but I remember that some of them like Sin 1 only use the server browser in the Steam client.Only Valve games and their modifications use the Steam browser - other games use their own systems.
I never saw any such problems with the Half-Life 1 engine games on WON, and I played those games online a lot all the way up until Valve pulled the plug on its Won support.I never said there was a problem... I said Steam was an improvement.
So keep it up. I simply laugh at you for it, and you will no doubt think of me and curse my name every time you have a problem with Steam.I've never had a problem with Steam, actually. Vista is a completely different matter, as Microsoft accused me of having illegal software and I had to activate it by phone at 3am... THAT is bad software protection.
Does this mean you are anti widescreen now too? I mean, shouldn't the users have the choice to play widescreen or 4:3?This is Riley we're talking about... he has to attack everything that is popular.
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Founder of the "I Hate Smiley Fitz" society
Remember: Riley has autism. He has trouble communicating, and in an overstimulating
environment, he can get frightened and run away, leaving his parents frantic. - Auburn
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."
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