BioShock issues and fixes

by: John - posted: 8/24/2007 8:07:00 AM

Boy, BioShock's had an up and down week hasn't it. The website has posted some news concerning the problems between SecuROM and widescreen issues. First off, they are upping the limit on simultaneous computer installs from 2 to 5 and the reinstall limit from 3 to 5 on said computers. They call it their 5x5 plan. Personally I think they should do away with the limiting of reinstalls and really eliminate SecuROM itself as that's one piece of software that seems to cause many frustrations with this and other games. They are also looking to putting out a patch so you can change your FOV and have widescreen folks the ability to expand the horizontal FOV. They are also looking at a similar update for the 360.

I remember some problems with a game called Half-Life 2 that involved installation problems so perhaps 2K Games is going to have to go through a similar situation and learn from this experience like Valve has with Steam.

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.