Bioshock

UPDATE The fucking demo has a rootkit.... I am fucking pissed. I have already had some interesting things occur on my system since installing this. I can't say if they are related or not, but it stinks either way.

From Slashdot....

"Sony (the owner of SecureROM copy protection) is still up to its old tricks. One would think that they would have learned their lesson after the music CD DRM fiasco, which cost them millions. However, they have now started infesting PC gaming with their invasive DRM. Facts have surfaced that show that the recently released PC game BioShock installs a rootkit, which embeds itself into Explorer, as part of its SecureROM copy-protection scheme. Not only that, but just installing the demo infects your system with the rootkit. This begs the question: Since when did demos need copy protection?"

Now the question, how do I remove this fucking thing!!!!!!!


http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?ar...=7670&cc=US

Has anyone been paying attention to this game? It looks like one incredible Single Player FPS.....

I am downloading the demo now via steam..... The full game goes on sale Tuesday (today?). There is a HD trailer if you want to learn more.

Atomm wrote:
http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?ar...=7670&cc=US

Has anyone been paying attention to this game? It looks like one incredible Single Player FPS.....

I am downloading the demo now via steam..... The full game goes on sale Tuesday (today?). There is a HD trailer if you want to learn more.

Actually yes. I have been really thinking about getting this one. It has not had a lot of commercial hype but is now getting more from the internet. It is getting GREAT reviews. 9, 9.5 and 10 out of 10's.

It has no multiple player modes so that sucks. I think I may wait until the price drops a bit and pick it up.

I have the demo downloaded. I'll install it and let you know what I think.

Played the demo. Liked it a lot. Got a splitting headache.... 🙁

I don't think I'll be able to play it, but it was a blast. It has a lot of original ideas and cool ways of doing things. If you liked Doom3, then you'll love this....

Saw this this evening.

full story and links to other sites
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/22/biosh...ame_bundle.html

BoingBoing wrote:2K's BioShock is easily the most overhyped game so far this year, though it is quite beautiful.

What they're no doubt underhyping as best they can is the fact that the PC version of the game is packaged with SecuROM copy protection, a piece of third party anti-copying software that phones home and prevents installation on more than 2 PCs.

The PC demo of BioShock causes AVG to go nuts at it for containing trojans. It wouldn't install or load on a winXP partition until AVG antivirus was completely uninstalled. *Presumably* this is due to SecuROM, which also demands that other perfectly legit processes stopped:

The response on the 2K forums has been a pretty uniform "Yarr!":

Anonymous adds,

Worse yet, game maker 2K is telling people to call Securom, and Securom is telling people to call 2K. Steam is affected as well. You can only install the game on 2 PC's, period. (Confirmed by steam employee.) So, if you use your steam account on 3 PC's, you'll only get to play on 2. You're required to right click the game in the steam menu and choose 'delete local content' before you can transfer the game to another PC. If you delete the game without following this procedure, you may end up in the same ordeal as retail buyers. Details for the steam issue can be found here:

fuckwads.....

I noticed I had to turn off AVG because it kept hanging up until I did....

When will these guys get it..... They are only hurting the people that buy the game and the warez guys will crack it in no time.....

Um. . . Bioshock

Worse yet, game maker 2K is telling people to call Securom, and Securom is telling people to call 2K. Steam is affected as well.

Always, ALWAYS hold the company selling you the program responsible. They made the decision to integrate SECUROM, it's their responsibility if it gives you grief. None of this "pass the buck" BS. YOUR product, YOUR name on it, YOU fix it,or YOU get Securom to fix it - your consumers do not need to talk to anyone else.

Securom might be a lump of shit (and it is). . .then they shouldn't have paid them to put their lump of shit in Bioshock.

I always liked the Unreal Tournament games because they'd actually DISABLE CD checks after six months or so.

Atomm wrote:
fuckwads.....

I noticed I had to turn off AVG because it kept hanging up until I did....

When will these guys get it..... They are only hurting the people that buy the game and the warez guys will crack it in no time.....

I downloaded the demo from usenet. The nfo sez the cracked version is already out.

HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

Man, these guys just don't get it.....

lexx wrote:
I downloaded the demo from usenet. The nfo sez the cracked version is already out.

I get more and more WTF from reading your posts. . .

You DL'ed the demo from the USENET groups? Why? What, in the DEMO, did they crack?

Or are you saying the DEMO's INFO file says the game is cracked, in which case, why did they UL the DEMO at all if the full game is available?

You go on Usenet, there's a TON of fake Bioshock posts. I haven't seen one yet that ppl aren't screaming FAKE over.

I think you DL'ed a rock.

I used usenet so I didn't have to F with planetbattlecrap or bitchytorrent, etc, etc.

I grabbed the Demo only version. Other file descs claimed to be full. It doesn't matter since I couldn't get the demo to work right.. no mouse.. I looked up the cause...


----------------------------------
The X800 is from 2004, an adapter running on dx90b with shader model 2 support.

Bioshock (and the Unreal 3 engine) requires SM3 at the bare minimum to render textures and other things correctly, although particle effects will render on the lower quality SM2 hardware if you have an ATI adapter (since ATI in general has lower precision registers than nVidia).

Either buy a new video adapter that supports SM3 (or higher), or don't play Bioshock.
-------------------------------


... and on the otherhand....

-------------------------------------
When I heard you needed a SM3 card to run Bioshock, I was mad. Here I had a video card that could run HL2, Stalker, and even upcoming Crysis, but not a game I had been looking forward to and had been getting good ratings everywhere.

So I started tinkering in the shader files of the Bioshock demo...

After an hour, I got it working on my card: and Ill tell you how

First, download this (which I made, and uploaded! )

http://rapidshare.com/files/50276163...ottJG.rar.html

(If you install the above and it doesnt work, then try downloading and installing this, which offers more of my configuration files: http://rapidshare.com/files/50284028...ottJG.rar.html )

Then, copy and paste all files to the C:\Program Files\2K Games\BioShock\Builds\Release directory

Boot up Bioshock, and you should now see your cursor (you couldn't before)


Note:

1)It will take a LONG time to load things now at check points. Wait at least 5 minutes when you get a loading screen up
2)Some textures will look really crappy (or be an entirely different color than they should be)
-------------------------------------------


Now this is supposed to work, but will take 8mins to load scenes. Now I know why the x800 was such a good price last year. Also on my searching about, UT3 is said to work with the SM2 cards, so its not the UT3 engine, but video cards greasing the developers ?? Dunno. Its time to go back to my building work 🙁

lexx wrote:
I used usenet so I didn't have to F with planetbattlecrap or bitchytorrent, etc, etc.

I grabbed the Demo only version. Other file descs claimed to be full. It doesn't matter since I couldn't get the demo to work right.. no mouse.. I looked up the cause...
----------------------------------
The X800 is from 2004, an adapter running on dx90b with shader model 2 support.

Bioshock (and the Unreal 3 engine) requires SM3 at the bare minimum to render textures and other things correctly, although particle effects will render on the lower quality SM2 hardware if you have an ATI adapter (since ATI in general has lower precision registers than nVidia).

Either buy a new video adapter that supports SM3 (or higher), or don't play Bioshock.
-------------------------------
... and on the otherhand....

-------------------------------------
When I heard you needed a SM3 card to run Bioshock, I was mad. Here I had a video card that could run HL2, Stalker, and even upcoming Crysis, but not a game I had been looking forward to and had been getting good ratings everywhere.

So I started tinkering in the shader files of the Bioshock demo...

After an hour, I got it working on my card: and Ill tell you how

First, download this (which I made, and uploaded! )

http://rapidshare.com/files/50276163...ottJG.rar.html

(If you install the above and it doesnt work, then try downloading and installing this, which offers more of my configuration files: http://rapidshare.com/files/50284028...ottJG.rar.html )

Then, copy and paste all files to the C:\Program Files\2K Games\BioShock\Builds\Release directory

Boot up Bioshock, and you should now see your cursor (you couldn't before)
Note:

1)It will take a LONG time to load things now at check points. Wait at least 5 minutes when you get a loading screen up
2)Some textures will look really crappy (or be an entirely different color than they should be)
-------------------------------------------
Now this is supposed to work, but will take 8mins to load scenes. Now I know why the x800 was such a good price last year. Also on my searching about, UT3 is said to work with the SM2 cards, so its not the UT3 engine, but video cards greasing the developers ?? Dunno. Its time to go back to my building work 🙁

Thanks for a very comprehensive post. Looks like my x800xl and myself will be giving this one a pass. I'll think about it again after I've built a new machine (not likely to happen this calendar year).

DocJon wrote:
Thanks for a very comprehensive post. Looks like my x800xl and myself will be giving this one a pass. I'll think about it again after I've built a new machine (not likely to happen this calendar year).

I take this more as a warning to wait until UT3 starts beta/demo testing. Then and only then will I consider a new moto/video card. Seems to me we upgraded abouts Feb, so thats not even a year yet.

This could explain why 2142 is such a dog for us.

These companies only hurt legitimate users that actually buy the game. The pirates will run a cracked version free of all the crap anyway! It does not do what they intend. Pirates will ALWAYS find ways around it!!! Especially for a stand alone game that does not even connect to servers to play online. That is cake to them.


WHEN WILL THEY UNDERSTAND THIS????

I have not ran a cracked game in many years but this makes me want to DL and play it for free now just to NOT give them my money. I would never run a cracked multilayer game but this is tempting. I won't do it though.

I will not buy this game now, enough said. if they did not do this crap they would have had one more sold.
I do not have time to play it anyway. I still have CoD2 to install and play let alone the two mods for HL2 DocJon found.

I need to game more.

UPDATE The fucking demo has a rootkit.... I am fucking pissed. I have already had some interesting things occur on my system since installing this. I can't say if they are related or not, but it stinks either way.

From Slashdot....

"Sony (the owner of SecureROM copy protection) is still up to its old tricks. One would think that they would have learned their lesson after the music CD DRM fiasco, which cost them millions. However, they have now started infesting PC gaming with their invasive DRM. Facts have surfaced that show that the recently released PC game BioShock installs a rootkit, which embeds itself into Explorer, as part of its SecureROM copy-protection scheme. Not only that, but just installing the demo infects your system with the rootkit. This begs the question: Since when did demos need copy protection?"

Now the question, how do I remove this fucking thing!!!!!!!

Atomm wrote:
UPDATE The fucking demo has a rootkit.... I am fucking pissed. I have already had some interesting things occur on my system since installing this. I can't say if they are related or not, but it stinks either way.

From Slashdot....
Now the question, how do I remove this fucking thing!!!!!!!

Keep reading, they'll come up with something - there are prgs that remove rootkits, and they may not be specific to certain rootkits. You might want to do some Googling.

I've been reading about this for the past 24 hours or so, but I've heard conflicting things - it IS a rootkit/no it's not you n00b - blah blah blah. Until it shakes out, I'd recommend not installing it.

I'm hoping this stirs up a great big shitstorm of controversy. If it DOES have a rootkit, that could be the best thing they could've done for us. We need some company to push the gaming community too far with a big release game if we're ever going to see any changes in how things are done.

When we get some real, solid info that doesn't change every 20 minutes, we need to front-page this. We should probably put up a short warning now, something like, "BIOSHOCK may install a rootkit on your computer, we recommend holding off installing it until more info is available." - unless you've found some real, hard data, then we don't need to be wishy-washy 🙂

Done....


http://www.gamersradio.com/content/view/5692/1/

I hope it is not a rootkit because the sony rootkit was a target for malicious intent and even worse, it hid things like botnets from the very programs designed to prevent them.

It also allowed people to load cheat programs onto a system and avoid the scanning methods designed to catch cheaters.

FYI: This was in one of the slashdot comments on this issue.

Whether or not this is a rootkit, the fact that the game won't run unless a user completely disables or uninstalls legitimate utilities such as antivirus programs or process monitors is enough to make a security conscious user worry.

References:

http://consumerist.com/consumer/punishing--the-one s-that-don.t-steal/bioshock-comes-with-nasty-drm-t hat-sets-off-anti+virus-software-ruins-everyones-d ay-292841.php [consumerist.com]
http://forum.sysinternals.com/forum_posts.asp?TID= 11000 [sysinternals.com]

I agree. It may not be a "rootkit", but it sure acts in a suspicious manner.

Very good write-up on the front page, Atomm. Good one.

As for the "I hope it's not a rootkit", well, I hope they come up with a complete removal solution soon, but I'm gonna continue to hope for a worst-case scenario. This is getting to be a fairly big deal, and the addition of the word "Rootkit" is gonna send this bad publicity through the roof. Ever since the Sony debacle, rootkit =big stink in the press.

If we could get this big a push in the press without the word ROOTKIT, it would be better, as I'm afraid all this will just shake out to result in "NO ROOTKITS". That would be cool, but "NO ROOTKIT OR OTHER INVASIVE PROTECTIONS THAT SCREWS WITH LEGIT PROCESSES" would be better. I'm hoping the stink raised will be of such a degree, that BIOSHOCK will be re-released with different protection, and/or patches will be made to remove the rootkit and still be able to run the game.

Somewhere on ./ was a comment about someone who is an expert on "rootkits" talking about this and saying it was definitely a rootkit. Of course, that's like 4th party removed twice from my cousin's sister-in-law, but still.....

I say it's a root kit because it bypasses security measures granting the program root level access to key parts of the operating system. If that's not a rootkit, then I'm a monkey's uncle....

http://www.gamecopyworld.com/securom.htm

ROFL!

Money well spent, NOT!

Oh and here is how to remove the Securom crap.

To remove SecuROM:

code: 1. stop UAService7 service (CTRL+ALT+DEL, find it and kill it)
2. using e.g. Autoruns (http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Autoruns.html) remove this service and delete the file \windows\system32\UAService7.exe
3. delete the folder Documents and Settings\<your_user_name>\Application Data\SecuROM
4. delete the folder Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\SecuROM; in case of any deletion problems use DelInvFile tool
(http://www.purgeie.com/delinv.htm).
5. delete securom registry keys using regedit
6. key named HKLM\SOFTWARE\SecuROM\!CAUTION! NEVER DELETE OR CHANGE ANY KEY* contains embedded nulls and cannot be removed using regedit; use e.g. RegDelNull tool (http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/RegDelNull.html) instead of it."

Sony loves a good rootkit. . .or an OK rootkit. . .ANY rookit, really.

http://www.betanews.com/article/Sony_USB_D...rise/1188324644

Review of Bioshock.

*waring strong language is used*

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/v...uation-BioShock

Sagz wrote:
Review of Bioshock.

*waring strong language is used*

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/v...uation-BioShock

Funny and informative. Thanks.