buy the "box" version of bioshock and not the steam version.

Is this true? isn't Steam Valve's propietary?

franpa: been a while since you purchased a game, eh? I bought HL2 "offline" when it came out, and still couldn't play it without inet access. I guess it's the same with Bioshock.

A bit OT: i just played the XBox 360 version, and i'm not rocked so far. Of course, the "Art Deco" style is something new and looks quite cool, but until now, i feel like i'm playing a mixture of Doom 3 and Condemned, with the "shiny" graphics of GoW (;

OT: I find pretty stupid that you buy a game and you can't play unless you have an internet connection and download god knows what. On the other hand this could prove to be an effective and annoying copy protection.

franpa wrote:

buy the "box" version of bioshock and not the steam version.

Is the box version free of such horrendous copy protection?

no

Fuck. 🙁 I guess I'll only buy Bioshock if there's already crack available --I just want to play my original copy without having to copy with such horrendous internet activation scheme.

At least "enhanced audio CD" is easier to crack.... 🙁

but the box version would be easier to bypass the protection with.

Gamecopyworld has the No Intro fix and a mini image of BioShock up so that you can play without the CD drive.

If you don't want to use a mini image then you can image the BioShock DVD with the latest ver of BlindWrite and that will work as well.

I don't keep up with the "scene" so I don't know what the status is of bypassing the activation for the DVD release.

franpa wrote:

but the box version would be easier to bypass the protection with.

No, unfortunately it makes no difference. The HL2 experience was similar.

probably a stupid question, but does the bioshock demo have securom too?

Yep.

its been proven that the "securom" provided with the demo can easily be removed, just look at your services and disable it and now your done 😁

franpa wrote:

its been proven that the "securom" provided with the demo can easily be removed, just look at your services and disable it and now your done 😁

After disabling securerom, can you bypass / work your way around the activation or such?

no or not to my knowledge. theres a article somewhere that describes it.

Wait:

DosFreak wrote:

I looked in HKLM and HKLU but nothing really stood out. A regisitry or installation monitor may tell us more....but I've already tainted my system with the activation so I'm not sure how trustworthy a reinstall on the same windows install would be at capturing the install.

Maybe the Securerom windows service hides it. Maybe you can better find the downloaded activation key (or file) after disabling the Securerom service?

Here is a new article about the protection thingy.

Good article at TwitchGuru that goes over the situation:
http://www.twitchguru.com/2007/08/27/bioshock_drm/index.html

damn, i really wanted to play this game, but i dont want to "taint" my system with this securom. I've read, however, that antivirus software also "taints" your system too. Is that true?

Every program that installs and runs things behind your back "taints your system". Most antivirus do it too.