The new game "Bioshock" seems to be making waves. I saw a news article a couple of days ago that said it was really popular.

Shamus says it's also making a lot of people angry, because of out-of-control copy protection. For the moment, the best advice seems to be to stay the hell away from this game.

In fact, even stay away from the demo of the game. It installs something called "SecuROM", which is not uninstalled when the demo is uninstalled, and which remains active even when the demo is not running.

Go read about the nightmare. And be forewarned.

UPDATE:

Most people are calling SecuROM a “rootkit”. The point is debatable, (mostly because of the varying definitions of “rootkit” everyone is using) but what is clear is that the program circumvents the standard Windows logins & permissions, giving itself “admin” powers even if it was installed under a non-admin login.

How in hell did they figure out how to do that? Whatever they did, Microsoft better analyze it and plug the security hole!

UPDATE: More here from someone who seems to know what they're talking about.

After a couple of high-profile screwups of this kind, I seem to recall that Congress passed some new laws about this kind of thing. I have a sneaking suspicion that SecuROM may break those laws.

The damned thing is from Sony. Didn't they learn their lesson from the last time?

UPDATE: Here's the official word on what you have to do to uninstall SecuROM if you ran the Bioshock demo. No idea whether it actually works the way they say, or will leave your computer a fucked up mess.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 02:28 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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