DRM Watch: 2K Removes Bioshock DRM, But Not Really

So 2K decided to try to appease the hold-outs (people like me) who don't want to buy Bioshock due to its insanely evil DRM by removing activation limitations from the game. It used to be that you were only limited to a certain number of installs before the game would tell you to call 2K or Securom (they could never decide) to have your activation limit reset. This was tantamount to asking daddy for a pat on the head and permission to reinstall the game that you already bought and now own *COUGH* I mean licensed.

Almost on cue, Luke Plunkett of Kotaku donned his ass hat and declared that Bioshock's DRM is now gone. According to 2K, they have removed all activation restrictions from the game. Unfortunately for us and Kotaku/Luke Plunkett's journalistic integrity, that means that Bioshock is still very much locked down with Securom DRM. You still need an internet connection to go get permission to play your single-player game. You also still need to download and maintain a backup of the executable to make the game start since it does not actually come on the game disc. You still must install MotherF**king Securom^TM. The problem here is that we still have DRM that can only prevent legitimate customers from playing while every pirate out there already long ago downloaded the Bioshock ISO along with a cracked EXE and has since finished the game without paying a dime for it.

Well, here's the official announcement thread on the 2K forums. A lot of it is posts from thankful users, while the rest of it is posts from people like me who carefully point out that DRM IS STILL ON THE DISC, then go into detail as to why the practice is so dreadfully insane and nonsensical. It is a good primer for those who aren't aware of all the issues that surround DRM and why they should be concerned about them. I recommend it to those who fall into this category, as well as those who already vehemently oppose DRM as it is very therapeutic.

Downgrade to Firefox 2

If you are like me, you downloaded and installed Firefox 3, then decided that you don't appreciate Firefox 3's new features and its incompatibility with your Firefox 2 plugins.

To downgrade:
First, back up your profile. Use MozBackup to do this. You should retain your bookmarks, settings, plug-ins and themes by backing up with this.

Uninstall Firefox 3

Download Firefox 2 from the Mozilla FTP:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/
You will find Firefox 2 under releases/(version#)/win32/(language) if you are running Windows. As of this writing, the most recent version is 2.0.0.14.

DRM Watch: EA is the Devil

Three installs of Mass Effect PC. That's it. Once you have installed the game 3 times, you must go out and buy it again.

I was looking forward to Mass Effect PC too. I was not too keen on the 10 minute elevator rides that constitute the 360 version's loading screens, and I of course wanted mouse control for the shooting sequences. This is not the first time that consumers have been jerked around like this, and you can count on it only getting worse from here on out. This is the price that gamers must pay for mouse control these days. Unfortunately, for some insane damn reason, everyone who buys the PC version of these games seem to be willing to bend over and take it for this crap. Furthermore, there seem to be enough of these people that the publishers are still turning a healthy profit. Too damn bad.

This is my official declaration: The PC gamer has lost. PC gaming is dead. Long live the console, shitty dual-stick aiming controls, and a complete lack of mod support for first person shooters and RTSs.

The Toy Pouch: Disable Firefox Auto Image Resizing

While we're on the subject of Firefox pet peeves, I may as well post this little tidbit.

In Firefox 1.x, Firefox gave you the option to either enable or disable automatic image resizing when viewing just an image in the web browser. With auto-resizing enabled, images that stretched beyond the edge of your browser window were auto-resized into ugly, pixelated vomit in order to fit in your browser window. You would have to click on the image in your browser every time in order to enlarge it to full size. The ability to turn off auto-resizing was especially useful for people such as patent lawyers who need to browse TIFF-formatted patent documents all day on the United States Patent and Trademark Office web site.
However, starting with Firefox 2.0, somehow the asinine decision was made to remove this option from the Options/Configuration interface. The browser now auto-resizes all images loaded into the web browser, and doesn't provide the user with the option to turn it off. This is nothing short of infuriating for some people we support where I work.

Well, there IS a way to turn it off, but remembering how to get to it is just as difficult as remembering the IP address for Black Viper's web site, hence my growing distaste for what I once considered to be the infallible Firefox. Here's what you gotta do:

1.) In the Firefox address bar, type about:config and load the page.

2.) Search for browser.enable_automatic_image_resizing

3.) Change it to false.

Problem solved. So long as you use MozBackup to back up your Firefox installation and all its settings and subsequently use it to restore those settings on a new Firefox installation, this setting will follow you to all reinstalls and new installs.

The Fourth Nintendo DS Lite RMA

Forget the Red Ring of Death. Why hasn't anyone called out Nintendo on their shoddy DS Lite design yet? I bought my DS Lite some time around September 2006, and since then, I have had some component of the system fail me three times. Every single time it was one or both of the shoulder buttons, and perhaps one or two other, smaller problems. In any case, the shoulder button(s) would first begin to respond only intermittently to button presses, then eventually stop working altogether. Now I am initiating my fourth DS Lite RMA request with Nintendo.

Click to enlarge


This should come as no surprise if you are familiar with the mechanism that the DS Lite employs for interpreting shoulder button commands by the user. It doesn't matter how lightly you press the button. Each time the mechanism that suspends the metal contact is depressed, it is weakened. Over time this metal contact will recede into the unit until the user is simply unable to get the shoulder button to reach it any longer. It's not a matter of whether it will fail: It is a matter of when.

The DS Lite only comes with a 1-year factory warranty, even though the device is obviously failure-prone. This means that those who more lightly use their DS units are more likely to have something go bad with their unit outside of the warranty period, and will be asked by Nintendo to pay $50-$85 for the repair. The only saving grace of the warranty is that it is, reasonably enough, extended for another year after your unit is repaired by Nintendo. The kicker here is that those who use and abuse their DS Lites more heavily than others are more likely to get something to go wrong with their unit within the 1-year warranty period, allowing them to send the unit in for repair and get another year of warranty service from Nintendo for it. Therefore, if you want to preserve your investment, don't be too protective of those shoulder buttons. Let them go bad: They are the most likely part of your DS Lite to do so. Additionally, if you notice something else wrong with your unit that does not have an adverse effect on your gameplay experience with the games you play, let it go unfixed until the warranty on your unit approaches the end of its life, then ask Nintendo to fix it. For instance: My DS Lite's microphone also does not work right now. However, I have no games for my DS Lite that require the microphone, so I'm going to save that for when I either get a game that uses it, or my warranty is about to expire.

The Nintendo.com DS Lite troubleshooting and repair page can be found here. Click on your specific problem and follow the troubleshooting steps. You will eventually be presented with an option to send your unit in for repair. Be careful what you choose, though: If you select an option such as "cracked screen", then the system will automatically deny you free warranty repair since a cracked screen is only caused by physical damage, and thus user negligence.

ANOTHER Another Reason Why I Don't Own A 360

A 360 is pretty much only worth having if you subscribe to the Live gaming service. Plain and simple. Forget that I don't have the time to play games online often enough to justify a $50-per-year fee. Forget that the 360 has a 30% probability of failure. Forget that MS customer service is useless and arbitrarily voids your warranty to help recoup the $1 billion they've had to put up to repair 360s. No, on top of all that, it seems that the Xbox Live service will also arbitrarily declare your inoffensive gamertag to be offensive months after its establishment, then force you to change your account, thus losing your reputation and possibly everything you have done with the account. All of which there is no fix for.
And this is supposed to convince me to buy a 360 how?

Another Reason Why I Don't Yet Own A 360

No, I don't own an Xbox 360 yet, and unless I get one for a steal, I might never own one. Here are a few reasons why, all from a "Microsoft insider" who conducted an in-depth interview with the Seattle PI:

"... MS was so focused on beating Sony this cycle that the 360 was rushed to market when all indications were that it had serious flaws."

Q: How much more reliable are the current generation of Xbox 360 than the previous designs? Original Xenon, Zypher and Falcon.
A: "I've heard that the failure rates for the current design (the Falcon board -PP) is sub 10%. Much much better, but still too high imoh(sic). And those designs haven't seen much life yet, so no one knows if that failure rate will hold."

When asked about the causes of the infamous Red Ring of Death (RRoD) error:
"Bad parts, incompatible parts (timing problems) bad manufacturing process (like solder joints), misapplied heat sinks or thermal interface material, missing parts, broken parts, parts of the wrong value, missed test coverage."
"... And many of the failures were obviously infant mortality, where they work when they leave the factory and fail early in use."

When asked about what happens when 360s are sent in to MS for repair:
"You send in a broken box, you get back a working box (hopefully). So there is a rotating stock of the original units that get repaired and returned to service. Plus, they keep finding these cashes of launch units here and there and using them too. Didn't you hear during the holidays that bundles were found with units made in 06? Those were pulled back from the retail channel last spring when the new heatsink was done, and had the new heatsink placed on them and then put into the shipping flow like any other box." ... "You risk getting one of those back until the last one is out of the system. I imagine the next big outrage will be when some of the folks who waited till Falcon to buy a console for reliability reasons, and has to send it in for service, gets a Xenon (earlier design -PP) back!"
This is the main reason for my not having bought a Falcon-based 360 yet.

"(On average) It's (the 360 failure rate) around 30%..."

Be sure to read the full article.

Essentially, I have not yet bought a 360 because I don't believe it to be a safe investment... certainly not at $400 or $450 for the worthwhile version (the Elite).

Well, to add to that mess, it seems that Microsoft has now also resorted to accusing you of tampering with your system when a hardware failure occurs, whereafter they gleefully void your warranty, take your money and run. All when the tamper-proof sticker is clearly still affixed to the system.

My mind is made up. My next console purchase will be the PS3. You simply don't get this kind of crap with Sony. Sure, they've got absolutely horrid, offensive advertising practices, but at least their product doesn't break when you breathe on it.

The Okami Screw-Up Heard 'Round the World

I have a set of inalienable virtues that can not be altered once established. I value their integrity more than anything else, and adhere to them with little trouble. It is these virtues that have prevented me from purchasing a single EA game since Medal of Honor Frontline once I decided to take issue with EA's business practices. It has also thus far prevented me from purchasing Bioshock once I discovered its draconian DRM implementation. In these types of instances, I tend to derive far more pleasure in depriving such outfits of my business than I would if I were to pay for their product.

On the other hand, I love Okami to death. So I would never have thought that it, along with Capcom- two of the greatest things to ever happen to gaming- would wind up on my "do not buy" list. But alas they have. It seems that, according to Clover Studio/original Okami producer Hideki Kamiya, the Wii version of Okami no longer makes any mention of the original Clover developers, because the credits video has been omitted from the Wii version of the game.

Didier Malenfant of Ready At Dawn wrote two comments on the Platinum Games/Kamiya-san Facebook post. He mentions legal trouble in defense of his company, but then immediately ducks behind the "not enough room on the disc" argument. Why he even deemed the latter to be worth mention is highly suspicious to me. I can see why he might have groped for whatever decent-sounding excuses he could muster. The entire Okami community has read Hideki Kamiya's post, and are now out for Ready At Dawn's blood. It is not at all surprising then that Mr. Malenfant felt it necessary to defend himself and his colleagues for what happened.

Let us address the purported legal issue first. Now, anyone with any knowledge of law knows that, when creating a commercial product, it is illegal to use intellectual property in a way that is inconsistent with the provisions of its license or the wishes of its license holders. Using intellectual property in a way that may piss off the legal owner will leave you liable for criminal and civil penalties. This begs the question as to what exactly was contained in those end credits that publisher and former owner of Clover Studio, Capcom didn't already own. It is safe to say that every asset used to create the game is considered to be property of Capcom since those assets were created by its employees on the company's yen. Even if some of those assets were created by some developers in their off-hours time, proving such a thing is often more trouble than it's worth. Were none of this true and the developers of Clover Studio- some of whom now compose Platinum Games- owned any of the assets that compose the Okami game, then Capcom would have reasonably been able to expect to be sued for millions by now by the original developers. From a business standpoint, this could easily be seen as a good reason to not produce the Wii version of the game at all, since the prospect of court costs and damages to be paid by Capcom in a judgment in favor of the Clover developers would have the possibility to negate the potential profit that could be earned from a Wii port of a failed PS2 game.

So where am I taking this? The point here is that the only legal issues that could have resulted from this whole mess would have been over the inclusion of something in the game that Capcom did not own. There is exactly one thing that appeared in the Okami game that Capcom did not own: The names of the developers. Were they removed for legal reasons? That would be extremely unlikely. Otherwise, there doesn't seem to be anything left that Capcom can't claim legal ownership of that appeared in the PS2 version of Okami other than the Clover Studio logo. Examination of the Wii box art of Okami reveals no instance of the Clover Studio logo, which seems quite damning. Capcom certainly has the rights to display the Clover logo on the PS2 version of Okami since they've got a signed contract filed away that says so. But now that Clover had absolutely nothing to do with the Wii version other than all the original code, this prospect is lent further credibility as a possible reason for this whole mess since the ending video for the PS2 version of Okami included the Clover Studio logo in it. It is not outside the realm of possibility, after all, that some of Clover's members retain intellectual rights to the name. But unless we are able to get a straight answer out of former Clover devs in regard to this question, it is likely that we will never know.

There are two more issues to take into consideration as well. One of these was fully dependent on the developers at Ready At Dawn, if we are to take Didier Malenfant's comments as fact; the other MIGHT have been.

The latter of those two has everything to do with the presence of the Clover Studio logo in the end credits. If indeed this whole issue hinges on that particular instance of the Clover Studio logo and/or all textual references to it in the end credits as many are suspecting, then it could once again be considered Ready At Dawn's fault for not putting forth the trivial amount of effort that would have been required in removing all instances of Clover Studio text and logos from the video. Heck, I could have done it. They could have sent me the video, asked me to clean it up, and they would have had a perceptionally-lossless re-encode sent back to them inside of a very short period with all the necessary changes. This would have regrettably removed all mention of Clover, but at least the devs would have their names attached. But again, this issue hinges on whether this whole legal issue could have been resolved by a simple edit to the video as mentioned above. I make no definitive claims as to whether this is indeed the case.

The former of the two items listed above is the space issue. Mr. Malenfant claims in one of his comments after the Platinum Games post that the Okami Wii data was "much larger than the original PS2 version", and thus they wouldn't have been able to fit the video on the disc if they had wanted to. Unfortunately for Ready At Dawn, I typically consider such claims to be irresponsible and/or disingenuous, or a smoke screen thrown up to protect the technical limitations of the programmers.

There is a game by the name of Roboblitz. It is an Unreal 3 Engine-powered Xbox Live game that weighs in at just under 50MB in order to satisfy Live's old download size restriction, yet the developers were able to utilize a new image compression technology that compresses images into low-footprint text documents. The resulting imagery looks quite good, and is exactly what you would expect from an Unreal 3 Engine game. Whether the game is any good is irrelevant. Just look at that imagery. A full Live game was released with that kind of imagery at just under 50MB. This is a prime example of what compression technologies can achieve.

Next you have Hideo Kojima and Metal Gear Solid 4. The MGS4 team was given 50GB of Blu-Ray disc to store their game on. This shouldn't be too tall an order considering that Kojima was only able to produce one eleventh the game he had wanted to. Yet some how- some way- 50GB is not enough for Kojima Productions. Contrast this with nearly every Xbox 360 game released- many of which arguably provide more content and higher-detail imagery than Metal Gear Solid 4- and ask yourself how the vast majority of them fit on a single, 8GB DVD when MGS4 can't fit on a single 50GB Blu-Ray disc. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the power of compression, and in the case of MGS4, a great example in regard to what happens when you neglect to apply compression to your game files responsibly.

Now, it is not my job to create games. I am a consumer of that medium, not a producer. With only C# and Visual Basic under my belt, I can't say what is and isn't possible when it comes to the limitations of your middleware, your target platform, or the compression algorithms that you employ. I do know that if Ready At Dawn was in fact unable to put the video on the Wii disc due to space constraints that there was a fundamental failing in their planning abilities, among other things. Unfortunately, we must then also take into account the experience and skill of those who programmed this Wii port, and wonder whether they could have constructed tighter, more efficient, more compact code. There may also be files on that disc which they chose to place less compression on for fear of extending load times, thus increasing file size. They may have spread multiple copies of some assets across different parts of the disc so that they will be more quickly accessible by the laser, thus minimizing the need to travel to another part of the disc to retrieve the first instance of that asset that was used in, say, an earlier level. They may not have considered that the higher level of compression could be offset by placing more commonly-accessed assets toward the outer edge of the disc, where data can be read more quickly by the laser. There are myriad things that could have been taken into consideration when the issue of space came up, and it is unfair to have expected Ready At Dawn to have thought of all of them. Regardless, in the end, if it could have been a decisive factor in whether the video was actually included, as Mr. Malenfant's comment suggested, someone has to take responsibility for the alleged lack of space on the disc of the Wii version. Considering that the storage constraints of both the PS2 and Wii version are the same- both the PS2 and Wii have their games stored on DVD discs- we see that the ending video was able to make it onto the PS2 version of the game. That the game's code was inflated to a point where a single ending video could no longer fit on the disc could be considered a complete failing of Ready At Dawn to accommodate what should have been a primary consideration: GIVING CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE. If we are to believe that space constraints was indeed an issue as Mr. Malenfant states, then it appears to demonstrate to onlookers a complete lack of respect on the part of Ready At Dawn for the original Clover developers.

I realize that this is highly-inflammatory talk that I have leveled at Ready At Dawn. Additionally, I realize that Mr. Malenfant cited more than this space issue in his explanation, and thus what was probably an irreconcilable legal situation probably negated the need for Ready At Dawn to concern themselves with making room for placing that staff roll video on the disc. But unfortunately, to those on the outside looking in- especially former members of Clover - this is how bad it looks when you state space constraints as a primary limiting factor in what happened. I would like to make it clear right now that it is not my personal opinion that Ready At Dawn totally blew off Clover. I know you guys have incredible respect for Clover, and proceeded accordingly. At the same time, it would be irresponsible of us to not call you guys out on things like this. This is, after all, an awfully damn big deal. I have proposed that you could have done this or that differently, that you could have prioritized giving proper credit where it is due had you had any respect for the original developers if in fact the purported legal issue could have been circumvented with a simple edit to the video, so on and so forth, and I realize you don't like to hear it. Likewise, I don't like to call you out on it. Unfortunately, I regret to say that these criticisms are not wholly without merit. So it is probably very unwise to use space constraints- which is in all honesty a very poor excuse- to defend the video's absence. I would suggest that the issue of "not enough space" not show up in any official press releases on the matter.

Oh, and I guarantee that Mr. Malenfant's post didn't help dry any tears over at Platinum Games. If I were to receive a comment on such a post that could be perceived as "sorry dude, while we were coding our port of your game, we totally forgot to plan for putting your name in there," I wouldn't be too happy either.