The BioShock Activation Revoke Tool

[-HP-]

Lol, this one's funny.

I suppose it was just a matter of time before this happened, but I must admit I'm rather surprised it happened so soon. Thursday it was announced (and rather quietly I might add) on BioShock's community website, The Cult of Rapture, that a downloadable tool is now available that will revoke one of your activation tokens. What does this mean exactly? Well mainly it means that you will now be able to erase and reload your copy of BioShock onto your PC as many times as you want without using up one of your activation "tokens" provided you don't make any major changes to your current hardware. The tool is downloadable on The Cult of Rapture website which also lists a nice lengthy FAQ that should answer any questions you may have about the tool, its uses and whether you even need it or not. Maybe now we can finally put this whole activation fracas to rest.

http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/revoketool.html

[Thrik]

When is the BioShock patch coming ffs? I've been holding off playing it so I can enjoy whatever performance and beauty enhancements may be contained.

[Taylor]

Yeah, and I've been holding off playing it because it DOESN'T BLOODY WORK.

[Section_Ei8ht]

Yeah, and I've been holding off playing it because it DOESN'T BLOODY WORK.

QFT

[Sentura]

i dont get it... why enforce a rule then months later send out a tool that cancels it out?

[dux]

Because 2k games are muppets.

[Thrik]

They said when it came out the activation process was largely to curb the 0-day warezing, which it did. They also said that the activation mechanism would almost certainly be removed or negated once it'd been out a while.

[Zeta]

They said when it came out the activation process was largely to curb the 0-day warezing, which it did. They also said that the activation mechanism would almost certainly be removed or negated once it'd been out a while.

sounds like a solid idea

[Rick_D]

I am aware of a dozen or so different cracks that I have come across when just browsing my regular batch of sites (that are unrelated to wares), and the actual wares sites have/had quite a lot of cracks for the game, so I am not sure how fair it is to punish people who buy it on the basis that you are going to stop people cracking the game. If people want to crack something they will crack it.

Which is a shame because PC games are suffering because of this imho, consoles are a safer bet because it's much harder to crack games, either that or it's more hassle which your average console gamer cannot be bothered with.

I bought Bioshock btw, wasn't impressed. Pity we can't give away games over Steam (not just HL2 and Ep2), although I am sure it will come.

[Thrik]

I'm really not convinced many people have actually suffered because of the activation process. I mean, do you personally know anyone who did? Because I sure didn't.

It was quite a well-known fact that the BioShock protection was solid for at least the first few weeks, and possibly a bit longer; indeed, I think it's possibly the most effective we've seen yet without resorting to nasty drivers and stuff.

It definitely accomplished its goal of stopping the initial warez flurry, for once demonstrating that those who really want to play the cracked game don't always necessarily end up doing so. I'm guessing a fair number of people got fed up waiting for a crack for weeks on end amongst all the hype and just ended up buying it.

I'm sure we'd all prefer a world without activation and stuff, but let's face it: PC gamers are as a general rule greedy as fuck, and happily flaunt the fact that they download the majority of their games illegally. 'Playing PC games' almost equates to 'downloading them illegally' for a lot of people, and surprisingly this goes for older people too (parents, grandparents, etc).

It's a culture of warez, and we've unfortunately got noone to blame for these stronger anti-warez measures but ourselves, no matter how much of an injustice we may make it out to be. It's either the publishers demand these measures be implemented or they withdraw from the PC market altogether, which in all honesty probably wouldn't hit their finances that hard if they piled those same resources back into the consoles.

I realise that some of you may be innocent of ware:- wait, who am I kidding? None of you are innocent of warez.

[dux]

I realise that some of you may be innocent of ware:- wait, who am I kidding? None of you are innocent of warez.

I always warez then buy. Excpet for BioShock, it was an insta buy.

[Thrik]

Seems like a bit of an unnecessary risk just in case you for whatever reason got stung or something. I usually find demos perfectly sufficient for trying out a game, combined with a bit of MetaCritic.

As long as you buy in the end I guess that's all well and good for the publishers/developers. I know a lot of people say they warez 'n' buy to sound all righteous and such but never actually do, though. Hopefully you're not one of those filthy animals.

[Skjalg]

Seems like a bit of an unnecessary risk just in case you for whatever reason got stung or something. I usually find demos perfectly sufficient for trying out a game, combined with a bit of MetaCritic.

As long as you buy in the end I guess that's all well and good for the publishers/developers. I know a lot of people say they warez 'n' buy to sound all righteous and such but never actually do, though. Hopefully you're not one of those filthy animals.

I'll admit I am, but we've had this discussion a couple of times on the 'core and it usually boils down to; if you got the cash buy the game, if not, we don't care.

Anyways, it took 10 days before a potent bioshock crack was out, and it wasn't by any of the scenegroups which made the release take a couple of more days before it reached the sites... I know atleast 3 people that couldn't stand the wait and purchased the game anyway, so I guess it worked. I don't know anyone that got "affected" by the protection tho..

[Rick_D]

The game doesn't work on my steam account at work, because I installed it on my home machine first.

There you go, you all know one person who got fucked by the system.

And considering I played the game for 25 minutes _max_ before getting utterly bored of it I kinda wish I had stolen it, but I don't like to steal games anymore - people put a lot of time and effort into them and I would like to reward them by not stealing their hard work.

[-HP-]

The game doesn't work on my steam account at work, because I installed it on my home machine first.

There you go, you all know one person who got fucked by the system.

And considering I played the game for 25 minutes _max_ before getting utterly bored of it I kinda wish I had stolen it, but I don't like to steal games anymore - people put a lot of time and effort into them and I would like to reward them by not stealing their hard work.

lol!

I totally agree with you, I wish I could say I buy every single game I play, fact is, I don't! Either because I don't have the money to buy every single one, and besides not all the games deserve my hard-to-get money!

It's a fact, that since the day I started workin on games, I buy alot more games than I did before, because I now know how hard it is to develop them, and all the money they cost!

Warez first, buy later! Is still my quote of the day though.

Unless of course, great titles like bioshock, UT3, orangebox, etc.