SecuROM still in use, Bioshock 2

Awesome. It seems the gaming development world hasn't learned from the lessons that EA attempted to teach by showing how not to treat it's customers; SecuROM is set to be used on Bioshock 2.

Despite the developer 2k Marin saying that they only plan to use it for disk activation and not for saving single player games, nor will it require online activation at each play, it will still have an activation limit. The listing for the game on Steam has changed several times in recent days, initially stating that 15 activations would be possible, but now it's dropped down to 5; only a few more than the original Bioshock had which it was heavily criticised more.

Now, undoubtedly most players are only going to need the one install of the game, but these developers don't seem to understand that DRM in almost all instances, only annoys your paying customers. DRM doesn't prevent downloadable cracked versions from showing up online, often they are released before the game goes on sale. All that happens, is a small player base that do want to install the game several times will be restricted from doing so, and will ultimately fall foul of SecuROM.

Look at Spore, EA's big release of 2008 was the most pirated game of the year, with more than 1.7 million illegal downloads on the books alone, most likely many more untracked. Many claimed they downloaded it simply to avoid the SecuROM, and what do you know, the illegal version didn't have it.

Try and get it through your heads developers, DRM that is restrictive only hurts your customers, because illegal downloads of the game don't come with the DRM. Remove it, and spend the vast quantities of money you dish out on these types of services to make a better game.