Copies of Bioshock are flying off the shelves. The game is currently holding the #1 top-selling game on Amazon. Take-Two's stock rose over %10 yesterday. Bolstered by numerous glowing reviews, Bioshock looks like it should be pleasing gamers everywhere. 

But not every gamer out there is happy. Their might even be a few that are angry enough to toss their copy of Bioshock out of their living room window, and out onto the streets, for rush-hour traffic to crush and destroy.

It seems that the over-zealous SecuROM only permits the PC version of the game to be installed twice. After two installs, the game DVDs are then only fit to be used as coasters -- or perhaps, possibly Frisbees. While it might be possible to reactivate the game with the help of Take-Two's customer support people, this has not been confirmed at this time, and is not indicated in the manual or on the box. Actually, the box or manual doesn't mention this installation limit at all; only in the licensing agreement small-print does it state that: "Only legitimate customers who have purchased the product are able to unlock the program which is bound to the hardware after activation." 

It is understandable that the creators of this fine game would want to hinder the pirates -- in fact, cursory glances across popular file trading search engines show that while the Xbox 360 version was pirated soon after release, a cracked PC version is yet to emerge. However, only allowing two installs seems a bit extreme. What if your OS went belly up? Or what if you installed the game on your laptop and home PC, but then, a few months down the road, bought a new computer? The SecuROM folks can't really expect consumers to be want to purchase another copy of the game for this, can they?

The two copy install limit is also present on the Steam version of the game (and presumably, the Direct2Drive version as well).  

Maybe Take-Two Interactive should change their name to Take-Two-Copies-Only, Interactive -- it doesn't have the same ring to it, but at least it would let consumers know of this copyright limitation before any nasty surprises pop up. 

Update: Elizabeth Tobey, 2K Forum administrator -- and ardent opponent of sentence capitalization -- has posted a response to the many angry gamers thread on the 2K's forums in regards to SecuROM 'situation': "hey guys, first, let me say this. you DO NOT NEED TO USE THE INTERNET EVERY TIME YOU PLAY THIS GAME. it is only the first time. second, you can uninstall and reinstall this game, and if, by chance, you have 2 computers you want to simultaneously play this game on, you also can do that. if by some chance you are reinstalling this game without uninstalling it first, a lot, there is a chance you may have to call securom and get a key, or deactivate some older installations. but if you upgrade your hardware next week, you'll still be able to play the game. if you revamp your system and need to reinstall bioshock, just uninstall it before you go through the overhaul, and then do your reinstall."

If an uninstallation permits the user another installation of the game, then this makes this copy-protection a little bit more palatable; bit still, there could be many gamers left up the creek in the case of a Windows failure, and it would have been nice if this issue was addressed somewhere in the documentation for the product.

Update 2: According to forum chatter, many people are having problems getting Bioshock's uninstall feature to 'credit' them a reinstallation of the game. Furthermore, for users that have this problem, asking for assistance from SecuROM will get your email redirected to 2K, and writing 2K about it will get you unhelpfully redirected to SecuROM. The man behind Bioshock, Ken Levine, came onto the forums to issue this brief statement: "I've followed up on the circular email with securom and we are working on this issue. I agree, it sucks, and we need to get that sorted."

We'll have to wait a while, to see what happens. In the meantime, be careful how many times you install this latest title from Take-Two-Copies-Only Interactive.

Update 3 (August 24th): A blog interviewed Bioshock's Ken Levine, and he has stated that the installation limit is set to raise in a patch, and that the only reason that the 'uninstallation'-credit situation did not work was due to the unexpectedly massive success of the game overloaded servers.

Update 4 (August 29th): The promised patch to raise the install limit to '5' install has not yet appeared. Gamers everywhere are still very much choked. However, for fairness to Take Two, it should be noted that the peg-leg pirates of the Internetty seas have not yet been able to crack the SecuROM protection.