BioShock DRM removed

2K Games has just announced that the strict and rather draconian digital rights management included in BioShock has now been completely removed.

The anti-pirate DRM software, which was created by a company known as SecuROM, sparked controversy last year by limiting PC gamers to only a few concurrent installs of the game. The DRM was known to be a little faulty though as some users were unable to reach their install limit or to claim back 'install credits' after uninstalling the game.

Worse, the software was shown to be pretty pointless for the most part and cracks were quickly spotted on the internet to circumvent BioShock's copy-protection anyway. Many users claimed that all the software did was inconvenience legitimate customers while providing an excuse for piracy.

Now, almost a year later, the SecuROM copy-protection is gone. 2K's Elizabeth Tobey has said on the official forums for the game that "all activation restrictions, including install limits, have been removed from BioShock PC."

The extra-good news though is that the fix has been made server-side, so there's no need to download a new patch or anything like that.

It's interesting to see that 2K has waited until now to finally remove the copy-protection from the game, from which we're assuming that PC sales have started to fall off. Now that the copy protection is gone, will all of you who claimed you wouldn't buy the game on principle suddenly rush out and snag a copy? Certainly one way to get your message across to publishers would be to create a sales spike right about now. Let us know your thought in the forums.