Bah, the Sony CD case was much worse, for a lot of reasons. This one is a bit like the rootkit that Norton Recycle Bin uses, and it's actually done to protect you (playing devil's advocate...). The BioShock case is nothing more than the usual software protection used by hundreds of games and quite some shareware software.
The problem in these cases is what would happen if the rootkit is used for less 'healthy' reasons.