The People Have Spoken: ‘Spore’ Is Ruined By Its Own DRM
Judging by the reviews on Amazon.com (120 and counting), the public reaction to EA and Will Wright’s hugely-anticipated epic Sim-everything game, Spore, has been overwhelmingly negative.
The huge majority of the complaints seem to be aimed at one particular aspect of the game – not the gameplay itself, but EA’s decision to include the SecuROM DRM (Digital Rights Management) system. The much-maligned system only allows the game to be installed 3 times, before requiring a phone call to EA to request an extra activation.
This essentially reduces the game to nothing more than a rental, which will be completely useless when EA eventually switch off the activation servers. The system also installs software which runs with super user privileges that cannot be deactivated, which is a huge security risk and may well enable worm and virus attacks against Spore users in the future.
Understandably, paying customers are furious that they are being treated like pirates and are making their voices heard. You could download it DRM-free from your favourite torrent site after all – it won’t even cost you a penny either.
I fear that last sentence might cause you trouble.
No, the last sentence is what will cause EA trouble and should be their primary concern when baking up new piracy-prevention methods.
I’m not encouraging people to pirate the game – far from it, as I’m in the software development industry myself. I’d just rather the retail version offered all the freedom and hassle-free installation as the pirated version.
Perhaps people should buy the disc and download it?
I hear you, but EA are good at unleashing hellspawn minions at anything that has a chance of deteriorating their image if they can put their hands on something that looks legal. They live on it.
@SmellyGeekBoy
Give EA your money PLUS the opportunity to sue you for stealing their stuff? That doesn’t sound like a very attractive option.
I bought the game off Direct2Drive, got my install key and used it in a pirated version, I think it is the best of both worlds.
I get to pay money for a good game and not be treated like the pirate I wasn’t.
Has anyone heard of any problems installing yet?
@SmellyGeekBoy – that’s not going to solve anything. EA needs to receive the message that this type of DRM is unacceptable. The only way to let them know that is to impact them financially. I don’t even know why you would think that rewarding them monetarily would help to deliver this message. Think about it.
I am not going to buy or play Spore.
The cost of purchasing a new PC which will be good enough to even run Spore properly is already pricing me out of the market.
Unfortunately, if people decide not to buy this game I can see it affecting the people at Maxis far more than it will affect a company as large as Electronic Arts.
EA can afford to take a loss with one of their games but Maxis might find it more difficult to bounce back from poor sales and the knock-on bad publicity the game will receive due to this incredible error in judgement.
Although, having said that, they do have Sims 3 up their sleeves so I’m sure they’ll do just fine.
I think Spore looks great, but I’ll be waiting a while until I buy it, not only because of the system requirements* but the whole DRM fiasco too. No wonder I’ve stuck to console gaming ever since Half-Life 2 was released (remember the activation server issues on the first few days? Eugh.)
*Apparently there is a hack to allow Spore to run on the Mac Mini’s GMA 950 graphics chipset, though I imagine it runs like a pig.
Yeah, it’s a good idea for not in a rush to buy it.
Let’s see what’s gonna happen next.
The game looks cool but with limited time installing…?
Hello..it’s a trial then, not a ready-to-sell product.
Most people have the whole idea of Securom and the 3 activations wrong..It’s not just a simple DRM, it installs seperately to the game without your knowledge..if you un-install the game..you don’t un-install the SecuRom, which makes it a rootkit (malware), so if you don’t know this, you will think it’s gone coz it hides in hidden folders and in your Registry, not to mention what it does to AV’s by disabling them and the damage it does to some of the PC”s hardware. The other issue I have with this type of Draconian DRM is that when you can’t afford the internet anymore, you can no longer Play a Game you Paid for, and that is wrong..most games aren’t played over the Net so why do we have to be connected to it. There is a lot bigger picture than what we’re seeing here right now, this is only a baby step to the end plan. I will not buy anything that is put out by EA anymore, even though I would love to buy Sims2 Ikea, Sims2 Apartment Life and Spore but I just don’t trust EA or Sony.
If you guys want a new and better spore, please help participate by signing this petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/restorsp/petition.html And by all means, get your friends and families to sign too and then they can spread it even further. These petitions do tend to get things done.
Thanks in advance
Sincerely
Marius
Actually, it’s legal to have a backup copy. A pirated version of software you own counts as a backup. So no, they couldn’t sue you for stealing anything.