Spore DRM Controversy Spawns Protest Creatures

To everyone intelligent enough to understand what is really going on here, make sure you do not purchase any product with this kind of DRM and make sure you contact the developer to explain why you are not purchasing their product.

I cancelled my preorder of Crysis Warhead yesterday and contacted Crytek to tell them why.

This protection is plain useless and stupid.

This prevents legit users from upgrating their pc or formating.

And for pirates its just copy and paste a crack.

If it hurts legit customers more than pirates then its baaaaad, and it will only encourage more piracy.

Make quality games and make them cheaper, and piracy will lower by a high amount.

I call shenanigans on this who thing. I understand that a large group of people have decided to draw a line in the sand against DRM... and that's fine, I guess. But I frankly think that they are off the mark by specifically targeting Spore.

Let's assume that DRM is necessary for a new, popular piece of software. (I don't agree that it is... but let's assume). I find Spore's approach to be no more or less offensive than other methods that have been tried in the past to prove that someone is a legal owner. Code wheels, manual look-ups, cd checks. They all place the burden of proof on you, the legal owner, to show that you are legit.

(And yes, I firmly believe that ALL of these schemes only punish the paying customer and don't actually curb piracy. But that's not what this is about.)

The invisible, background online-activation is frankly an extremely unobtrusive methodology. With Spore, you don't even need the DVD in the drive to play.

Now, let's talk about the 3-install rule. Stupid, yes. But I don't believe that this will negatively affect anybody. I guarantee that in a year or so, EA will remove this in a patch once the interest in the game dies down. But before that happens... let's say you are attempting to install on your 4th computer. I don't know for a fact how it works, but my guess is that you just pick up the phone, call EA, and they give you a code, or something. Pain in the ass? Sure. Stopping you from enjoying your game in any meaningful way? No.

(And for the record... I've been playing PC games since about 1985. I can only think of a handful of absolute classics that I've installed on 4 computers.)

Another interesting take on the issue: I can't remember who said it... but someone pointed out that this was more about crippling the GameStop resale industry than it was actually about DRM.

Yet another interesting way to think about this. There nothing in place to stop you from giving your copy of the game to two friends. Is EA actually giving you the ability to pirate the game?

This whole DRM issue is way overblown. You can contact EA and extend your install limit if it bothers you so much. On top of that, EA will probably drop the DRM after a few years when the game no longer sells any copies at retail.

They are well within their bounds to protect their own material.

"I find Spore's approach to be no more or less offensive than other methods that have been tried in the past to prove that someone is a legal owner. Code wheels, manual look-ups, cd checks. They all place the burden of proof on you, the legal owner, to show that you are legit. "

Lets see:

"Code wheels"

Doesn't limit upgrades(Hardware or OS) or HDD formats, doesn't require contacting customer support(or should I say presumed to be a thief for presumably(but probably lying about it) upgrading your computer support.

"manual look-ups"

Doesn't limit upgrades(Hardware or OS) or HDD formats, doesn't require contacting customer support.

"cd checks"

Doesn't limit upgrades(Hradware or OS) or HDD forms, doesn't require contacting super annoying "customer" support.

So nope, you are wrong, all of those are SIGNIFICANTLY(there is that word again, I wonder what it means) less annoying and obtrusive then this piece of shit.

So EA loves shutting down servers for games that are old(ish). How long until they shut down the activation server?

Firstly, let me say this: A company that provides good customer service recognizes that the customer's PERCEPTION of the company doing wrong is just as bad as the company doing wrong. As far as customer response and his/her future action is concerned, negative perception yields the same end result for the company whether the customer is correct or not.

Because of this, it is outright stupid to not do something about it from a company standpoint. Put aside the argument that it is correct or not. Customer perception is customer reality, and if the reality for many of your customers is poor business and service, you do something about it.

I'm not running around grabbing statistics or taking polls on what people feel, but I've never seen backlash like I've seen now. As far as I'm concerned, the perception in a lot of customers out there is that they're being screwed. I for one have not purchased the game, although I would like to, in hopes they're going to fix the single profile per copy problem. Won't buy it until then though.

So that's my opinion on the reality of the situation. As far as my take on whether the practice is correct or not:

I've reinstalled my most coveted games more than 3 times. This is after owning them for over a year or so though. Maybe they'll patch it in the future to allow unlimited installs? I guess that's my problem. It's only a maybe, which also means I may be screwed down the road.

I'm not so much turned off by this as much as the one account per cd-key issue, though. Just allow us more than one profile per copy, even if it is on one account, and I'll probably buy it! You can kiss my sweet ass though if you think I'm buying four copies for everyone in my household. I'll buy ONE copy, if and when this is resolved, although the 3 install rule will still leave a voice in the back of my head saying "you're gonna get screwed" when I go to buy it. I'm not willing to buy four copies, and I'm not willing to choose who gets the profile in my house, so I can't buy one either. Oh well.

Maybe this is a good thing (for me). I instead spent my money on Assassin's Creed and I'm freaking LOVING it. The roof jumping is crazy fun. I didn't think I'd like it, but I finally caved and gave it a chance when I found out I'm not buying Spore. All that time I could've been playing it... wasted :(

Achievements seem pretty easy to get too, although that could be bad for replay.

So these people bought the game... and their protesting to other people who already bought the game.

I don't see this working.

This is great, more game customers need to be aware of how they're getting screwed over.

Hey Guys! I just bought myself a new album! BUT WAIT- I can only listen to it on 3 different devices!

So.... piracy is contained to less than 1%?

This is great, I love that the gaming communitty has refused to just accept the heavy handed brute force of a major publisher. I am proud of my fellow gamers that they managed to organize a consumer protest and humiliate the largest publisher on the planet on one of the greatest flagship launches. As an industry professional it gives me great comfort and hope that gamers are willing and able to strike back at publishers who deliver low quality games with intrucive DRMs. The internet is a great liberator and vehicle for democracy. For those who complain that these "pirates" are hurting the developer, they are wrong. This only hurts EA the publisher, who gets the lions share of the profits from the game. The developers have already been paid, so they dont lose a dime. Last time I checked EA (or any developer) doesnt have a profit sharing scheme (a serious one anyways). I personally dont believe that 1 pirated copy = 1 lost sale. That is pure fantasy.