Spore Questions

S

saturninus

CAGiversary!
I have heard that Spore will only install three times and then you must call EA technical support. Do you think EA will do away with this after a while the same way the people who Bioshock did?

Secondly, I'm not going to pay fifty bucks for something that has DRM and supposedly an invasive rootkit. As a matter of fact, if this second is true then I might skip this game altogether. But how long do you think it will take to get the price down to at least $40?
 
As of lately, it doesn't look like EA plans to do away with the DRM.

Here's an interesting article I found:

Piracy rampant on Spore. DRM fails

Category: PC, Posted: 09/14/2008 at 06:37PM CDT by Frank Ling, Editorial Director

sporepirate1221434513.jpg


Ironies of ironies. It seems that Spore has been downloaded, illegally, over an estimated 500,000 times on BitTorrent, which puts Spore on track as becoming the most illegally downloaded game in history.

We pause as everyone catches their breath from laughing and making rude noises.

EA decided to put SecuROM, an anti-pirating routine, on Spore in an attempt to prevent piracy. Immediate reaction from gamers was overwhelming at Amazon.com, where the game received 2,016 1-star ratings (the lowest score) out of 2,216 reviews. Among other things, gamers balked at the 3-limit installation of the on their PCs.

Although the PC community has given a big two thumbs down on the DRM placed on Spore, EA is turning a deaf ear to the complaints. Mariam Sughayer, corporate communications manager at EA, said that since less than 25% of PC users install games more than once, and that less than 1% tries to install their games more than three times, there is no reason to change policy.

You wouldn't know it from the complaints found on Amazon.com, and all the illegal downloads of the game.

Does DRM work to prevent piracy? In the case of Spore, it seems to have made the practice more popular. It is evident that publishers need to protect their games, but over restrictive DRMs is not the answer. If anything, it has caused a backlash of major proportions through illegal downloads.

If EA decides to change their DRM policy on Spore, they still may be able to make a few bucks before most of their sales disappear to pirates.

[via efluxmedia & Washington Post]
 
I'm not sure this sort of DRM was made to combat bit torrent users, I think it was more meant to combat people giving the disc to their friends and installing it on multiple computers.

Seriously though, this has so much online content, its completely worth buying it.
 
Esentially this kind of DRM punishes those who actually buy the game. I believe those that have pirated that game aren't too worried about these DRM issues.

I ran into some DRM issues with World In Conflict after purchasing it on Ebay. I can only play the single player because the disc key can only be associated with one email address and can never be changed. I'm ok with that, but I haven't played the single player because I know I can't move onto the multi-player. Why would this matter to anyone? Because when World In Conflict 2 comes out I won't have the urge to buy it.
 
All publishers hate the secondary resale market. Steam does an excellent job of eliminating it; EA's DRM...not so much. I wonder if used games will go the way of the dodo by the next console cycle.

Spore's DRM is just the first of many salvos against people reselling games or installing/using them on multiple machines.
 
If EA doesn't plan to at least do away with the three install limit then unfortunately they have lost a customer.
 
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