EA strikes out with Spore DRM
Spore was quite possibly one of the most anticipated titles due for release this year, with gamers the world over descending on stockists like a pack of hungry hounds on the day of release. All was not fine in the world of Spore, however.Most, if not all, gamers know of DRM, or Digital Rights Management. DRM has been a touchy subject for quite a while now – and many people will remember the Sony BGM debacle from a few years back. Well, this year EA () – in an attempt not to learn from others’ mistakes – walked into the same wall.
The stated function of DRM has always been to curb piracy, but in this case it seems to be having the opposite effect, as EA’s heavy-handed tactics drove users away from purchasing legal copies of the game – despite receiving good reviews on Amazon, the game scored a ton of single-star scores, the reason almost always being the DRM. And at the moment, Spore is possibly the most pirated game around. Within 2 weeks, various Torrent sites reported a combined total of over 500,000 downloads of the game, with the game’s copy protection being cracked by the day after release.
The issue most users had was with the fact that Spore could only be installed on 3 computers, and required online authentification. This was the start; however, EA now face a from users who claim that the installation of the game installs a second “undisclosed program” – SecuROM – without disclosure or warning – which cannot be uninstalled even when the game is unistalled.
EA has since relaxed its policy somewhat, increasing the number of computers that can run the game from 3 to 5, after drawing a lot of criticism from legitimate users who said that they are “being made to feel like thieves” or feeling that they “are effectively renting the software from EA” after paying full price for it. Pirate Bay, one of the biggest torrent sites in the world, had users urging everybody to download the game and give EA a wake-up call.
But it might just be a little too late.
September 15, 2008 7:21 am 
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