Spore DRM

[kane_magus]

It's a bit sad that Spore is getting savagely raped in complaints over something that has little to do with the actual game itself.

Then again, given the big flap over Mass Effect not too long ago, by doing pretty much the exact same thing all over again with Spore, EA is bringing all this on themselves.

When are devs (or, more appropriately, publishers) going to wise up and finally learn that this kind of crap does jack and shit to stop pirates and does everything to harm consumers of their products, either driving them toward piracy in order to find a means to play the broken game that they bought, or simply driving them away from their future products altogether?

Well, at any rate, it didn't stop me from pre-ordering Spore (my copy should be here by tomorrow, hopefully), and I'm personally not as militantly opposed to all of this as many others seem to be, but I can certainly see why they're so pissed off over this and are refusing to buy the game outright.

As for the comments regarding the gameplay itself, I can't really say anything about that given that I haven't played the game yet. We'll see come tomorrow, but I have a feeling that, at least as far as I'm concerned, it won't be as bad as many are making it seem.

Comments

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

I consider the DRM to be part of the game itself in all cases. It's a "feature" like any other, just not one with the customer's best interest in mind. So draconian DRM is well worth raping a game's score in my books.

Slashdotters had reported on Mass Effect and Spore having the same BS in them a while back, and more or less predicted this kind of response. EA has only themselves to blame, and while it would be a shame to see a good game die because of the DRM - perhaps they'll learn if enough of their games tank like that.... or they'll do what the music industry does and blame all the losses on piracy and fight for more draconian laws that do not address the problem.

It's things like this with DRM (the state DRM has risen to anyway) and the pure cost of keeping a computer upgraded sufficiently to play the l33t awesome current PC games that turned me off of buying PC games altogether. The hardware side for the current releases, and the crippling DRM for getting them years later when bargain bin computers become fast enough to play them.

Last game I bought I believe was CivII Gold. I don't even recall what kind of DRM it has, although it was probably one of the games that required the disc in the drive. At least it didn't require some stupid online activation.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

The only thing I don't really agree with is the idea that the DRM is actually a part of the game itself. To me, it's just third-party malware that happens to share the same disc as the game. The game itself doesn't require the DRM to run, as evidenced by the fact that hackers are able to crack and remove the DRM and the game apparently still runs fine after that, for the most part. In any case, yeah, it's still worth raping the game's score, since it's not really feasible to separate the two in any meaningful way (without hacking, of course), but I still find it sad that the an otherwise potentially good game is being dragged into the toilet over shitty, pointless, ineffectual DRM.

But aside from that slight bit of semantics, I mostly agree otherwise.

[alessar.livejournal.com]

Not too surprised, though I thought after the initial lashout at the DRM they backed off. Oh wait, originally it was going to require a weekly PhoneHome to keep running, wasn't it? But I thought they were going to at least allow 5 installs of it.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

Three installs... five installs... any number of installs that is less than infinity is too few, in my book. I don't foresee reaching the three activation limit any time soon, but when I do, I'll likely just look for a crack somewhere rather than waste my time trying to contact EA to beg "just one more activation" out of them. You know, the thing that this DRM is supposed to try to prevent? Yeah, good job on that one, EA.

[alessar.livejournal.com]

I'm just with Stardock on this... it's infringement on consumer rights. If I were married urban professional guy, I'd want an install on: my den pc, the kids pc downstairs, my work laptop, my home laptop, and I'd also want to be able to wipe the windows OS and re-install clean every 6-9 months.

The no revocation thing for installs is really unreasonable.

[korby.livejournal.com]

I got my copy today. Not sure if I want to install now it since I'm leaning towards getting a new computer in the next few months.

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

Now now, that's just delaying the inevitable unlocking of the unadvertised bonus stage - the telephone call with EA customer support. (If it's like bioshock, I suspect it'll be by far the hardest stage in the game, but if you complete it you may receive a free activation.)

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

I hear that level's a real bitch. When I get that far I'll probably just input the super-awesome cheat code (i.e. "Visit Google. Search for 'Spore crack'") and get as many activations as I want, and just skip that level altogether. I know some people don't like to use cheats though as it supposedly takes all the fun out of the game.