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Spore. Ah, Spore. I’ve been looking forward to the game for a while. It’s an intriguing concept: a game where you create and evolve a creature into a whole race of creatures, from a single-celled organism all the way up to a space-faring race, with complete creative control. Sounds like fun, right? If you’ve clicked the link, you may have already noticed that it only received one star on Amazon.com. With such a cool premise, why is it rated so badly? Was it poorly executed? Not from what I’ve heard. No, it’s another problem altogether.
Sadly, Spore is saddled with some pretty restrictive DRM. In short, it allows you to install the game three times, ever. Period. Want to install it a fourth time? Buy a new copy and throw out your old one, because it’s a coaster now (or a Frisbee, if you prefer). Want to get one of your installs back by uninstalling? You can’t. Sorry. Why did EA do this? Ostensibly, they did it to prevent piracy. The thing is, this game showed up on BitTorrent sites before it was even released, so apparently it didn’t even fulfill its purpose. This means that those who want to pirate the game can, with very little effort on their part, while those who buy the game legitimately are treated to a heavy-handed reminder that EA doesn’t trust its customers. EA has effectively just alienated the entire hard-core gaming market. Those people who upgrade their PCs every six months to a year? Yeah, they might have bought the game. They won’t now, because eighteen months down the line they won’t be able to play the game they bought anymore.
It really baffles me. EA had to know that this wouldn’t really do anything to prevent piracy, because Mass Effect had the exact same DRM, and it’s been pirated plenty. With that in mind, wouldn’t it have made more sense to put a simple disc check on the game, save money licensing the DRM, and sell more copies? It seems simple.
In the end, I’m faced with a decision, as are many others who want this game but don’t want to deal with the DRM. Either I buy the game and get treated like a criminal, or I pirate the game and I’m not. On the one hand, I want to support Maxis for making such an interesting and innovative game. On the other hand, I want to send a clear message to EA that this kind of DRM is not okay with me, and the clearest way to talk to a giant corporate entity like that is with your dollars. What does everyone else think?
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I’m a little late to the comment party, but still get to be first!
What to do about Spore, you ask? Simple, don’t buy it. Not just for the DRM, but also for the lackluster gameplay. I just bought a new laptop for gaming and thought that I should get a latest/greatest video game, so I picked up Spore. In addition to finding out about the DRM (boo!) I have become considerably underwhelmed by the gameplay. The first little bit of swimming through the tide pools and creature building were fine, but everything just feels too……”dumbed down?” Also, I hate that while you have a large selection of parts when creating critters, you better only choose the better ones, if you plan on being able to sing/dance/fight/etc effectively. To be fair, I haven’t done much in the later stages of the game yet, so I should give it another shot, but at this point I’d say just buy the creature creator and/or play Civilization 28, or whatever number they’re up to.
See, I’ve been hearing this a lot. I think that EA really shot themselves in the foot with Spore. If not for the DRM, a lot of people would have bought into the hype and just gone out and purchased it on day one or before. The DRM made lots of people gunshy, though, which gave them some time to read reviews and opinions around the Interwebs, and those opinions have, I think, had an overall negative effect on people’s opinions of the gameplay in general. The way I figure it, if I get it for Christmas, great. If it drops in price, maybe I’ll pick it up. But for right now, I simply don’t have the desire to play it that I once did. Are you listening, EA? You may have just lost a sale.