I sympathise, but the PC developers HAVE to get their act together on this. Perhaps it's time that everyone bit the bullet and used Steam.

BritBloke916

@BTFzor_Freestyle:
You mean make it asplode twice, because you only get 3 installs. And you don't have to go that far, simply switch out a major piece of hardware, like a video card or processor, and you will have to use up a Spore 'activation' (installation).

BigWyrm

"Donald Ronald Sop...DRM for short, is an incredibly stupid creature that hsould be wiped from the face of the earth"

i actually LoL'ed

Badassiousness

Man, this is such a great protest by the people who already bought the game. Remember: when dealing with commercial companies you vote with your wallet, not your voice.

YamiNoSenshi

makes me happy

fonfa

Far more creative than people who just jump on a forum and whine or creating penis protest monsters

Blazinfire0

Haha... that makes me happy =)

greyhoundbus

You know I have a bad tendancy to add (pig) latin to my spore creations... just an aside.

Anyway I've already bought the damn game so the only thing I can really do is not do something stupid and make my computer explode 6 times.

BTFzor_Freestyle

lol. they need to remove the drm immediately, just like bioshock.

Grumpz®

I wonder how much more people possibly need to bitch about something that doesn't even effect them.

Jesus CHRIST just shut the hell up already. How much do you people complain about things that are actually important in life? Not too much I'm betting.

mva5580

@AndrewG009: Hm, or, they could take the Stardock route and remove the DRM.

Ashkihyena

Do people really need 3 install's to tell how disappointing this game is?

DiscoBeard

I have yet to see someone show any evidence of how Game-DRM fights piracy. In the case of Spore it was cracked, released, and torrented days before it was even released to retail.

How useful was DRM again?

DRM only pisses off the legitimate users who buy the game, they get the DRM and have to deal with it. The pirates just download a cracked copy with no DRM attached. A 10 year old could porbably tell which is the better option.

I bought mine, I faced the DRM. I'm not buying this sort of crap again.

Acklan

@BritBloke916: Not a bad solution.

I disagree that the DRM was the best of all the solutions possible, but piracy makes it necessary. Granted, EA could stand to lose a few bucks, but all the same being able to only install in on 3 machines, and forcing everyone to buy an individual copy, even in the same household or circle of friends falls in the category of just plain asinine.

AndrewG009

I'm for cretive expression. However, this is like... Using nudie pictures to protest pornography. By paying and using Spore, even to protest Spore, your just another "satisfied" customer. That is to say, EA is satisfied with your money. But I don't want to stop expressions like this, just realize this is about as effective a protest as graffiti.

AllegraStreit

Yes, this makes me happy.

Spiderkid

@Acklan: The DRM isn't to fight piracy. Honestly, they can't do anything about the pirates, they'll get it either way and wouldn't have bought it in the first place. It's to prevent second-hand sales, which actually do cost EA.

Kirbysuperstar

@mva5580: Yes it does effect people. DRM effectively turns a game into a $50 rental.

If nobody complained, it would never be changed. So how about you stfu instead.

kojirodensetsu

@mva5580: I paid for $50 for a game I can only install 3 times, have 1 person play, and have background programs installed on my competer with.

seems to affect a lot of people.

Grumpz®

I still dont understand why DRM is such a hassle that people hate on it...

People always make metaphors of how it hinders the normal buyer from getting what they want, yet I have not heard exactly what it is keeping you from playing.

NeonLight

@NeonLight:
5 years down the line when you feel like replaying Spore, you'll feel a pain in your arsehole that's why.

_Hayko

@AllegraStreit: You can download the trial version of the Spore Creature Creator for free and upload your creatures to the site with that. So, these protesters aren't necessarily paying for Spore.

AppleJax

@NeonLight: DRM systems like SecureRom have to operate at a low OS level in order to defeat things like virtual DVD drives, and the result of messing around with the guts of your OS in the wild is that, for a not insignificant number of users, the DRM either breaks your system or breaks the game.

So, the reason people hate on obstrusive DRM is that the pirates defeat it instantly (so it doesn't do what it's supposed to do) and legitimate, non-technical users can't even run the game they paid 50 bucks for.

And you can't return PC software. So if it doesn't work, you're either out 50 bucks, or you're put in the position of illegally circumventing the copy protection in order to use your legal copy.

And, after massive outcry after outcry from the gaming community, and ample evidence that hardass DRM doesn't reduce piracy, gaming companies keep using it because pointy-haired-boss-types can't stomach the idea of their multimillion-dollar game out there in the wild with no protection at all.

And the consumer suffers. Wouldn't you hate, too, if the company's desire to treat paying customers like criminals left you down 50 bucks with nothing to show for it?

crashfrog

@NeonLight: While I haven't had any problems with it myself, and it certainly won't stop me from purchasing Red Alert 3 or any other game I want (Mass Effect), you have to admit it's rather pointless and ridiculous. I'm not about to grab my pitch fork and start protesting outside EA's offices but I certainly won't criticize people who are taking a stand and voicing their opinions.

Đipic

@mva5580:

I wonder how much more people possibly need to bitch about something that doesn't even effect them. -mva5580

Hey look kettle, it's the pot!

doubtful

I'm not surprised at all that the DRM issue is going on they really need to just get rid of it all together. But this being EA I highly doubt that they will get rid of it. Hell even if they would release a revoke tool like they did with Bioshock that would take some of the flame out of the firestorm.

Retorrent

EA does not care they have the money you paid for spore.

Lombax

@AndrewG009: Your argument holds water only if the DRM actually stops pirates. It doesn't. Spore was cracked and torrented a week before release! So the only people hurt by DRM are the legit, honest consumers. Do you want to count up how much time you've spent entering a 24-character serial number into various software? Let's not even mention Windows activation... I've spent too many hours arguing with "activation specialists" that my PAID FOR AND ONLY INSTALLED ON ONE COMPUTER copy of Windows XP is legit, and I was simply unfortunate enough to change my hardware that mysterious nth amount.

DarkWolf7

That's an actually pretty cool looking creature. I think that I'd abduct one for my private garden.

Talleh

I wish people would see the irony in complaining about people's complaining, telling them to complain about something that matters. (Or complaining about people complaining about people complaining, in my case.)

Dadu

I'd really like to get an EA insider's perspective on exactly why they use DRM the way that they do. It can't be to fight Piracy.
EA may be incompetent, but they aren't stupid.
I think that their real goal is to get a few more purchases out of the people who pay money for the game.

I wrote an essay about this last week that I hope some of you might enjoy.
[www.intellectualdetritus.com]

FunPaul

@NeonLight: Not on this game, but related to DRM in general. I was in a Hollywood video store, renting some movies. The line was held up by a lady who was having trouble with a DVD movie, it wouldn't play on her Blu-ray machine. The movie was playing fine in the store's DVD player. The clerk was throwing out some crap about "Well, I don't think you can play a DVD in a Blu-ray player." To which, she pointed out that Blu-ray machines play DVDs as well. I then asked if it was a Sony Pictures movie, because several had been released with DRM issues around that time. Sure enough, it was "The Pursuit of Happyness", a Sony Pictures release.

In this case, DRM erronously decided that the lady's player (which was a Sony player, BTW) was not looking at an authorized copy of the movie and that she was a pirate or other unsavory person, and thus not allowed to watch a movie she has legitimately rented on a player she had legally purchased.

DRM is not meant to protect the rights of the consumer. It is meant to restrict or deny your rights as a consumer and hand as much control as possible to the media giants, even if it surpasses the legal limits of their rights.

LordSkippy

Brilliant. I love it. Kind of like the opposite of how I feel about EA and their ball-sucking DRM... which is hatred and a yearning for its destruction.

Mikit0707

I think its a great idea :)

The consumer is showing their strong dislike(hatred) for the DRM shipped with some of these games, and its up to EA, who is listening to shareholders who know squat, to listen to the consumer.

Ranged360

@Acklan: @DarkWolf7: You are assuming that DRM is designed to stop ALL pirates, or that they were targetting torrents to begin with. They were not. Not even a little bit. There are generally 3 groups of people out there that game publishers recognize:

1) People who will buy the game.
2) People who will pirate the game.
3) People who might buy the game if motivated to.

Groups 1 and 2 are irrelevant to this discussion because you already know what they will do. EVERYONE who torrents the game is part of group 2. They are IRRELEVANT to the DRM discussion, and absolutely do not count. Game publishers know that there is virtually no way to stop this group, and they are not the intended target.

Group 3 is the only group for which DRM matters. This group might pirate the game if its convenient. They may not bother with the game. Or, they may convert to buying it if presented with the appropriate mix of carrots and sticks. All advertising is targeted towards this group and ALL DRM is also targeted towards this group. See how game publishers spend a TON of money on this group? They are the only group for which marketing and DRM matter to begin with, because they are the only ones who can be 'converted' into customers. You are already getting group 1's money. You are already NOT getting group 3's money.

DRM is mean to stop casual users, who might pirate a game if its easy enough, but won't research it much further than that. This group is larger than you think! Large enough that spending millions on advertising and DRM makes a huge difference to the bottom line. The reason you people don't know this is because you like to convince yourselves that DRM serves no purpose without first knowing what DRM is even meant to do.

People think "oh, everyone I know uses bittorrent, blah blah blah." Guess what? your circle of friends is a very narrow slice of the population. There is still a large population of individuals who will not torrent the game due to lack of technical skill, distrust of the internet, moral reasons, etc, but might 'borrow' a copy from a friend, which has a much lower technological threshold.

ludwigk

What a great idea! I'll be sure to download this creature and search for others. =) They should hopefully show up in the creature and tribal stages.

Spore's first 4 stages are great fun. However, I'm not sure what's worse...stage 5 (space) or the DRM. Clearly the DRM, but that space stage is the most broken game I've played in years.

BigDragon

@ludwigk: I'm in the third group. And you know what? DRM is the reason why I decided not to buy, as was the case with Mass Effect. And I think a great portion of the gaming population knows about DRM and may take my position.
I am educating all people I know who might buy the game and their reaction once they know what DRM is for and how it works usually turns like "Then I'm not buying that".

DRM is bad, and is only working because people don't know about it. A bit of education would bring this system down.
In the long term people will realize that they can't install more than three times and the will stop buying games. That will not hurt gamers or owners, but the whole industry.

EloraHRanma

So, in general, this just means DRM is a bad way to "stop" piracy. Sure I downloaded it, to see it, but I knew it wasn't my type of game. I would have been a complete dumb ass to buy something I know I won't enjoy.

GodKiller0

@ludwigk: Wrong. Sorry. Age old DRM that prevents a person from just burning a copy of a game disc + a key generally keep the honest people honest. But hey you keep believing that until you get burned when some company decides to blacklist your video card because someone once used one to watch a pirated video. BTW, I have a job, thank you, and I pay for honest copies of games that I find are actually worth paying for--don't assume that because I speak against DRM that I'm some shady pirate. When I buy something, I Want to own it, including the ability to install something 100 billion times if I want to, or even *gasp* sell it to someone else. For example, I own a paid for copy of X-Wing Alliance that I have installed and reinstalled at least a dozen times because I honestly like the game that much, and any time I've migrated systems for whatever reason, it always ends up on there.

If EA had released that, I would have had to buy it over at least 4-5 times by now.

DarkWolf7

Like others have said - nice, but this proves they bought it, so what does EA care if they don't like it?

Now that they're published, I guess these people will lose their accounts and have to buy it all over again!

fuchikoma

I feel compelled to point out, again, that piracy does not make things like DRM "Necessary." It took Pirates less then a DAY TO CRACK THE DRM. They had the game cracked BEFORE IT WAS EVEN TECHNICALLY RELEASED (pre-downloaded).

It isn't making things 'harder' on pirates. They are bypassing it with almost zzzzzzerrrrro difficulty.

It isn't necessary, it isn't even working. So either they're so grossly incompetent that they're closing their eyes, sticking fingers in their ears, and screaming "Lah lah lah lah lah nobody can pirate my game now!" or there are other, less-consumer friendly motives.

Personally, creating a system that forces a computer-illiterate to buy a new game after 3 installs sounds the more likely reason then to protect the game from a group that's notorious for bypassing all forms of Copy Protection with minimal effort.

Evdor

@AndrewG009: It's pretty clear at this point that DRM is nothing to do with piracy. Piracy happens irrespective of DRM.

@mva5580: Doesn't affect them? Are you seriously suggesting that or just trolling? If you really are being serious then I suggest you read up a bit more on the adverse affects various DRM schemes have inflicted on legitimate users.

MattB

@BTFzor_Freestyle: Biggus Dickus phallusus?

Grive

DRM has been removed before on a number of titles.

I want to get Spore, but I can wait.

PurdueMEB

Instead of wasting my time protesting something that's been in at least a half-dozen other games I've owned, I'm actually just playing Spore. And having a blast.

Strangelove

@Strangelove:

To qualify that statement: I'm not happy with the DRM, but I'll be damned if I'm not going to play fucking Spore because of it.

Strangelove

@Strangelove: Well, you might not be able to play Spore because of it. The DRM may simply break on your computer, rendering your copy unusable.

I had problems with the creature creator, and it took a while to track down the incompatibilities; Mass Effect never could run stably on my PC, despite ample system resources.

So I'm just not willing to take a gamble on Spore at this time. In a while, when the DRM comes out (and the price goes down) then I'll give it a shot. In the meantime, back to playing through Mass Effect one half-hour at a time.

crashfrog

I like to think of it like this, I've installed/deleted Diablo II from my computer probably 8 or 9 times since the game was released 8 years ago (whether for space or whatever). My problem is with EA's draconian DRM, they are effectively removing my ability to control what I want on my hard drive. Now I have to seriously think about deleting 5+GBs of data, since I may not be able to get it to work later on.

If more games/programs come out with this type of crap on it, then it is going to create a serious problem for consumers since they won't be able to properly manage their hard drives.

rabidkeebler

I usually delete games i'm not regularly playing, only to install them later when i get the craving to play it.

And seriously. Just found out that i need to reformat my computer. Spent the last 12 hours looking for a solution for a virus which doesn't seem to exist.
If I didn't resist the urge to buy spore, yeah, I would be kind of screwed.

fonfa

@ EloraHRanma...I'm in the same boat as you. I want to play Spore and I want to play Mass Effect...just not with a DRM on them.

I don't think DRM has anything to do with piracy..it's just their excuse, but they know it does nothing. DRM is to kill the second hand market. A couple years ago I would pay premium prices for games...now I'm too busy to play that much - so I don't pay over $30.

That being the case, I buy used - often from people that I know. But I can't buy a used copy of Mass Effect or Spore now can I? So publishers think they have their greedy little paws on me and my $50...well F them, I don't need to play the game.

DRM is to stop 2nd hand sales, and maybe it makes a few 2nd hand buyers pay premium prices...but not me.

smber2c

@crashfrog:

No, I'm actually playing it with no problems at all.

Strangelove

@Strangelove: Well, that's good for you, I guess; I'm just not willing to take a 50 dollar gamble on a game I suspect is going to have problems.

crashfrog

The DRM on this game isn't even NECESSARY. You're missing out on a lot of the fun (creatures from all around the internets) if you don't have a valid license.

I got around this kinda sneakily. I torrented the game the day I found out about it, decided it was awesome, and purchased it from directtodrive or whatever its called. This gives me a valid cd key, and a license for the game.

No harm done, except the needless DRM, which , along with EA, can go get stuffed for all i care.

Karunamon

To quote a newspaper:
To prevent piracy the publisher should hobble the pirated version; not the legal one. Different words, but that was the essence of it.

What are EA doing? They're seeing how many of the customers rights they can nag away at before they get a legal boot.

Melonfodder