Ready to 
Spore is “Most Pirated Game of 2008,” proving worthlessness of DRM.
Brian Ambrozy
December 4, 2008 6:30 PM ET in Gaming
Spore, now with more DRM
The SecuROM DRM (Digital Rights Management) of the hotly anticipated Will Wright ‘everything’ game Spore was discussed almost as much as the game itself in the months leading up to release day. Defended by EA as necessary to combat piracy, and placing the burden and annoyance of activation/registration and lots of tech support squarely on the legitimate buyers of the game, the SecuROM systems seems really only to punish those who actually give their money to EA instead of pirates.
To further drive the point home, many people pirated Spore just on principle – to send a message to EA that draconian and buggy DRM is not the way to solve piracy. The results of this campaign are in: Spore was the most highly pirated game of 2008 according to Torrentfreak.
I purchased Spore just a few days ago for my son. He’s nine years old. He knows how to install games, and has successfully installed several games on his own, including Valve’s Team Fortress 2, Bioware’s Knights of the Old Republic, and EA’s own Sims 2. He’s computer saavy.
He couldn’t install Spore. First, he was asked to make an EA Games account. Then he had to link it to his Spore.com account. There were problems galore, it gave some kind of permissions error, told him he had installed the game too many times, and refused to let him get an account to play online. In tears, he ended up coming to me for tech support (I discourage this – I make them suffer through PC doldrums on their own until they’re REALLY stuck.)
Dad to the rescue, most of the time. But not here – I now have an open trouble ticket with EA Games because neither a 31 year old career IT guy nor his tech saavy 9 year old son could install their stupid game to work online. It’s offline only for now.
Don’t get me wrong – he’s having fun right now, but he’s having it offline. No online Spore for him, not until we hear back from EA.
Point being – I’m positive this debacle is related to SecuROM. I paid for the game, but I hated every cent of it. I know my money is supporting this idiotic scheme devised by corporate committees who are totally clueless.
Congrats on the award, EA. You’ve earned it.
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