It turns out Electronic Art’s Spore has some digital rights management (DRM) under the hood that’s irking a few video game players. We use the term “few” lightly, as game players use their voices to be heard and let them ring loud! Taking a gander at Amazon.com’s listing of Spore and you’ll see 797 customer reviews with an average rating of 1-star.
What’s the problem with the DRM? It’s almost easier to ask what isn’t the problem with the DRM in Spore. First, it’s intrusive, install Spore more than three times and you’ll have to call Electronic Arts to have them re-activate the game. Are we renting games now?
To re-activate your game with one more additional install will require you to give proof of purchase, so the comments say and, pretty much, you’re assumed to be pirating the product immediately. That might be over-reacting, a bit, but not really much considering the limitations on the product.
What if the DRM solution goes wrong? What if the game cannot access the Internet upon installation? There are plenty of what-if scenarios one can play out when they find their precious $50.00 game is phoning home to protect itself from you and your habits.
“This caused EA to remove the requirement that the game authenticate online every ten days, changing it to authentication whenever new content was added to the title. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be enough, and the limit on installations is what gamers are now finding most heinous. Review-bombing Amazon is a particularly nasty way of getting the point across as well; casual gamers who aren’t aware of this campaign may not bother to read the content of the reviews and only assume the game isn’t very good.” (arstechnica)
No doubt all the negative press will result in a full on revolt, having gamers who’ve not purchased the title ding it with a 1-star to prove a point, why not? How else shall we fight “the man” and their unholy DRM solutions.
Oddly enough, you can find the game pirated already across the Internet, what has this proven? The game was found on torrent sites before it’s release, already cracked. It’s said they’re using a Sony DRM solution, a known DRM solution, which means hackers whom have already cracked this protection before had it un-shelled in a matter of hours.
What did the DRM get Electronic Arts but a PR nightmare and a bunch of people stealing it off the Internet now that they know it’s already available? Lot’s of publicity for very little gain; imagine the reviews and comments had they chosen to go without a DRM solution and be a pioneer of future technological solutions.Sure, it would be on a torrent site within hours… but it was anyway.
Great podcast! Talk about information overload. I learned a lot, but liked it anyway.
CyberPunk 2077 looks pretty awesome, but now that you guys all gave it the seal of approval I’m extra psyched. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X2kIfS6fb8
Thanks for the heads up about the free trial of Unreal Champions. That offer was extended through this weekend so there’s still time to pick it up on Steam. It is a ton of fun. plus cool NIN music.
Keep up the good work, cyberpunks.
HI guys.
Thanks a lot for this huge episode! was a little bit work to listen to it, but was very informative 🙂
I want to look at all the shows from every single publisher and figure out, which game i will spectate (is this the right word?). I pre-ordered BF5, becausei want to play it with my friends. In addition i will pre-order Kingdom Hearts 3. My friends want me to pre order Cyberpunk as well, but i did not even play Witcher 3 to know if i like the engine and graphics .. but i love cyberpunk / steampunk 🙂 …. let´s see …i will have some months before the games come out 🙂
My friends also backed this Star Citizen game 2 years ago …. so their decisions are not always the best ones 😀
So, thanks again for this huge work on this episode 🙂
Your loyal listener,
Ralf