Spore Failure
Sep/089
Author: ted
body by satan!
Spore was released, and it failed.
In case you don’t know about the game:
Spore is a multi-genre “massively single-player online game” developed by Maxis and designed by Will Wright. It allows a player to control the evolution of a species from its beginnings as a unicellular organism, through development as an intelligent and social creature, to interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture. It has drawn wide attention for its massive scope, and its use of open-ended gameplay and procedural generation. (Wikipedia)
Sounds cool, right? Wrong.
The developer, Electronic Arts (EA), put something called DRM on it. DRM is “digital rights management.” It’s the same thing that iTunes uses for the songs you buy from them- you can only install it on a certain number of computers. So basically you’re renting the game, you don’t have full ownership of it. You can only install Spore 3 times. If you want to install it more, you have to buy more cd keys.
Excuse me, but I like to think that when I lay down $50 on a video game, I can actually own it.
Bad move on EA’s part- anyone with a developed mind immediately torrented the game for free. As of September 13, the game has been stolen over 500,000 times according to TorrentFreak. If you multiply 500,000 by $50 (price of the game,) the fact that the game uses DRM has cost EA about $25,000,000.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is beyond fail.
But it is a win for us free-thinking citizens.
This shows the world that DRM does not work. Hopefully, media developers will see this, and stop putting gay restrictions on the digital content that you buy. Another step in the right direction for proper media content management, if the media developers catch on.
Help fight DRM by getting Spore here. If you need help installing, read the instructions.
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12:08 pm on September 20th, 2008
Yah fuck spore and fuck EA!! Noone should put up with DRM.
7:44 am on September 30th, 2008
lol @ EA. they need a wake up call. retards.
10:03 am on October 28th, 2008
What an completely irrational text. You draw far too many conclusions. Firstly, you say that it was pirated 500k times. That’s fine. The problem is that approximately EVERY SINGLE NEW GAME released gets pirated, the only difference is the amount. If it DIDN’T have DRM, it would still be pirated a lot, since it was a big release and people had been waiting for it. Thus, the $25M you say EA lost, is FAR from correct… Secondly: “…gay restrictions on the digital content that you buy.” You just gave away any respect i might have had for you. Seriously, learn to write.
2:55 pm on October 28th, 2008
@ Sighs
We don’t work for your respect. We say what we want.
$25 million is correct- not necessarily money that they “lost,” but money that they didn’t make. If the game was DRM free and maybe even costed less, I think it’s safe to say that they would have gotten a buttload more money.
And what are computer testers supposed to do about benchmarking if the game is addressed to their system already? Buy it again for numerous component configurations?
Google “spore DRM” and I bet you anything you’ll find tons of articles bashing the DRM on spore. It’s a big deal.
4:07 pm on November 21st, 2008
i agree wuth mister writer
6:09 pm on April 21st, 2009
Actually theres going to be an expansion coming out in 2 months, it probably will no longer fail.
6:04 pm on June 13th, 2009
Don’t complain about how you can only install it 3 times, the amount of pirates already proved the irresponsibility we have with the internet and so we deserve it.
2:14 pm on October 12th, 2009
Ya Anon, so that gives them the right to punish the honest paying customers? That makes a lot of sense.
“The pirates are irresponsible! Let’s punish the people who buy our game! That will show em!”
6:07 pm on December 9th, 2009
I loled at the fact that Sighs apparently thinks using the word gay makes you a bad writer.