back to article EA in Spore DRM climbdown

Electronic Arts has taken its lumps over the past few weeks for its digital rights management (DRM) restrictions on Spore. Critics claim DRM limiting those who bought the hotly anticipated sim to only three installs amounts to no more than renting the software out, rather than selling it. DRM also prevented players from …

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  1. Pete Scott
    Heart

    Gamer's bill of rights

    After reading the gamer's bill of rights drafted by GPG and Stardock, I went out and bought a copy of "Sins of a Solar Empire" for £25. What a pleasent change of heart to own a game and not feel victimised for it.

    In future, I shall support more games that sign up to this bill. In fact, there should be a regulatory body that puts a stamp of approval for every title that does:

    "Games for Windows" - more like

    "Games for Customers"

  2. Jesse
    Stop

    Boycott EA not just for Spore

    I bought a copy of BF 2142 a while ago using their download installer. God was I an idiot.

    It wouldn't run (IMAGINE THAT!) because it couldn't --validate-- me using its mandatory computer Gestapo program. So I open a TT and get the usual guy from foreign country who doesn't want to help me; he wants to close a trouble ticket. I give him valid human information... he gives me cue cards in response, complete with questions I had already preemptively answered.

    Turns out that the web interface had TWO ways to register/activate an account and they are two different accounts although they appear (graphically) the same, and because I had never used the one system, I activated an account on the new system, but some other underlying shadow system still did not have the account. Being in software development, and also kind of smart too (hah, sorry!) I noticed it, went the unique and undocumented registration route and lo and behold it worked. I instantly realised it was a systems design problem that EA probably had no clue about.

    But it didn't matter to EA almost a year after the software was released, because they essentially didn't have to return people's money. They could drown out legitimate user problems with an Indian guy and cue cards. I hinted to the robot on the other end that I knew the problem and offered to explain it to him. Fuck if he cared, ticket closed.

    This is something everyone knew was coming, but people can't seem to organize and boycot all of (Insert bad company's) products, which is what it takes -- Not just bitching about DRM or Spore and then turning around and buying it.

  3. Mectron
    Flame

    EA still clueless

    Lowering DRM restriction is not good enough. Spore DRM have (once more) proven that DRM does not work and only punish legal user. Plus Censoring the Spore forum shnould be ground to punish EA with a huge fine to making treath to its own consumers.

    When to the goverments arround the world will put their pants on and declare DRM illegal, once and for all?

    Spore is good game who went bad because of illegal DRM. There is simply no use (legal or otherwise) for DRM (and securerom malware)

  4. theotherone
    Gates Horns

    another one

    just another company who grew too big and started to take it's customers for granted and shit on them .....

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Steam?

    There seems to be a relatively hassle-free way of policing game ownership -- Steam. I don't like it myself so I avoid games that use it but I know people who's got accounts and it seems to work just fine for them.

    The problem with things like SecureROM is that it screws with your system. That's not acceptable. No vendor should be allowed to modify any part of a user's system without their explicit consent (not some vague description buried in 15 pages of fine print but spelt out very clearly).

  6. Bob. Hitchen

    Fuck EA

    The moral of the story is wait for the pirated version. Those with a guilty conscience can always offer to pay EA .

  7. TJ
    Thumb Up

    Poor business model anyway

    Make the game free, Charge for online use. True, you can play single player for free, But most will want online play. After the recent report of the profit margins on WoW, The game could be 100% Free, and then charge a monthly for it . Best Gaming Business model ever. (This is of course, if the game doesn't suck, but I think that pretty much goes no matter what business model you use.)

    DRM aside, EA just used poor business sense on this one.

    As for the DRM, We've seen time and time again how well it doesn't work, And if it does, how long it takes to hack around it. This is something the industry cannot but still does run blind to. DRM isn't going away, but niether are we. And the ball is in the publishers court as to what to do about that.

  8. NT
    Flame

    Angry Internet Men?

    Sigmund Fraud said:

    << EA = 0 , Angry Internet Men = 1 >>

    And the score for Angry Internet Women?

    Well, someone had to say it. Sorry.

    But seriously, this whole thing hacks me right off - and particularly at the moment since I've been struggling to reinstall 'Superpower 2', a fairly old geopolitical simulator from Dreamcatcher. After far too much buggering about I've given up. I'd written to 'StarForce' - the company responsible for the atrocious DRM software on the disc, and they've offered to help IF I send them a log containing, as far as I can tell, every last detail of my computer and its configuration. The trouble is, it shouldn't be necessary for me to forward all that information to someone: I've paid for the game, and therefore I'm not a pirate, and therefore I should not be being treated like one. If I can find a cracked copy that I don't think is going to riddle my machine with malware then I'll download it (I have, after all, already bought the game so I don't consider that piracy). Why should I go hat-in-hand to some third-party company and beseech them for permission to use a game I've already paid for? It's time we saw the end of this 'licensing' scam: "oh, you might have paid a ridiculously inflated price for the game, but it's not actually YOURS - you can only use it if we say you can."

    F... rak you, then, quite honestly.

    But when I get paid next I'm going to buy Democracy 2 from Positech, because although it's not quite what I was after, it's the sort of game I enjoy. I liked the demo, and, above all, the writer is extending me the courtesy of assuming I'm *not* a pirate. There's no DRM and no other messing about. I pay him, I download the game, I play. As a result, I intend to give him money to pay him for the work he's done on the game. That's how it works. But from here on in, if these big firms want to treat me like scum then they can whistle for my money. From now on the copy protection is going to be the first thing I check before I buy a game - and if there's anything more than a serial code in the box or some similarly straightforward system, well, sorry, but no sale.

    Sorry. Bit on the Angry Internet side, there... :o)

  9. John

    As a lowly developer working in the games industry.

    I have NO problem with what EA are doing.

    Maybe it was too strong but to just eliminate copy protection completely is the wrong way to go too. Yes people may be able to download the software of the internet but what companies should be doing is requiring an active internet connection to a main server to play the game, that way they can check the serial of each game and if it's already in use they should flag it and disable that serial or maybe something a little more forgiving but this same principle.

    Piracy has already destroyed the music industry and will destroy the games, TV and movie industry if it's left unchecked. These products require huge investment (the last game I worked on cost over 10 million dollars) and the investor needs a return on his investment.

    Most 20 year olds download all their music now, and the bands make their money from touring (hence the huge increase in concert tickets) however that's not the case for these other industries.

  10. NT

    @ John

    << Piracy has already destroyed the music industry >>

    Which music industry would that be, then? Presumably it's not the music industry that's raking it in at the moment, but another music industry we're not so familiar with? I see no evidence that the movie industry is in any kind of trouble, and it's a fact (at least for the non-specialist) that DVDs aren't as easy to copy as VHS was. According to Wikipedia (yes, I know, but it's convenient), the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' trilogy as a whole cost $665 million and took $2.6 billion worldwide. Am I really supposed to believe that that's an industry in trouble?

    Yes, games cost millions to make. Yes, games are bloody expensive to buy. But, while I don't want to speak for the other commenters, I suspect the objection here isn't to copy protection as a concept, and I'm sure nobody here opposes the right of the manufacturers to make money from the sale of their games.

    What people are objecting to, I think quite understandably, is the presumption by the company that ALL its customers are criminals by default; and the fact - the *fact*, mark you - that DRM software does *not* prevent piracy. The *only* function of DRM is to inconvenience the legitimate buyer (or in my case, prevent them playing something they've paid for). As already noted above, pirates don't suffer the inconvenience, because they simply remove the copy protection and carry on without it.

    What you're advocating - requesting permission online every time you want to play - isn't 'a little more forgiving', as you put it: it's invasive and insidious. If I fork out £30-40 for a game, then I demand the right to play it when I choose, and uninstall it and reinstall it as many times as I choose. And sure, I'm not obliged to buy the game if I don't like the terms; but at the same time, if the games company doesn't want me playing it then they're not obliged to put the product up for sale in the first place.

    Piracy is an unavoidable aspect of technology. I mentioned Positech on my previous comment here: without wanting to seem as though I'm advertising the company, you might want to check out Cliff Harris' blog there: unlike the big companies he's actually taken the time to solicit views from pirates and asked them why they do it. Sure, there'll always be some who do it just because they're thieving scum - but his results seemed to indicate that companies' anti-piracy tactics actually end up being responsible for quite a lot of it.

  11. Mostor Astrakan
    Pirate

    As a counter-example...

    World of Warcraft has no DRM that I am aware of (please do educate me if I'm wrong). In fact, they suggest lending your CD to a friend if you want to give them a trial account. You get an account on their server, and that is what you pay for. As long as you keep your password secure, you're fine, Blizzard is satisfied that you have paid for your pleasure and everybody's happy.

    Copy protection went out of fashion some time in the seventies.

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