Spore's DRM and Mass Effect's DRM

Any thoughts on why people are so up in arms about Spore's DRM when it is the same as Mass Effect's and there wasn't the same reaction when Mass Effect was released?

 

Probably because Spore is a higher profile game compared to Mass Effect. Could also be that some people just had enough of that crap. Spore has an internet component that requires you to connect with EA in order to have access to other players' creations. People probably want to genuinely buy the game instead of pirating it and not having access to the net component. Also, RA3 will have the same DRM except it will have a 5 install limit instead of 3 due to the protest. Like that makes a big difference...

 

I agree that it's a higher profile game, since Mass Effect as previously released on Xbox, but I'm not sure if I get what you're trying to say otherwise, cos Mass Effect does the same kind of online authentication, just presumably not as frequently, since it's not constantly updating online.

 

Well, I've not been one to explain things well, but I'll try... Basically there are more people responding this time due to many factors culminating in a larger protest for the DRM in Spore. The major factors as far as I know are personal views on DRMs and continued distrust for Securom, experiences from BioShock and from Mass Effect, and Spore being aimed at a larger audience that has been hyped and marketed far more that the former 2 games, ergo higher profile.

There are those that didn't and still maybe don't care about the DRM being on Bioshock and Mass Effect since they are purely single player games. They lose nothing significant from obtaining pirated versions that remove the DRM. As for Spore, people are coining it as an MSO (Massively Single Online) game. What they mean by that is a lot of the content for the game comes from sharing with other players, and the only way to get that content easily is to connect to EA's Spore servers to d/l the content. You can't get on those servers without registering your game and you can't do that with a pirated version, which means you lose out on a significant part of the game.

So back to your original question, why Spore? I can't give you a factual answer since all I know is from what I've observed. People seem to want to buy the game and truely play it, but for the reasons above, they don't want to buy it with the DRM the way it is. Hope that explains what I tried say better. Best I can do.

 

Um, Bioware's forum was a ground zero bloodbath when the DRM for Mass Effect was announced; long-time fans were swearing off ever supporting another Bioware game, and many still haven't bought Mass Effect as a result of it. Run a search on even this forum, and you'll find a lot of strong opinions on the subject.

I'm one of those who isn't bothered by DRM.

 

@Prydeless: I see what you're saying. and I hadn't really thought of it that way.

I'm not really down with the install limit, I think that's rather dumb, but I'm cool with authenticating the game periodically.

Sidenote. I bought Spore. I like it.

 

Oh, another thing; the fan reaction to ME's DRM scheme was so passionate that Bioware canceled the online authentication, but kept the installation limit. Mass Effect does not "phone home", ever, except once during the initial install.

 

Didn't Bioware change that stuff prior to release?

Also ME's is as such: "with online authentication consumers now connect to the Internet the first time the game is launched and are required only to reconnect if they are downloading new game content." (from http://masseffect.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=629059&forum=125)

Which is essentially the same as Spore, you just download new content way more often with Spore.

I personally prefer the product phone home than have an install limit, but I bought both Mass Effect and Spore.

 

All this DRM crap is Bull****!

You know what was a good game? Yuri's Revenge!

Why?!

Because the game physically needed the CD to play required movies and songs. The game would simply crash or cause problems if you tried to make it run without the CD.

Game developers should just do that lol, or do something like Steam, which works very well IMO.

 

To be fair, whenever you install the game and have a net connection, it doesn't count against your 5 install limit. That sounds much more reasonable. I agree it is still a matter of concern on the offchance their servers are taken down in the future, but if that were the case I'd hope they'd patch games that required this sort of authentication so that the limit no longer applied at all.

 

I am a bit worried - I've been cycling through notebooks trying to find the right one. I think I have installed ME, Bioshock and Spore 2x already (actually ME is 3).

Too bad the un-install does not de-register...

 

Has anyone called EA to grovel for another install?

I know MS is great. I've activated XP Pro x64 and Office 2007 many times (only ever on one PC at a time).

 

Could always call and see what happens. Record it and post it too if you want