Spore: DRM causing mass pirating?

I totally agree with you. If stores are trying to charge $120-150 for a video game then by all means pirate it. I really only get mad when someone in North America spends tons of money on a PC, pirates PC games, and then tries to justify it.

 

I think we're in agreement and on the same page...except for this line. There is a sizable group of people out there who, in the absence of fully featured vbox demos or rental opportunities, pirate to try something out. Normally it only takes less than 24 hours to find out if you like a game or not.

There are perfectly acceptable alternatives though. Steam is the best example. Impulse is also not a bad example. EA Downloader or Download Manager is a bad example because it fails to anticipate that the customer will want to burn their download to a DVD and has known problems, particularly with 64-bit operating systems and Vista. Securom is a proven failed protection scheme. Good old CD-keys and a master server also is effective anti-piracy. Why EA sticks with a flawed system that has never prevented piracy is beyond me.

 

AOE2 was tons of fun and a real challenge. I loved that game.

 

Yea you're right. So basically DRM needs to be fixed, Demos need to be released, and the global price of games needs to come down.

 

or even 50 pikemen i've done a few tests on that one

thats why i still play it online

i think it comes down to people are either going to get games legally or they are not.......if people are not going to buy the game because of the DRM/because it is crap/because it costs too much money...the developer isn't losing money if they go get it illegally becasue they weren't going to buy it anyway.........its only when the consumer would have bought it that EA is losing money......

they are still breaking copyright laws though.


I don't want to here any of you yanks whinging about prices......come over to australia and then you can.

 

Oh man, don't tell me about it. $100AU for a game? Ridiculous. Thank God for play-asia and Steam.

 

If we yankees lived in Australia and were faced with those prices, we'd all be going bat**** crazy. When gas went over $4.00 a gallon here theft was rampant, people were lifting up the hoses to get every last drop, and station owner vehicles and houses were getting TP'ed (covered in toilet paper for those unfamiliar with the term). Then people jumped on the ripple effect of 'staycations' (vacation at home) and other things that caused such great harm the government now wants to raise gas taxes to make up for lost revenue due to less driving. If the same thing happened with video games, there'd be an attack on every game company's website and *****ing so bad of the likes you can't even imagine.

 

SO TRUE...

 

Say you downloaded an EA store copy with one email address and wanted to register the game with another, is this possible?

My brother took the Spore disk back to uni so I had to use a download, I used my younger brother's since he already paid because he couldn't use the disk due to drive issues. So far we've spent £80 on Spore and don't really want to spend another £40 just to get another download so it works on another email...

If I can get the disk back, is there a way I can just uninstall the game without my save file being deleted, so when I validate the install from the disk it would still recognise my save file?


This is a pain in the arse, what if people just want to register with another one of their own emails for personal reasons... :/

 

That's just the "having the best beaches" tax. (Quote from Zero Punctuation >_> Love that guy)

 

Sucks to be here if you're allergic to the beach. High game and computer prices, alongside crappy internet. "lucky Country"? Heh, only for hippies.

 

^^don't like the beach?????? oh no....call yourself an aussie

the beach is were its at.......

and ****e i'm getting a bit off topic........DRM...it sucks balls

 

Hi all.

I bought Spore. I paid equivalent of about $70 for it... Ah well I was waiting for this game so it's my fault.

But now, after playing for some time, I feel fu..ed hard. It's not so good space strategy game. I'm disappointed. But I cannot do anything about it. I cannot return the game, I cannot sell it as used one... I just have a piece of crap laying on my shelve.

And the game takes up to 6 GB of HDD space. Because of a small HDD I do uninstall games from my laptop then I install them again after I feel like playing it. Because of the 3-times install limit I won't be able to do that and I'll have another crap laying around, on my HDD this time. I hope EA will release a patch that will return this game to normal. If not... Well, we'll see what 'the opposition' has to offer. :/

I do feel f..ed with this game, DRM and lack of information about it on the box. If I knew I wouldn't buy it.

I was thinking about buying Crysis Warhead but since it has the same DRM type I'm sorry but I won't buy it. Sorry EA, you are all wrong.

EDIT. Lack of information about DRM is a purposeful act of EA. You didn't see it, you bought it, you don't like it. Well, we have your money already so p..s off, who cares what you think about it. It works on short term but it is really a bad long term policy. I really hope EA WILL feel it (lack of sales or bankruptcy).

We, customers, are under a dictate of the big companies, who think they can do whatever they want. The only thing we can do is not to buy their crap products. If they have no money (our money) then they WILL listen to us and do rather what we want than what they think we want.

 

simple google search shows

"This can be triggered via using up your 3 activations and each time you change a piece of hardware, reformat your computer or install/upgrade a new operating system, it takes up one of the activations."

so go ahead and reinstall on three separate machine as much as you like!! but then again you wouldn't want to reinstall a "piece of crap laying on my shelve" again would you :/

 

You have a point here .

But I may give it another chance or three . And this '3 times' limit is ugly. Anyway.

 

I'm not buying it solely for DRM, I win!

 

Really? ****it, I was really looking forward to this game.

Looks that EA is trying really hard to lose customers.

 

I hate DRM, obviously it doesn't work because 500,000 people were able to get a pirated copy of it. DRM will never work, people will always find a way to hack it. The concept of DRM working 100% is like having unbreakable safe or uncrackable code. It just does not work. However one thing that DRM will do, is preventing legitimate gamer like me from ever buying or playing the game.

 

I think they upped the cap to 5 and are removing the checkups from what I read on CNet.

 

Understand that an unprecidented cracking of a DRM game doesn't do anything.

The executive in charge of this stupidity is probably claiming that the DRM helped despite the fact that anyone, their uncle, and that uncle's 12 children can download the cracked (and superior) version for free.

 

Wow, you're so dense. Re-read that sentence.
...This can be triggered via using up your 3 activations and each time you change a piece of hardware...
The key word is AND. It's 3 installs period... except say you change out your motherboard but don't re-install Windows (or any software, including your games) then you have to use up another activation of Spore. Get it now?

So no, you can't go ahead and reinstall it as much as you like on three separate machines, or even one machine. Three installs. Period. Now give it up.

 

Take a look at this http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080919-ea-relents-changes-spore-drm-too-little-too-late.html

For one thing, EA uses those stats to argue that majority of the people install Spore on only one computer, and that installing on more than 5 computers is unlikely. This was taken over a 2 week period since its release. That's the best argument I've ever heard! So 10 years from now I should still be able to play games that have DRM on them on my outdated 10 year old PC. Yay!

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