Spore has been one of the most anticipated games in gaming history, however after Electronic Arts (EA) released the game containing new digital rights management (DRM) software, it has become the heat of controversy. The software known as SecuROM changes some registry entries on your machine to make sure that the game can only be installed 3 times. After the 3rd install you have to contact EA and ask for another install.
EA claims that this DRM software was set in place to put a stop to piracy, however the only ones suffering are those who purchase legal copies of the game. A cracked version of the game was released forcing many usually legal gamers to
pirate the game simply to bypass the troubles of the DRM software. Spore is on it’s way to becoming the most pirated game in history with over 500,000 downloads.
If you aren’t using the game in an illegal way, why would you need more than 3 downloads? This question has been posed by many less tech-enthusiastic people out there. There are many reasons that gamers would need more than 3 installs. Everyone has technical failures and sometimes you just can’t avoid cleaning your HD and starting over. Any active computer user will tell you that this is necessary way more than 3 times in the average life-span of a computer. Some gamers want to install the game on different machines in their household for the simple purpose that more than one person in the house might want to play the game. By allowing only 3 installs, EA leads gamers to believing that they no longer own the game they purchased. You pay good money for a good game, but when it comes time for that 4th install you either have to go through the long and tedious EA support line to get another install or you have to purchase another copy of the game (which might be the easier of the two options).
What are xPirate’s thought on the subject? – I neither support nor condemn piracy. I believe there are circumstances in which piracy is morally okay and then there are the cases where piracy is wrong. I am not one to judge. However, I believe that EA made a huge mistake by including the SecuROM software in the Spore game. It was highly anticipated and would have made the company so much money giving the right circumstances. However, because EA chose to include this software, they lost a majority of their legal customers to piracy, the thing they were attempting to stop. With Spore being close to the most pirated game in history, it is obvious that EA took a step in the wrong direction. Solution? Remove the annoying software and give gamers the ownership of the game they paid for! Combating piracy is not an easy task. This is just an example of how one company messed with the fire and felt the burn.
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