Spore Amazon Review Blammed Over DRM
I purchased a copy of Spore yesterday afternoon, along with hundreds of thousands of people (estimate). Game installed, EA account logged in and I was pumping DNA points into my Darwinian atrocity within minutes. It is at this point many people had an issue. Literally hundreds of amazon.com users have logged in and decimated the rating of Spore, giving it a 1.5 star rating. Why, you might ask? DRM.
Spore comes equipped with SecuROM, a system designed to prevent the game from operating if a CD-Key has been used more than a handful of times. Inconvenient yes, but EA will always provide you with more CD keys if necessary.
DRM is a show stopper. I doubt this game will work for me after a few years given my habit of new hardware purchases and system snapshots. Like others have said, this game is for rent not sale.
The DRM for the game utilizes securom which is essentially a virus that installs itself without warning when you install the game. There is no way to completely remove it without reformatting and it is constantly running in the background if not removed. Sucking up computer resources.
I hate SecuROM, with the burning fury of a thousand suns. I don't think there is any denying that copy protection is a massive hassle to anyone who legitimately purchases their software. It is, however, something that most of us learn to get over and just deal with.
Amazon users slam Spore DRM [Amazon.com]
Asterick
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 8 September 2008
· Comments (16)
Other stuff like this: amazon, drm, ea, maxis, securom, spore
"It is, however, something that most of us learn to get over and just deal with."
It shouldn't be though - that's the point. If any other industry used such over-the-top copy protection "features" they'd be lambasted, but the gaming industry gets away with it, because people just accept the way it is.
Companies have backed down from using shitty, damaging DRM before. Starforce comes to mind.
Wow. Looks like the internets are angry.
I can't really say much about the DRM as I downloaded the AU copy pre-US release. From that I can say the game really isn't that great. It is a collection of Sims, most of them not very good Sims. The first two stages are actually pretty fun, but the rest has been done before and done better before. You CAN design buildings and such, but it isn't a lot of fun, at least not for me anyway.
wow, so how's it work on OSX?
It's down to 1 star now.
The game is fantastic. It is a collection of Sims, yes, but the first four Sims are patently there to give you a sense of the world you're in and the scope. There is some depth and replay value in each of them, though, because each time you can go through with a different creature and different strategies.
The Space stage is the real meat of the game though, and is positively huge. It accounts for about 70% of the gameplay. A lot of people who are giving it bad reviews sound like they just played to the beginning of the Space stage and considered it "beaten", or who are stupidly expecting each stage to be as deep as a full-fledged game on it's own - they were expecting Flow, Diablo, the Sims, and Civilization each at complete depth in one game - which is a ridiculous expectation.
This game is NOT for power gamers. That should be readily apparent. If you play games for a sense of accomplishment or "Pwning" than you had better look elsewhere. This game is squarely aimed at people who like creation and exploring. And I think a lot of people were expecting it to be all things to all people, but it's just not.
That being said, it's a great game - but it could use some junk. Shit that needs to be in the expansion:
* Flora editor
* Giant Creature Editor
* Underwater civilization, vehicles, and creatures.
* Floating/Sky/Flying civilization creatures.
* Body language selection
* Wings that work and look like fucking wings instead of cardboard.
* Option for creature to be photosynthetic.
* Ability to design sexual dimorphism and gender in creature.
* Ability to design body parts and choose how they function - like in Magic Pengel/Graffiti Kingdom. So you can have a square creature with ease.
* Also via Magic Pengel - ability to color body parts separately and draw on creatures, buildings, and vehicles.
* Space Station construction/use.
* Ability to conquer nations/worlds politically - if you treat them well enough and you have the proper tools they ASK you to conquer them.
* Ability to get out of the damn spaceship if you so choose and explore on foot or in a vehicle during the Space stage.
The annoying thing is that some of these features were IN earlier builds of the game but taken out.
Game publishers need to realize that their intrusive copy protection measures have done nothing to stop piracy. You can find cracked versions of most titles within days of their release. All it does is create additional hassles for the people who are willing to pay for the software.
I don't see the point in wasting time and resources on people you know have no intention to pay for your software with draconian measures that make the people who are willing to pay less likely to do so in the future.
Asterick,
The only ones who will have to adjust to DRM are the legitimate users. The ones pirating the game and downloading the cracked torrents won't have much of a trouble.
There are better ways to protect games from piracy. DRM just annoys the legitimate buyers.
WHAT THE HELL!? Securom came with that damn thing!? Sorry, I'm just rather pissed off because, until now, I've managed to avoid getting that on my computer.
Incidentally, I noticed my computer's been running slower AND randomly coming out of Sleep Mode since I installed Spore yesterday morning. Now I know why... grr.
I walked into the shop with £35 in hand ready to buy the game, I chatted to my friend behind the till, he mentioned securom, and it cost them a sale.
My pirated copy works fine, and no securom.
I was prepared to pay for the game there and then, and I still will if they release a none crippled version.
Are you kidding me?! DRM on spore :(
I still play my 1995 PC games some times. Over the years I sometimes have to format my hard drive or move everything to a new PC. This is really annoying.
Well I'm glad I didn't upgrade anything beforehand.
Laters :)
@hephaestus:
As they've used Cider it'll most likely be there too, albeit sandboxed into the .app folder so it'd be gone when you uninstall the game (which would get rid of the constantly running in the background issue, as the Windows subsystem is only used when the game is loaded).
I was looking forward to this game, but this is a deal breaker for me. This onerous DRM shit has to stop; it only hurts the honest user. It's good to see the outcry on amazon. Hopefully some reviewers will punish EA with lower scores because of this, too.
Sleep Fighter is absolutely correct. Nobody needs the game disc if he wants to pirate it, it is already all over the internet. Pirates have so far cracked each and every kind of copy protection on the market, and the effort to run these games has in no way increased in the last 5 years. If anything, not having a stupid CD in your drive is a great advantage over store-bought versions. Effectively, the industry is only hurting their loyal customers. Andybody else can enjoy the game more and for no charge at all. I say either make it an online game (WOW, D2 and WC3 are great examples of this) or leave out the freaking copy protection. I would seriously buy more games if I didn't have the hassle of using CDs or DVDs all the time. Thank you Blizzard, FU EA!
I would take it further Tek Guy, as I said, I pirated it because no alternative is offered to me that isn't gimped by DRM, which I abhor absolutely.
Make the game unobtrusive, and don't restrict my installs, like Steam, which I have purchased many things from, given my love of playing and inevitably breaking my registry I format quite often, and it's great to just download an app and not be punished.
Limiting it to 3 installs is a joke, and the reason I didn't buy Bioshock until recently, on the 360, instead of PC on launch day, another game I was willing to drop the cash for.
Punishing legit buyers hurts sales more and more, you drive more to piracy so they take stronger measures which piss off more people and make them pirate, the vicious cycle is only deleted when it's offered openly and ungimped.
I went into Gamestation perfectly happy to pay £35 for Spore, and I left the shop without it because of this.
I'm the kind of person they need to be convincing to spent his money more often, I used to buy tons of PC games, now I'm lucky to buy 3 a year, even with way more disposable income than I used to have. I choose to purchase because I want to support development, if you don't support your consumers your business model is frankly, dire.
* Flora editor
This was already mentioned to be one expansion that the Spore team will work on eventually, but agreed.
* Giant Creature Editor
I'm not that far in the Space stage yet so I'm not sure what this could mean...
* Underwater civilization, vehicles, and creatures.
Totally agreed!
* Floating/Sky/Flying civilization creatures.
Agreed, again.
* Body language selection
Hmm?
* Wings that work and look like fucking wings instead of cardboard.
* Option for creature to be photosynthetic.
Agreed, and this should be part of the Flore editor expansion pack as well methinks [it'd add more value at least].
* Ability to design sexual dimorphism and gender in creature.
I guess? *shrugs*
* Ability to design body parts and choose how they function - like in Magic Pengel/Graffiti Kingdom. So you can have a square creature with ease.
* Also via Magic Pengel - ability to color body parts separately and draw on creatures, buildings, and vehicles.
Agreed. It's annoying trying to colour extra details like wings!
* Space Station construction/use.
Agreed. It'd be nice to expand the homeworld beyond its look in the Civilisation stage [not that I've played much into space yet tbh].
In fact whilst we're on the subject... Why do we no longer make any Spice revenue on our homeworld once the Space stage occurs? It's like the world just stops doing anything once we've done the Civilsation stage... Meh.
* Ability to conquer nations/worlds politically - if you treat them well enough and you have the proper tools they ASK you to conquer them.
I guess so.
* Ability to get out of the damn spaceship if you so choose and explore on foot or in a vehicle during the Space stage.
Agreed. That'd be so much fun!
Now I don't know alot about Securom, but its running in the background and monitoring my computer tidbit doesn't sound nice... Especially since I brought the game legally like some did [with a large portion doing the torrent thing].
Don't see why we should be punished because of their hobo-ness. >->
Is there anyway to remove it without being punished i.e. not being able to run the game etc?
And lastly, just to add to the 'wish list' above, something I thought was going to be included within the game [having been given the opportunity to design characters using the CC beforehand]:
-The ability to actually play AS the creatures we've designed prior to the single uest / in the CC!
e.g. My Knuckles the Echidna creature alike would be broken down into a suitable set 'Cell' model which then evolves into the original design come the 'Creature' stage, and thus the game continues as normal.
Because as I understand it now, I can only meet the creatures [I] have designed, not play as them unless I've made them during the single quest mode... *sighs*