From Homotron: Did DRM Make Spore 2008's Most Pirated Game?
While Spore boasted some of the most controversial (and obnoxious) DRM of the year, EA's anti-piracy efforts seem to have been confounded. While Spore's DRM effectively angered a wide swath of gamers who actually did purchase the game, that same DRM apparently did little to prevent Spore from being the most-pirated PC game of 2008. By a long shot.
Under the threat of a class-action lawsuit, EA tried to minimize Spore's piracy rate, but TorrentFreak's statistics speak more clearly than EA's spin:
When we posted about the impressive download rate on Spore - inflated due to the DRM that was put into the game - EA doubted our statistics. EA's Mariam Sughayer said that every BitTorrent download was not a successful copy, and that several downloads didn't work, were buggy, or contained viruses. We wont deny that on badly moderated torrent sites, malicious torrents probably can be found. However, this constitutes less than 1% of the available torrents, and they are not added to our statistics.
The list itself:
- Spore (1,700,000)
- The Sims 2 (1,150,000)
- Assassins Creed (1,070,000)
- Crysis (940,000)
- Command & Conquer 3 (860,000)
- Call of Duty 4 (830,000)
- GTA San Andreas (740,000)
- Fallout 3 (645,000)
- Far Cry 2 (585,000)
- Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 (470,000)
What do we think? Some say that Spore's evil DRM drove otherwise square gamers to piracy; others say a popular game gets pirated more because it's popular. I'm of the opinion that it's a mixture of the two, but that Spore's DRM made it much, much easier to justify piracy.
Spore Tops List of 2008's Most Pirated PC Games [GamePolitics]
tiny dancer
Posted to Hot Stuff, Miscellany, Video Games on 9 December 2008
· Comments (6)
Other stuff like this: ea, piracy, spore, torrentfreak
DRM made me [and everyone on Usenet I speak to] download Spore, instead of paying for it, there's about 300 people in my local group, not all of which I speak too obviously, however the ten or so I have somewhat regular correspondence feel the same, and they have echoed sentiments throughout the entire gaming community. Stop loading games with rootkits, DRM and all the other crap, and they'd buy a whole lot more, as evidenced by nearly everyone purchasing Sins of a Solar Empire and not pirating it, including myself.
I'm ambivalent to gaming, give me what I want, how I want it and I will reward that with money, make me feel like a criminal for buying a game, which lets face it these DRM ridden farces make you a criminal, pirates don't suffer with activation problems and limited installs. These numbers prove that gamers hate DRM, and a proportion download them just because, and they should be stopped as they'd never buy anything anyway. I consider myself an ethical pirate, you don't meet my agenda so I won't suffer yours and so on with hyperbole.
If a game is loaded with DRM, pirate it, the guys at Reloaded whom I know a couple of are great and are always three steps ahead of the companies. Developing cracks and patches to make these games just work.
If it's an Indy game, don't pirate it, which isn't much of a problem as people tend not too pirate them anyway, the people like me don't out of principle [That been the majority], and the people who wouldn't buy it anyway don't matter.
EA lost Red Alert 3, a game I've spent 7 years waiting for patiently, I'd have paid £50 for it, and then some, and they go and fill it with his crap, costing them yet again.
There's lousy pirates out there, but there's lousy resellers and dire companies too.
But, you wouldn't steal a car, you wouldn't steal the wreath from a war heroes gave, set it on fire and attack his grieving widow with it, you wouldn't set fire to an orphanage and stand outside with a cricket bat beating down the kids that escape the inferno.
I think this is hialrious and it serves them right.
Ah DRM... the gaming equivalent of using a chainsaw to hack off your arm to fix a paper cut.
Yes, very yes, despite what EA says. SecuRom just sucks outright and should be destroyed.
Ironic
Yeah, Anti Theft measures making customers so mad, that they end up stealing the game just to play it without any bother.
Whoever thought of DRM should be locked up, since it encourages stealing.