What is Digg?880 Comments
- inactive, on 09/08/2008, -1/+921DRM to a consumer = stumbling block in the way of enjoyment.
DRM to a pirate = pesky hall monitor that can be easily bypassed. - jlpete9, on 09/08/2008, -7/+6943 installs? That's ridiculous.
- inactive, on 09/08/2008, -4/+569I was considering buying the game until I saw this article. Not now.
- TnTBass, on 09/08/2008, -7/+503Aww *****. Bought it last night as a download from EA. I'm having issues playing on Vista x64 (More due to video card issues, but that's another story) so I was going to attempt to install XP with this again tonight. After reading a few of these stories, I can't help but think I should have just pirated it first.
ThePirateBay: Because paying for the content that doesn't work is the real crime. (tm) - synack, on 09/08/2008, -0/+350Content creators need to stop treating their PAYING customers like criminals. The people who BUY your products are not the ones pirating them. All this does is give people who would normally legitimately purchase a product such as Spore a reason to engage in piracy.
- smurfsahoy, on 09/08/2008, -6/+348I was going to buy a copy for myself and my girlfriend. No longer. I'm not a criminal, and I won't stand for being treated like one for no reason, plain and simple. I also convinced at least two of my friends who were less knowledgeable about DRM to not buy either. You just lost four customers, EA, and probably stopped zero pirates (or actually encouraged one or two, more likely). Congratulations on being a failure at business.
Plus, you smeared your feces all over the years of hard work from a brilliant game designer (Will Wright and co.), and basically committed fraud against consumers by not indicating the DRM policy on boxes, or the fact that this is a rented game, not a purchased one.
EA needs to be the ones sent to prison, not the ones putting people there. - MetallicWii, on 09/08/2008, -0/+295Take a look at Amazon.co.uk - 99% of the negative reviews have been removed - is EA flexing its monetary muscles?
However, all the negative reviews remain at Amazon.com - rubberpants, on 09/08/2008, -2/+254Online activations for single player games aren't about stopping piracy. They're about eliminating the used game market.
- wukillabee, on 09/08/2008, -6/+246unlimited installs and no drm:
hxxp://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4375656/Spore-RELOADED
hxxp://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4379413/Spore.Crackfix-RELOADED
buy from Blizzard not EA - Sepeteus, on 09/08/2008, -2/+242Oh well... I'll spend 50€ for something else then.
- totallyspotless, on 09/08/2008, -2/+210EA just lost another customer.
- dsmx, on 09/08/2008, -3/+198DRM to a customer : At best is an irritation at worse prevents the game from working.
DRM to a pirate : What DRM? - widman, on 09/08/2008, -2/+185EA as publisher sucks big time. Combine this with other strategies like turning off multiplayer servers for games over 2 years and you get the picture how they care about customers.
- inactive, on 09/08/2008, -8/+173good thing i pirated it instead of buying it.
Arr! - Wartz, on 09/08/2008, -4/+153I bought the game, then found out about the DRM. I told all my friends who were going to buy it to pirate it instead. Thats about 5 sales lost there.
Congrats EA on being retards. - Fhwqhgads, on 09/08/2008, -2/+140Keep fighting the good fight against this DRM *****.
Make the developers wake up and smell the present and the future. - Danikar, on 09/08/2008, -1/+137And people will still find a way to pirate it. Thanks for wasting your paying customers time for nothing EA.
gg - n0odles, on 09/08/2008, -1/+132It's not carpet bombing. People ***** hate DRM. Therefore hate the ***** product with DRM.
- smoger, on 09/08/2008, -11/+127i'm a strong believer in supporting software developers. I haven't pirated much of anything since I finished college 4 years ago, but after reading this I will be pirating this game. Not because I even particularly want to play it(after reading reviews).. I just want to protest the way EA is treating their customers.
I implore you digg: make Spore the most pirated game ever and show EA that pissing off their customers will only hurt them in the long run. - twitchr, on 09/08/2008, -10/+126The game is alright. I got it and played for 8 or 9 hours straight. It's really all about the space travel stage. everything else is mediocre.
no DRM for pirated copies, but no online... :( - Dustin00, on 09/08/2008, -1/+106And you just know some day in the future you'll think "hey, I wanna play that game again," go to install it and hit the block. You'll call EA and they'll say "we no longer support that game".
- uglybanana, on 09/08/2008, -11/+115***** EA
***** DRM
***** Piracy
And while I'm at it... ***** THE RIAA! - Kohaxx, on 09/08/2008, -3/+105DRM to a customer: Prevents the game from working under reasonable circumstances while still costing $50
DRM to a pirate: Yarr, free download and no DRM
Companies like EA turn people who normally support developers into pirates. - De4our, on 09/08/2008, -1/+87EA Games...Challenge Everything!
- greytalyn, on 09/08/2008, -1/+84Boo. Time to return my pre-ordered copy.
- GhostyBoy, on 09/08/2008, -1/+8310 years of development, amazing hype and really cool game idea....it will be a shame if they cripple their own success because they insist on DRM.
- joeanon, on 09/08/2008, -7/+86I was considering downloading the game for free.... but now it seems like a waste of bandwidth.
- rejectpenguin, on 09/08/2008, -5/+81I pirate alot of games I play, but this was 1 game I was going to support the developer because I was looking forward to it so much. After hearing about the 3 install rule I canceled my preorder and opted to pirate. I would have bought the game if it weren't for this (would have regretted it tho due to hardly any replayability and boring gameplay)..
I don't understand why legit customers get punished while pirates have a superior version. - Destinatus, on 09/08/2008, -1/+77Talk about opposite ends of the spectrum, I remember not that long ago when people were jizzing all over this game.
- grodrigu, on 09/08/2008, -7/+82rabble rabble rabble
- melter, on 09/08/2008, -0/+68Amazon has done this before. I remember the release for a new MMOG that was so buggy it was unplayable. I can't remember for sure which game it was. Anarchy Online, maybe? The reviews were almost all negative, so Amazon just deleted them.
- 13373h4X0r, on 09/08/2008, -4/+61Are you serious?! If you could show evidence of this I'm sure it would make it to the front page of Digg, Slashdot, and many news outlets. That would be HUGE. A company systematically removing negative reviews in a public review system simply to assure more sales of a product? That is HUGE news.
Seriously, if someone merely uses waybackmachine or whatever to get snapshots of the Amazon sites and shows a comparison that reveals a large difference -- with the negative posts removed -- that's a story that would send shockwaves!!! - Radan, on 09/08/2008, -1/+56THIS is why Blizzard's games sell and other's don't. Fully optimised Mac/PC version on the same disc, without copy protection other than regular CD-keys.
- zeblith, on 09/08/2008, -1/+54-Especially- since they force you to sign up an account. If they let you install the software freely, but then sign up for an account linked to a particular serial associated with a purchased version of the game, and only let that account be active in one place at a time, they would be able to moderate game usage without ever completely destroying your ability to play the game. (I'm taking this idea from how WoW accounts work, just without the recurring subscription fee. You can have the software installed on as many computers as you like, but in order to play you have to log onto an account which you had to pay to activate, which can only be active in one place at a time. Naturally since there is so much other information they have to store with your account, this was really their -only- solution, but you could easily make a twist on this approach for ANY piece of software.) All it has to do is just allow for authorization, it doesn't have to store any other data, that can all be done locally much like Spore already does. As yes, you could still share that account with other people, but I could do the same thing now by installing Spore on my computer and those of a couple friends, and that actually grants me MORE liberty to distribute authorized copies of the game than a verified account would.
Of course, they would have to have some sort of infrastructure to support this, and that costs money. And like EA would ever go out of their way to do something convenient/helpful for the people who keep their company afloat.
And what's going to happen in the long run? Eventually everybody will use up their installs on systems they own, just through normal computer upgrades. If your hard drive craps out, you have to use up another install just for that. Eventually the install disc will be nothing more than a useless piece of plastic, the way they have things set up for now. And if they acknowledge that this system will eventually break, then THEY SHOULDN'T BE USING NOW!
The shame is, any pirate worth their salt will figure out a way to circumvent the installation limitation. So the only people this is going to hurt are the people who bothered to actually purchase the game - just like every other method of information control: video games, music, movies, books, or really any kind of software. - apothekari, on 09/08/2008, -1/+52It works the same way with ANYTHING else in society, Should Ford get a cut when I sell my goddamn 40 year old Mustang?!
No, because I bought it.
It is mine.
I am the owner.
I know this is a RADICAL concept but people please try to wrap your head around it.
I buy a Danielle Steele book for my wife and take it to a bookshop 3 years later.
Should Danielle Steele get a cut?
***** No, That's absurd!
But here come the fanboy apologists.
I just don't get it either dude.
WTF is wrong with mainstream PC publishers. - Fhwqhgads, on 09/08/2008, -0/+51and repeat revenue when you buy another copy years from now they stop supporting it altogether.
- iticu, on 09/08/2008, -3/+53Posting regret of preordering the game.
God damn, EA sure are the masters of ruining a good thing. - Orsenfelt, on 09/08/2008, -1/+50Dugg.
Simply the single worst gaming company out there. - deepthot42, on 09/08/2008, -6/+52Game is fun though.
Space Stage (the big payoff) plays allot like Stark Trek.
I got bamboozled into buying it without a DRM warning.
Oh well, I can still download the pirate version as a backup. - Ganpachi, on 09/08/2008, -0/+44It does seem a bit unfair that I can buy a console game and sell it when I am done. PC games with DRM I just end up having to give away with a no-CD crack.
Either way the original publisher looses money, but in only one case am I breaking the law. How is that fair use? - jaxontyler, on 09/08/2008, -0/+41Dugg because the article is SPOT ON.
- Krissam, on 09/08/2008, -0/+41it does... when you're keeping an eye on which cdkeys are playing online.
CDKeys are a good thing imho - FastForward108, on 09/08/2008, -1/+41I completely agree. Palin's ridiculous misuse of simplistic control schemes and poor choice in DRM restrictions have once again put a bad face on the gaming industry. If she can't even launch a Will Wright game, how can she be our Vice President?
- jeremymccurdy, on 09/08/2008, -1/+41Same here, I was actually just about to go to EB to pick up a copy when I read the article. ***** EA, I'll download it. Three installs?! Are they ***** joking? I uninstall and reinstall games all the time, I only keep them installed when I actually feel like playing them.
- byobyob, on 09/08/2008, -0/+39@dsmx:
Actually, a CD key combined with a game who's primary appeal is online play is the only effective anti-piracy scheme. I can pirate Starcraft II when it comes out, and play through the single player, and there's nothing Blizzard can do about it. Blizzard knows this, but they also know that if I want to play on battle.net (and I most certainly do) a cracked copy of the game or duped CD-Key are worthless to me. - DaClub, on 09/08/2008, -1/+40Apparently you havn't read this article yet. Good luck getting any of this to work with 64 bit.
http://digg.com/pc_games/If_You_Thought_EA_Custome ... - InJectaH, on 09/08/2008, -0/+38I figure if I should pay 50$ (Which I won't) I should be entitled to unlimited installs. Say you have registry errors, reinstall. or maybe a program might be sharing the same DLL. or something thus causing conflicts. You never know if you have to reinstall. Hell, This game doesn't even look worth pirating if that
- Averytingwong, on 09/08/2008, -0/+37EA needs to look at Valve's Steam. They have it done right, I never hesitate to buy a game off steam if they have it available there and in stores. You can download it as many times as you want and install it on as many computers as you want. You can just have one active user at a time. Games install quickly (as quick as your internet allows anyway) and updates are automatic and in the background. You never have to click anything to get the latest patch. The game is on your account for the rest of eternity, you can get it again forever. Or as long as Steam is around.
EA's version of online content delivery is basically this: You pay full price for the game, you download the game. You have 6 months to redownload the game, after that, you have to pay full price to get another 6 months. Oh they also sell you an "extended online download" time, where you can download it for 2 additional years for like 10-15 bucks. You've got to be kidding me. - Gotar, on 09/08/2008, -0/+36The real reason Spore seems so limited and mediocre now is because the rest of the features will be in the next 10 Spore expansion packs.
- tHePeOPle, on 09/08/2008, -0/+35I think you meant "pre-rented" copy.
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