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- Broadband, on 09/12/2008, -0/+371Update:
An Amazon spokesperson says that the reviews disappeared due to a "glitch" in the system. "The team is working to resolve this issue now and have all the reviews back up on the site," the spokesperson told Ars. "Amazon doesn't censor or edit customer reviews based [on their content] and we'd only remove a review if it fell outside our guidelines." The thousands of negative reviews are slowly coming back online.
As of 4:25pm CDT, all 2,216 reviews were back online, and the average rating is one star. - Broadband, on 09/12/2008, -17/+310Lets do a quick review:
1) Only 3 installs before you get to call EA's wonderful customer support
2) Only 1 account per unique copy of the game
3) The game isn't nearly as revolutionary as the hype made it out to be.
I was genuinely surprised that I was so bored that I uninstalled the game prior to even reaching the tribal stage. Good thing the holiday lineup is just around the corner.
On a side note, I *really* can't wait for Red Alert 3, however if the DRM is nearly this restrictive I'll either grab it for the 360 or skip it all together. Way to put another nail in PC Gaming's future. I don't see why they couldn't have just used the copy protection Quake 3 used. Verify the serial number when the game launches and don't allow multiple simultaneous uses of the same key. Not like anyone would prefer playing this game offline.
Oh well..... - logandurand, on 09/12/2008, -4/+150What a wonderfully convenient glitch - affecting just this *one* product at just this *one* time.
- glucoseboy, on 09/12/2008, -3/+144But DRM is part of the game. It is a legitimate and appropriate criticism that should be reflected in the Amazon review.
- yowhat2002, on 09/13/2008, -4/+141Spore has DRM? I never noticed, my pirate copy doesnt bug me for anything :S
- mnemy, on 09/13/2008, -2/+110"Reader Melissa Thomas sent in word that though the old reviews have been reposted, Amazon may be more aggressively monitoring Spore-related reviews. Her review was removed, and upon contacting customer service she was told that her review of the game was removed because it "did not describe [her] experiences with the product." According to Melissa, her review dealt with "the fact that Securom does not uninstall when you uninstall Spore, and there appears to be problems with Securom interfering with other software and sometimes hardware." "
Mmm... actually, since the "product" in question installed Securom, and the customer is complaining about the behavior of Securom, then it is describing her experiences with the product. - amawg9, on 09/13/2008, -4/+111[This comment has been removed by Amazon.com]
- inactive, on 09/13/2008, -2/+106More like,
"Oh *****, they noticed. Quick, issue a statement and make it look like an accident."
Either that or a pretty interesting coincidence, which I will admit is a possibility, but an entirely unappealing one. I like my version of events better. - Proel, on 09/12/2008, -3/+103"Accidentally" deletes, eh?
"Whoops, what'd this delete button do?!" - zeebo, on 09/13/2008, -5/+85The goal of DRM from the point of view of the executives is to turn people who would otherwise never buy a game into paying customers. Their hope is that by making the game too painful for the pirates they'll be forced to bite the bullet. However, as we all know this never works. Game companies wind up spending on average a million dollars for every hour that whatever DRM solution they've bought keeps their game safe, and even then its often cracked and on torrent sites before the game even appears on store shelves. In the end DRM only punishes people who have bought the game legitimately, which drives more people away rather than bringing more people in. They're trying to punish people into paying, which never works.
What could they do instead with those millions of dollars that would bring more people to PC gaming? Ports. Linux and Mac users may only make up a relatively small percentage of total PC users, but that number looks a lot larger once you remove business PC sales, and focus on the fact that PC games tend to sell to a small minority of PC owners anyway, largely due to the ever-increasing hardware requirements in games. You may only bring in a few million dollars more in sales, but its larger than the number of pirates you'd convert with DRM. More importantly this generates good will and can lead to larger numbers of sales, especially to groups of people who play games together, just like how steak houses offer vegan options in order pull in as wide an audience as possible.
Years ago I spent tons of money on new PC games, now virtually all my game budget goes to console titles. Its not that I don't want to play games on my desktop machine, or on my EEE, its that virtually no one even attempts to sell me games for the PC anymore. I would gladly pay $5-10 for Linux ports of older games that I could run on my EEE,, and I think that if PC gaming is going to have a bright future, its going to have to embrace low-power devices like that along with the more varied nature of their software platforms. I might even be convinced to pay a premium for a Linux port of a game if the game was good, I pay for Transgaming Cedega basically just so I can play Team Fortress and WoW. That's money that they get that could easily be going into the pockets of Valve and Blizzard instead.
Keep in mind, the same executives who think that ever more power-hungry Windows-only games are the way to go, are the same ones who are approving the use of DRM to protect their titles from the people who want to play them. - bbardlbradd, on 09/13/2008, -3/+7909-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
Oh wait... Am I late? - Ismith988, on 09/13/2008, -4/+78***** DRM!
- ColinZeal, on 09/13/2008, -2/+75You guys re-discovered sex?
Congrats. - retral, on 09/13/2008, -1/+67You know something's wrong with the world when legitimate customers are more hassled than pirates.
- Jedakiah, on 09/13/2008, -1/+62I hope to see more games getting bombarded with negative reviews if they include DRM period. That is one of the few ways we could get the point across to executives.
- inactive, on 09/13/2008, -0/+54"What a wonderfully convenient glitch - affecting just this *one* product at just this *one* time."
On Friday when a lot of people get their pay checks. - sathias, on 09/13/2008, -0/+52"1) Only 3 installs before you get to call EA's wonderful customer support"
I'm not sure how it works there in the US, but here in Australia the support line costs $2.50 a minute, and people have been reporting being on hold for up to 20 minutes. Thats half the cost of the game just to reactivate what should be rightfully ours.
Copy protection is well and good, but it should NOT be a profit centre! - lilbugleboy09, on 09/13/2008, -1/+52So if I pirate the game I don't put up with this *****?
Hoist the sail! - xXShadowstormXx, on 09/13/2008, -0/+41Oooo, five instead of three. It's still *****.
- boneit, on 09/12/2008, -0/+40This isn't the first time they've deleted reviews, at least these came back. Remember that woman that had an outrage rant on TV about GTA4, and admitted she'd never actually played it? A number of gamers panned her book on the same bases of not actually having read it, Amazon deleted several hundred negative reviews from her book.
- kevman459, on 09/13/2008, -2/+40This wouldn't be the first time, Amazon deleted a whole bunch of negative Dianetics reviews too.
- ChinezePanda, on 09/13/2008, -10/+45The game is awesome.
Screw all you naysayers.
I built me a ***** monster! - lulzitsadigg, on 09/13/2008, -0/+32A few days ago they deleted the #1 most helpful comment.. it "magically" came back up after people started complaining
http://gameviper.com/pc/amazon-removing-negative-r ... - stoanhart, on 09/13/2008, -0/+31"Are you sure you want to delete over 2000 reviews?"
ummm.... ummm....yes? *****. - inactive, on 09/13/2008, -4/+32My wife and I have been waiting to buy Spore for the better part of a year.
We will NOT be buying Spore. I do not need to explain why. - dronf23, on 09/13/2008, -0/+27Just saw someone at work today mail this back to amazon today because of DRM.
- DalamarArgent, on 09/13/2008, -0/+25I was totally psyched up about this game over the last 3 years, but in a matter of 3 month since they announced their 3 max activations BS and now all this DRM bs I won't buy that game. Hell if I wanted to play it, I could have a hassal free copy of it in under 10 key presses and 3 mouse clicks from the pirate bay, good work shooing away another customer EA.
- dewdrinker19, on 09/13/2008, -0/+24Why can't these people LEARN FROM VALVE'S STEAM?!? Simply log into an account (which can only be logged into from one computer at a time) upon game launch to verify that you own the game! Problem solved...
- jtbell04, on 09/13/2008, -0/+24It was that gabby bitch going on about the "interactive sex-porn youth-degradation rape kill game" called Mass Effect.
- EmileVictor, on 09/13/2008, -5/+28Space stage is *****... Once you realise it's their excuse to make you continue playing the game after three days it becomes much less fun. It's basically a galactic grindhouse where all you seem to do is a combination of these three activities:
1. Mine resources
2. Be annoyingly interrupted by yet another UFO attacking one of your planets because its inhabitants are too retarded to do anything.
3. Fix some biological disaster on some random planet because its inhabitants are too retarded to do anything.
4. Fly plants around. - aidave, on 09/13/2008, -0/+23Probably a tech support flunkie brow-beaten by an EA rep into deleting them over the phone.
- palehorse864, on 09/13/2008, -0/+23The DRM reviews seem more to me like they are saying "The camera functions well, takes beautiful pictures, but it is prone to breaking after three months use and may be unusable thereafter unless sent back to the company to fix it."
As long as the DRM is a part of the product, and can interfere with use of that product, it belongs in the reviews. - ErickStevenson, on 09/13/2008, -1/+22Actually it is part of the game, it's a valid review to inlude the DRM as a flaw of the product.
- osmaker, on 09/13/2008, -18/+38I really do hate Sarah Palin. Oh wait, this time it's Amazon who's the bad guy?
- paulishuku, on 09/13/2008, -3/+23Look, the game is great. It is entertaining. It doesn't live up to the hype it received.. but it is certainly close. It is fun.
With that said, it deserves every one of those negative comments. EA Games is despicable for implementing this horrid DRM system. I hope they'll learn from this.. In a good way. - BTConan, on 09/13/2008, -1/+20All this DRM talk makes me want to point out Sins of a Solar Empire. No DRM; you don't even need the disc in to play. It runs well on older machines, and it's incredibly fun. IMO it's money and time well spent.
- dronf23, on 09/13/2008, -12/+30There is really no excuse for the crappy DRM, but the spamming of amazon's reviews is abusing their rating system. People rely on reviews posted by PEOPLE WHO HAVE ACTUALLY USED THE PRODUCT. I bet 99% of the 1 star reviews are made by indignant geeks who read about the DRM on slashdot.
If i was looking to buy something, say, a camera, i would like to see reviews about the camera, not thousands of posts about how horrible the company that packages and ships the camera is. - fugazied, on 09/13/2008, -0/+16DRM really adds to the list of advantages gained by obtaining a pirated copy!
- inactive, on 09/13/2008, -0/+16Didn't they do the same to the reviews of the book that the Fox reporter tha criticised Mass Effect wrote?
Good job, Amazon. - enclaved, on 09/13/2008, -2/+18You suck at partitioning.
- raydeen, on 09/13/2008, -1/+16And now he's down to two installs. Hope he doesn't get bored two more times before the Space stage.
- StuartGibson, on 06/14/2009, -1/+16Amazon's a MILF?
- valkyries, on 09/13/2008, -0/+13nope just in time for the party.
- thesonofdarwin, on 09/13/2008, -1/+14Aceys - Let's say you are an asthmatic and were on Symbicort, a drug administered via inhaler. Now for some reason, the inhaler stops working correctly, but the medicine inside is just fine! Do you have the right to complain about the product even though you bought it for the chemical compound inside?
The methods of using the medicine and game are faulty and perfectly legitimate complaints. The DRM is no less part of the game than an inhaler is part of the medicine. You could get completely silly and make the inhaler only administer the medication three times and even though it's still 90%+ full you can't access it because of the inhaler-DRM. That is your Spore. - skinflute, on 09/13/2008, -0/+124) Comes with rootkit like SecuROM
- ww3ace, on 09/13/2008, -16/+28bored? hmmm. I've been addicted to this game since i got it
- cherwilco, on 09/13/2008, -3/+15@emilevictor. um thats 4 activites
- inactive, on 09/13/2008, -3/+15"What a wonderfully convenient glitch - affecting just this *one* product at just this *one* time."
On Friday when a lot of people get their pay checks. - fmorel90, on 09/13/2008, -0/+11Yeah, think it's called "Spore Reloaded." I remember seeing a mention of Spore and PirateBay together somewhere.
- evnglion, on 09/13/2008, -1/+12Its amazing how fast I went from "100% positively buying this game on launch date" to "ehhh, don't really want to drop $50." There are lots of obvious flaws with the game, but nothing nearly as bad as this DRM. I can tolerate complicated installs to a degree, but only letting me install it 3 times? Sorry, I am lucky if I don't install Windows 3 times in a year, I am a formatting fiend. I will not be playing the full version of Spore unless something changes, and I agree with some of the other posters here... I won't even download the ripped copy off of "___insert_torrent_site_here___.com"... thats saying something for me.
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