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EA addresses Spore DRM concerns

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On September 17, 2008, 11:18 AM EST

Spore has been one of the most highly anticipated games in recent years, in part because it’s the brainchild of Will Wright, who made a name for himself with games such as SimCity and The Sims. Unfortunately, the launch of EA’s evolution title was marred by a number of concerns regarding the draconian SecuROM DRM implemented in the game to supposedly stave off piracy.

Specifically, that a legitimately bought copy of Spore can’t be activated on more than three different computers, and that users can’t create multiple online accounts from a single copy of the game – even though the game manual claims the opposite. As a result, Spore is quickly becoming one of the most pirated games of all time with over 500,000 downloads on torrent sites so far.

Speaking to MTV Multiplayer, EA spokesperson Mariam Sughayer addressed those concerns by saying the company intends to make changes to its current three install limit on the game. According to Sughayer, legitimate owners of the game will be able to transfer licenses between computers through a patch in the “near future,” meaning they can install the game as many times as they please but only three can be active at any one time.

It’s hard to tell if this will be enough to appease the masses, but at least it's a step in the right direction towards less cumbersome DRM restrictions. EA nonetheless downplayed the issue by saying the three-install rule only affects a small percentage of gamers. As for the slippery issue of the instruction manual explicitly stating that players could create more than one online character from a single copy of the game, it was once again written off as a misprint, but EA failed to respond to why this restriction was put in place to begin with.

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User Comments (5)

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black_adder
on September 17, 2008
3:13 PM
And thus the Gamers Win... again.Anti-piracy AGAIN Fails... have they learnt yet?

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Darth Shiv
on September 17, 2008
8:40 PM
No black_adder. They are legally retarded. The whole "one of the most pirated game of all time" thing is just a statistical anomaly I find it funny how all this DRM crap hasn't stopped the pirates at all but has severely inconvenienced the legitimate users yet EA, RIAA etc all forge ahead with new DRM measures.

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siiix
on September 18, 2008
10:48 PM
no its a small victory in a huge loss : (i for my self i wont buy any EA game even if it kills me unless they remove those idi0tic restrictions

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boony
on September 19, 2008
1:46 AM
"It’s hard to tell if this will be enough to appease the masses" Yes, it does, somewhat. My greatest concern, being a beta tester and reformat junkie was burning through the three installs and have to "prove my innocence" to EA, so to speak. The point is, it should have been this way from the start. It's not like they don't have a case history to refer to. As pointed out by others, DRM, in every case, is broken quickly by pirates, and has served only to alienate, frustrate, and anger paying customers.A rat running a maze learns quicker than these companies.

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noo_pirate
on October 2, 2008
10:17 PM
I've never pirated a game in my life. Was about to go out and buy Spore, thankfully read the online furor over DRM. Have no intention of giving EA the money now regardless of how they're backpeddling and will be pirating my very first game. Shame really.

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