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.