Spore DRM catches consumers’ ire
EA Games’ much anticipated game Spore is already out in the market after a development of so many years. But looking at different forums and ratings at Amazon.com, you’d think that the game is crap. Actually, the bad ratings are not really directed at the quality of the game but rather on the bad DRM implementation in Spore.
The DRM in Spore only allows owners up to three activations of the game after it has been installed as a way of deterring software pirates from reusing activation codes. But the problem here is that an owner who uses up those three chances even for completely legitimate reasons will have to contact EA’s customer support and ask for a new authentication, with approvel given on a case to case basis.
I’m curious as to how EA will manage this potential problem.
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Comments / What do you think?
September 10th, 2008
The 3 activations isn’t that big of a problem. I had to activation my copy of the spore creature creator 4 times and had to contact tech support to get additional activations. it was a quick process, done through email, and took just a few hours.
However, the 3 activations is only half of the problem. The other problem is that unlike the Spore creature creator which allowed multiple profiles per activation, the spore game only allows a single profile per activation even though the manual states that multiple accounts can be created. This means my wife and I are a single user as far as EA is concerned — the creatures we create are shared, the awards earned are shared, the online features are shared.
When EA tech support is asked about the errors in the manual, they reply that it is a ‘typo’ and you have to purchase a copy of the program for each person who wants to have a unique profile. Then when people purchase the additional copies, they find that they cannot install the additional license keys on a single computer. If you are sharing a computer you must share a single activation/account. The only way to have multiple accounts is to purchase multiple copies of the program AND have multiple computers.