14 DAY TRIAL // Spore player complaints have made the headlines lately regarding Electronic Arts' DRM policy for the God game, recently released for the Macintosh platform. EA Games president Frank Gibeau revealed in a statement that the company would increase the number of installations from three to five and would institute a system to allow players to de-authorize a machine, Inside Mac Games is reporting.
“We’ve received complaints from a lot of customers who we recognize and respect. And while it’s easy to discount the noise from those who only want to post or transfer thousands of copies of the game on the Internet, I believe we need to adapt our policy to accommodate our legitimate consumers,” said Electronic Arts's Frank Gibeau. “Going forward, we will amend the DRM policy on Spore to:
· Expand the number of eligible machines from three to five.
· Continue to offer channels to request additional activations where warranted.
· Expedite our development of a system that will allow consumers to de-authorize machines and move authorizations to new machines. When this system goes online, it will effectively give players direct control to manage their authorizations between an unlimited number of machines.”
Gibeau felt it was necessary to clarify to the Spore fanbase that EA is evolving its policy solely to accommodate consumers. The giant developer and publisher of video games for all platforms also hopes that “everyone understands that DRM policy is essential to the economic structure we use to fund our games and as well as to the rights of people who create them”. Warning that “the entire game industry will eventually stop investing time and money in PC titles,” EA stresses that the ability to protect its work from piracy is a top priority for the company.
Also highlighting a few aspects in relation to Spore's DRM policy is a Maxis representative writing on the company's official forum. The spokesperson revealed plans to allow multiple screen names for each Spore Online Account. More on this, here.