14 DAY TRIAL // Spore is a great game, no doubt about that. I only made it through the Spore and Creature stages and I already think that, despite having pretty basic mechanisms, the game manages to convey the astounding complexity of evolution while also tying players emotionally to their creatures.
But Electronic Arts' decision to stick onto the game some of the most restrictive DRM this side of StarForce was a bad decision any way you look at it. On the one hand, the game was cracked and pirated well before the official release date. One the other hand, piracy could have been dealt with by using restrictions to the Sporepedia and to the other social aspects of the game. After all, Spore is a game about socializing as much as it is one about evolution. But, in typical big publisher style, EA opted to include a DRM which only allows for three installs of the game before you must beg customer support for more.
Well, it seems that the customers’ protests, which included anti-DRM creatures delivered to Sporepedia and a lot of one star reviews on Amazon, have changed the company line somewhat. A recent statement from an EA spokesperson mentioned that the game would soon receive an update that would make the DRM a lot like that of iTunes. The idea is that a player will be able to deactivate his Spore installation from one machine in order to activate an installation on another computer, as long as no more than three are active at the same time. The spokesperson said that the match would arrive in the “near future”, which in videogaming terms can mean anything from tomorrow to next year.
Sadly, another complaint, related to the fact that you can only create one game account for each copy of the release you own, has not been addressed yet, even though it’s as important, in my opinion, as the multiple activation DRM complaint.