Spore’s DRM Protection Not Exactly Paying Off

Back in May, I had a minor rant about piracy, and the fact that the worst victims of it are the real consumers. It’s us who pay for the game that have to put up with ridiculous protections, not the pirates. The pirates instead download a game, apply a crack, and be done with it. Sure seems convenient, aye?

The post then talked about Spore’s insane copy protection that requires the game to validate with EA’s servers with each play. Like Microsoft Windows, if you install too many times, you will have to call EA to explain why, and then they can unlock your account if they so choose. I don’t think it takes a brain surgeon to figure out exactly why this is so foolish, and only hurts the paying customer.

Well, EA’s move to include such poor DRM isn’t paying off. Like most games, this one was already cracked and available on torrent sites before the official release, and as it turns out, many people who were planning to purchase the game are instead turning to the pirate version, and seriously, who could blame them? If the option was there to choose between a version that constantly phoned home or one that gave no hassles whatsoever, it’s pretty easy to make a choice.

At the time of this Forbes article, the game was downloaded over 171,000 times through BitTorrent networks, and while I’m sure the vast majority wouldn’t pay for the game anyway, tens of thousands would, and that’s nothing but lost revenue for EA. It’s just too bad they won’t learn, or change. If they did, I’d be surprised.

“By downloading this torrent, you are doing the right thing,” wrote one user going by the name of “deathkitten” on the popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay. “You are letting [Electronic Arts] know that people won’t stand for their ridiculously draconian ‘DRM’ viruses.”