Spore Ships With DRM And Trouble
EA has managed to earn a fair deal of hatred from gamers all over the world for trying to take over every game studio all over the globe. The latest bit of hatred comes from their latest and highly anticipated game title — Spore. Spore is a game all about freedom and evolution, but the installation of Spore forcibly adds a DRM system on to gamers’ computers. It appears EA might need to learn a few lessons on freedom themselves.
EA is also being attacked by a lawsuit. Consumers are fuming over the DRM software not uninstalling when you remove the game, and also setting a limit on the number of installs allowed with a single copy of the game. Initially a limit of three installs was allowed, but that was later pushed to five.
To make matters worse, the DRM has been easily disabled by crackers and distributed over the Internet, thus allowing users who illegally download the game to have a DRM-free installation, while paid users suffer. A look at the Amazon’s customer feedback page for Spore shows only a fraction of the users rating the game above one on five — all this after a seven year long development period. Despite all the controversy surrounding the game, the launch went off smoothly and has been gaining popularity very fast. EA’s other big title Crysis Warhead just came out and there have been fears of the game being sold with DRM built into it. It appears the single player game has the DRM, but the multiplayer component which comes on a separate disc doesn’t.
EA isn’t out only to trouble gamers — it’s also been causing a fair deal of trouble to residents of North London. Motorists found a long queue of traffic lined up leading to a petrol station. The reason is EA’s latest publicity stunt for their upcoming title — Mercenaries 2. EA was providing 20 pounds of free petrol to motorists and a total of some 20,000 pounds worth of fuel was purchased. The game Mercenaries 2 is set in Venezuela and fuel is used as a currency.