So these people are taking the time to download and play the game to fight drm? Like wouldn't a better statement be to refuse to play or purchase it all? Maybe go buy a drm free game like Sins of a Solar Empire?

In before the "OMG PIRATES SUCK, NOW LET ME GO LISTEN TO MY COLLECTION OF ILLEGALLY DOWNLOADED MP3s."

Sigh I need to pay for college man! I can't pay for things! I won't lie and say I downloaded spore because of DRM. It's because I am poor right now :(. EA IS FUCKED! Especially when Dead Space comes out.

"I'm pretty sure most of the people bitching are the pirates themselves."

I'm pretty sure the pirates could care less. There was a DRM-free version of Spore floating around the internet at least five days before the release of the game.

And this is only going to give EA more reason to put that piece of shit DRM on every other PC game they release. The RIGHT thing to do would be to not by the game AND not download it. If the game was barely downloaded AND missing a huge chunk of profit, it would be harder to sell the "pirates killed it" line to their stockholders. As it stands now, everyone who's downloading it is actually HELPING EA find an excuse to keep the DRM. The DRM doesn't need to work, they just need to blame it on something else, like pirates.

Heh, amazing that people choose to opt for the better, cracked version, isn't it?
I mean, the game was hacked before release, what does that say?

Hmm... torrents made EA their bitch...

I think neveranything summed it up pretty good: "And this is only going to give EA more reason to put that piece of shit DRM on every other PC game they release. The RIGHT thing to do would be to not by the game AND not download it. If the game was barely downloaded AND missing a huge chunk of profit, it would be harder to sell the "pirates killed it" line to their stockholders." I hear the games pretty meh anyways. I'll pass on this one.

There is no way to combat piracy. I don't partake in any piracy though.

I was going to go in and pay for spore but the problems with DRM made me think about holding off until they fix it.

So I still have no spore.

Oh and the lack of demo other than the creator (that you have to pay)

make pirate the only way you can try the game before you buy you cant rent PC games.

DRM makes people play more console games, not fight piracy.

Someone should introduce EA to the proverb "You can take a horse to water, but you can't make it drink".

They can get people interested in the game, but they can't force people to buy it, especially when you can get it for free with less hassle. It's high time they started making people want to buy their games. DRM will never do anything to curb file sharing, it only makes it worse through coverage and turning off paying customers.

Piracy is a tough issue to get around. The only way I can think of is kind of how blizzard handles it; single player offline, sure pirated easy, but if you want a multiplayer experience it has to be online on their servers.

People will pirate, and people will buy. It's kind of a sign that your game is good

I'm too lazy to even pirate a game like Spore, maybe after they have patched/expansion packed the game and it becomes good I will buy it/pirate it.

I'm staunchly anti-piracy but even I see very little problem with this. If I didn't hate EA as a company and this was happening to Capcom I'd be calling everyone who downloaded the game a "whining greedy little bitch" but the reality is that EA screwed up royal with this. Lots of people don't have the space or desire to keep a game on their computer after they stop playing it for months at a time so they delete it and then redownload it. After a relatively short amount of time this would make a copy of Spore useless and if the time frame was long enough then EA might not even allow you another download because the game is "too old" and they don't want to bother.

I'm not really seeking to justify the whole piracy issue either, but what goes around comes around...

What's DRM for? Isn't it to prevent illegal piracy of the game? Well if it was cracked and distributed 5 days before it's even released, I think that shows clearly how much good DRM actually does against pirates. So DRM isn't accomplishing its job, instead, it's punishing actual buyers at this point, given that the pirates don't have to deal with the mess created by DRM (limited installs, activation, etc.).

I don't really understand how it's gotten to this point... Starcraft is cracked on the internet, but you can't play multiplayer with it. The fact that you need to actually purchase it to play multiplayer is, to me, the best detergent against pirates (besides making the game good enough to merit its purchase).

Most people play Starcraft, Counter-Strike, etc. for their multiplayer, making it worthy to buy in a pirates view. I'm not saying that games such as Diablo and Doom should be pirated because it won't make a difference these days, I buy PC games if they're worth it, regardless of whether or not a pirated version is the same. But when a pirated version of a game is actually BETTER than the real version, something is wrong...

The only difference is you can't go online with the game, but I heard that there is no real multiplayer in this game, just downloading other people's creations I believe. Now, as I said before, a game doesn't need to have multiplayer to merit its buy, and I'm very interested in Spore, but with that awful DRM system they have now it almost seems counter-productive to buy the game as opposed to downloading it. Especially given the fact that I'm unemployed and a full-time student in college, I don't have money readily available to risk purchasing a game which many describe to be a long rental because of its DRM...

I'm pretty sure most of the people bitching are the pirates themselves.

I'm pretty sure you're drunk.

I paid for it. I'm glad I did too because the game is so fun. It's too bad that EA is being a douchebag about the DRM.

lol @ all you soft shites blaming pirates. How in the hell is limiting installs going to stop people downloading it. The install limit serves a couple of purposes and neither are reducing piracy.

1) EA charge for 'protection' if you buy through their digital distribution system (which only lasts a couple of yeasr). If after 6 months (or that couple of years) you have a problem, EA will tell you to buy the game again.

2) Limiting installs makes it far less likely that people will buy a used copy.

If you're cool with publishers infringing on your rights as a consumer, at least be aware of why they are doing it. EA hope this game will be as big as The Sims. How many times do you think people have reinstalled those games over the course of several years with all those expansions? How many times have you reinstalled your favourite game when there's nothing to play and then deleted it when you need the room?

This DRM is a part of the game forever. What's to say that EA don't just drop the game and lock people out as they reach limits when there's a sequel released? They already do this with servers for sports games I believe.

Ask yourself why the hell EA would spend money on DRM for Red Alert 3 to stop piracy when the exact same system was used for Spore, which was cracked and on file sharing sites 5 days before the release date? It makes no sense.

Yay for console games!

I want Red Alert 3 but NOT with a DRM so I wont be touching it, not even illegally touching it.

Dead Space can come on over to my PS3 though no DRM there.

Listening to pirates trying to justify their actions always gets a good chuckle from me. So ridiculous/dumb/ignorant.

I don't feel bad about pirating Spore, not one bit.