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Spore inspires a new kind of online petition
Electronic Arts is one of the most draconian publishers when it comes to intrusive copy protection for their PC games. Like many of the big publishers, they take digital rights management seriously, often to the detriment of paying customers. It's gotten to be more and more of a hassle to play EA's games, even (especially?) when you download them from the EA store.
What's a disgruntled customer to do? Beside not buy their games, of course. Rant on a message board? Put your name on an online petition? Write an angry email? EA will laugh all the way to the bank. But some folks are counting on EA taking notice if they mess with Spore's rating on Amazon.com, where there appears to be some sort of organized campaign to give the game a 1-star rating as a way of protesting the copy protection. Right now, there are well over a thousand 1-star ratings, outweighing considerably about 60 actual ratings.
Normally, I wouldn't encourage this sort of thing. But if you want to make your voice heard, you can jump in here. Just keep in mind that maybe Spore deserves a little credit for not requiring the disc in the drive to start the game. Maybe you should consider giving Spore two stars.
By Doug at 11:29 AM ON 09/09/08
I think the thing that really killed spore for me is the 'only 1 person can play per purchase'. I have a family and when we buy a game (we only have 1 computer) we all play that game. I understand 1 copy of Spore running at a time, makes sense, but only 1 person per purchase has really turned me off. We don't buy 3 copies of movies or xbox games - that restriction has harmed my view of EA, Spore and Mr. Wright.
The achievements they added are kinda pointless because different people are getting them so they are meaningless to the individual members of my family.
All the creations are logged against the first person who logged in (my wife) and she really, really doesn't like my (rather evil) carnivore creations showing up under her name (she actually deleted them all the first time not understanding that we only have 1 account to share the game).
I actually kinda want to return the game... but now that I am reading about the DRM can we even do that? Can we get our 80 bucks back from this Special Edition? I would have seriously reconsidered the amount of money I put into the game (if I even got it at all) if I had known only 1 person per purchase could use the game. And I think most families (large portion of the 30-somethings market?) would too.
By salwon at 1:43 PM ON 09/09/08
Wait, it doesn't allow multiple accounts? I'm not usually a fan of "OMG DRM=NAZ15!!!!!!" but that's pretty ridiculous. Especially considering your case is most like what they want this game to be, with everyone in the family engaged.
I can't imagine Wright has anything to do with it, but at this point I'd be surprised if he's involved in anything other than cashing the checks.
By Zeus at 8:09 PM ON 09/09/08
What's the difference between Spore and a game that doesn't work out of the box, no matter how many patches you install?
Three installations.
Xbox 360 is starting to look pretty good right now.
By Somedude at 10:15 PM ON 09/09/08
Hey, my creatures!! :) Did you take that for the article or find the pic somewhere else?
By Tom Chick at 1:55 AM ON 09/10/08
Nope, that's my own picture. Thanks to your creatures for their guest appearance in my game!
By Somedude at 4:20 AM ON 09/10/08
Hah. At least they were some use to someone other than me. Whatever Spore's faults, the content creation and sharing tools greatly exceeded my expectations. I had someone comment on one creature after it surprised and kill them in the creature phase.
It's almost like a shared Dwarf Fortress games and by almost, I mean tangentially related, since Spore doesn't maintain detailed planetary histories to be shared amongst players (at least I think it doesn't).
By Somedude at 4:22 AM ON 09/10/08
And by Hah, I mean "Your welcome." or "No Problem." It read better when I typed it, but now I look at it makes no sense.
Somedude:
And by Hah, I mean "Your welcome." or "No Problem." It read better when I typed it, but now I look at it makes no s...More »