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Will DRM Exterminate Spore?
AC Dude writes "Will an anti-DRM flash mob that's determined to give EA's latest sim game Spore a rock bottom rating on Amazon.com sink the game, or will Spore evolve and shed the DRM? Is this the beginning of the end for DRM-laden games?
'Over the past few years we've focused a lot on the music industry and how it has attempted to use DRM to control distribution. While DRM in this market segment has been unpopular, anti-DRM campaigns have largely fallen flat when it comes to attracting widespread public attention because of the fragmented nature of music. Games are a much easier target given the monolithic nature of their release — campaigners only need to spread the word on a handful of specific online outlets to reach a wide audience. A quick read through the Amazon reviews of Spore seems to suggest that the negative comments are already putting people off from buying the game.'"
http://thepiratebay.org/search/Spore/0/99/0
I really want this game but I will wait until a patch is available that turns off the DRM.
Some would call it a crack but if I buy the game then I say it is a patch.
A piece of code that improves the program is too my mind a patch.
I have have had more problems using DRM software that I have paid for than I would ever have hunting down pirated copies.
Companies have got to learn to stop treating paying customers and criminals.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I agree. DRM on games sucks. Thanks to DRM on games, it's nearly impossible to play certain games on Linux with Wine, because things like SecuROM don't like Wine. Pretty worthless 'rights management' if it prevents a legitimate customer from using it.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
The server side community is an integral part of the game. What do they need DRM for? Are they so used to annoying their customers that they just added the DRM out of habit?
All the reviews I've read about Spore have said the same thing - great toy, boring game. I'd think that would be far more likely to repel potential buyers than some scuffle over DRM.
If you read the EULA, EA owns your creations. You only get the rights to use them as they see fit.
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
I don't understand how the cost of developing DRM protection on games and then dealing with the support costs of having DRM can outweigh the "cost" of a few pirated copies of the game.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
For once I find myself happy a game has DRM. I was going to buy Spore, until I heard of the DRM. Once that information became available it was off my to-buy list and I forgot about it.
Then a few days ago I am informed there's a cracked version available. I decide to see if it lived up to the hype and install it. Three hours later, I delete it out of boredom.
If it hadn't been for DRM, that would've been money out the window. There can be but one conclusion. DRM really is there for my benefit.
Sadly it's just terrible. Horribly boring. Evolutions is largely meaningless. There's basically no point in playing more than once, even going down a completely opposite tree was an identical experience. Just painfully dull.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Your emails would have more force if you explained you'd never buy it or even better will spend money with their competitors rather than pay them money. When you threaten to pirate, that is the only thing they are going to see or consider. Tagging yourself a pirate means you weren't apt to be a customer in their eyes anyway. You are also threatening to combat a wrong with wrong. The corporation may be faceless but a human probably reads your mail at some point and such a statement isn't morally impressive.
A quick read through the Amazon reviews of Spore seems to suggest that the negative comments are already putting people off from buying the game.
This line from the product page seems to suggest otherwise:
DISCLAIMER: I'm a die-hard PC gamer. I go all the way back to the Commodore 64 and I've owned and I have had the privilege to play some of the best games of all time.
PC gaming is already in a fragile state. There is much competition from the Console market. Cheaper hardware, less compatibility problems, more stability and no DRM (at least until they go all download based). Assuming that DRM will eventually permeate every PC game, it could very well be the factor that pushes PC gaming over the edge. It just adds one more reason to choose Console over PC as a gaming platform. Soon, everyone will compare the two and most likely arrive at the following conclusions:
In today's day and age, consoles are unfortunately what most people want. They want to go buy a game at the store, plug it into their console and start playing right away. As much as I hate to say it being a long-time PC gamer, this is just one more nail in the coffin for PC gaming.
If the PC gaming platform is going to be saved there are many issues that need to be addressed. Gaming PC's need to be cheaper to be competitive with the price point of Console rivals. There has to be some sort of compromise about DRM. There has to be a way to raise the level of quality (stability, hardware support) of PC releases. Most PC releases, especially console ports, seem like they were just slapped together. Lots of products are released that are buggy as all hell and you have wait for 2 or 3 patches to get to play the game properly.
I sincerely hope that PC gaming lives on but right now it seems like it's fading away.
We'll make great pets
If you're bored after the first two stages, why would you move on to the third? A game is supposed to be fun. If it's not fun relatively quickly, there's no point in playing it.
Maybe you're a masochist, but apparently he's not.
Developers: We can use your help.
Spore is intended as a huge, open-ended game with user-created content and lots of gameplay "meat": the kind of game that should be lasting 5 or 10 years.
Sadly, Spore does not come anywhere close to this. The best parts of the game are the Cell stage and Creature Creator... and that's not really saying a lot. [TL;DR version of this review at bottom.]
First off, the cell stage plays almost exactly like flOw, so if you've ever played that game, you already know what this is like. You can try it out here for free.
Next is the Creature stage. You design your creature using very limited DNA points, and the most basic body parts, and then you go out into the world. This stage consists of avoiding any creatures tougher than you [Which is most of them.] and befriending or killing any creatures weaker than you, then doing this while looking for bones laying around on the ground. [Finding bones gives you additional bodyparts in the creature creator.] Killing creatures consists of clicking on them until they die. Befriending creatures consists of repeating a song, dance, charm or other emote, and doing it several times in a row. If your creature sucks at social things, you won't be able to befriend much of anything. Basically this stage is grind grind grind grind to find bones and kill things/befriend things for DNA points until you have the parts you want, and the brainpower needed to advance to the next stage.
After the creature stage comes the Tribal stage. Here you can change the outfits on your creatures to add to their gathering, hunting, or social skills. You spawn more creatures out of a hut, up to a maximum of 12 [once you've conquered a couple other tribes.] Once again, you can do two things: Conquer a tribe or befriend them. Befriending them is essentially the same as in the creature stage, except that you need to build musical buildings to give your creatures access to musical instruments so they can repeat what music the other tribe plays. The combat is essentially summed up as: click on an enemy and wait until he dies. If you die, respawn more creatures at your hut and do it again. There are no strategies involved beyond equipping your creatures with different weapons. [Axes, torches, or spears.] The difference between these weapons is pretty negligible, and don't really add to any strategies or tactics.
Once you've befriended/killed 5 other tribes, you move onto the Civilizations stage. Here you have a city where you add a couple buildings to change how happy your citizens are, or how much money you produce. You can also add turrets. You are also given 1 type of unit for each unit type, for a grand total of 3 different units. You use these to capture spice mines around the planet, or other cities. You can capture a city economically, religiously, or militarily. Economics involves buying the city out, religion you target unhappy cities and convert them, and with military you right click on a city and select 'capture city'. That's really about all there is to this stage. The AI generally doesn't defend itself.
Finally you get to the space stage. You're given a spaceship and told to go plant a colony on another planet. This stage has the most gameplay in the game, by far. But it has one incredibly annoying drawback: Every 3-5 minutes, [Literally. Sometimes even more often - I used a watch.] you will have one of your colonies attacked by pirates, unfriendly aliens, Grox, or you'll have to go and deal with ecological disasters on friendly alien planets. Typically the game tries to force you to do several of these all at once. I found myself going to an allied planet to stop an ecological disaster, only to find that my homeworld and colony are under attack by aliens. This stage would be fun if it weren't for these kinds of constant annoyances. Overall the gameplay for the space stage is similar to Star Control, though in my opi