Spore DRM Protest Makes EA Ease Red Alert 3 Restrictions

Crazy Taco writes "The heavy Amazon.com protest of Spore's DRM appears to have caught the attention of executives at EA. IGN reports that DRM for the upcoming C&C: Red Alert 3 will be scaled back. Unlike previous Command and Conquer games, the CD will not be required in the drive to play. The online authentication will be done just once (rather than periodic phone calls home), and up to five installations will be allowed, as opposed to three for Spore. While I still think five installations is too few (I've probably re-installed Command and Conquer: Generals 20 times over the years for various reasons), EA says they will have staff standing by to grant more installations as necessary on a case by case basis. So, while this still isn't optimal, at least we are getting a compromise. Hopefully, if the piracy rate for the game is low, perhaps EA will get comfortable enough to ship with even less DRM in the future."

Comments

Re:How is this a compromise?

[im just cannonfodder]

they are trying to destroy the second hand game market.

have you read this?

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3169899

FTA: Even on the same PC, extra copies needed for each family member who wants a new profile.

As if there was any need to further incite angry gamers with Spore's DRM issues, The Consumerist yesterday ran a story on how -- in addition to the many other restrictions the game's DRM presents gamers with -- a copy of Spore provides you with only a single game account. In other words, if you've got multiple people in the same house who want to play Spore and have their own individual online personas, you'll have to buy an additional copy of Spore for each person.

Forget what you may have read on the manual -- particularly that part on page 53 which reads, "You may have multiple Spore accounts for each installation of the game." An EA spokesperson going by the name "EA_Violet" has clarified questions regarding the matter on the official Spore forums, providing us this disappointing revelation:

"That section in the manual was a misprint and will be corrected in future printings of the manual. There is one Spore registration/account per game/serial code so you are correct in that you cannot make multiple accounts at this time. I have sent your guys' feedback to the game team though since I can understand the desire to share a game on a system that you entire family uses."

For a "misprint" the language seems pretty clear, and it is common practice for games to allow different user profiles so you can login and play with your own data/saves(naturally, with only one instance of the game running at any given time). One can't help but wonder whether this feature was removed so late in the process that the manual had already gone to print. Regardless, if this policy sticks after the game team reviews the feedback noted in the post it will only fan the fires of gamers frustrated with EA's handling of Spore. While we stand staunchly against piracy, requiring each member of a household to buy their own individual copy of the game seems like one of those policies that could backfire, driving people who otherwise wouldn't dream of it to potentially consider it as an alternative. But maybe this is simply an example of not having thought things through.

Should it hold true, this revelation also calls the game's strict installation restrictions into question. If each game serial code only authorizes a single account registration that should render how many times you install the game fairly moot.

We've contacted EA for a comment on the story but have yet to receive a response.