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

Thanks for the warning

[the eric conspiracy]

Limited installs is not acceptable. I am off to cancel my Red Alert preorder and leave a nasty review.

Re:How is this a compromise?

[Tacticus.v1]

You have to call to get more activations
and in .au that's 2.95 a minute to wait on hold while some stupid frakking helldesk tool flips a coin to decide if you get to use your game or not

plus costing 100 USDish :(