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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."
They are just saying 'OK, Spore hurt too much and the customers are making too much noise. Let's use a smaller dick with the next game'.
What they should do is be honest and describe the limitations in the box.
-Warning: Zero resale value.
-This game can only be installed 5 times.
-This game will refuse to run when other applications are running or installed.
-Some applications will be installed to verify playing rights. These applications will be running even when the game is not.
Would that hurt sales? If they think they are offering a reasonable 'compromise' then they should just do it, and no one will have a reason to complain.
If they think it would be suicidal to do it, then they know they are still fucking their customers. So expect no sympathy.
No, securerom is a resident program on your computer, I should also not have to get permissions to install more than a few times. Spores limit of one account as well is ridiculous. I will not buy another game with securerom ever.
Hehe you know what I'd do if I had the game?
Install it again and again, then call them to be able to reinstall it once a week (back up your saved games of course). Tell them it's because of windows and you had to reinstall it since some other unstable programs tend to screw the OS.
Lulz for everyone!
But they'd get the message ;)
I don't see how that affects their decisions. Spore has reportedly been pirated half a million times - how has the DRM changed that? All it's done is piss off the paying customers, who are being treated like criminals.
DRM doesn't work against pirates. It only works against the honest people. When will companies learn that?
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.
That's not how it works. If the piracy rate is low, they will herald their measures as a success, and it will only serve to increase the amount of DRM in the future.
-G
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
No airtight DRM is possible (and Spore's already been cracked). But content producers are so obsessed with absolute control that they'll beg people to take money to sell them snake oil. Of course, this always works. Yeah.
Others speculate the real target of game DRM is to kill the second-hand market. But, of course, that does no good when the competition is the cracked copies. Piracy: The Better Choice.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
The version I just got off of usenet didn't ask me to... oh, nevermind, that's right, DRM is only meant to piss off ACTUAL customers.
I'll be enjoying my drmFREE game now. kthxbye.
Having to have a CD in the drive is a minor inconvenience. Easily solved (put the CD in the drive. any legitimate user will have one).
Having to call EA to persuade them to let you install the game a sixth time is a potential inconvenience. EA may not exist in a year or two. I might still want to play the game if EA doesn't exist! We're still leasing. Just because we're leasing on more generous terms doesn't mean we're getting a better deal. They've clobbered any potential resale value.
If piracy is low, EA will assume this works and use this scheme every time.
Pirate this as well!
Limited installs is not acceptable. I am off to cancel my Red Alert preorder and leave a nasty review.
"I'm not really sure what's the way to go on it, but I know posting some BS FUD on Amazon like "SONY ROOTKITTED ME OMG!" and claiming victory when they raise the install limit to 5 is not the way to go."
I buy from Amazon a lot.. and I've also been waiting anxiously for Spore. So I went on over to Amazon the other day to pre-order it and was a little shocked to see 1 star ratings. So I read the reviews. They were a very far cry from "SONY ROOTKITTED ME OMG!". They were thorough, intelligent, well thought-out and actually educated me on the whole securom thing as I haven't been on /. that much lately and missed the article(s) about Spore's DRM.
Anyway, the comments actually persuaded me to not buy the game. I don't feel like paying hard-earned money for something that will only install X number of times (even if the number is 1,000 I don't care. Like other people I've still got games that are 15+ years old that I install every once in a while for old-time's sake) and will phone home and require an Internet connection every time I play it etc.
Customer feedback is the single most important thing that a business needs to pay attention to in order to succeed. Restaurants can not grow without reading comment cards and responding to their customers complaints and suggestions. Game companies can not grow by pissing off their customers. If EA ignores the negative feedback about this DRM then they deserve to be out of business in a couple of years. I was going to e-mail them to explain why I decided not to buy Spore but I couldn't find a contact address. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
"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."
It's NOT about piracy, it's about removing the ability to transfer your game to someone else (used game sales, lending to a friend, etc).
Why is it we still have silly piracy protection like starforce and securom? Just the other day I was fighting with Crysis, it suddenly would hang when launched. What was worse was that damn securom CD icon that hijacks your mouse cursor wouldn't go away until a reboot. So what did I have to do? Go to game copy world and download a patched "no DVD" exe for a game I BOUGHT WITH MY MONEY! Now what is sad. The execs should pull their heads out of their asses and see that they are wasting dev time and money with buggy and possibly destructive DRM. Piracy cant be defeated with silly cd check mechanisms, cd keys, phone homes, or dongles. It just doesn't work and will be cracked within days. Please stop screwing us after we already paid for the software.
Fuck EA and all their studios that bow under pressure to "protect" their IP. Spore sounds like an amazing game but that will be marred for many who have to fight with suckrom constantly crashing. Looks like another legit game that will have to be cracked to work. And ONLY 5 installs? What happens after 5 years if I want to play again? Will there be someone at an EA support desk to give me a new key? What if EA goes under? Unbelievable.
It's all about one thing. Absolutely killing the rental and resale market. You can't even give it to your kid brother when you're done with it.
Be honest! Spore is nothing more than a very expensive rental game now -- not a purchase.
And the only way to make this all go away is to absolutely refuse to buy their product because other manufacturers will follow suit.
I've never pirated a game, but if I wanted to try out Spore I'd pirate a cracked copy of this one.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Hypthotically speaking, from what I've heard about the game, even my youngest (6) would enjoy the game (and would even progress this past weekend to the start tribes level herself). My second youngest would also love the game, and make it even further than that, loving the game. My 15 year old would also enjoy many hours in the game. Myself and my girlfriend would also have truly enjoyed the game, and make it to the tribes level, although not as far as my kids, and are looking forward to playing it further. All ages would seem to enjoy the game, and find value in it. Hypothetically.
If it were sale for $30, and no silly DRM, we would have bought a copy, but we didn't. The online game play looks very interesting, but with the DRM we won't bother to find that out, sadly. The torrented version (I hear) plays fine for single player, with no authentication hassles.
I bought Half-Life 2 a few years back, when I was living in a small cottage. Years later, no chance in hell of finding the box, my son asked me to play the game. After failing to find the original discs, I started a torrent going (I mean at least I could, hypothetically), but remembered that along with the lost boxed copy of Half-Life was an associated Steam account. I guessed at my probable username/password, and got in successfully. I realized I could now not just download patches (which used to take forever on my satellite internet in the boonies :), but I could also install the whole game from scratch. On multiple computers in the house. (With four kids, mobility between the PC's is very helpful). I ended up installing it on four different computers. We never used (and presumably couldn't) use more than one copy at once. That's fine. We weren't looking to abuse our purchase. We weren't looking to run more than one copy at once. We just wanted to play our one copy, when and where we wanted, and Steam allowed just that, and with very fast downloads. We had many, many hours of enjoyment going through the levels together, taking turns. If they had chosen EA/Spore-like DRM, this would have never happened. That has a *huge* amount of value to me.
Plus, there was a fair bit of additional content (forgotten highway, Counterstrike, etc...) that weren't in my original box. And some pretty reasonably prices for some additional promotional games they had running.
To even lump Steam into the pile of steaming DRM out there seems insane to me, when I see someone criticize it. It lets me download and play the game I bought, anywhere, anytime, even though it's a big honkin' game.
I wish EA would wake up and smell the roses. Steam has proven that license management doesn't have to be offensive to users, but they still persist. Such a waste, especially for such a cool game. Sure, check my account's validity and in-use status when I run it (no two-copies-at-once for a single account) but let me download and run it from anywhere. I'm happy, you're happy. It's not freakin' rocket science in this day and age...
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.