Comments on: EA Downplays Spore’s DRM Triggered Piracy Record

By: Spore Tops the 2008 PC Games Piracy List | Student Tech News

Spore Tops the 2008 PC Games Piracy List | Student Tech News — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 11:15:25 +0000

[...] due to the DRM that was put into the game – EA doubted our statistics. EA’s Mariam Sughayer said that every BitTorrent download was not a successful copy, and that several downloads didn’t work, [...]

By: Top 10 Most Pirated Games of 2008 at IDTorrent Blog

Top 10 Most Pirated Games of 2008 at IDTorrent Blog — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 18:10:43 +0000

[...] was put into the game – EA doubted our statistics. EA’s Mariam Sughayer said that every BitTorrent download was not a successful copy, and [...]

By: Torrent Freak: 10 Most Pirated Games Of 2008 - StrafeRight Forums

Torrent Freak: 10 Most Pirated Games Of 2008 - StrafeRight Forums — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 12:43:48 +0000

[...] due to the DRM that was put into the game – EA doubted our statistics. EA?s Mariam Sughayer said that every BitTorrent download was not a successful copy, and that several downloads didn?t work, [...]

By: Bucky Ohare

Bucky Ohare — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 03:16:09 +0000

I had spores 2 weeks before its release thanks to a nice aussy, it works just fine, I felt bad at first and was going to buy it but poor EA tried to bend us all over with their sneaky crap 3 installs LMAO, what you think people would rebuy your game? But it was them who got to bite the pillow this time! SO bend over EA and take it like a champ. How many other titles have you done this to, in reference to installing crap on my pc with out me knowing? Anyways I think Ill download the Sims2 for the Mrs. now and yes all of the expansions too, just need the mansion stuff and it will be complete. I will never buy an EA game again, and a HUGE thanks to the uploader for saveing us the money and the jaw dropping expression when we would reinstall and see “your maximum installs has been reached”

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 03:20:36 +0000

Spore was shit.

I downloaded it (OMG A LOST SALE!!1111), played it 5 minutes and deleted it.

By: waku2waku

waku2waku — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:11:28 +0000

Frustrated like me. Check out the campaign to get EA to unbundle DRM and SecuROM at http://www.thepoint.com/campaigns/ea-games-without-drm-and-secu-rom

Petitions are petitions, but at least it’s something.

By: blackbunny

blackbunny — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:13:02 +0000

I hate EA. Warhammer online… yeah that’s all i have to say. other than a 4 letter word that starts with a fu and ends with a ck.

By: PC Gaming DRM « Eric Schroeder’s Weblog

PC Gaming DRM « Eric Schroeder’s Weblog — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:06:21 +0000

[...] http://torrentfreak.com/ea-downplays-spores-drm-081001/ [...]

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 11:17:49 +0000

I bought it and installed it before I learned about the DRM. I wouldn’t have learned about the DRM if the game had worked properly in the first place.

I was having technical issues related to image rendering (and yes, I have a computer that more than meets the requirements) and when I looked for help I discovered, much to my dismay, that there was a DRM scheme in my computer as well as a crappy game. Or as another poster suggests, a “gamelage,” (think collage with game).

So EA got my sale (Galactic Edition) this time but the company will never see another dollar from me for the rest of my life. I don’t care if they switch to life support equipment and I’m dying. I will not patronize their company again. I’m also doing what I can to participate in the lawsuit.

As I’ve stated on their forums, they made a crappy game, couched it in a terrifyingly invasive DRM scheme, and prevent me from selling it to someone else without divulging my personal information and I consider this no less an act of piracy than the hundreds of thousands of people stealing their software.

If the game were worth playing I might consider pirating it so I can at least play it without fearing my install limit will magically appear but the game is dull and buggy.

My advice to anyone wanting a decent gaming experience, look elsewhere.

By: Ponderings For 2008-10-05 » Ponderings Of Guy

Ponderings For 2008-10-05 » Ponderings Of Guy — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 01:37:48 +0000

[...] goes to show the real outcome of truly evil forms of DRM (they are all evil, but ones like this are from the seventh [...]

By: Anonymous2

Anonymous2 — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 13:26:15 +0000

I agree, it is bullshit!!! EA wants to make a claim about piraticy, isn’t that what they just did with the shit that is now floating in those computers. Who in the fuck do they think they are to regulate anything besides there hours of operation.

By: mem

mem — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:49:11 +0000

on the plus side, this could be cited as an admission by EA that the “one download = one sale” policy is broken as hell

its nice to hear a them admit their mistakes, even by accident

By: lucegunz

lucegunz — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 10:53:04 +0000

My little brother bought and installed spore on my system! I had no idea they used secuRom as i never really play any games on this thing…

Can someone show me how to remove it? or leave me a link as to where i can go to get rid of it… i hate root kits =/

By: lero

lero — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 07:50:47 +0000

yeah, #56, you got that right.

By: lero

lero — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 07:48:18 +0000

gotta admit, in this case it will reflect badly on sales, i’ll download a game, if its great i’ll always buy it(yeah i know you hear it all the time) but this is one boring game, if i could’nt download it i would have rushed out and bought it based on the hype, now i won’t. more new games need to put out a demo on the net pre release, it does’nt seem to happen anymore, maybe most new games are’nt confident enough.

By: huh

huh — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 07:25:05 +0000

Why has nobody said or done anything about comment #:

10 Oct 02, 2008 at 00:10 by mwahahaha

no moderators? no nothing? WTF?
DRM isn’t ok, and neither was that comment.

By: NOMORE_EA

NOMORE_EA — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 00:48:58 +0000

I will never purchase another product from EA again.. I recommend you fire the idiot who came up with this plan

By: Johnmc

Johnmc — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 22:26:06 +0000

#52

Yes I will just go in that store and steal something that I did not want to buy.. So now what is UP with your logic

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 22:24:01 +0000

#52 – Anon

Why the hell are you here?.. Go back to your feel good interwebs and leave the pirating to the Adults..

By: Johnmc

Johnmc — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 22:22:30 +0000

#27

Go back to your RIAA websites asshole.. Why are you here exactly?

By: Maxguy2099

Maxguy2099 — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 16:08:19 +0000

The game is fine.. the DRM no…

By: bubba ganich

bubba ganich — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:16:59 +0000

Hell no… I downloaded spore to see if it was worth buying. The game was utter crap and boredom. All this time, and THIS was the best they could to?

It a damned art project with a game added to it (sort of). Ok.. a REALLY bad game added to it. If it had been good, I would have bought it… if there was no “install limit”.

I will NEVER buy a game that limits me to the # of installs. They’ll have to pry my CD’s from my cold dead arthritic hands.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:29:59 +0000

My reason for not buying the game isn’t the secrurom per say; it’s the fact that the game sucks.

By: Anon

Anon — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:23:05 +0000

I’ve been gamming for over 10 yrs now, and I’ve got what I consider to be a nice collection of games going. I do buy many games, in fact, any game I deem worthy, I’ll buy. I’ll d/l a game if I’m unsure of it’s quality, but if it’s worth it, I’ll go out and buy it. But this is all to say, if I don’t deem a game worthy of $50, I WILL d/l it. If I couldn’t d/l it, then I wouldn’t play it, simple as that. To say it’s a lost sale isn’t exacly accurate. Now as far as spore or EA is concerned, I would NEVER buy such a game, not because I think it’ll be boring as hell *buncha mini-games*, but simply out of principles. Who the hell thinks it’s “right” to install a rootkit to someone’s machine – nevermind the 5 installs – I upgrade my machine at least once or twice a year!

EA will never step foot into my house again….

/rantoff

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:34:43 +0000

Save that quote. Next time someone cries that piracy is stealing their sales, whip out what the largest software publisher in the world has to say.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:13:15 +0000

I downloaded Spore a few days after it came out. Played for a few hours and decided that it indeed was a good game and i was ready to go to a store and purchase the game. That was the plan until i read online that Spore contained a DRM and restricted the number of installs.
Why should i go buy something broken when i could get a working version for free?

By: ha

ha — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:15:42 +0000

“BitTorrent download doesn’t represent a successful copy of a game, let alone a lost sale.”

Finaly. Now if only that statement could be used as evidence in legal cases, none of the industries would have a leg to stand on unless they could prove that what you download was 1. complete, 2. usable and 3. resulted in a lost sale. Otherwise, GTFO.

By: Anon

Anon — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:14:46 +0000

I just love the comments “I wasn’t going to by it anyways so I just downloaded it”. Using your logic I could go into a store and just steal anything I want because I wasn’t going to buy it anyways.

By: Chump

Chump — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:09:10 +0000

EA sucks. They dont get my money, so I download their games.

This developer/pulisher model sucks because good developers keep getting stuck dealing with these overbearing, brutish publishers.

I wouldnt have hesitated buying a “Maxis” game, but Electronic Arts? I’d rather download it.

By: Truth

Truth — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:08:19 +0000

Hey EA that “incomplete, slow, buggy or unusable code. In one case, a file identified as Spore contained a virus” you speak of is a successful download. That is EXACTLY what Spore is, buggy unusable code with a nice little virus on top.

By: Learned Individual

Learned Individual — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:57:54 +0000

@12

You phail.

By: Jessica

Jessica — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:48:37 +0000

The great thing about this is that this subject is nothing new. The Sims 2 Community has been irate with EA over their use of DRM in later expansion packs. Some people have had their cd-roms disabled because of it. The fact that EA tries to act as if these complaints are unfounded further lets me know how much the actually care about their customers. I personally will never buy an EA game again, simply because I like the make my own decisions about my computer, which apparently EA thinks is a bad idea.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:26:18 +0000

I was very excited about SPORE before knowing about the DRM issue, I even reserved my copy (only paid $5 bucks).

After the news about DRM I never went to get the game… I downloaded it instead…

“..people need to recognize that every BitTorrent download doesn’t represent a successful copy of a game, let alone a lost sale.” Oh.. I´m sorry to tell you it does.

By: Grammar Freak

Grammar Freak — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:22:44 +0000

“its DRM” not “it’s DRM”.

By: AyeRoxor

AyeRoxor — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:07:02 +0000

“as the debate heats up over it’s DRM”

it’s = it is

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:06:32 +0000

it’s = it is

By: Phishybongwaters

Phishybongwaters — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 10:39:07 +0000

every download doesn’t mean a lost sale indeed. I for one, never had any intention of buying the game. Me downloading it means instead of never playing it and telling my friends how fun it is, I get to do that.

The game is buggy, and it has nothing to do with downloads. If you bought it, you deserve a refund.

Anyways, they are downplaying it now, but when they sue, it’s every download costs us 5400$

come the fuck on.

By: Opinion

Opinion — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 10:38:26 +0000

Too bad they went with DRM. This is a loss of money for them.

http://friendshares.org/8

By: 1984

1984 — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 10:31:22 +0000

@17

Seconded. Let’s see them attempt to upscale their imaginary losses with this statement out in the open.

Good show EA. Well played.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 10:00:27 +0000

@24
It isn’t fun. Don’t play it. Download it, burn it to your CD, and then burn it (i. e. set it on fire) in public. That will show them how crap it is.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 09:54:19 +0000

@27

“BitTorrent download doesn’t represent a successful copy of a game, let alone a lost sale.”

Apparently, they’re not losing any money.

QQ else where.

By: Drew

Drew — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 09:31:43 +0000

EA can go F*CK them selves, and just so they know, more than just every download was a lost sale, but I know people who downloaded the game then made copies that they gave away to people that didn’t know how to pirate it.

By: Jiffers

Jiffers — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:21:46 +0000

I think its high time to boycott ANYTHING with EA on it!

Jiff
http://www.anonweb.eu.tc

By: Lachtan

Lachtan — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 07:46:20 +0000

“This solution serves to protect our software from piracy”

Duuude, laught my ass off.
Go fuck yourself EA…

By: lolz

lolz — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 07:06:04 +0000

”
Q: Why are Maxis and EA implementing this new authentication process?
A: This solution serves to protect our software from piracy.”

LMAO @ that :D

By: Irate Pirate

Irate Pirate — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 06:34:50 +0000

I have absolutely no problem with buying a good entertainment product, be it music, a game, television show or movie. In fact I prefer it, particularly when it comes to software; I want to play, not troubleshoot. However, I will never ever support DRM of any kind under any circumstances. The only good it serves is to put money into the pockets of those who develop it. It’s clearly harmful to the companies that pay to use it in their product and is especially harmful to us, the law abiding consumers. If a business insists on using DRM in their product, it is then in a consumers best interest to spend their hard earned money somewhere else. It’s been proven time and time again, DRM does not work and never will. Plain and simple.

By: bert

bert — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 06:26:15 +0000

i bought spore,
i shouldnt have its kinda very crap and repetative.
got to space age on release day, havent played it since/wont again its weak.

How many LEGIT programs do you have that install themselves silently and hide in the background using resources and eating your pc so that on the 1 occasion every 9 months you put a disk in the drive it has something to do.
If DRM has got nothing to hide, why does it?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 05:42:37 +0000

@27
Piracy maybe stealing in your eyes, but it is copyright infringement under the UK, US and other countries laws… So i don’t like it being called stealing because the original copy still remains!

Yeah the companies play down or up to suit their every need!

By: me3p0

me3p0 — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 04:31:39 +0000

Regardless of the form it takes, DRM has proven time and time again to hurt the legitimate consumer. The pirates will -always- find a way to pirate it if it is worth their time and patience, no matter how good the DRM apparently is or should be. Even when the software medium itself is uncrackable because the security is in the hardware, pirates find a way to simply modify the hardware ala modded consoles.

Reducing the insanely inflated prices, especially in 2nd and 3rd hand countries; and delivering decent titles is the only way they will be able to curb the piracy on their games and other releases. And even then there will still be no end to the piracy..

By: NoNe

NoNe — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 03:27:33 +0000

Hi
Some of the DRM protections fucking up my vista 64bits, they install hidden 32bits drivers that is unsigned after that I need do full reinstall of vista and other program
I will never buy a game or software cthat have DRM or other protections that install a hidden drv. Each program or games I am exaime the installer and decmpress it. then using own patch or 3d party to remove the crap if it need it. Never again a 3d party drm drv will be install in my vista 64bits