DRM Helps Spore Make History as The Most Pirated Game Ever
Spore, a Sim-like game about the evolution of creatures, was recently released as one of the most anticipated games of the year. Our initial impressions were high with the release of SporeCreator. However, Spore itself failed to meet our expectations. In the end, we found the game to be too simple for our tastes.
A major problem that plagued the release of Spore was the inclusion of a DRM system. This has caused multiple reviews of Spore to be disappointing for Electronic Arts (EA), the developing and publishing company of Spore. If EA hoped the problem would go away, it hasn't. Fans and "pirates" have taken things one step further to make Spore one of the most pirated games ever.
We Told You So
The DRM system included in Spore has caused an outrage in the gaming community. We stated in our review of the game that the DRM system would have to go if Spore wanted to succeed. Apparently, consumers of the game seem to feel the same way. As of today, Spore has been downloaded over 500,000 times on various bittorrent sites and doesn't look to be slowing down. The first 300,000 downloads of Spore happened after just one day of the game being released. These pirated versions of Spore remove the DRM system that users encounter when installing the game. While it's not uncommon for popular games to hit those type of numbers on P2P sites, it's unusual for it to happen so quickly. Currently, the game has been the most popular download all week on The Pirate Bay, one of the most popular and controversial bittorrent sites around.
DRM is Not the Answer
The Sims 2 currently holds the record for the most pirated game. Pirates and disappointed fans are looking to change that. According to the TorrentFreak blog,
[Spore's] download rate exceeds that of any other pirated game in history, and in a week or two from now it will be the most pirated game ever on BitTorrent.
Spore is still one of the worst rated games on Amazon. Since its release it has been given a rating of only 1 star by more than 50% of its reviewers. The majority of these ratings address problems with the DRM system. DRM is not the answer and continues to provoke "pirates" to release what publishers should have given to customers from the beginning.
There's no doubt that Spore would've been pirated regardless of the DRM system. However, users of P2P networks are now encouraging others to pirate the game in order to teach EA a lesson. A commenter on the Pirate Bay known as "deathkitten" stated,
"You have the power to make this the most pirated game ever, to give corporate bastards a virtual punch in the face."Unfortunately for EA, this is exactly what they're doing. We hope that EA will learn from this experience and the feedback of their customers.
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So, is there a way around the DRM?
Yeah.
Enlighten us, please ;)
I guess we are facing a cultural issue here. No system will ever be good enough. Games are more sensitive because they are targeted to a market segment that is highly subversive in nature.
Perhaps they should opensource these kind of games and dedicate themselves to enterprise / collaboration BI simulation software ( which is not a bad idea at all ).
Opensource the platform! create open, distributed games meshed with social applications!
And make money from enterprise software built on top.
Humm.. probably not a new idea.
Or the other takeaway from this (and probably most important) is that DRM does NOT work. It just doesn't. It never has and it never will.
Posted by: AlexScoble(Robert'sBro)
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September 13, 2008 12:35 PM
The problem with the pirated versions (as far as I can tell) is that you can't connect to the online community. I DLd Spore to see if it will work on my machine and if it does I will buy. They deserve my money for making a good game, DRM or not. Cause, really I don't think the DRM is an issue.
Posted by: Mathew Ballard
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September 13, 2008 12:44 PM
In the past I've had to download cracked pirate copies of software I spent hundreds of dollars on because bugs in the software DRM.
Certainly. The online account... why does it have DRM in the first place then?
They must have predicted that it was going to be removed, and only harm their image.
You think the makers of spore have realized yet that their DRM policies are costing them money instead of saving them money?
Corvida, have you read this conversation with software pirates? http://www.positech.co.uk/talkingtopirates.html I had seen the call to engage in the conversation but your post here prompted me to go see what the results were. It was an interesting experiment!
Quite instructive article. thx
good news :)
Thank you for this post, I was looking forward to the game but I guess I will download a pirated version... and play it. No DRM for me, thanks!
If they fixed this issue then I might buy it :)
It's been said a thousand times already, but the more we say it the more likely they'll hear it. DRM frustrates genuine customers and doesn't prevent piracy. It's not something they can 'get right next time', it's a fundamentally flawed concept.
On a more idealogical note, I strongly recommend that anyone interested in DRM and copyright issues to read "Free Culture" by law professor Lawrence Lessig.
I bought Spore because I like the game and think that if we like it, we should buy it.
Nevertheless I feel betrayed because DRM is only penalizing those that go legal and may have to change computerr in a few years time (MB goes down... new processor, etc).
Why should I have to phone EA to give me additional install permission after the 3?
I would like to know who are the braniacs in EA that planned this, because they should be fired for extreme incompetence and for being completely acephalous on this and wasting the company money in stupid things instead of better sites and games(EA Forums look like crap and EA page does not have a single notion of usability and Spore can do way better, for instance, taking into account climate and the way the being is designed to survive it).
WTF?
Sure, there are legitimate reasons to oppose DRM. But your recent spate of articles have the tone of a mafioso threatening a victim who is trying to stand up for their rights.
"Didn't we tell you that Vito doesn't like it when you try to weasel out of paying protection? Maybe these broken fingers will make you think about trying to skip out again."
Personally, I've found RWW's immature and illogical cheerleading for unethical and illegal activites has actually made me view EA's attempts to use DRM more favorably. After all, they're only trying to protect themselves from ungrateful creeps.
Perhaps if you wrote an article on the business and distribution strategies that EA could have used to recoup their huge investment in Spore -- without resorting to DRM -- I might view your side more favorably. As it stands, you just come across as a bunch of whining ingrates with a huge sense of entitlement.
@Zenkat and others, who still think, that DRM is the solution against piracy. Fact is, it isn't. Or can you explain in simple terms, why Stardock has no problems with piracy? There is no copy protection or DRM on Stardock's games, you pay and download and it just works. Here is an interview by Shacknews with Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock:
http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=994
and
The Gamer's Bill of Rights:
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/54480
If Stardock can do it, EA can too. Or not?
Regards
Nohab.
Customers hate DRM, pirates remove it – this is how one developer summed up the current state of software protection from piracy. In summary, the current state of anti-piracy in the PC game industry is:
1. DRM efforts have largely failed to protect vendors’ legitimate rights because they are rapidly cracked
2. They have contributed to destroyed customer relationships and trust by impinging, inconveniencing and even impugning honest customers
3. Annoyed and hostile gamers publicly vent their outrage and fury on game suppliers and DRM suppliers via portals, blogs and message boards
4. Impacting honest users tends to shift their sympathy towards the pirates rather than the developers and publishers. In effect, onerous DRM legitimizes piracy – because with pirated copies you avoid the hassles DRM imposes.
How did technologies and efforts designed for the benefit to the industry instead become the enemies of the software business? And how do we fix it? The whitepaper "Is Anti-Piracy/DRM the Cure or the Disease for PC Games?" draws from multiple sources across the PC Games industry to answer these questions and it can be downloaded from http://www.byteshield.net/byteshield_whitepaper_0005.pdf
Unfortunately, companies don't learn that DRM doesn't work to protect games & software from piracy. What message they get instead, when the DRM is cracked, is that even more DRM and stronger protections are needed.
When their customers leave, after deciding that they have had enough with jumping through hoops and putting up with being treated like criminals, just for bothering to do the right thing and PAY for software & games, the companies blame piracy and not their own practices. This gives them what they need to justify adding even more DRM. They figure if they add more, the pirates won't crack it and their customers will come back because now they have to pay for it.
They are idiots...total fools. They will run themselves out of business, eventually, if they don't get a clue.
This article seems to imply that the rampant pirating of Spore is somehow a direct result of the DRM they've implemented. While their DRM policies are clearly upsetting a lot of fans, are you really implying fewer people would have bittorrented the game if they DRM hadn't been there?
With all of the buzz and anticipation surrounding this release it makes more sense to me that that would be the driving force behind the surge in pirated copies.
I'm hardly defending DRM here but does anyone else see this article falsely connecting the two? Or am I just way off-base?
George: I wouldn't have bothered with Spore at all, but after hearing all the hoo-ha about its ridiculous DRM, I'm downloading it through BitTorrent.
Yes, I'm downloading it specifically because of their heavy-handed method of dealing with piracy. I never would have bought the game, but neither would I have bothered pirating it if it hadn't been for the DRM.
1st As far is Spore is concerned, as is the game will not hit and will find it's way to the dust bin all on it's own. I bought the game legally, I played it through. I was looking forward to it but from the beginning didn't believe they'd be able to give what was promised but thought they might come up with something a little different. Instead they have a game that lack any depth and is truly limited. IT didn't meet the standards are any game that you might find on the market today, even a pretty as the graphics are I can design a pretty game if I have very limited or no collission going on. And that is what they did.
2nd DRM is a pain and I agree the industry should learn that is simple doesn't work. I have serval games I have bought only to go get the pirated version to get round the industries so call protection. This mean even though I buy my games I do totally support the pirates. And if I buy any more games like Spore I'm likely to get the pirated version first to see if I want to give the game company my money. And lets get real there are lot like me and in the end we're likely to just stop paying the game company all together.
Zenkat, the way for EA to recoup their huge investment in Spore is to release it without any DRM. This means it will proliferate to the largest audience possible. People will play it, they will love it, they will talk to their friends about it and share it with them. Then, they will want to access the online component, which is the revolutionary ability to stock the universe with creatures made by other players and share creatures with friends and others. In order to get access to that online component, they will have to pay for the game, as they do now even when they pirate it. So you already have all the normal customers who were going to buy the game anyway in the bank, in addition you have the extra customers who were not turned off (as I was) by the DRM, then you have the huge number of customers who, down the road, will want to own a legitimate copy of a game they love so that they can play it to its full capacity.
This argument only fails if it turns out that people in the third category don't love the game at all. If they play it and lose interest, they won't buy. And you know what? Good for them, the customer should not have their wallet held hostage to bad programming, software bugs, or over-hype of a poor product.
It is hilarious that how many games are pirated are a barometer for the times and popularity of something.
It used to be only the billboard top hits or sales numbers. This seems to be much more democratic. It makes me think if this game was a little cheaper and without DRM if all of those people would buy it online or not.
Would it help their sales? As much as I hate DRM I hate to see a mediocre game be destroyed entirely by people playing it and not paying for it.
I bought the game, had performance issues, and had to reinstall. EA tech support was terrible and unsympathetic. They kept responding to my queries with the same OT FAQ, and in the end, if I could to do it over, I would have pirated it.