I Voted, and a Spore Update (Long Overdue)

I voted. Drove right on down to the church where they conducted the voting for my precinct, and filled in little bubbles with a black marker. My state, Colorado, did not have a write-in for the Presidential race, so I was not able to write in Ron Paul. I did, however, vote for Chuck Baldwin, a member of the American Constitution party, whose views are, generally, aligned with Dr. Paul's. I voted for my Congress-people and Senators, and I didn't vote for a single person who voted for the bailout plan. They should all be publicly ridiculed for what they have done.

I meant to, a couple of months ago, write a follow-up to the post I did on Spore back in September. I've been following that one as it's developed across the Net. Currently, the Spore review sits at 1.5 stars on amazon, with most of those being 1 star. There are a few more people now who are giving it a bad review because of its simplistic gameplay mechanics. But most of the 3,124 people who have reviewed it are complaining DRM.

EA, at first, responded in typical corporate fashion... "We're trying to keep people from ripping us off" was the approximate jist of it. Not too long after, however, they made a big stinking deal about "listening to our custmers and responding to their feedback." How did they respond, you might ask. Well, they increased the number of installs from 3 to 5. From everything I can find, it seems that they were working on a way to let the system recognize when you've uninstalled it from a computer so you can get one of your installs back, but I haven't been able to find an update on that. If anybody has an insight, let me know.

One of the other big complaints regarding the SecuROM DRM was that EA did not, anywhere on the box or in the paperwork, tell customers that a third-party application would be installed along with the game. EA's explanation for this is simply that they currently use one form of a ToS (terms of service). If they were to include information about their DRM methods, they would have to have multiple ToS documents (one for each product, since they apparently handle DRM differently for each one - Read more here)..... Really?! What kind of excuse is that for a multi-billion dollar corporation to make. You can't handle the stress of having multiple ToS docs? Why not consolidate your DRM policies instead?

EA missed the point on this whole DRM thing. Yes, people are upset about the number of installs, and they're upset that EA is installing software on their computers without permission. The true point, however, is that DRM is just plain stupid. EA claims that it prevents people from pirating and installing on an infinite number of computers. My arguments against this remain from my last article, but wait, I have more.

To start with pirating, it's plainly obvious that DRM does nothing to affect pirates. Spore was released to the pirating community weeks before it was released to the public. Consider that, according to Torrent Freak, within one month of its torrent release (the game first appeared on 9/2, and the article was written on 10/1), the pirated copy of Spore had been downloaded about 1 million times. That's an estimate, but considering how long Spre remained in the top 15 most downloaded list, it's likely not that far off. So, obviously, DRM does nothing to prevent pirating - rather, it encourages it according to commentors on Pirate Bay.

EA's other argument is that it prevents people from installing it on umpteen computers. I hadn't realized this was that big of a problem, but consider this (straight from the mouth of EA via Ars Technica... and keep in mind that the numbers are "these numbers are a sample and shouldn't be taken as indicative of total sales"):

• Total activations: 437,138
• Users activating on only 1 machine: 86 percent
  
• Users activating on more than 1 machine: 14 percent
  
• User trying to activate on more than 3 machines: 0.4 percent

... so, straight from EA's own data, how is multiple installs a problem again?????

Like I said before, EA is missing the point. Stop treating paying customers like criminals, and they will still pay for your product. It's just that simple.