Spore DRM fails. Half a million thieves pretend to protest by illegally downloading it

Spore for PCIt looks like EA has a pretty huge crisis on their hands. Spore was supposed to be one of their biggest games to date. Developed by Will Wright of Maxis who created The Sims and SimCity, it was his next opus and was one of the most anticipated game launches of 2008.

However that may all be mute thanks to EA’s use of DRM in Spore. What does this do? If you legitimately buy a copy of Spore, they limit how many instals you can do with the game to THREE. After that, you must call them and have a tech-person allow you more instals. In addition, only one Spore file can be created per copy. So if you live in a household and like to game with siblings or friends, then you can look forward to them all having to play YOUR file.

In short, EA has effectively punished those who are paying for the game with anti-theft measures. This makes many customers feel like they are being treated like potential thieves.

And this has created a significant backlash. Spore has one of the lowest ratings on Amazon, due to every person who knows about the DRM sending EA a statement by rating the game with 1 star! In addition and much more significantly, Spore is one of the most pirated games in history, with an estimated 500,000 downloads on BitTorrent alone! The reason? Well outside of sending a statement to EA, the pirated version is also DRM-free, although you can’t play it online for that reason. Ironically this piracy crack removes one of the main features in Spore: 100,000’s of player-created races being shared onto your planets as you further explore the game (while online).

We at VGB do not endorse pirating and I have been very vocal about giving my support in the form of cash to the people I think deserve it, whether it’s a band or a video game developer. However, after learning all this about Spore, I can effectively say that they will not be getting my money. And that is a crying shame. Especially since I’m a big fan of Will Wright and had been looking forward to Spore for quite a while. 🙁

IGN is also reporting that the massive Amazon.com and pirating protests have gotten the attention of EA execs and as a result, they will be loosing the DRM restrictions for the upcoming Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3. As a result, the CD will not be required to be in the drive to play Red Alert 3, online authentication will only need to be done once and they will allow up to five installations (as opposed to three with Spore).

UPDATE: EA has released a Spore tool that removes DRM protection limit.