Spore DRM Protest Makes EA Ease Red Alert 3 Restrictions 486
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."
Re:Less Piracy - Less DRM? WRONG! (Score:2, Informative)
says who?
Ea aren't retards, they are the biggest games company in existence. They PAY for the RDM, and for their customer service reps. if they think they could get away with ditching DRM tomorrow they would. Personally, I think they *could* ditch it tomorrow, and not hurt sales, but they seem to disagree.
Anyway you look at it, jerks like that kid on thepiratebay saying "everyone make this the most pirated game ever!" are NOT going to get DRM removed.
The success of stardock and similar companies will do more to persuade EA they don't need DRM then any amount of name calling or piracy of EA titles will.
Re:How is this a compromise? (Score:4, Informative)
No, Spore can only be installed three times. Red Alert 3 can only be installed five times.
Has anyone confirmed three activations on Spore (Score:3, Informative)
In any case, "relaxing to five" is still a kick in the crotch, or would be if EA didn't censor that part of my creatures.
Re:How is this a compromise? (Score:3, Informative)
RA3, will be able to be installed five times.
Re:If the piracy rate is low? (Score:3, Informative)
If they get a lower piracy rate to sale rate with Red Alert 3, it will tell them that DRM harms sales. Simple.
Re:You're fixing the wrong problems! (Score:3, Informative)
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).
I see... Just how how many copies of ONE game should I buy due to disk wear?
I had to buy ANOTHER copy of C&C:Renegade to replace the disk worn from years of use... just so I could PLAY the game I supposedly had rights to play. I wish people would quit assuming that the only people that use no-CD cracks are those that're pirating the game.
DRM in games must go! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:How is this a compromise? (Score:2, Informative)
I don't see how they consider it "easing restrictions" by going from 3 installs to 5. That's the only change here. That you can play without the CD? So what? I can play a LOT of PC games without the CD (and even more if you count digital downloads). And that isn't easing anything anyway. Spore can be played without the CD and Red Alert had always been expected to be playable without a CD. Further, this "five installs" was in place for Red Alert BEFORE the whole Spore DRM issue. This is a non article, really.
Re:Thanks for the warning (Score:2, Informative)
If you like supporting indie developers that don't piss you off with DRM, it might be worthwhile looking at Multiwinia! [introversion.co.uk]
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Re:What (Score:3, Informative)
Why can't they use NO DRM, and see how that goes?
Because it would probably lead to higher sales and show the world they have been complete idiots for a very long time.
The Brad Wardell interview from a bit back lays it out nicely. Removing DRM gave higher sales. Allowing the return of games for full refund gave higher sales.
Re:Some Compromise! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:DRM, the snake oil of content producers (Score:3, Informative)
Yea, you have the right to sell it. But they have the right to turn it into a coaster before you do, if you agree to the license terms. If you don't agree to the license terms you aren't installing it anyways, so you can resell it.
Re:How is this a compromise? (Score:5, Informative)
have you read this?
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3169899 [1up.com]
FTA: Even on the same PC, extra copies needed for each family member who wants a new profile.
As if there was any need to further incite angry gamers with Spore's DRM issues, The Consumerist yesterday ran a story on how -- in addition to the many other restrictions the game's DRM presents gamers with -- a copy of Spore provides you with only a single game account. In other words, if you've got multiple people in the same house who want to play Spore and have their own individual online personas, you'll have to buy an additional copy of Spore for each person.
Forget what you may have read on the manual -- particularly that part on page 53 which reads, "You may have multiple Spore accounts for each installation of the game." An EA spokesperson going by the name "EA_Violet" has clarified questions regarding the matter on the official Spore forums, providing us this disappointing revelation:
"That section in the manual was a misprint and will be corrected in future printings of the manual. There is one Spore registration/account per game/serial code so you are correct in that you cannot make multiple accounts at this time. I have sent your guys' feedback to the game team though since I can understand the desire to share a game on a system that you entire family uses."
For a "misprint" the language seems pretty clear, and it is common practice for games to allow different user profiles so you can login and play with your own data/saves(naturally, with only one instance of the game running at any given time). One can't help but wonder whether this feature was removed so late in the process that the manual had already gone to print. Regardless, if this policy sticks after the game team reviews the feedback noted in the post it will only fan the fires of gamers frustrated with EA's handling of Spore. While we stand staunchly against piracy, requiring each member of a household to buy their own individual copy of the game seems like one of those policies that could backfire, driving people who otherwise wouldn't dream of it to potentially consider it as an alternative. But maybe this is simply an example of not having thought things through.
Should it hold true, this revelation also calls the game's strict installation restrictions into question. If each game serial code only authorizes a single account registration that should render how many times you install the game fairly moot.
We've contacted EA for a comment on the story but have yet to receive a response.
Re:How is this a compromise? (Score:3, Informative)
Please get your facts right, or at least fill things out more. You get 3 installs OUT OF THE BOX. If you need more, you have to contact EA. This is no different than a lot of other online licensing mechanisms. (Trymedia for example.)
I bought Spore, downloaded the crack and used that. Game works fine, online works fine. No authentication needed so I've used zero activations. Don't give a flying shit about anything else EA has in the pipeline so they can sell the games with zero authentications for all I care.
Re:Yeah, sure its because of some comments on Amaz (Score:3, Informative)
This is the magic of running a business as something than a sole proprietorship (which I assure you Valve is doing). Customers can sue the company for whatever reason, but the employees themselves and their assets (from the janitorial staff through the C-level execs) are completely protected*. If the company falls over dead one day, precisely what do you expect to receive as the result of winning a class-action? They have no assets for you to collect on. Maybe you could pick up a cardboard cutout of Gordon Freeman that was inadvertently left in a closet. They may not even have enough remaining infrastructure to release that patch that frees everything, never mind have any money left to pay out lawsuit winnings (oh the beauty of bankruptcy). With luck, one of their former coders could whip something together and throw it on TPB, but that could well be the extent of it.
I don't see this happening to Steam for quite some time, but it applies pretty much everywhere. Dealing with a dying company isn't likely to accomplish a whole lot.
*Protected from lawsuits relating to their employer, anyways. Obviously if they've personally wronged you, it's a different story.
Re:We will not compromise (Score:1, Informative)
You forgot one thing:
Version 1 is legally and morally unacceptable for game publishers to sell to consumers because it takes their cash away without giving them a product. Version 1 changes the terms of a game agreement (something that has been the same since the dawn of computing when Ultima 1 was sold in Ziploc bags) from buying a license of a game to just a 5 try game rental.
Version 2 is just the natural outcome of people fed up with being robbed.
Hypothetically. (Score:5, Informative)
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...
Re:How is this a compromise? (Score:3, Informative)
The worst part is spore isn't revolutionary at all. In fact, it's a huge dissapointment to me. NOTE: I've only played 3 of 5 levels/parts of the game.
It isn't a simulation like say, Sim City was. It's not even really like The Sims. It's been 3 minigames so far:
1) PackMan
2) CRPG style grind
3) Weak RTS similar to a stripped down WarCraft 1.
I can't imagine what the later 2 stages really are, but I'm mostly bored. The worst part is I've spent maybe 6 hrs to be almost done with Stage 3 (and what's holding me back is being unable to beat a basically equivelent in all ways enemy to advance).
Where is the simulation??? Where is me being suprised? If I wanted some funky pack of half assed games that have been done before, I'd just get one of those combo packs...