David.R.Gilson

Spore’s DRM woes

Sep 22

Editorial David No Comments
DRM, EA, Spore

Approximate reading time is 2 minutes

I have just Dugg four stories related to the controversy over Spore’s DRM. I’m posting about this, as Spore was a game I was looking forwards to for much of it’s development time, as were thousands of others. Although, I knew there was a shadow on the horizon given that Electronic Arts were the publishers, given my past experience of the company.

If you’ve been reading the tech news, you’ll know that the content of the game has been utterly overshadowed by EA’s use of DRM. EA have since relaxed the DRM, but the point is that it’s still there. In fact they have actually said:

We’re willing to evolve our policy to accommodate our consumers. But we’re hoping that everyone understands that DRM policy is essential to the economic structure we use to fund our games and as well as to the rights of people who create them.

I am staggered that this is the best they can say. I would go so far as to say they are completely wrong. You only have to compare the music and film industries for this. The music industry took a severe bloody nose for DRM, both Apple’s and Microsoft’s DRM was routinely hacked, so that paying customers could have the same convenience and freedom that they enjoy with physical media. Such that now, the music industry is making good progress at changing it’s ways, which is in stark contrast to the movie industry.

I am a staunch opponent of DRM, and I have only just started to buy music downloads now that there are companies selling DRM free music, such as 7digital, emusic and Play.com (and yes, I boycott Apple because I feel that their ecosystem is a one way street – i.e. it’s easy to buy into, but harder to get out of).

I am even more staggered that EA have taken the “okay we’ll change a little, but we’re still right” stance, given how successful Valve have been with the Steam on-line distrobution system. I used to play some EA games, but I personally became irate with the company given their handling of the titles I was playing. Despite that, I was willing to give them another go because I wanted to play Spore that much. My personal experience of Spore stopped at the Creature Creator application. EA have their own digital distrobution program called “EA Link“. They seemed to be so inept at digital distrobution that the only way you could prevent the Creature Creature crashing was to switch off the Link program!

I’m not going to join in with everyone who is downloading (what I call) shared copies of Spore, instead, I am just going to ignore the game. It’s still voting with my wallet. The biggest enemy of any creative product isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity, and I am going to contribute to it’s obscurity by not even playing the game. I’m sorry Will Wright, I think you had a best seller on your hands, but you chose a bad publisher.