Not buying Spore

12th September 2008 – 2.26 pm

I had got caught up in the hype surrounding Will Wright's latest game, Spore, to the point where I was quite excited about finally getting to play it. That there was a lot of buzz about the game for quite a while contributed, including seeing adverts for Spore before every film at this year's Sci Fi Film Festival in London, as did a Mac version of the game being available on release. However, despite the hype and the availability of the game on my platform there arose the issue of DRM, or Digital Rights Management.

It was revealed the Spore would be released with SecuROM, which would allow for three legitimate installations of the game and no more. It is possible that contacting Electronic Arts, the publishers of the software, would allow more installations to occur, but that is not guaranteed. I may not be in the habit of reinstalling software often, but I still don't want to be left with a useless disc after an uncertain amount of time, and that is assuming there are no technical problems to start with.

My first thought was that if EA are going to treat me like a criminal, by not trusting me with my legitimately bought software, then I may as well act like one and pirate the software, getting myself a fully functional copy without DRM. But then I realised the problem this causes. By pirating the software I would effectively be confirming EA's suspicions that DRM is needed to prevent unauthorised copying of their software. I would rather see no DRM, and indeed would have bought Spore by now if it had none. To that end, I simply won't be buying the game.

Spore is just a game. It may be the best game the world has ever seen, but it is still just a game. I am playing three MMORPGs at the moment, have plenty of other hobbies to keep myself entertained, and don't see this situation changing. Having another excellent game to play would be quite jolly but it is far from the end of the world to abstain from an entertainment product.

  1. 2 Responses to “Not buying Spore

  2. I'm right with you on Spore. This could be the bestest game ever and I'd still refuse to buy it on principle. I really hope more people stick to their guns so we can finally see the end of DRM and its ilk.

    By Winged Nazgul on Sep 15, 2008

  3. We can but hope.

    By pjharvey on Sep 16, 2008

Sorry, comments for this entry are closed.