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Electronic Arts caves in the face of DRM criticism

In the face of harsh criticism, Electronic Arts has decided to allow multiple Spore screen names for any one Spore online account. Currently, consumers are limited to one account per copy with no support for multiple screen names. The announcement was made on The Official Spore Forum.

Once the change is implemented, each copy of Spore that you have purchased will be able to have one Spore Online Account with five different Spore screen names. When you launch Spore, you will be able to log in with any of those screen names.

The content a consumer creates and the MySpore Page will be associated with the logged in screen name for that account. Each screen name will be able to view and create its own original content. Buddy Lists and Sporecasts will be tied to that screen name. The Achievements earned will be credited to the screen name that is logged in at the time the Achievement is triggered. In the first iteration of this change, all screen names will be playing in the same Galaxy and any content downloaded by any screen name will be available in the Everything section.

In addition to the forum announcement, EA Games Label President Frank Gibeau sent Kotaku a statement defending their position and a list of future changes. According to Gibeau the Spore DRM fiasco was a misunderstanding.

“We’re extremely pleased with the reception SPORE has received from critics and consumers but we’re disappointed by the misunderstanding surrounding the use of DRM software and the limitation on the number of machines that are authorized to play a single a copy of the game,” said Gibeau. He also implied that much of the criticism is “noise” from game pirates, “while it’s easy to discount the noise from those who only want to post or transfer thousands of copies of the game on the Internet, I believe we need to adapt our policy to accommodate our legitimate consumers.”

Gibeau went on to outline specific changes to the current DRM policy:

  • The number of eligible machines will be expanded from three to five.
  • EA will continue to offer channels to request additional activations where warranted.
  • The ability to de-authorize machines and move authorizations to new machines.

In his closing statements, Gibeau stressed the necessity of DRM stating, “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. Without the ability to protect our work from piracy, developers across the entire game industry will eventually stop investing time and money in PC titles.”

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ok
By xxsk8er101xx on 9/22/2008 12:49:43 AM , Rating: 2
That's better. if I can deauthorize it on my computer and move it somewhere else that works for me. just have to remember to do that whenever I upgrade.




RE: ok
By sc3252 on 9/22/2008 1:34:04 AM , Rating: 5
Its all fine and dandy when you have one game, but what happens when they have 20+ games out with this. having to uninstall every single game is really annoying, and I can imagine thinking, sh*t I forgot to uninstall so and so before the format.

Another thing that is severely flawed is that supposed "noise" from pirates, well you know what pirates don't know about it because they don't have to deal with it, paying costumers have to deal with it and are complaining about it not pirates. Hell its probably making pirates happier because it makes it easier to download the torrents now that more people are willing to upload/download them.


RE: ok
By defter on 9/22/2008 2:25:07 AM , Rating: 5
That's why DRM system is flawed, it's just making life harder for ordinary users but doesn't stop piracy. So one have two options:

1. buy a game, live with stupid restictions, remember to uninstall it when you upgrade, remember to call some tech support number if your HDD died, etc...

2. download a torrent for free, you miss some online content, but you never have to care about activations and upgrading.

Basically they are offering less and charging much more for it.


RE: ok
By omnicronx on 9/22/08, Rating: 0
RE: ok
By AgentPromo on 9/22/2008 8:55:15 AM , Rating: 5
Be that as it may, and I agree with you, human nature is what it is. Truth is, some people do not equate stealing online torrents of video games with something like an actual theft from say, Best Buy.

The justifications are many, and for each justification there is some level of truth. A few:

1. The free product is better than the paid product. There is some truth to that in that you dont have the DRM, and from the article we, the consumers, are obviously beta testing the DRM scheme for EA.

2. "I dont want to buy it without trying it". Again, some truth. I dont want to spend $50 on something that will be a piece of crap, its happened too many times. So, people will pirate to test it out and then some set of them will go and buy it. That said, every game released should have a fully functional demo of at least a few representative levels of content. A spore demo would be nice that gives you say, 30 min at each state to experiment.

3. "I would never buy this game anyways". Maybe, maybe not. But again, it may be true too and some people just want to kill some time and screw around without a $50 investment.

Point is, being judgmental is not going to help. People's rationalization's will exist whether we like it or not. The point with Spore is that they are making it EASIER to rationalize stealing for those that would already otherwise be inclined for one of the reasons above. Make a good demo, compelling content, and reasonable DRM, and you would not have this backlash in the community.

I for one will not buy this game, but I will not pirate it either. Then again, I dont buy games that are not on Steam, as I find that my perfect tradeoff platform between DRM, piracy and flexibility to move PC to PC without consequence.


RE: ok
By jtesoro on 9/22/2008 9:26:45 AM , Rating: 2
Now if only Steam had an aftermarket, I'd probably make real use of it. I bought Half Life 2 on CDs, and have been holding off on Episodes 1 and 2 because I won't have options if I buy it off Steam.


RE: ok
By Homerboy on 9/22/2008 9:43:13 AM , Rating: 3
so you'd get that kick-ass resell value of $5?


RE: ok
By jtesoro on 9/22/2008 11:00:47 AM , Rating: 2
For EP1 and EP2, that's actually an excellent point!


RE: ok
By WalksTheWalk on 9/22/2008 1:30:31 PM , Rating: 3
That's why I opted to buy the Orange Box for Xbox 360 even though I owned the PC version of HL2 & EP1. Operating systems and compatibility may come and go, but as long as I have a working 360 I can play it. The problem may be finding a working 360 down the road though. :)


RE: ok
By TreeDude62 on 9/22/2008 9:01:27 AM , Rating: 3
The point is that the DRM did not even slow down the pirates. It was cracked and uploaded on day 1. This proves DRM is unnecessary and does nothing to stop pirates. In this situation it is only causing more people to pirate so they don't have to deal with this activation crap.

This is also why I don't buy EA games on the PC anymore. I don't pirate them either though. There are plenty of other games to entertain me.


RE: ok
By bohhad on 9/22/2008 9:18:22 AM , Rating: 3
it was actually cracked and uploaded before day one


RE: ok
By jtesoro on 9/22/2008 9:44:54 AM , Rating: 2
The concerns people have here are valid, and I'm guessing that EA have thought through most of them already. Regardless of what their public statements say, I think that they realize that won't stop the tech-savvy and those who know enough to download the game off torrents. They will stop casual pirates though, and by their estimation, it is worth it to lose some legitimate buyers for this.

People don't have to agree with it, and it may not work out right in the end, but that's probably why they keep putting DRM in their products.


RE: ok
By Globemaster on 9/22/2008 9:51:08 AM , Rating: 5
How long will it take companies to understand that people who are willing to pay will pay and people who steal will steal, regardless of what DRM they implement. To defeat it, all that is required is for one group of hackers to crack it and then it will be everywhere for free anyway - and this always happens.

All odious DRM like this does is cause some people who want to be law abiding and would otherwise pay to steal it so they don't get the DRM on their machine. I actually know someone who bought a copy, but won't install it and is waiting to download an illegal cracked version. He wanted to pay for it, but doesn't want the DRM on his machine. Talk about causing the very problem you're trying to prevent! Idiots!!!!!


RE: ok
By jtesoro on 9/22/2008 11:12:44 AM , Rating: 2
The information I'd like to have is the number of casual pirates DRM stops and the revenues they represent. This should of course be compared to the revenues that would be lost from legitimate buyers put off by that same DRM.

Much as we'd like to think that companies like EA are crazy, I'm pretty confident that they did their math here. It would be very interesting to see what their spreadsheets look like, particularly their assumptions and the basis for those assumptions.


RE: ok
By kellehair on 9/22/2008 2:17:04 PM , Rating: 1
What's a casual pirate? Pirating games is fairly easy but the average user can barely send email as it is.


RE: ok
By jtesoro on 9/23/2008 11:00:47 AM , Rating: 2
A casual pirate is someone who isn't tech savvy enough to get around relatively "basic" obstacles placed in their way to prevent piracy. For example, those who don't know enough or can't be bothered to get around a CD-check upon game startup. That isn't a technical description, but maybe you get the idea.

I first saw the term used in an article years ago. If I recall right, the example given was that people often use one valid CD of Windows (98?) for all their PCs, and this CD got passed around to their friends and family. When Windows XP came out, people still tried to install it on multiple PCs. When Windows Product Activation prevented this, they just thought "I guess I shouldn't be doing that" and bought legitimate copies instead.

So for some companies (probably including EA), the purpose of DRM is to prevent that kind of piracy. The premise is that the additional revenue gained there more than offsets the losses incurred by the ill-will that DRM generates.


RE: ok
By robinthakur on 9/22/2008 9:06:03 AM , Rating: 2
I agree with you, and I have simply not purchased the game to register my disatisfaction HOWEVER, downloading it from a torrent is so easy (easier than going out to buy it) that it is actually a viable option for alot of people as we are seeing. Theft is never justified, but you can see the effects of the DRM on weak-willed individuals.

However, now EA will be allowing you to de-authorise machines this effectively clears up the limit, so I might be buying a copy in the future after all (Once this is implemented) I'm pleased that EA have actually listened in this case and also that the pressure from people not buying the game has clearly been felt.


RE: ok
By inighthawki on 9/22/2008 10:21:32 AM , Rating: 2
It always seems to me that the people who don't pirate do not really understand the whole scene. People don't pirate because theyre *ssholes and want the studios to go crash and burn, or making music artists go out of business, it simply isn't true. Most pirates out there do it for a couple reasons

1) They aren't gonna buy it anyway. Some people argue that this may or may not be true, its not. If you were definately NOT going to buy it, you weren't. If you were thinking about it, it's slightly different. Some of them do not HAVE an extra $50 here and there to buy it anyways. If you can find a way of building a replica of a product without buying it, is there a problem with that? Why pay when u can replicate.

2) It is extremely inconvenient for some of those who go to large lan parties, especially with friends. It is terribly hard to get a select group of people to buy specific games, especially if they aren't sure if they will like it and/or want to play. If you want to get your friends to try and play TF2, for example, why make them pay when they might not like it?

3) DRM, as it may be, is one of the GREATEST reasons pirates use to get stuff. One thing i don't understand is, why are the game studios SO very naive? From my experience, every time a game is released with so called "unbreakable" protection, it sells like crap and the pirates find a way around it anyway. Some of the games with little copy protection end up being some of the best sellers (UT2004 and CoD4 for example both have unprotected EXEs (mp for cod4 at least) and are two of the top selling games).

4) If a game sucks, and you just want to try it out or play it once, it's not worth what the devs sell it for to most people. If you want a good game that sells well and you want people to pay $50, make it GOOD. Some of the studios these days try to make crappy games which barely justify $20 these days. And i don't mean super awesome special graphics, good GAMEPLAY. From what I heard of crysis, the $50 justifies the fact that it looks pretty.

As for me, I BUY the games i feel are acceptable of being purchased. And those also happen to be the ones i play about 100x more than the rest.