According to EA, the copy protection system used in Spore is actually addressing the needs of the majority of gamers. According to the company's own figures, 75% of all users activate the game on only one computer, meaning that three activations is more than enough.
"EA has not changed our basic DRM copy protection system," said Mariam Sughayer of EA's corporate communications in a statement to Gamasutra. "We simply changed the copy protection method from using the physical media, which requires authentication every time you play the game by requiring a disc in the drive, to one which uses a one-time online authentication."
If you do need another activation after your three have run out, you can call customer support and request to enable more.
But seriously, what is the point of going to such trouble in 'abusing' your users, when over 35'000 people have downloaded Spore just from Wednesday to Thursday. In the end, they are simply sending out a message to their users to please download a bittorrent client, and access Spore the 'easy way' - at least now you don't need to worry about limited activation. And according to the next, quote Spore piracy rate has been extraordinarily high for any hi-profile game!
According to peer-to-peer research firm Big Champagne, Spore has been illegally downloaded via BitTorent 171,402 times since September 1 -- meaning downloads began a full week before the game was even released. While Big Champagne chief executive Eric Garland says it's not unusual for high profile PC games to reach six-figure piracy rates, what is surprising in Spore's case is how quickly the downloads are rising. "The numbers are extraordinary," Garland said. "This is a very high level of torrent activity even for an immensely popular game title."
What is so funny about this figure, is that its most likely doubled since the article was published - and how many other mirror torrents are there exactly for this game that have'nt been included in this figure?! Just looking at these figures alone, if each game is sold for approx. $50 - EA is looking at a total loss of more than +8.5 MILLION DOLLARS, just because they wanted to be radical with their approach to piracy.
Another very good point also made by 1UP was:
Ironically, part of what is luring people to pirate Spore is that the copy protection has naturally been cracked, meaning their illegal copies aren't restricted to a limited number of activations -- therefore making illegal copies, in a sense, superior to legitimate copies.
After all this bad publicity towards the company, with shares plummeting and millions of dollars being lost - will they change their approch towards the end users, or will the downward spiral continue? We will just have to wait and see! At least now, they can celebrate like the Sims brand by saying 100 Million Pirated Copies!
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