So.... Spore, DRM, and Amazon.com

they just confirmed same DRM for red alert..

Yes indeed. They're lifting them to the point of giving you exactly the same thing, but you get 5 activations instead of 3! Yeah, that's some good work there, EA. Real good work.

innociv:  Yeah, I just read about that earlier. 

I'm pissed off beyond belief, as I'd really been looking forward to getting Red Alert 3.  No longer, however. 

All I was really looking forward to in RA3 was the music. Now I'm not sure it's worth it at all.

I love how you see S-ROM as the Anit-Christ Kitkun

There's a reason for that. (And at least two typos. )

I had pre-ordered SPORE, through Amazon Canada, but I just cancelled my order (which Amazon.ca won't have in stock before Sept. 18 !?).

Even though I didn't like EA's SecuRom, 3-activations scheme, I did not cancel because of that.

I visited the EA/US & EA/UK forums, and it was the many critical posts concerning the "lame" gameplay that turned me off -- granting that those posts were subjective. They seem to suggest that EA has forced Will Wright to dumb-down his promising game to cater to the mediocre masses.

Red Alert 3 will have 5 activations : wow ! ... (I have an unused key for the RA3 beta : anyone wants it ?)

Yeah, I'm pretty pissed about that.  I'd actually preordered RA3 -- something I *never* do -- but I cancelled it upon reading that it was shipping with SecuROM.  As badly as I want the game, I refuse to support publishers that include invasive/restrictive protection schemes with their products. 

Incidentally, I would love to have your unused beta key.  The problem, however, is that it would only serve to torture me with playing a game that I now have no intention of ever getting (unless by some miracle, EA were to drop SecuROM).  Gah!   

Fight the powah!

All I do is PC games, so I don't have a choice. But you people with lives should like totaly not buy it so they they remove the DRM for me. Thanks in advance!

wait maybe ive been living under a rock or something but what exactilly is drm? and 5 activations...does that mean you can only install the game 5 times b4 it wont install anymore?!?!! if so thats the most retarded thing ive ever heard of..... i mean hard drives crash...ppl need to remove programs to free up space ect...what if in 2 years i wanna go back and play it again if ive installed it 5 times already i cant do that?!

Dickheaded Retarded Monkeys - or EA as some prefer to call it.

and yes, it is retarded.

I feel sorry for Will Wright and co, because in my opinion EA messed them around:

1. I think Maxis probably hate DRM but its being forced upon them by EA

2. While Spore is a good game, I think it would have been even better had EA not forced a release date on Maxis months in advance.  The reason Blizzard (and Stardock/Ironclad of course) games are pretty much perfect when they are released is that they know they are done when they release them.

The main problem is that Spore was such an epic project that the only way Will and co could get the man power to do it was to work under the shadow of EA

In short, the designers like to make good games, the publishers like to make money

If you go at GameRankings.com, the website offers, at the moment, 27 ratings of SPORE, which come from professional reviewers of 27 other sources (websites + magazines) : none give it a score inferior to 80% (the average being about 86%) !?!

But if you read hundreds of reviews & comments by gamers (on GameSpot, EA/US forum, EA/UK forum), you get a very different picture : a lot of them tell a very different story, denouncing SPORE for being sometimes too childish & simplistic, sometimes too stressing & tedious.

There is a huge contradiction between the evaluation made by professional reviewers and the one made by most gamers (who have probably spent more hours actually playing SPORE with intensity).

My personal bias is that I do not trust the too positive reviews, especially the ones composed by unconditional « fanboys ». When I go on GameSpot, for example, I will only read the reviews written by negative gamers : before buying a game, I want to learn what to expect, in terms of problems, bugs, issues.

At the moment, there is too much negativity surrounding SPORE for me to take the risk of wasting money & time on it.   

The review devide is simple: The casual who treat games as a bit of fun and the hardcore who treat games as thier way of life (outside other obligations). Imagine someone decided to change football (insert your nations favourite sport here) into something horribly simple and boring.The fans would be 'silghtly' more than upset.

We were originaly promised a far far diffrent game but they dumbed it down beyond even the worst fears of any real gamer. Spore is a technology demo that is going to make loads of money for EA, that was what they designed the game FOR, no ifs or buts. Spore sold out its players for more money, EA sold out its legitimate customers for SecuROM and Will Riiiiiight sold out his good ideas for cold hard cash.

... I really like saying sold out.

Specificly the game is WAAAY to simple, I replayed it to actualy see and it wasn't even thinking. I remembed what I was told LAST time and finished it without even reading anything and I took the slightly more time consuming diplomacy path.

Once in space after you get 3-4 allys and 3-4 planets the amount of micromanagment rivals freaking Afterlife! (The game).

Personaly I would only tell people to buy it if they wanted to see the technology first hand (and the lack of it, i.e. the inability for vehicles to use there weapons etc). If you like to play anything with ANY thinking involved, you probably won't like Spore.

Thxxx, Aractain, for your replies #14 & #15 : they confirm that I should wait a year or two before buying SPORE ... a far future when the multiple EA expansions will have re-introduced the features that have been removed, before August 2008, by the EA $$$ machine -- to dumb it down, and maximize profits over a longer period of time.

Well for what it is worth the game really has nothing to do with evolution in it current state. Moreover it only gives one account per user copy. That coupled with the fact that the body elements you add to your lifeform have zero impact on its game play really make it something for a little child to be honest. 

It is almost inevitable. The more hyped a game is, especially years in advance, the bigger the disappointment. Diakatana anyone?

I love playing spore and the DRM didn't affect me at all. Dunno why it causes some people so many problems.

The only problem I had with Spore’s DRM was registering the game before it’s official release date but I could still play it I was just not able to automatically download stuff.

Loonismeister, you've got it wrong.

The DRM causes so many people so many problems.

This is why I refuse to buy anything from EA... ANYTHING... last game I bought of theirs was SimCity4

I can't install it on more than one computer. It gives me a "can not connect" message. I hate EA.

<sarcasm>Why buy a game when you can just rent a dumbed-down version for the same price? Duh.</sarcasm>

I had Spore for a few days. I played it to death. The first few "stages" were just not fun. Well, the first stage was a hoot, swiming around and eating stuff, but as for creature, tribe and civ stages...they were crap.

Space was where it was atl. That was very well done. But while I was playing this great space stage, I remembered that I had Gal Civ 2 and Sins...so I instaled them, played them, realised that I was kidding my self with Spore and took it back.

I shop at EB and I have a preorder there for Fallout 3 and WAR, so I put the money towards those insted

Happy times folks.

On a side note all the fallout about the DRM has generated a lot of plugs for SD on many forums and in several news stories. Additionally, I think if DemiGod becomes a major selling product, it will serve as a very loud wakeup call to the industry.