News-Record.com

I have been waiting forever to play "Spore," the game just released by EA after years of anticipation from fans of "SimCity." It's a wonderful, quirky little game that lets you have god-like powers, taking your creation from one cell to space travel. I spent hours playing it when I first got it.

Then I went to the "Spore" forums to figure out how to do something in the game, and I realized that there are a lot of pissed off Spore fans out there. And I'm actually kind of irritated, myself.

Turns out that by downloading the game to your computer, you are installing a DRM to your computer that constantly runs, sucking up resources, that you can't get rid of without reformatting your computer (even if you uninstall the game). Also, you only get three installations of the game for life (maybe four if you beg and plead) -- essentially turning it into a rental, not a purchase.

On top of that, if more than one person wants to play "Spore," you need to buy another copy if you want separate accounts. One of the selling points of the game is the online interaction -- which you need an account to do. All of your creations in the game are tied to your account -- in the 10 or so hours I've spent on the game so far, I've created dozens of items and creatures. So if mom, dad, and the kids all like playing, their creations are going to quickly get disorganized and mixed up on the one account.

Supposedly all of this is to keep people from pirating the game and sharing software, but really, it's just punishing the honest people. The people who want to download it illegally will get it anyway -- I know of people who have already done so. If my husband wants to play the game, they expect us to pay another $50 for it. If Windows did this for Vista or Word, there would be riots. As it is, the fan base is already showing signs of revolt.

As for me, I have loved EA games for years, obsessively buying SimCity and Sims varations on release day. But things like this will make me rethink that in the future. There are plenty of other great games out there whose makers seem to care about their consumers.