Comments on: 'Spore' leads 2008's most pirated PC games

EA probably isn't too happy about having two games in this list of the top 10 most pirated.

[Bozco11]

I love how you all cry about DRM when a company is just trying to limit how many people steal their game. You act like people would pirate it less if it didn't have any protection when in all actuality it'd just be much easier for them to give to all their friends.

The best part of all of this? You act like it's your RIGHT to have the game. WRONG. Just because you don't like their practices doesn't mean you have the right to steal. What an ignorant group of people. Also, the cost of making games has gone up greatly and that's why the cost of games themselves have gone up. That doesn't give you the right to steal just because you don't want to spend $60. It's great seeing all of you trying to justify stealing to yourselves, pathetic.

[Dragon_Myr]

So if they're just trying to limit piracy, how exactly do you explain the exponential growth of piracy on DRM-protected games and the dwindling reviews and opinions of consumers on such games?

Spore was hit so harshly Amazon had to make up an error to dump a couple thousand 1-star reviews, which have since been replaced. The DRM did not stop the game from getting pirated a whole week in advance of its release and it has abysmally failed in preventing piracy thus landing the game as the top pirated title of this year in a mere 2 months! DRM has repeatedly failed to prove its worth and continues to be an intrusive rootkit stuck into software to accomplish a goal that can never be fulfilled. It is a waste of money, its cost should not be shouldered by people buying a game, and its presence on computers or interfering with the normal operation of legitimate software is intolerable.

[renGek]

Stupid EA. Thats the last time I make a spur of the moment purchase. I spent all of one week playing spore but that stupid rootkit is in my PC for a long time. There will be no EA purchases of any kind until my next PC.

And I like their comment "piracy have not hurt our sales"...yeah right. Wait till the quarterly results come in and they have to issue apologies. Intuit did the same exact thing with turbo tax and said its a small group of people that was unhappy. Then a year later then bought a full page NY times ad apologizing to the public.

[sharmajunior]

@ renGek

In windows, the Securom rootkit is in the {Logged in User's local-roaming folder}. All you have to do is enable all hidden files. Then go to "Search" and search the entire index for "Securom" and you'll see about 4-5 folders as I recall. you can just delete them manually. I did this on my friends computer after he uninstalled Spore.

Now it doesn't show any sign of it. I don't know about the activation count but at least its not there.

[thehog2]

I was so excited about getting Spore until I read about the DRM / rootkit bs. Now I will never buy any of their games. I'll spend my dollars on other gaming companies that don't treat me like a potential criminal.

[Venutian]

"EA, however, said the downloads didn't hurt Spore sales. " Weren't they the ones saying that piracy was hurting game industry?

[Benf]

EA is selling the wheels of of Spore, they dont care if an extremely vocal minority of people are upset, there DRM is working for them and they are making big bux off of Spore, it's going to take more than a few pissed off people like you and me to make em' change.

[edgecase]

I had $5 down on a pre-payment for Spore when I found out about the DRM. I decided to just lose the five bucks rather than help pay into a company that uses this stuff. Obviously, I'm not alone. It's sad that a game with such potential was hobbled this way.

EA will get what it deserves for this choice in time, via natural selection. Thanks to everyone who helped by not buying when they otherwise would.

[jameson627]

only thing i parated was sims 2 when mine failed to install

[dreamhunk]

pc gaming is far from dying and pircay is not going to stop pc gaming.

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/8795.asp

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1561460/TV-is-dying%2C-says-Google-expert.html

you can't play console games when you don't have a tv and tv these days are dying.

ets talk about console pircay that is in the billions. I also hear there is stuff like for consoles too as well.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Almost-1-Billion-Dollars-Lost-by-Nintendo-in-2007-78918.shtml

http://kotaku.com/5060952/fallout-3-360-compromised-by-pre+apocalyptic-pirates

http://www.nintendo.com/whatsnew/detail/3GwK3lZIp7jrUUeZdcp7se3MlENRIULs

[Zamoreta]

spore's DRM thing sucked. i still can't get my copy registered online

[kataclipse]

well, why not offer the game and single player component of it for free, and then offer an option to buy a one - time license to play online?
How can you like something without trying it first?
Would you buy a car without driving it at least once before?

[ferretboy88]

If people would not steal things in the first place we would of never had DRM.

[jCounsel]

It's stunning how we continue to allow failures to be propped up.

No it isn't. As many here have admitted, they WANT these games--they just don't want to pay the price or have the DRM.

That is sort of like me saying I, you, or CNET should be required to allow all comments, pics, and videos onto their site without being able to moderate THEIR domain. Again, it is their property--you are just buying a license that does severely limit your use of the software. Don't like the license? Don't buy the game.

[FrostyD7]

out of all those downloads, i guaruntee that over half of them realized right away they had no clue how to get it working once the download finished. The comment boxes at torrent sites are flooded with people asking how to play an iso file. Not to mention lots of those games may have been downloaded multiple times by people. These stats are unbelievably misleading. These companies are not losing as much money as these statistics lead people to believe. If someone goes through the trouble of downloading a game, its most likely because they have no means to afford one, so they lose 0 dollars in the process. Inflated stats to make an interesting article.

[adnosense]

Well I remember pledging myself to never download and play a game illegally. However when I looked for the first MAFIA game, the only option I had was to do so...It worked, but it just didn't feel right..The second time I did so was with NBA Live 08 and man that just didn't work...still can't figure out why...Anyways I think piracy is no new phenomenon and I'm full into it. However I think the video game majors have brought this on themselves. I'm pretty sure they got the technology to make it convenient for the gamer to be legit. But they just try to make some sort of point so that they can justify pulling out of some markets, just like the PC market with EA Sports...
They need to take it easy and make games that are GOOD games and not done for the $$...until then I don't see that trend going away anytime soon...

[dreamhunk]

Ok lest talk about console pircay. It's funny that game devs don't talk about console. Yet they they talk about pc gaming pircay.

did you know that nintendo lost 1billion in pirated games on the nintendo wii

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Almost-1-Billion-Dollars-Lost-by-Nintendo-in-2007-78918.shtml
http://news.softpedia.com/newsPDF/Almost-1-Billion-Dollars-Lost-by-Nintendo-in-2007-78918.pdf
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/81462-Nintendo-Seeks-U-S-Assistance-in-Anti-Piracy-Efforts

Console pircay is so bad there is people who make a living off of console games and pircay
http://kotaku.com/5084522/epic-sinks-gears-2-piratemodder-in-court

http://kotaku.com/5127249/elspa-celebrates-first-anti+piracy-raid-of-2009

games get pirated on console so fast that even before console games make it to the market it gets pirated

http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/17901/Pirated-Copy-of-Gears-of-War-2-Hits-the-Internet/
http://www.edge-online.com/news/fallout-3-xbox-360-pirated

the funny part of drm, it ok to limit the use of pc gamers. But console gamers can rent their games and use and share games as much as they want

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/01/15/game-to-start-game-rental-service/1