Spore's DRM: EA versus the used game market

In June, legions of RPG fans were annoyed with EA's decision to hide the RPG-greatness of Mass Effect beneath a draconian and unappetizing layer of restrictive DRM. Although the reactions to Mass Effect's DRM were resoundingly negative, the game sold well enough that it did not scare EA away from using the same tactics again with Spore -- just as they said they would last May.

Well now casual gaming and Will Wright fans are discovering the joys of Spore, and there is a bit of backlash resonating across the more vocal core of gamers across the great Internets. With Mass Effect, the disenfranchised failed to mount any retaliatory action against EA beyond a mass of extremely long forum threads in Bioware's 'Off Topic Forum' relating their displeasure. But this time around the anti-DRM crowd is becoming a little bit more shrewd -- they have realized that forum threads alone do not lead to change, and have taken more direct measures to influence gamers to vote with their wallets, when taking into account the exigencies of escalating EA-DRM.

In what appears to be a first step of an anti-DRM coalition of gamers, Amazon's Spore page has been flooded with negative reviews of the game, the vast majority not citing gameplay concerns, but instead, issues with the game's DRM. The game currently has a 1.5 star rating, with 517 (out of 570) review giving the game one star. Amazon is such a huge retailer of software that you have to imagine that this will negatively affect Spore's sales -- or at the very least, at least inform would-be buyers to the extent that the game's SecuROM system stretches. 

What's so bad about the game's DRM? Like Mass Effect, the game only allows three installations. Once the game has been installed three times, there is a good chance you are out of luck. Additional installations can be had by EA, but you have to call them up and argue a case -- a step many feel that is going a bit too far. Besides ostensibly challenging game pirates, Spore's DRM also appears to address another big concern of EA: the used game market.

In the last six months or so, some game developers have been lamenting the sale of used games. In short, they feel that they should have a finger in a piece of this used game pie, but in today's game stores, they do not. Many offline game stores make a big segment of their revenue from the sale of used games, and some game developers -- and specifically, most vocally EA -- feel that they are getting cut out. Perhaps this three installation limit addresses this issue for them. 

Whether or not the second-hand game market is a concern or not, one thing is certain: the game's DRM did absolutely nothing to stop its mass piracy. The game was available about five days earlier than its official release through pirated channels. As with Mass Effect, the only people suffering from the game's DRM are the people who bought the game.

The tricky thing in this situation is that EA has no way of accurately knowing how many sales the game's DRM has saved, or cost them -- but things like the annoyance and displeasure of Spore fans everywhere is something that is much easier to judge: "You used to be able to buy a game and play it on your computers, and do with it whatever you wanted," said one of the 600 negative reviews of the game on Amazon, "...not now! Now you can only 'rent' it from them."