darxio wrote:Have you installed it on more than 3 computers yet?

Just because a limitation exists, does not mean that it's going to ruin your fun.

I have Spore installed on my Laptop and Desktop right now. So far both work great, and I havn't had a problem with the DRM yet. If I have a catastrophic breakdown of a computer or a reformat(Which I don't plan on), I can just call them if I need to reinstall it. People have phones these days, right? And EA isn't going out of business anytime soon, right?

But not everyone can use phone. For example, I am deaf person, how can I use phone to contact EA? I truly hope EA will be able to reponse to me using email in case if I have to reformat my pc hard drive three times in the future...




Chaoic out...

chaoic16 wrote:

But not everyone can use phone. For example, I am deaf person, how can I use phone to contact EA? I truly hope EA will be able to reponse to me using email in case if I have to reformat my pc hard drive three times in the future...




Chaoic out...

TTY? I know it is "old tech", but it is there. How can you be deaf and not know about TTY?

/or...maybe they don't have a receiver for TTY...yeah that would be a problem.

No, from what I have gathered, installs are eaten up when the game is uninstalled, or if the computer is formatted, or it claims that the game is being installed again during driver updates.

zerofill wrote:Sounds like EA completely misses the problem most people have with a 3 install limit. The problem for most is not that they want to install it on more than 3 systems simultaneously, but that in the future, they want to be able to install their game, after hardware upgrades, clean OS installations, new PCs, etc. If you got an install back by uninstalling (or deactivating) your copy (like with iTunes which they compare their system to) so that you could have 3 activated installations at any given time, it would not be nearly as much of a problem. However, that is not the case and it's 3 installs and done or call them, beg for another install, and get charged for your trouble. That is NOT how to treat paying customers.

QFT- Well said Zerofill.

I only want to install Spore on one computer at a time. But my gaming rig is a constant work in progress, and I will eventually want to reinstall Spore after upgrades, hard disck swaps, etc. I'm not surprised that only 1% install it on three machines simultaneously, but that is not what the complaints are mostly about.


Edit- to clear up some confusion, here is EA's official policy regarding the install limit. Yes, reinstalls on the same machine DO count.

Response (Harsh Jindal)09/15/2008 07:35 AM
Hello,

Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts.

We only provide 3 activations per game/code and you can only activate the game on maximum three computers.

Note: Re-installing operating system will be count as new computer.

If you need any further assistance regarding your question, please let us know by updating this incident.

Sincerely,

EARep Hagan
Player Relations
Electronic Arts

Quira wrote:Even so, whether the DRM is legal or not doesn't change the fact that pirating the software is illegal irregardless, unless you plan to argue against copyright law itself.

Of course not. Who would be so silly to oppose such a useful money-making tool anyway?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-copyright

Quira wrote:
However, the question of whether the DRM is legal is suspect to begin with, so that's your grey area. Even so, whether the DRM is legal or not doesn't change the fact that pirating the software is illegal irregardless, unless you plan to argue against copyright law itself.

While I don't claim that piracy is any less criminal nor unethical, the DRM may actually run afoul of copyright law as well, making it as least as illegal as piracy is, (we hereby run into the "do as we say, not as we do" problem).

The First Sale provision that is part of the same set of copyright laws they're hiding behind does seem to disagree with the way EA wants to control how the game changes hands after it is purchased. In fact, they may even use the terms "first sale" in the EULA, which would be hubris on top of hubris.

In short: Whether or not it's illegal, EA could be found to be committing a similar crime and doing so openly and willfully, thereby giving them no moral high ground and indeed egging people on as they pirate the game. Ethical or not, EA clearly has no remorse for doing similar misdeeds... except that EA's misdeed causes damages dozens of orders of magnitude larger than piracy does.

Imagine a hypothetical situation where a country was complaining of "wrongful, unethical artillery attacks on our territory", while at the same time launching a surprise nuclear attack against a helpless, uninvolved nearby nation. This would be what EA is doing.

I have read all 6 pages. I have spore installed on my desktop and laptop, I have installed the 3 times alone on my laptop (It may be vista I'm not sure but it doesn't show up in my start menu) so from personnel experience re-installing without config changes does not count towards your 3 limit.

That said, from what I have read and replied too, for a lot of people the DRM/secuROM problem is not all about how many times you can re-install but more so the people who had Creature Creator in a multi family home cannot play online with different spore accounts that were established.

I have to play offline because my husband registered first, which is fine I have no problem with that. The problem we have is that if I want to download new content I have log in under his account to download off his spore page, In doing so all of my achievement and creatures now become his and vise versa.

I play as a shawmen on my game and he has a military game yet on his page because I logged in he has both achievements. I'm not worried about having to re-install later my problem is this account is useless because I can't do anything more then type on the forums.

EA/MAXIS have listened to the Majority and trying to work on that issue. Just like with "Bon Vogue" EP for TS2 I believe they will eventually cut out a big portion of the DRM/SECUROM issues down the road. I'm p***ed off too but it will die eventually.

Ok I must fall into the 1%.
I play spore on my laptop when I have too. But I prefer to play on my oldest son's PC. But he plays WOW ALOT. So sometimes I play on my youngest son's PC. Now after 3 installs, my laptop takes a dump and I reload windows Vista. Guess what!? I can't reinstall spore. I'm at my limit. I could uninstall it from my kids PC but when I get to play there I will have to uninstall the laptop.?

I don't mind the DRM. But EA should make it available to the honest person to be able to reinstall (reregister or reset the installs.).

I will make my impact by NOT purchasing any more games with limited installs and if I can't tell I'll just assume EA does this on all games so NO MORE EA for me!! (I'll tell a few people too!)

trigger863 wrote:I could uninstall it from my kids PC but when I get to play there I will have to uninstall the laptop.?

Wouldn't do any good. Uninstalling does not free up any of your installs.

(I'll tell a few people too!)

At least three of my friends decided not to buy Spore after all the problems I've had with it.

So far as torrenting a cracked copy of Spore:

When I buy a car, I do my own repairs. If something on the car breaks, I generally don't take it to the shop if I can fix it myself. And I don't buy factory parts if salvage or rebuilt are available.

So I've bought a copy of Spore but it does not work. I am currently capable of fixing my Spore game by installing third-party components. IF I ever get the desire to play Spore again, that is what I'll be doing. But it's highly unlikely that I'll give Spore another chance.

Darxio wrote:Have you installed it on more than 3 computers yet?

Just because a limitation exists, does not mean that it's going to ruin your fun.

I have Spore installed on my Laptop and Desktop right now. So far both work great, and I havn't had a problem with the DRM yet. If I have a catastrophic breakdown of a computer or a reformat(Which I don't plan on), I can just call them if I need to reinstall it. People have phones these days, right? And EA isn't going out of business anytime soon, right?

But I don't plan to have those kind of computer catastrophes to happen in the first place.

I'm sure the DRM is mostly implemented not only to make pirating harder, but also to make sharing among friends(As in, neighbors, school buddies, best friend down the street) harder. But honestly, the DRM hasn't done anything to me yet, and if I keep following what I'm doing, it shouldn't bother me for a long time to come(By which then the DRM might even be removed).

Yes the DRM sounds restrictive. But is it 100% stopping you from playing Spore? No. The people complaining just don't want to have to interact with people in order to install the game on 27 computers or are just a clutz after their computer reformatted itself for the 12th time this week.

Why not do what the creatures in Spore do? Adapt.

This made me LoL.
Have you not read any of the complaints? The DRM resets and you have to reinstall (using one of your installs) after a change of hardware...reformatting...ANYTHING that will change your PC. So it's not necessarily that we want to load it on 148 million computers, it's that if we have to upgrade our computers, we cant install it after 3 upgrades to our components.
And the EA "help" line is not toll free, like most. They charge by the minute, long distance.

I don't really like chiming in on debates that have nothing to do with me, so I'm going to say this as a general statement to everybody in this thread.

But if anybody wants to debate about whether or not the DRM is invasive, or whether or not it's easy to get extra installations; I'd like for them to first read up on my feature length thread here: http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/6800.page

The DRM is invasive. It is not easy to get extra installations. If you would like to mislead people into thinking otherwise, I'd be happy to verbally crush any point you can muster up to the contrary.

Anyhow. I just bought Hinterland, so I'm gonna go play that for a bit.

lol IM Canadian myself and US law cant touch me here for piracy. I just download whenever I feel its better to do so. I wish I had done this with Spore could have saved myself 80 dollars.

Hindsight89 wrote:[...]The DRM resets and you have to reinstall (using one of your installs) after a change of hardware...[...].

I've changed my gfx card, installed the new drivers and didn't have to reinstall Spore. Windows uses similar approach, you have to reactivate it after a major hardware change. Don't know if that gfx card change counts as an install internally for Spore tho.

Xamataca wrote:

Hindsight89 wrote:[...]The DRM resets and you have to reinstall (using one of your installs) after a change of hardware...[...].

I've changed my gfx card, installed the new drivers and didn't have to reinstall Spore. Windows uses similar approach, you have to reactivate it after a major hardware change. Don't know if that gfx card change counts as an install internally for Spore tho.

When my Windows XP Pro ran into the registry issue; I called a toll free number and within five minutes I got five more licenses.

When my spore ran into the license issue: I called a pay-per-minute technical help number and within five days after being given the run-around for three of those five days, I finally received three more licenses.

Big difference.

Just because there has been a lot of people downloading it "illegally" doesn't make it right, but at the sametime u idiots who are defending DRM, it obviously HASN'T WORKED YEAH?

Me, the legitimate customer, has to screw around with a set amount of installs. I've already used up 2, 1 for me, one for my girlfriend. What happens when I need to format? 1 more gone.