http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20655

John Riccitiello wrote:“So far, Spore has outsold Sims 2,” he notes. “Commercially, it’s doing very well.”

“Everyone gets that we need some level of protection, or we’re going to be in business for free,” Riccitiello says. But he sees a lack of understanding among “a minority of people that orchestrated a great PR program. They picked the highest-profile game they could find,” he says. “I respect them for the success of their movement.”

“‘I'm guessing that half of them were pirates, and the other half were people caught up in something that they didn’t understand,” he says. “If I’d had a chance to have a conversation with them, they’d have gotten it.”

He notes that the company will soon be rolling out newly-announced relaxations on the account restrictions any day now, allowing users to deactivate one registered machine in order to activate another one.

“There are different ways to do DRM; the most successful is what WoW does. They just charge you by the month,” Riccitiello says, noting that the subscription model means that even those who pirate the software itself can’t play without paying.

“We’re going to see an evolution of these things. I wish we didn’t live in a world where we had to do these types of things. I want it to be seamless and easy – but I also don’t want to have a bonfire of money.”

Point #1: There are free, hacked versions of World of Warcraft servers out there. There are people playing World of Warcraft without paying.

Point #2: You don't need DRM to protect the sales of your product, as Stardock's recent smash-hit, Sins of a Solar Empire has proven.

Point #3: We still lack the deactivation tool. We still lack an ETA on the deactivation tool.

Point #4: It is not easy to get more licenses on your legitimate registration key.

Point #5: SecuROM is an invasive rootkit program that installs itself without permission. There is no prior warning on the box.

I challenge John Riccitiello, or any of his spokespeople to sit down with me on X-Fire for a one on one logged conversation regarding the problems between the Spore Fan-base and the failed experiment that is SecuROM's 3-to-5 license limitation.

Convince me that the DRM is important to keep.

I can promise up front that it will be civil. I also promise you that I will be open to any explanations. I will not skew your words in an attempt to attack you. It is not my place to criticize or debate in a civil conversation.

However:

#1: I will stress the importance of prioritizing the deactivation tool's release.

#2: I will stress the importance of raising the limitation to a more reasonable 10 for everybody, or to simply remove the limitation completely if raising the limitation of licenses is not feasible for older versions of the game.

#3: I will stress the importance of a toll-free number or at least a way to reimburse people who are being charged long-distance charges for calling your Customer Service based in Texas.

#4: I will stress the dangers that SecuROM poses on any computer. It can shut your computer off at any time if it does not like what it sees. It can cause problems to hardware, and software. It does function exactly like a piece of Malware, and there is zero warning on your box in regards to this feature.

These are legitimate concerns. These all deserve a valid response from a representative of EA, or Maxis.

So I challenge you Maxis, EA and John Riccitiello. Change my mind about the DRM.

~~ Dairuka Sutain.

BUMP!

No, not just Bump - Perma Bump!

NICE callout!!!! AAA+++++ and NICE catch on that bold section in his errr.. umm.. jaded speech?

That was the sound of inevitability.

He'll never agree though. Especially not with the current lawsuit in the offing, they can't talk about that at all at this point, is my guess. It could possibly be used to demonstrate foreknowledge which could cause them to lose the class action suit.

Dairuka wrote:
Point #2: You don't need DRM to protect the sales of your product, as Stardock's recent smash-hit, Sins of a Solar Empire has proven.

At the risk of being one starred to death, I'd like to interject with an off-topic rant... simply because I'm getting sick and tired of people sugar coating the pile of crap publicity Stardock pulls with SoaSE.

Let me break it to you easy first. Stardock isn't the sweet innocent little indy people gloss them up to be. They lie and manipulate the public just as much as Bethesda and Electronic Arts.

They say that Sins of a Solar Empire's sells are top of the charts, mainly because of their disbelief in any DRM scheme that other companies use.

MYTHBUSTER FACT 1;

Sins of a Solar Empire does NOT top sales chart, nor has it at any point, on ANY vendor list except their own Impulse. First, take a look at Impulses catalog of games and then tell me why it's on top. Thats right, beyond Sins and GalCiv... that catalog isn't exactly boasting grade A titles. It's not suprising that Sins is top of sales on Impulse... everything else sucks

Beyond Impulse, Sins doesn't even have a track record of ever being on large chain stores Top 10...(ie best buy, target, circut city... can't include Wal*mart because they don't poll thier software anymore). Latest PR Stardock gave over the sale of Sins marks it just over the 500k mark, which [in the grande scheme of sales] isn't much.

But, that's fine~ Stardock also claims they don't develop thier games according to market, they develope according to player base. Smaller target audience, smaller sales. But that doesn't exactly give them room to say that Sins is a "smash-hit"

MYTHBUSTER FACT 2;

DRM does not mean "Disk Copy Protection"... Sins of a Solar Empire still has it's own form of DRM... it's DRM? Impulse. Like Steam is to Half-life, Impulse is to Sins. You cannot play online, recieve patches or install the upcoming expansion without registering your CD-Key through Impulse. Your license is also controlled via Impulse.. just like your steam games are licensed through steam.

Granted, Impulse and Steam both aren't nearly as draconian as Sony's Securom, they STILL use online DRM checks to ensure your using a legitamate copy.

It wasn't always like this with Stardock, either. Both GalCiv and Sins offered stand alone patches that didn't require you to verify authenticity to Impulse, but as of August, that changed... and if you think it's NOT because they're concerned about piracy, you're a fool.

Stardock's PR over thier "Great Sells without DRM" and thier "Gamers Bill of Rights" are nothing more than publicity stunts to get people to buy thier software. They blanket facts with media espionage just like every other company.

totally 5 stars from me dude..... preach

Bet u anything tho that EA's CEO is a coward.

It'll never happen, but kudos on the callout.

Torbin wrote:*Snip*

I called it a smash hit.

Ranking #2 to Call of Duty 4 is a pretty big deal for a small developer/publisher like Stardock.

Oh comme on, anyone that still believes that the DRM is to protect us from pirates is in urgent need of a reality check.

All it does is control legitimate users.
And not the good kind of control.

I for one have learned my lesson.
No mather how you look at it.
You get treated as a criminal when you buy the game.

When you pirate the game you are a criminal but there is noone to tell you what you can or can not do.
Also its for free. And in some cases the community support is better then the official support.
Spore being a prime example.

Interesting Very Interesting.

Well DRM is a piece of thrash code. Why would you install crap like securerom on windows, Windows has enough flaws of its own, we dont need addissional software to protect us from pirates. EA please keep DRM with yourself. My system is unstable as it is dont make it worse by installing more spyware like securerom. Anyways I authenticate with spore website anyways why the hell do you need drm on top of it. Well to pirates it does not matter they will find a workaround this and make it work. Why should paying customers pay for secure rom. A well in the end if DRM hurts customers, customers will hurt EA. And this is inevitable so seriously there is no point discussing this. Time has a tendency of solving problems itself.

Thats a good point, none the less if we didn't adressed the DRM isseu here a lot of people would still not know about it.

TheSims fora are a good example of this.

Personally I see it as every humans duty to educate the masses.

(5 stars)

John will never accept the challange, not because he will ignore it or anything, no, because he will never see it.

Since this IS being turned into a class action lawsuit (*hopes that ti will become big in the news*), I plan on trying to get myself on Nancy Grace with some sort of EA rep. so I can chew them apart...and if Miss Grace decides to bank with EA's side, I'll go ahead and tear her a new spore hole as well.

"Half are pirates, half got caught up in something they don't understand"

What part of "damaging my operating system" don't I understand?

Ryuujin wrote:"Half are pirates, half got caught up in something they don't understand"

What part of "damaging my operating system" don't I understand?

How to fix it, that is. In fact, saying that people "got caught up in something they don't undestand" is a very solid staement, seeing that no one knows how to fix it.