Features 10 Years On: Spore

I think there was a lot of negativity towards the game upon it's release due to it's DRM

 

Was a great game at the time - my kids had loads of fun playing it. As to the fuss when it came out, well there was the DRM but tbh it's classic internet - a small minority make a lot of noise, news websites pick up on it and amplify to drive clicks. Both the loud minority and the websites feel they are driving public opinion, but the truth is most people didn't give a s**t about the drama - they checked out the reviews, decided it looked fun, bought the game and really enjoyed it.

 

It was actually serious because it had a strictly limited number of installs and then it would become worthless, however it got patched so the scandal died out as quickly as it started.

 

I always felt the DRM backlash was entirely justified, it used a particularly egregious version of SecuRom that was not only hidden from the user within the installer, but also allowed a paid for copy to be installed only 3 times. If that wasn't silly enough the DRM counted hardware changes as 'new' installs, it wasn't quite at the level of keyboard and mouse, but there were plenty of claims of monitors, speakers or other items that required driver installs triggering one of the count, to say nothing of GPU or HDD changes.

EA, being EA, responded to the backlash by generously (their word) increasing the install limit to 5. They removed SecuRom from the digital releases entirely after they were sued over it's ability to remain present and functional even after the game was uninstalled.

That more than anything tanked Spore's sales. When mainstream news is running articles about how a game secretly installs borderline spyware the problem is bigger than the usual internet angries. The fact that a cracked version was out the same day as the retail game hurt it even more, I can remember lots and lots of threads about Spore that amounted to 'Spore is great, get it here without DRM,'

Yet another tale of EA having an excellent game on their hands, then destroying it by being EA.

 

Yeah, at the time I heard a LOT more about the draconian copy-protection than the actual game. The copy-protection debacle was damning.

 

Like a lot of people, I was really hyped for Spore and bought it on release. Never put much in the way of hours into it though as, although I enjoyed the earlier stages, creating the beasties, building mad vehicles, and so on, I found the space stage too restrictive at the start.

Too many times I hit the space section only for messages from nearby races to start popping up "give us X amount of money or we will wipe you out", now you can only do that a couple of times before you end up skint with one crappy ship thinking "ok, now what?"...... /*ding*/ "give us X amount of money or we will wipe you out".

Just ended up getting bored and moving on. Shame really, some parts were great fun, others just frustrating.

 

Like wise I enjoyed the pre-space stages. I was a little disappointed with the tribal stage and felt that it was under developed and passed by way too quickly. I had fun in space, I didn't have the problem of being blackmailed out of all my money but I never played it for long. My mother-in-law, loved the space stage and had mad trading skills and could max out her money so quickly.
I forgotten about the DRM scandal, until I read the comments. I had been planning to buy the game and stop when I heard about the game's DRM limiting the number of installs. Only reason I've played the game was I got a copy as a gift.