DRM: Buyers Beware

Do you remember The Sims? You know-the best-selling life-simulation computer god-game that took the public by storm?

Technically, asking if you "remember" the game implies its demise, which would be entirely untrue. The Sims franchise, very much alive, well and thriving, began back in 2000 and has since then broken five Guinness World Records including Best-Selling PC Game in History.

It was published by Electronic Arts (EA), the top video game publisher for the past two years, that has also produced other largely successful series and games such as Battlefield, Madden NFL and Crysis, to name a few.

As an avid fan of famed designer Will Wright, the lead creator of The Sims, as well as having respectfully admired his design of possibly one of the most addicting PC games on the planet, I remember being, to say the very least, ecstatic when I heard of his newest computer game project in the making, Spore.

It took seven years, but its highly-anticipated debut occurred Sept. 7. Backed by the renowned EA Games, conceived at the hands of the legendary Wright and sporting a revolutionary and complex gameplay concept, how could anything go wrong?

Unlike with their past games, EA decided to implement a very harsh, to some extent even draconian, digital rights management (DRM) policy on the software. This stirred many fans into quite the frenzy.

DRM refers to the protection of copyrighted digital material-the system is basically designed to allow for legitimate distribution and protect against piracy and unauthorized access.

However, Spore's DRM restrictions limit the software to only being installed a maximum of three times. Usually, installations are unlimited.

Most households these days have more than one computer, and families with more than three who want to share the game would be facing quite a predicament. It also doesn't help that the game developers have only allowed one account to be made per game purchase. So even if brother Billy and sister Jane had the game installed on each of their own computers, they'd have to play on the same account with the same character.

In my experience with computers, a number of things have forced me to reformat them a few times in the course of their mechanical lives. I've relied on each of my games to be with me regardless of them allowing one reinstallation or 15 of them. But this type of DRM doesn't allow for that.

In response to EA's policy, many angered Spore buyers engaged in an anti-DRM backlash in the form of numerous nasty blog posts and a massive attack on Spore's star rating on Amazon. After only being out for little over a week and a half, out of the 2,616 customer reviews, 2,304 of them were 1-star reviews.

It seems the general consensus would deem Spore's DRM to be absurd. But for what reason exactly? According to EA, based on game activations of approximately 450,000, 77 percent installed once, 23 percent installed twice and only 1 percent installed three or more times. Why then would fans create such an upheaval with a limit they normally don't even meet?

As evident in their heated reviews, it's more about being restricted in general. The majority of people feel they're being treated like criminals despite the fact they've purchased the software legally.

And then come the issues of money and ownership. We've come to understand the exchange of money for goods or services means we own that good or service and will do what we wish with it to our heart's content. But what are we to think when with our newly purchased product comes with instructions and constraints from the previous owner? DRM makes me feel like I'm renting the game-EA's being the evil landlord who says I can't paint my bedroom walls fuschia.

This protocol threatens our sense of entitlement to the product-a claim that, in our eyes, we have the right to make since we used our hard-earned cash to buy it.

And although I do not advocate piracy, I had to laugh at the game's current state among downloaders. The copyright system was intended to discourage illegal sharing of the software, but according to major filesharing website BitTorrent, it's been confirmed that Spore has already been downloaded over 500,000 times and is quickly on its way to being the most illegally downloaded game ever.

Take that, EA.

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