Former Maxis Dev Labels Spore DRM a “Screw Up” and a “Disaster”
- Scribbled on September 10th, 2008 by Jonah Falcon
- Filed in Industry News, Interviews, Mac, PC, Strategy
In an interview with Spong, former Maxis developer Chris Harris laid into Electronic Arts’ claims that SecuROM was “as standard for the industry”, stating baldly:
Firstly, SecuROM didn’t even work, as the game was pirated before release. Secondly, this game was much anticipated by gamers as one of the most significant releases of the year, so the idea that you could not have a single worldwide release date, and expect people in North America to resist the temptation to pirate it was just silly.
Also, they have thrown away a lot of the goodwill that gamers have towards Will Wright. I understand why they think the DRM is a good idea, but they haven’t even tried to make it ‘good’ DRM, by defending their position, making it clear when and if the DRM will be removed, or abandoning it the day it got pirated.
From a PR point of view, this is a disaster, as they have come across like they have their fingers in their ears and aren’t listening. Ultimately I think it’s sad, because this was a very original, high budget PC game release that could have been a great shot in the arm for PC gaming. Everyone loses as a result of this, EA, Maxis, and PC gamers. the only people celebrating this are the people who make a dishonest living from selling advertising impressions on pirate websites. It’s a totally avoidable disaster.
Let us know if you have avoided Spore due to the DRM.
September 10th, 2008 at 11:35 am
I won’t buy this product until it’s DRM free, just like my music. I don’t buy from iTunes, I buy from Amazon. If I want to rent stuff, I’ll use a rental service.
September 10th, 2008 at 11:41 am
I totally agree with Chris Harris here – SecuROM didn’t do anything to stop piracy, and the hassle it causes legitimate customers is enough to drive a lot of them to piracy just to avoid it. Well done, EA :/
I was really looking forward to Spore, but after I heard it came with SecuROM I decided to stay well away from it. SecuROM has already caused me serious problems when it got onto my computer with The Sims 2: Bon Voyage and crashed my DVD drive. So not only will I not be buying Spore, I won’t buy anything from EA until they ditch SecuROM.
September 10th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Spore and Mass Effect; and now Red Alert 3.
All games I wanted, but now that SecuROM seems to have become as bad as Starforce was I’ll not buy anything with it. £35 is too much to rent content.
The sad thing is that they’ll just assume that any percieved low sales figures are due to piracy, no matter what the truth is; thus bringing more DRM and eventually doing themselves in…
September 11th, 2008 at 11:42 am
spore who?
September 12th, 2008 at 2:14 am
I was really looking forward to buying Spore, but having run across my first encounter and problems with a lesser version of SecuRom on my Sims 2 games, it most definately put me off.
EA couldn’t have asked for a better customer than I am, and they just lost it. Here in Australia, “rental” price is $100 new. Just not interested.
September 14th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
I was looking forward to this game, and would have shelled out the $50 to buy it. However, having seen what SecuROM has done to end user’s computers with The Sims 2 EPs, I will avoid it.
I’m boycotting all EA games until they remove this DRM.
March 29th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
[...] seems Spore was the staging point for the SecuROM revolt and the massive Amazon.com 1-star reviews and backlash have not gone on deaf ears. Electronic Arts [...]