Game Stooge

Brad Wardell Weighs In on Spore DRM

• Scribbled on September 24th, 2008 by Jonah Falcon
• Filed in Interviews, Mac, PC, Strategy

Brad Wardell of Stardock Software, which recently released Sins of a Solar Empire and The Political Machine 2008, has related his thoughts on Spore’s maligned DRM software, and how Electronic Arts could have fared better with it.

“I think most consumers understand that developers need to protect their intellectual property,” says Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock. “What I think consumers are getting tired of is seeing lazy, ineffective, and intrusive methods used.” Wardell doesn’t oppose piracy protection measures, only sloppy, vague implementations of those measures. He thinks that Spore’s online activation, which has caused so much consternation, could have been much smarter. “The whole activation thing could be relatively painless if even a minor amount of effort was put into it,” says Wardell. “There’s a big difference between three activations coming from the same IP address in a week and three activations coming from different parts of the world. Our non-game software takes that into account which is why you so rarely see complaints — most of our non-game customers don’t even know there is an activation because it’s handled during installation seamlessly.”

That’s the rub in this ongoing Spore saga. The game calls home to make sure you bought it, much the same way Impulse or Valve’s ubiquitous Steam platform do. Only, you never hear mass complaints about Valve’s last big offering, The Orange Box. That’s because Steam stays out of your way, gives you the freedom to install anywhere you play games, and on top of it all adds value to your experience with automatic updating, easy installing, and the best social gaming tools around.

Electronic Arts releasing Spore on Steam? Madness. Oh, wait - they do have something to do with Valve Software - like distributing Half-Life 2. Had Spore been released on Steam, it could have saved a ton of headaches.

(Thanks, 1Up.com.)