> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.opendemocracy.net/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Spore, digital rights, and the future of gaming - URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/spore-digital-rights-and-the-future-of-gaming/ - Published: 2008-09-20T14:09:01.000Z - Updated: 2019-02-14T22:59:16.000Z - Author: Evgeny Morozov - Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 19:46 Spore - "the most hotly anticipated computer game of the year" according to CNN - has quickly become the mostcontroversial game of the year and, quite likely, of the whole decade. Freshlyreleased by Electronic Arts (EA) and designed by Will Wright, the designer of Sims, the best-selling brand in the history of gaming, Spore relies on a vastarray of themes from evolution to genetics, a sure way to win the hearts andminds of nerdy gamers. Yet it is not the protests of the creationistsor gaming-bashers that have triggered the current round of controversy aboutthe game. In addition to weird creatures and breathtaking graphics, Sporefeatures one of the most draconian systems of digital rights management (orsimply DRM), which, in theory, should save the game from illegal distribution.Instead, DRM has earned Spore the dubious honor of being the worst rated gameof the year on Amazon, the most pirated game of the year on peer-to-peernetworks like The Pirate Bay, and, quite possibly, the most telling example ofhow DRM hurts companies that promote it as much as it hurts consumers who buyproducts locked with it. DRM is not one of those uber-geek terms youcould afford to live without; if you have ever tried to play a DVD purchased abroadon your laptop, you may have inadvertently run into DRM restrictions yourself.For example, if you have switched between regions on your computer more than 5times, you may no longer be able to play any DVDs. The opponents of DRM - suchas the [Free Software Foundation](http://www.fsf.org/?ref=opendemocracy.net) and the [Electronic Frontier Foundation](http://www.eff.org/?ref=opendemocracy.net) \-suggest that it's rather misleading to call such limitations "rights"and that a more appropriate term would be "digital rightsrestrictions", since they often push beyond what is available undercurrent copyright law and result in anti-competitive practices. While DRM has become an integral part of theentertainment industry, many of the enthusiastic gamers who agreed to fork out50 US dollars and buy a legal copy of Spore were not prepared to live throughthe extreme DRM hell they got as a bonus. EA stipulated that those who boughtSpore could only install the game a limited number of times (three), afterwhich it might stop working. To reactivate it, they would need to call EA Customer Support and plead to extend the game's working life. Given that manygamers regularly reinstall operating systems and switch between computers on adaily basis, imposing any number of limits - three or thirty - would alwaysleave some of them unhappy. Many found this frustrating and proceeded to ratethe product with a mere one star on Amazon, citing the game's draconian re-installation restrictions as themain reason for their actions. EA countered the numerous complaints bypointing to the fact that the DRM used to lock Spore is quite like that inApple's iTunes. True, the latter imposes restrictions on how many times onecould move purchased songs between different computers accounts, but what EA failedto mention, however, is that Apple actually allows one to de-authorize any ofthose five accounts. Thus, even if one decides to reinstall the operatingsystem or buy a different computer, it would still be possible to transferiTunes purchases by deactivating previous accounts. However, this is not the case with Spore; oneneeds to call EA and beg for the right to reinstall more often. This sense of externaldependency is precisely what has infuriated so many gamers: EA wants itscustomers to believe that the company will stay in business forever. But whatif EA were to follow Lehman Brothers into the dead pool tomorrow -- would onestill be able to play one's favorite game on a newer computer? The gamers arerightly worried about whether they will be able to play the game ten years from now: who would they call if EA goes bankrupt? EA's existing set-up looks more like arental than a sale; it might even seem inappropriate to call it "ownership"in the traditional sense of the term. It's not surprising that the anti-DRM movementhas grabbed the Spore opportunity to campaign against DRM in general. With thepirated DRM-free version of the game already scoring more than 500,000downloads on peer-to-peer networks and with many users downloading the game outof solidarity with its true fans, Spore will soon become the most piratedgame in history, bypassing Sims with an estimated 1,000,000 downloads. Feelingthe pressure of a few thousand negative reviews on Amazon, EA was forced to increasethe number of install limitations from 3 to 5 in its other highly anticipatedgame, The Red Alert. It's hard to imagine any future meeting of EA's seniorexecutives that would approve a decision to impose more DRM on their soon-to-be-releasedproducts. The fundamentals of the gaming business aresuch that most revenue is made in the first few weeks of a game's release;casual piracy sets in soon after and erodes the sales. At the moment, all thatis needed is for EA to release a little utility - a patch - that would removeany restrictions on the number of installations (they have belatedly acknowledgedthat such a patch is forthcoming "in the near future"). But sincepirates have already developed such patches, some consumers are faced with thedifficult choice of either using an early but illegal patch from the pirates orwaiting for the official one that may or may eventually appear. The most fascinating feature of the Spore caseis that, given how strict EA's DRM regulations are, piracy has become the onlyway to secure a tiny bit of ownership in Spore. As happens quite often, DRM hasonly affected those who were willing to pay for a product, while the piratesget away with all features at no cost. EA leaves its dedicated fans no otherchoice but piracy; this is a very sad prospect for the future ofrevenue-supported digital entertainment, as this doesn't at all tell us how topay for expensive activities like game development in the future. It's quite possible that many of those whobought the game nevertheless proceeded to download a pirated version, as itgave them more freedom. For many of them, thanks to EA, this was their firstforay into the world of piracy - and many more could easily follow. If even themost dedicated fans are forced to embrace piracy, rather than pay, if they wantto enjoy the ultimate game experience, then something is wrong withthe entertainment industry. Spore would have probably been widely pirated in anycase, but EA's DRM policy has ensured that this has happenned on a much greaterscale, revealing the futility of the restrictions in the process. It remains tobe seen whether Spore heralds the imminent death of DRM as we know it, but thelinks between lost revenues, negative product reviews, piracy and the harshnessof DRM have never been exposed more clearly. Given how many other games havetried - and largely failed - to incorporate powerful DRM systems, EA'sexperiment may be one of the last of its kind. The gaming industry thusfollows in the steps of the music industry, where even giants likeMicrosoft and Yahoo had to shut down their DRM-heavy online music storesearlier this year. To understand the changes that might soonoccur in the gaming industry, one need look no further than Asia, where adifferent business model is already emerging. Here, some gaming companiesprefer giving the DRM-free and fully-functional version of the game for freeand charging the most dedicated fans for extra features (even EA is alreadyexperimenting with this approach in games like Battlefield Heroes but arguablynot fast enough), not to mention the Radiohead auction-likemodel of charging whatever one is willing to pay for the product. Whatevermodels emerge in the future, EA's unsuccessful gamble with Spore suggeststhat consumers are unlikely to stay quiet about the DRM abuse much longer;thankfully, Amazon and other similar sites offer a good platform to documenttheir rage and warn others.