EA Finally Realizes People Are Upset Over Spore DRM

from the taken-by-surprise? dept

It only took two weeks since the massive backlash against EA for the DRM and account limits it included with Spore for EA to recognize that maybe it needed to respond. This morning, EA agreed to up the install limit from 3 times to 5, claiming they may also make exceptions in some cases, and also released a patch allowing for multiple user names. While it's nice that the company finally responded, this is still a pretty weak response and doesn't address the core issues.

Also, it's odd that it took the company this long to respond. EA claims that the controversy caught them "off guard." If so, then they clearly haven't paid much attention. We were among many sites that talked about the DRM problem back in May, which got tons of angry comments. Other sites that discussed the DRM got similar angry comments as well, so the only way this should have caught EA off guard was if they weren't paying any attention whatsoever to what various gamers were saying.

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EA Admits That You Can Only Have One Spore Player Per Install

from the and-it-lied-in-the-manual dept

Things aren't getting much better for EA since critics of its overly annoying DRM on the new video game Spore expressed their displeasure in droves on the Amazon page for the game. Now, Consumerist alerts us to another, related, issue that is pissing off many of those who did buy the game: you can only have one player account at a time. That means that if you live in a multi-person household, and multiple people would like to play the game themselves... EA says you need to pay up for another $50 license. Of course, if the game didn't have DRM that wouldn't be a problem.

Even worse, the manual for Spore says exactly the opposite:

You may have multiple Spore accounts for each installation of the game.

Users, however, have been complaining that doesn't seem possible, and while it took a while, an EA rep finally admitted "our bad":

That section in the manual was a misprint and will be corrected in future printings of the manual. There is one Spore registration/account per game/serial code so you are correct in that you cannot make multiple accounts at this time.

This isn't exactly the best way to win fans over to the game, is it?

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