The long anticipated Spore has been recently released for the PC. I’ve been moving away from PC games to consoles for the last few years now, but there’d been so much hype around Spore that I had been tempted to buy a copy anyway. But now I hear that the DRM in Spore is so onerous that people are starting to pirate it en masse. Apparently, you can only install Spore 3 times on your PC for any reason. So if your machine is infested with spyware and you have to reinstall everything, you’re out of luck with Spore if you’ve already used up your 3 strikes. Having had to reinstall Windows on numerous occasions, I can see this as a likely scenario for many. So I’ll be taking a pass on Spore, unless it comes to Xbox 360.
It makes me wonder if the powers that be are intentionally trying to kill off PC gaming for good. Most pirates weren’t likely going to buy a legit copy of the game anyway, but onerous DRM can only scare off customers willing to pay cash money for it. This doesn’t sound like a very sustainable business model to me. It reminds me of my local CVS drugstore, which in one of the most affluent neighborhoods in Chicago, has started locking up things like body washes. Rather than hire security to catch shoplifters, they instead treat all of their customers like criminals and in the process offend and thus lose paying customers like me!
I have no time for screwy DRM, but I don’t want to pirate Spore either, so I guess I won’t be playing it on the PC at all.T_T