It may have been a little fitting that we reported on Spore's recent evolution to v1.01 on Talk Like A Pirate Day. Whenever DRM seems to be mentioned... anywhere, and especially when it involves video games there is always an out lash from legitimate, paying customers. This is due to gamers being limited by cumbersome and sometimes intrusive DRM.

Electronics Arts are often criticised for utilising DRM that can be considered "overkill", by allowing limited installations of a particular game on different hardware configurations. Spore's Amazon rating plummeted due to the use of extremely limiting DRM, limiting users to three installations. President of EA's Games Label, Frank Gibeau has gone on record, recently admitting some flaws in the DRM present in Spore.


In a recent interview, Gibeau first conceded that EA had "received complaints from a lot of customers", and then added - "We need to adapt our policy to accommodate out legitimate consumers." There is some good news from this statement, but not that which many gamers have hoped for.

EA have now increased the total number of re-activations available for Spore from three to five. This means that the game will be able to be installed on up to five different machines, with five online activations made available before a consumer is required to contact EA customer support.

Gibeau closed, stating that:

We assumed that consumers understand piracy is a huge problem, We have found that 75% of our consumers install and play any particular game on only one machine, and less than 1% ever try to play on more than three different machines.

While the use of draconian DRM on many titles can affect sales and result in the consumer disappointed at the value they've gained from the purchase of a game; it is important to remember that in all instances software is licensed, not purchased.