Spore DRM

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I bought the game and regert doing so because of the DRM. I like the game but since I already installed it on two computers for my wife and myself that leaves me with one activation left. I was planning on doing a upgrade soon but I fear using the last activation. I'm not made of money infact it was a finacial stress just to purchase this game I can't afford to keep buying the same game over and over again.

I don't understand why they would choose to punish the legit buyers like this its not like it affected the piracy of the game. They really should have tempted legit sales better by offering updates only though accounts tied with a legit cd-key. With the promise of free meaningful updates I think the game would have sold just fine.

Also it seems like the only real advtange of a legit copy is getting other users content. But whats stopping me from downloading all the featured and most popular ones and simply making a torrent and sharing them with the pirates? I could just make update packs to keep the piraters just as up to date as anyone else. Or even a simple fan based website could share creatures much like The Sims.
It seems the only thing that was worth protecting that seperared legits from pirates is defensless.

Well if it comes down to me being out of activations and if they won't give me anymore for free then I'll just crack my legit copy. I'm sure some spore addicts will make fan websites sharing creatures or if not I'm sure someone will just share the user created content through torrents or some other means of getting them. I already bought my copy and I'll be damned if I let them stop me from playing it.
 
but steam doesn't change the fact that the company can do mass seppuku and take their servers with them

then your games wont work properly anymore

while a drm free game will last forever

if there going to shorten the shelf life of the game then they should adjust the price accordingly also


which means steam could go out of business tomorrow or 2 days from now and you will loose your games, or at least much of it's functionality and you wont be able to reinstall them or upgrade your pc or many any significant changes to the OS if you want to keep the now crippled games

and there's no way to assume that a company will still be running 5-10 years from now

every empire through out history thought their empire was too powerful to ever fall, only to be wiped out the next day by another army or internally from corruption

 
Well a company called XL Holidays went bust this morning, everyone who had paid for and booked holidays lost them, even the people showing up to fly this morning were simply turned away without so much as an apology. People are even stranded abroad without no way to get home, and because XL went in to administration they are not held responsible or expected by anyone to do anything.

My point is, if valve do go bust they don’t need to explain or do anything with steam what so ever. You will simply be locked out of steam and that will be that.
 
nuclearshadow, you do realise AFAIK you can just phone up EA and get it reactivated if you use up the initial three right?
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I was under that impression too until I've heard the opposite. With Mass Effect I heard that some people were told they could buy more activations and even Second Take points out that your completely up to their mercy on what they choose to do.

I feel like I paid for trial software... you know the type that lets you use it X amount of times with out limitation till it locks up and asks to be bought. If this is the future of PC gaming then I'm going to have to find a new hobby to replace it which is sad to say as I've always been a PC gamer.
 
Whatever your views about piracy doesn't change the fact that the game was cracked and released to bittorrent days before the official launch. All the DRM did jack squat against that and pissed off a whole lot of legitimate customers in the process. It was a complete failure, plain and simple.

And strangestranger, nothing in the world is black and white. You'll realise that when you get older I guess.
 


That right there is the crux of the problem It didnt work and just pissed the legal customers off.

As we know from the music industry the majority of piracy isnt disk sharing \ copying its downloading torrents so there it was cracked and in the pirate haven. all this DRM came to nothing.
 
nope, right and wrong is not decided by humans, it just is. If you let humans decide what was right and wrong you get situations like this where people think this is even a debatable topic.
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That's just ignorant, and it doesn't make any sense.

Like I said, when you're older you'll realise the world is not as simple as you think. Until then I'm not going to derail this thread any further.
 
ha!

everything in life is black and white, only humans invent shades of gray.
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It's not as simple as that. It's not a black-and-white issue. There are so many shades of gray.

Business World is a Boom Festival.

For those who are alergic to the latest God creation, the Google.

The Boom Festival is a biennial festival that occurs every two years in Portugal. The festival features music, paint, sculpture, video art, installations cinema, theater and a concept of crosspollination of different art forms. The first Boom Festival happened in 1997 with a large influence on electronic music, but nowadays Boom is a multidisciplinary event.


You really forgot we are talking about business run by humans, bought by humans, discussed by humans. I guess you skipped that part, and tried to prove facts with opinions. Politicians so far are only the ones that can do it, for short periods of 4 years or 8 years in case they don't fack up much.

And in this small off topic discussion was ended by copasetic in a very, very cool way:

Whatever your views about piracy doesn't change the fact that the game was cracked and released to bittorrent days before the official launch. All the DRM did jack squat against that and pissed off a whole lot of legitimate customers in the process. It was a complete failure, plain and simple.
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You can stop an army with 1 soldier. You can't stop an idea that just broke loose.
 
nope, right and wrong is not decided by humans, it just is. If you let humans decide what was right and wrong you get situations like this where people think this is even a debatable topic.

things are black and white, you either do something or you don't, black and white.

in this case you either buy it or you don't. that is it. if you only buy some and not others then you are still not buying, still black it is not grey.
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You are still too young.

Ill give you something to think about it.

Right or Wrong due to being concepts do not exist.

That philosophy/idea is over 2000 years. Start there. Leave this forums and start reading. Go outside.

Go read a bit of Kant, Kierkgaard and Socrates for starters. The morality you imply started with Aristoteles that based the "Cristian" morality. Witch you seem to base your right and wrong concepts and dogmas. You just posted a dogmatic line of thinking so ill believe it might be funded by religion. If you base your morality in the Cristian mythology pick up Aristotles first.

Start with Socrates, Plato, Aristoteles.By that order. Then you can pass to the other boys and girls.


 
I can tell you why I like Steam.

Every game I've purchased on there has been less than I would have paid at a Brick and Mortar store. I like the weekend specials, they're like renting but better. They have demos of almost everything. It 'handles' my installation media. I don't have to keep track of disks. I can uninstall or reinstall as often as I want. There's a whole community of gamers peer reviewing, rating and helping to support those games. I've bought fantastic games there that I never would have purchased anywhere else.

Sure, someday the Steam servers might go down and I'll lose what I've invested, but I don't see it as worse than any other authentication system being used today. There's no disk to be damaged or manual to be lost.

Yes, most times it requires an internet connection. Bummer. It's not like most gamers don't have one of those hooked to their PC's 24/7.
 


We didn't invent morality its actually a instinct. Animals even show signs of morality of course not as complex as humans but its there.

Anyways back on topic. If you really examine the logic behind the activation limit its just pure bull. The cd-key is tied to the account so its not like even the legit cd-keys could be shared and lets face it 10,000 people logging in to the same account at once would make for a obvious ban. So where does the activation limit actually come into protecting against piracy? Whether the game is cracked or not I can't see any logic behind it.

If the game wasn't cracked those who wished to pirate it wouldn't be able to play anyways nor could anything on a legit copy go and help them in anyway. So where is the logic in the activation here?

But since the game was cracked now the people skip the whole activation process and don't need a legit cd-key or account. The only limit they have is they can't use sporepedia.

In both scenarios the only people hurt by the activation limit is the legit users. It never has nor will it ever effect piracy.
 
nope, right and wrong is not decided by humans, it just is. If you let humans decide what was right and wrong you get situations like this where people think this is even a debatable topic.
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Because it is debatable. "Right" is determined by what an individual or group collectivly decides is the correct action to take in a given situation, and "wrong" is generally considered any other outcome to that same event. Any argument that degenerates to the point where "because its the right thing to do" is uttered, is an argument that has already been decided in the other direction.
 
oh deary me, i am an athiest, hence why i do believe in right and wrong not being decided by humans.
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So,by your logic,you can't say that i am wrong. You are still a human. You are incapable of deciding right or wrong.

i have not read too much philosophy bar the history of western philosophy by betrand russell. that shows quite clearly that all philosophy is flawed as they rely on being human and the cultures that surround them to base their ideas on when you should step back and take humans out of the equation.
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You should read, do some thinking, and see other lines of thought. Not having Critical Thinking or at least a capability of unbiased analysis (witch you don't, you jumped the black/white, and now justified) and afterward, spew backed conclusions. We had in this forum much "quasi-flaming" discussion from both parts, for longer, without derailing, due to facts and due to each side backing up its statements. I like to discuss with smart people that disagree with me.

you do not understand that and are shaped by your world and the views shoved down your throat.
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That sounded almost as fascist view of the things. Burn the books !! Burn them all !! Because you say they are wrong !!!
Ask any physicist what is your common sense worth ? Nothing.
Common sense has its uses but you must pass over it. It is reliable to cross the road, not to have a somewhat inteligent discussion.

Again, you still don't understand what i said as Critical Thinking.

age does not bring wisdom, knowledge does. my knowledge is fine i assure you and when it boils down to it, there is only one right choice, many wrongs ones. in this case it is very obvious what the right one is.
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[/quotemsg]

You lack both. Your opinion do not have any factual insider, no conclusion, just hammering of black/white opinions. As i said earlier, only freaking idiots politicians can do that. Prove facts with opinions. Because they are usually idiots.

You believe that is the right thing. Prove it. By your terms and dogmas you just posted. I'm all ears.
 
no, you have to have some sort of reasoning to a decision for it to be right.

you cannot just do what you think is "right" as that is what usually serves the people making that decision.

take most societies, they are dominated by men and as such oppress women in order to benefit themselves, is that right even though most people would say so, no it is not and yet most people will "instinctively" create societies based on that way of thinking.

morality as decided by instinct can not always be trusted, reasoning must come into it and if someone has done nothing to deserve something then whatever that action may be it is wrong, in this case it is being stolen from.
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You make no sense whatsoever.

Lets look at the death penalty, shall we. Half the country will argue its immoral to not kill a murderer in retaliation for a murder. The other half argues that murder in any circumstance is wrong, and killing the murderer is immoral. With your logic, one group would be moral, and the other immoral. Please tell us which group is which.

(Note, I only used "kill" instead of "murder" above, because adding any more murders to that sentence would...murder it 😀).
 
Right and wrong are already abstract concepts. To clearly delineate them is to imply that they are concrete, which they fundamentally are not.

In most things, if not all things, there are obvious shades of gray. I understand your point about piracy, but there are viewpoints that disagree with you.

Lets look at it this way...
There are aspects of any purchase decision that could be beneficial or detrimental to the majority. Lets explore some of them.

If a company has taken too many liberties with it's DRM and is clearly being abusive to the consumer, it is actually a very detrimental thing to buy their product, because it is in effect, giving them permission to continue to be abusive.

Downloading a game and playing it without paying for it is somewhat detrimental because it validates the impression of developers that piracy is costing them substantial sales. Also, assuming you could afford the game, it did cost them a sale.

Now, having defined the two opposing positions let us see which one is black and which one is white... Assuming each has to be one or the other, both end up black. That is not how the world works however.

It is more like this.

Buy DRM'ed game --- Wait until DRM is removed or reduced --- Don't buy game --- pirate the game now and buy it when DRM is removed or reduced --- Pirate the game because you couldn't afford it --- Pirate the game despite being able to afford it with no intent to purchase.

The whitest position on this line is probably Wait until DRM is removed or reduced or Don't buy the game. The blackest positions are the two extremes. No options are entirely beneficial or detrimental to everyone so no options are entirely black or white. This is what is meant by shades of gray. Things can be a very dark gray and still be gray.
 
It has an adverse affect on everyone because it encourages the developer to continue to use abusive DRM. It has an adverse affect on the people who refuse to support that DRM and therefore don't play a game they very much were looking forward to. It has an adverse affect on people who bought the game not knowing that they were going to be shafted, it has an adverse affect on anyone who is a potential customer of any upcoming games published by the same publisher.

I would daresay it has more of an adverse affect than pirating does.
 
You say stealing is wrong. Lets say you are starving to death next to a supermarket. In your eyes, would stealing some food be wrong?

I take the line most philiosophers take; the action that benifits the majority for as long as that action has effect is the "right" decision, while all others are "wrong".
 
Well, putting on my fire retardant suit: copying bits is not theft, despite the intense propaganda from the "content industry."

For me to steal something from you requires that you not have it anymore. I can't "steal" an idea from you since, even if I have the idea (no matter how big and complex the idea is), you still have it.

Similarly, copying bits is not piracy in the true sense. Piracy is robbery, rape, and murder on the high seas. Calling copying some bits piracy is vastly melodramatic.

So let's call this what it is: copyright violation, plain and simple. It is illegal to copy Spore, bypassing the DRM. Should it be? That's up for debate. But it is not theft (unless you want to broaden the definition of theft to "taking something and not paying for it when you could" -- in which case, since some people sell air, breathing is theft), or unless you're just spreading propaganda.

Again, I'm not wading into the "is copying a game like Spore immoral" issue, cuz that's a MUCH bigger can of worms and involves things like the "right" of the programmers to make a buck versus the "right" of the public to not be burdened with buggy, over-restrictive spyware (since that's pretty much what most DRM is). It's a big topic.

But it ain't theft, and it ain't piracy. It's copyright violation.

As an aside, I find it fascinating how well the big content industries -- the RIAA, MPAA, and BSA (et al) have brainwashed us into agreeing with their narrative on this.

And before anyone claims I'm acting out of self-interest, I'm a programmer who's "sold" software and a wannabe professional writer. No matter how you slice it, I'm actually acting against my own self-interest by pointing this out, but truth is more important to me: copying bits illegally isn't theft. It isn't piracy. It's copyright violation.
 
oh deary me, i am an athiest, hence why i do believe in right and wrong not being decided by humans.
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I can't believe I'm going to get into this discusion, but what the hell.
Stranger, I believe what you are talking about is the theory that morals have evolved through natural selection such that people are generally wired with morality rather than it being taught to them by say religion - i.e. Nature vs Nurture. On this point I agree with you. However I must disagree with your conclusion that this evolution makes things clearly black and white, right and wrong.
There are two points in which this type of Darwinian evolution works against your conclusion. First off evolution is an ever on-going process where changes are always being made, especially in cases where there are new environmental variables (like the rise of the digital age). Secondly just because a variant or in this case a moral has survived natural selection that does not necessarily mean it is positive, only that it has the traits necessary for survival. Homophobia is a great example of such a moral where it’s obvious to see how it would be fit for survival in the ‘gene pool’ of morality, but today any rational minded person rejects it.
I’m so tempted to go on and on with this subject but it is neither the time nor place. If anything I hope my thoughts on this matter will help to sort out this issue of right and wrong and morality so that we can get back on topic.

I actually have two Spore DRM related questions. One is the process for additional activations as I’d mentioned earlier. In the ST video is was made to sound very painful, but what are the real world experiences with either Spore or Mass Effect? Does anybody have the game or even just the number to call as I think it would be interesting to see what happens when you call for another activation even if you really don’t need one. Secondly what about the direct download version of the game, does it have the same number of activations?
 


From what I have seen of the games forums is that you have to call them up and it takes forever to get connected to someone. Sometimes after all of that you still will may never get anyone.

I recall one story on MassEffect forums a guy used all his actviations he called expecting to get a more activations and they ended up trying to sell them to him. Needless to say he was not pleased. So basically we may have to pay a unknown price just to continue to play. I don't know the number but I assume its in the manual somewhere.

I heard the direct download versions have the exact same protection with no differnces whatsoever.
 
I heard the direct download versions have the exact same protection with no differnces whatsoever.
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That doesn't make a lot of sense since the downloaded version is installed for you. Each time you reinstall it's not like it's coming from the same CD/key code. It seems pretty redundant to both tie the installs to a user account and limit the number of times that account can install.
 
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