Spore

So. Let’s talk about Spore.

I enjoy the process of buying game software. I like walking into Ye Local Gayme Shoppe and putting down a quantity of dollars for entertainment experiences. I like the crisp, clean smell of the packaging. I enjoy the feeling of unwrapping the box like a gentle lover. If it’s a console game, I throw it right in and keep the manual handy. For a PC game, I read the documentation like a generously written holy text as the progress bar progresses.

But this SecuROM nonsense? Enough is enough.

(If you know what I’m talking about, skip this paragraph.) EA has decided to make cracking software harder. Every ten days, your copy of Spore will check itself on the intertrons, making sure you are not playing a pirated copy. The problem here is that this is extremely invasive, and interrupts gameplay for loyal Joe Consumer every ten days. And heaven forbid the authentication server ever goes down.

This hasn’t really made cracking anything all the more difficult. Eventually, someone will break the thing, within hours. Then the torrents will start. And here I will sit, at my computer, pondering this difficult question: do I buy, or do I pirate?

I’m not a digital privateer when it comes to my games. I have purchased all my game software, every last ounce of it. And now I feel as though EA is preparing to slap me in the face with their collective genitalia for having the audacity to pay people for their hard work. I bought the software, and they’re going to make damn sure I bought that software, every ten days. This is an extra hook in the game that I can only foresee causing software problems, requiring numerous patches just to get the damn thing to work right so we can play.

EA, we’ve seen this before. It was called Vista, and nobody wanted to dance.

When you’re punishing your customers for paying for things, you need to take a look at your operational model.

I’m probably going to wind up pirating Spore.

EDIT: Flippin sweet. God bless you, Kotaku.