Speak Out Against SecuROM for Spore! Be Heard! Voice Your Say! I'm pretty peeved at this mandatory requirement to check in with EA every ten days just to play Spore. It's absurd. It is silly. It is plain stupid. Let's consider the potential scenarios here: There are users out there who want to play Spore but simply don't have internet access. In this day and age, I know it's surprising, however there's still a decent size population. Plus there was a promise that you could play Spore without being online. What if you're on holiday/vacation? Are you simply gonna play Spore for the first ten days and then have the game suddenly die out on you? Or go to a country where internet is heavily filtered and they block these data from being sent to and from the server? Let's not forget that we're depending on EA's servers here to validate our game. Let's say the demand overwhelms the servers and we've seen this happen too with previous games. People had to validate their titles (I believe just once) but people decided to validate all at the same time that validation servers came crashing to their knees. End result: People paid $50.00 for coasters. Imagine having to renew every ten days and the sheer volume of requests it is processing to validate the games. It isn't just Spore they are validating here too; they are also validating mass effect users. This is sheer stupidity and it's time we speak out. I want everyone to be heard here and let's get an emails going here to say something about this. It's arrogant on EA's part to think we'd put up with this. I'm not and I encourage everyone else not to as well. I can not give out an email address of Maxis or EA employees as a respect to them, however I've setup an email address here at TerraSpore for you to send your complaints and to speak out about this. The email login has been sent to Maxis and EA for them to view at their leisure. Send your complaints to maxis <at> terraspore.com Speak out! Be Heard!
More points: I still play SimCity, SimTower, and SimCity 2000. Those games are over a decade old. Are we to expect these servers to still exist when Spore becomes this old? Validating every 10 days, why so? Are those same people who purchase the game plan to suddenly switch to a pirated copy? Technically, EA is now in control of our games now. We are expected to shell out $50 for a product we won't even control ourselves. With this 10 day rule, we will be told whether we can continue playing or not. I don't want SecuROM on my PC, PERIOD....It should be a choice, not forced on us. Pirates will find a way to bypass this and in the end, will have better copies than the ones who purchase the games. I don't understand this. They say those who are mad at this issue are the ones who are going to pirate the games. You can't be more wrong, because the ones who really decide to pirate won't even have this problem, as it will already be hacked, leaving only us legit consumers SOL. Like mentioned above, there are still those without internet connection. Some people live in Rural areas and either are connected via using a work PC, library, or relative/friend. You are hurting those people. Say I go on vacation. I'm on the 9th day out of 10 and leave somewhere for 2 weeks with no connection. I take my laptop with me which has Spore installed. So the next day, I'm prompted that I cannot play. Basically, I won't be able to access my game for those 2 weeks. I could go on and on with more points. This whole idea is a mess. Honestly, I don't believe you are the ones to blame, Maxis. This whole fault is probably the idea of a big-wig EA employee. If this is true, I will NOT tolerate it. I don't want to be told when I can play my game, and a crack is released which gets rid of SecuROM, I will be supporting it. This might hurt my chances of ever going to visit EA/Maxis headquarters but I will not be stepped on.
Absofrigginlutely I won't put up with this bull stuff. Hell they're already going to get our $50 plus another $10 for those people who are thinking of getting the full version of the creature creator as well. Securom has already screwed up my ability to burn dvd's (any dvd's) which I can live with but like Jud says what if you go on vacation somewhere that has no internet or something else that prevents you from playing and/or letting them know you're updating your game's status on their servers. Once a month would be a more reasonable time limit if they do this but still having to do this PERIOD is bulloney. If this turns out to be true then this good ole boy won't be spending his dough on their game. I sent them my two cents worth too!
What I've been saying all along. SecuROM caused problems for my PC, and nope I don't have emulation software, nor do I even know how to do stuff like 'mounting images' or whatever. All the burning I do is for legitimate backups of my pictures and game files. SecuROM stopped that. It also was a violation of my right to choose to have it on my PC, because Bon Voyage made no mention of it and I only found out after it was installed. It's MY computer, MY hard earned cash that paid for the computer, and MY right to decide which software I allow on my computer. And evidence has shown just how much of a problem SecuROM can be - yes, EA say that this version of SecuROM is not the one that causes problems but nope, take a look around, still plenty of people having trouble. And would you trust anything that EA says about Sony and SecuROM after their previous versions that hit the news? Like Jud said, it's the honest legitimate gamers who suffer through the actions of the pirates. And I find it hilarious that SecuROM actually turned a vast amount of gamers to the dark side when Bon Voyage was released and everyone found out about it. So good job EA, you got the result that your copy protection software was meant to avoid - more piracy. How many of those gamers do you think will actually buy Spore or any other game titles from EA now they know how to obtain illegal copies?
This is a terrible idea. As it has been said many times, this will do little to actually dissuade hackers. They'll find a way to circumvent the security, while the rest of us legitimate players will have to deal with this obtuse and intrusive system. Come on, lets be real here.. You're screwing the very people who have been waiting and supporting you for YEARS. Is it worth it?
I'm so disappointed right now. After all this anticipation, I'm actually considering not getting Spore. Why can't the game simply check a CD every time it's run? I go to work, care for a sick dog, take night courses, (and so on) and now I'm supposed to schedule my game play too, to avoid hassles? I have enough adaptive crap going on in my life, without all this. I just want to play my game without a constant reminder that EA Games wants to make money and prevent pirates. Talk about spoiling the mood.
Attention : BioWare Responds to Copy protection Outcry...Removes 10 Day SecuROM. http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/52618 Yea!!!! Apparently our people in the armed forces did some complaining too. Good for them!
