Comments on:

By: Phillip Kerman

Phillip Kerman — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:29:01 +0000

Clients that do stupid stuff–sure. But I also have contracts with clients and when there’s a case where the client is more of a partner (like a publisher) then I read the contract. I’m sure this developer is big-boy enough to read a contract.

Saying that EA is so big you either do biz with them or you don’t do biz may or may not be true… but when you choose to partner with a company you become as responsible as they are for actions taken by them on your behalf.

By: Lee McColl Sylvester

Lee McColl Sylvester — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 20:02:06 +0000

Man, you’ve described every single client I’ve ever had ;-) The saying “the customer is always right” comes from tradesmen who didn’t care about word of mouth (like my father-in-law :-D).

By: Steven Sacks

Steven Sacks — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:14:10 +0000

In this day and age, a game as massive as Spore could not be made by any other company, except maybe Blizzard, who are quite focused on their three games (WoW, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3). EA is a behemoth and has swallowed up every decent game company. You either play ball or you don’t get to make your game. I don’t agree that the developer (Maxis) is complicit.

Have you ever had a client that made a really shitty decision, no matter how much you warned them not to, and you had to move forward on it and build it the way they wanted? We’ve all been there at one time or another. What if everyone blamed you for that decision? What if you put your heart and soul into building it for half a decade (which is how long Wil has been working on it) and at the end they come along and made that decision? Should you be to blame? How would you feel about people putting up negative reviews of your hard work that had nothing to do with your hard work, but they blame you all the same? I’m not saying Aral did this, I’m saying that’s what’s going on right now online.

By: Lee McColl Sylvester

Lee McColl Sylvester — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:06:36 +0000

If people continue to buy EA games, then nothing will change. In fact, it might even get worse, as they find out people are still cracking these things.

By: Phillip Kerman

Phillip Kerman — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:23:02 +0000

@Steven I think you CAN blame the developer. I suppose it’s possible that he had no clue that EA wouldn’t be using “bad DRM” on his product… but that’s just ignorance if that was true. I can think of many analogies where people shift the blame–but I’d say the developer is complicit.

By: Steven Sacks

Steven Sacks — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 02:55:10 +0000

@Lee All I’m saying is, argue DRM, but don’t bring Spore into it as if the game has anything to do with the protection scheme. They’re two separate things. I have mad respect for Wil Wright, and even though I may not love to play all his games, the man’s a bloody genius and has high aspirations for humanity and its future. EA is a monster, no doubt.

By: Adam

Adam — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 23:01:46 +0000

Oops EA did it again…
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B001ATHKVC/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_summary?_encoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

By: Phillip Kerman

Phillip Kerman — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:28:41 +0000

Steven, EA must have some great PR folks if this message is so poorly communicated. Punishing the developer? That’s funny… I thought DRM was supposed to HELP the content owners. Doesn’t seem to be working on any front.

By: Lee McColl Sylvester

Lee McColl Sylvester — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 19:52:59 +0000

Hey Steven, you rant that people give you a tough time on blogs and forums, yet I never ever see a post where you’re actually agreeing with people… I think you bloody well love to argue ;-)

You should think yourself lucky Mike Chambers hadn’t replied to this post :-D

By: Steven Sacks

Steven Sacks — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:11:31 +0000

This is a one-sided, melodramatic, troll post. EA and Maxis have been extremely clear that if you need to install the game more than three times, they will grant you permission to install it more on a case by case basis. They even have a customer support number set up for this extremely rare situation. Everyone who is whining that it’s not rare is just doing so to argue.

I can think of other software that forces you to activate it (any Adobe product, any copy of Windows) and will not work for long if you don’t. I am more likely to need Flash on a new machine than some old game I beat a long time ago (and either way, I doubt I’ll need to do it more than 3 times before a new version comes out or I finish playing the game). I don’t see Aral writing troll posts lambasting Adobe for their draconian activation policies for Flash. Where’s your post about that? Oh yeah, they butter your bread. You know better than to shit where you eat.

This is not about Spore, or EA, or this particular DRM policy. This is about distaste for DRM in general. People are using the power of the internet to punish Wil Wright by giving Spore 1 star reviews as some sort of online protest against DRM. Wil put his heart and soul into this game and people are shitting all over it not because of the quality of the game, but because of the DRM the publisher put on it. It’s lame.