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Sep
8
Unusually low reviews for... Spore??
What a terrible thing to happen to an otherwise fantastic game: Spore losing the DRM Fight. Short version: reviewers are downranking Spore on Amazon.com simply because of the draconian DRM system and state that they refuse to shell out money for a game they will merely be renting.
I checked on Amazon and the game seriously has an average score of 1.5 out of 5 stars, with 126 reviews submitted. That's a really impressive turnout of pissed off players!
The DRM system used on the game, apparently, requires electronic activation over the web before you can play and you get THREE activations total, so there are hoards of gamers who are understandably upset. Was EA really that afraid of piracy?
I also wonder what say Will Wright had, if any, in this particular aspect of his game. If Wright had no say, what does that mean for the rest of us no-name game designers who are looking to get games published and don't have the luxury of world-wide fame to get people to buy our game in spite of whatever crappy obstacles the publishers foisted on us?
I guess it's all just more evidence that old school material distribution needs to be seriously reworked... or just plain abandoned.
[edit at 12:18 pm] The average rating has now dropped to 1 star with 660 reviews and there is an explosion of discussion in the Amazon forums, from some people who are upset at the game being marked down for something that is not part of the game's design to the rest of the people who say that the DRM absolutely impacts the user's experience and the reviews are rightly placed.
A few other reviews applaud Amazon for not deleting the reviews, which is apparently what some other review sites are doing.
