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[Micro102]

Yes, they can do it with any program, just this program is on ring 0, meaning they can do ANYTHING they want with your computer.

It's still possible

If they put it under the pretense of preventing piracy, they might just have to pay a fine for it.



and about your imaginary EA manager discussion, all your doing is trying to discredit us by making us look like we actually belive that what your typing is what really happens, so please stop.

And its not just old games, any 2 disks will be seen as a possible game copy.

[Leafsnail]

And its not just old games, any 2 disks will be seen as a possible game copy.

This game has sold lots of copies.  So why have only a few people registered this complaint, considering that 2 disk drive PCs are pretty common?

[Micro102]

So your basing it off that? Without even trying it yourself? And while its a simple matter of taking 1 disk out its still troublesome. People with multiple disk drives don't want to have to empty them just to play spore and it shouldn't automatically read 2 disks as a pirate attempt.

[LegoLord]

and about your imaginary EA manager discussion, all your doing is trying to discredit us by making us look like we actually belive that what your typing is what really happens, so please stop.

You're contradicting yourself at this point.  First you suggest that EA is doing this on purpose, making other things not work properly, then you complain about how they are greedy and profit-driven* as if trying to paint them as evil, then you say you don't believe it.  So why are you even posting any of it?

*most companies are like this; I have yet to hear of one worse than or even close to as bad as Wal-Mart, which has had several issues with mistreatment of employees and employee protests, among other things.  I can actually tell you a lot about how it's worse than EA, really.

I actually have 3 disks on my computer normally, and they all work fine for me.  Since installing Spore (and therefore SecuRom), I have installed several games, among them Starcraft and TES III: Morrowind.  Very few people seem to complain about these mysteriously unproven and unreplicable (not at will, at any rate) issues that you claim it causes.  Therefore it is unlikely to actually be the cause of these issues. 

Finally, Spore is a DVD game.  Most games are CDs.  The likelihood of a program confusing two different CD games is unlikely unless it's an unprofessionally made, sloppy program.  But confusing a specific DVD game with random CD games?  It would take a real novice programmer to make that kind of mistake.

[Micro102]

If your talking about the drives, yes, if your talking about techinacal issues, no.

I don't see why a pirate cant copy data from a game onto a CD or DVD...since you just said spore was on a DVD im pretty sure its both.

This is pretty much over so im gonna stop nitpicking at possabilities and peices of the whole.

[Glacial Eidolon]

Yes, I know, I am now officially a necromancer. I'll be sure to go to the cemetery to raise dead bodies tonight.

*cough*

I played Spore, and didn't like it. It was fairly boring, repetitive, and chore-like - not really much to do in any phase, making it obnoxious the umpteenth time you had to do a fetch quest in the Space Phase. Creature Phase, you just played a social minigame over and over or ran around mindlessly spamming the 1 and 2 keys, with an occasional 3 (bite and slash could be spammed, charge was good for only one thing, and spit was absolutely useless other than a few niche circumstances). Cell Phase, directly before it, was even worse as there was absolutely no user-generated content in it whatsoever. Tribal Phase was static, boring, and simplistic to the extreme (plus there was absolutely no meaningful customization, it seemed). Civ Phase added in some customization, but seeing as you spent most of the time zoomed WAY out from your city and buildings it was unnecessary and futile to add extra details to your buildings/vehicles. And Space Phase was a hilariously boring grind.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As well as being a terrible grind, the Space Phase was home to a monkey-type race called the Grox, who owned about half the galaxy. As well as being a pain in the rear and able to flatten your one-man space fleet with about a hundred ships in a minute if you pissed them off, they also held about a thousand planets. You'd think the extra artifact which can bring life could stop them, but you can maybe off a twentieth of their entire empire before you can't do any more (and then the artifact is useless for the rest of the game). This is worsened yet again by the fact that there is absolutely NO way to defeat the Grox in an unmodded game; some of their solar systems are completely unreachable by space ship, leaving you no choice but to leave them be. To make matters even worse, after the grind and monotony you're rewarded with having to do it all over again the next time you do the Space Phase.

Yes, but anyways... the SecuROM, while it makes me not want to buy any more EA games again until they get rid of those idiotic policies, doesn't actually do much harm. I downloaded a SecuROM remover from its website and was able to uninstall it without any problems whatsoever. What's more, it seems that even the remnants (which supposedly stuck around) have gone away without a trace. It's annoying to have, it's infuriating to have your trust violated, but it's not an actual detriment in most cases and was easily solved for me. Perhaps they patched the uninstaller?

I might have played it more if I had known about the DRM, but the fact is it's a boring, monotonous game. The creators are excellent, but the gameplay has more in common with a level-based freeware MMO (that you have to buy, in this case) than an actual sandbox game. I grew tired of it shortly after ascending to the Space Phase, and shortly thereafter resolved not to play it. A month or two later, both it and the DRM are gone.

Overall, I'd have to give this game a 4.5/10 for the effort, the creation tools and the atmosphere in most of the stages. However, in gameplay terms the game falls short, while the DRM (while not terrible) definitely is underhanded.

It's unfortunate that EA decided to rush the game - I have no doubt Maxis was not responsible - but what's done is what's done, and all we can do is let what could've been turn into wisps and float away.

[Micro102]

The thing wasn't rushed though, it was remade to be simpler so that casual games could play it.

And can you link the DRM uninstaller? The best one I've found is where you have to search around for files and delete them all manually, some which don't show up in searches. But i still don't know if it uninstalled everything. Since SecuRom is installed on ring 0 that means the uninstaller either can't reach that far into your computer, or it can, meaning if the thing has a virus your not gonna be able to get rid of it with a normal antivirus program.

[Glacial Eidolon]

I'm pretty sure this is the one I downloaded:

https://support.securom.com/removaltool/

Also, I'm not sure on the validity of the argument that the DRM is installed in the kernel. It might be - my limited computer knowledge is less than satisfactory in this regard - but I'm fairly sure the actual thing that controls the application is able to be removed. Thus, it's just a matter of defunct crap clogging the kernel instead of actual semi-malicious programs.

Please note that YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO PLAY SPORE IF YOU DO THIS. It's not that great a game by any means, but if you want to play it you'll either have to be flamebait for ninja-lovers or just deal with DRM.

Also, it was rushed in the regard that the remodeling of it wasn't tested properly - or long enough - by QA and ended up just making the game not fun.