Well now that’s a pity… Spore, the ground breaking game that’s been on everyone’s lips for years looks like it has struck out. Why? Three little words…

Digital. Rights. Management.

When you buy your copy of Spore, it needs to be activated. Each copy can only be activated a maximum of 3 (!!) times. This means that if you are like me and regularly trashing and reinstalling your PC as a way of getting it to run that little bit faster, you’ll quickly be on the phone to the Electronic Arts activation line, begging for just one more activation.

From what I have read, the assumption on EA’s part is that you are a criminal with stolen property trying to perpetrate fraud. You have to convince them otherwise, or else your expensive new game becomes about as useful as a tyrannosaur in a titanium teapot.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, using the game requires an online account. There is one single account attached to each copy of the game, which means that if you have more than one person in your household that wants to play, you have to either buy a new account for them, or have everyone playing on the same account, meaning that each player will continually screw up the settings, savegames and progress of everyone else.

The backlash of all this is that what could have been a really wonderful launch to a much anticipated game, has been lambasted by the gaming public. Amazon.com has over 2100 people giving the game one star out of five. That’s 2100 people out of 2300 voters!

Piracy is a problem, granted. But this isn’t the way to solve it.