futility
Gameviper | Spore Cracked by “RELOADED” Group
After news of Spore breaking the street date in Australia, we hear that Spore has already been cracked by a group called “RELOADED” despite it’s use of SecuROM, the anti-pirating software. (the same one used in BioShock) There are currently over 10,000 people downloading the game on just one public torrent tracker. All this 4 days before the game even comes out in North America.
So… If you purchase the game legally you need to wait several more days to get it, and it’ll be crippled by some fairly agressive DRM. Or, you can pirate the thing, and get it early without DRM. Really makes doing the right thing attractive, doesn’t it?
Of course you should certainly pay for any games you play, how else are you going to ensure that the developers get paid and are able to turn out future games? But publishing companies that keep insisting on heavy-handed DRM are really shooting themselves in the foot.
The more aggressive you make the DRM, the more intrusive it is, the more likely it is to be cracked. If for no other reason than just because people who legally purchase the game don’t want to be bothered by it. I personally download cracks for just about every game I purchase just so I can get around all the cumbersome disc checks and whatnot.
One of the best ways to ensure that your game is actually paid for is to add compelling on-line components that require a valid CD-key to activate. It doesn’t actually have to be subscription-based… Just add enough incentive for people to actually purchase the game and register their CD-key.
Hellgate was a terrific example of this. The single-player was readily available with a cracked download. The multi-player required a valid CD-key and added tons of replayability.
And maybe that’s the case with SPORE… I know that there is an on-line component that allows you to share your creatures with other people. Maybe the on-line component is compelling enough to make people pay for their games.
As for myself, I won’t bother to download it anytime soon. That demo of the Creature Creator really put me off… I wasn’t all that impressed with the creatures that you could make, I expected more variety and flexibility. And I was downright insulted that EA would charge you money for what was basically a glorified demo.
I’ll wait and see if there’s a demo of SPORE itself, of the full game, so that I can get a taste for what it is actually like.