Last week, I presented the crusade anti DRM against the new simulation gain Spore. In any case, DRM did not stop me to purchase it. My personal opinion is that it is a great game (at least as I like them ;-)) Hereafter are some of my first creatures.
The installation requires connection to Internet. Without initial registration on the server, the game will not start ( This is frustrating when installing in a train 🙁) Once registered, there is no more need of Internet, or of the genuine disk. Nevertheless, online connection offers many goodies: possibility to share creatures, bio diversity on the planet due to creatures from other players, possibility to post videos of your creatures on YouTube, automatic patch installing.
A 86Mb path is already available. In theory, it is possible to do it manually without the official download manager. Nevertheless, I did not succeed. The patch did not find my official Spore version. When patching through the game, it was painless.
A naughty idea of mine: What about issuing an application with a severe known flaw. The patch release would need online registration. Furthermore, the patch would check that the copy protection elements are not tampered and still in place. Of course, it may not be pleasing customers. Furthermore, it may not be legal.
A cracked version is already available. It seems to be a good success when looking the number of seeds and leeches. It works. The crack does bypass the registration phase. Of course, it also provides a key generator. I did not test if the patch works on it.
Conclusion: Online connection to Spore server does bring so many goodies that may be Electronic Arts (EA) could have avoided the limitations to three computers. Online real time checking of the uniqueness by the server may have been sufficient. EA will issue next year another blockbuster: The Sims 3. Will EA use the same DRM policy for it?