If it ain't fixed, don't broke it  

Posted by Unknown

Spore came out. The expectations were high, and the reviews were decent. Hell. It's number one on Amazon as far as games go. It's $50. Average price as far as blockbusters go. I was considering buying it, until I visited my favorite shop. Amazon is a mecca when it comes to my technology needs. And I value the reviews that customers leave. Most of them are people who have made purchases themselves, and I have avoided a dud or two from the information left.

So I was considering spore as a purchase, but noticed a disturbing conversation. The issue is the DRM that the cd contains. You get 3 installs, and then you have to ask permission to install it. When I am in my hardcore gamer mode, I can redo my computer 2 or 3 times in 1 year. This means there is a very good chance that I will be calling EA begging them to use my game. As some of the commenters mentioned, it's more like paying $50 to rent the game. Now, what will probably happen is after the sales cycle of the game has reached a certain maturity, the need for the security will probably be killed, but until then, what is the solution?

Well for one, maybe certain people should buy their software. Yes, I have done my fair share of flying the bit torrent airways, but I would much rather pay for my software. If something is useful, I would hope the company that makes it would be able to financially survive and continue to make software that I can find useful in the future.

But until that day, I would hope that the software companies understand that the people paying for the software, are not the ones who should be punished. The people who are cracking the security placed on your software are much smarter than you, and you cannot win this way. You just alienate your existing customer base. I could of been part of that base, but I don't rent my games.


This entry was posted on Sunday, September 07, 2008 . You can leave a response and follow any responses to this entry through the Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) .

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