Just head to Amazon to find out why people weren't happy with Spore.

The gist of it is that they felt like they were renting the game. It was definitely an overreaction, as the vast majority of people don't even install over 3 times (I think EA released figures that only 0.4% of people install over 3 times or something like that).

It's more of a matter of principle in my opinion. When you pay such a large amount of money for a game (especially us poor Australians), you don't expect to get something that is akin to a demo trial period. Of course, that's a complete exaggeration, but that's the feeling you get. As you like to put it, you feel like you are being treated like a criminal.

Besides, Spore was just used to set an example to publishers more than anything. People just thought they'd choose some high profile game with SecuROM and make a mass protest against it. I bet the vast majority had no intention of buying the game anyway.

I think it was the limits on activation that frustrated players.  I mean, heck, I know that I was forced to download GalCiv II and WindowBlinds twice last week alone (PC crash, and hadn't backed up those files as they are "not irreplaceable"), so even though I had, in my mind at least, a legitimate excuse, by EAs standards I would have already used up two of my "freebies"

though I have issue with the runup in companies and this whole "intellectual property" BS that has been the focus of the market the past few years.  When I purchase something, I own it; plain and simple.  And if you're not going to give me a hard copy, then IMHO, i should be able to access it or download it at any time.

personally, its my same opinion with iTunes.  It bugs me that while iTunes has a complete purchase list of everything I have bought over the past few years, if for some reason a file is deleted, I can not redownload.   Ok, fine, wahtever, but I don't understand why at the very least I can't have a free streaming song or tv show to watch on demand since I already paid for it.  I look it as you alreayd know which computers i've authorized, as long as the stream is going there, and on heck, even if i was required to use a special iTunes media player, then i'd still get to watch my shows or listen to my music that i had purchased, even if i had lost the actual file.

1.) Invisible Activation: I don't really have an issue personally, as long as it doesn't affect me being able to use the product effectively.  Personally, i'd like a strict catch-net that would, let's say, stop an un-activated product from downloading or uploading any files for that product.  Most Stardock products already use a system similar to this; ie GCII where you can only get the updates once the product is registered; or for like WindowsBlinds.   If you want to pirate a product, well, there's probably not much one can do to stop you, but at least we can stop you from getting the really good stuff.

2.)  I'll admit that I like having my cases, same reason I like records over CDs (those covers were awesome!), but even so its frustrating to have search for a disc, or worry that it may have gotten a tiny scratch on it somewhere.  I really really like just clicking on an icon and having my title screen appear.  And really, i mean my Sims 2 collection is already at 8 discs, and i don't even have all the expansions (and besides, most just sit there idly since i don't even 'need' the old discs anymore, such a waste of resources)

3.) Agreed! If I have to run another program just to make the one I wanted work/run, I'm not going to be very happy about it.

All this being said, I am slightly concerned about how some cable companies have put hard caps on internet usage.  Sure 250GB may seem like a lot now, but then again 1GB seemed huge just a decade ago.  Since I am bout 95% positive most programs/software/etc are going to be headed toward an exclusively internet format in the future, I can only see problems ahead.

I'm fine with CD-keys provided they're stuck to the box or manual.

What I don't like:

 - Online activation required when installing from a disc.

 - No de-authorization.

 - CD required. They degrade.

 - Another program required. I want my system power on the game, not other stuff.

 - No guarantee of "It works or your money back."

I know I'm repeating myself from other threads, but oh well:

Mass Effect did not work on my computer despite tech support. One email even insinuated that SecuROM wouldn't let the game run because I had Norton Antivirus running. Didn't work turned off, either. Eventually (About two weeks after I first contacted them), they told me to take back the game and get the 360 version.

No store here takes returns on PC games or even buys them used anymore, and EA wouldn't take it back. I was angry, so I downloaded a crack from online. In ten minutes, the game played perfectly.

I'm not really a fan of activation at all either, though it's generally not a problem for a download. Downloaded from a different source though...:

I also have the Beta for Red Alert 3 installed, which was downloaded through FilePlanet. For some reason, I can't reach the EA.com domain, so I assume that's why RA3 refuses to let me open it. This one does appear to be my computer, but it's frustrating nonetheless.

Double posting since edit is borked.

The Yahoo Music store went under. All songs could still work but they'd only work on that computer. Ever. People who bought the music were forced to never upgrade that computer again or lose their music.

It definitely was the activation limit for spore - I didn't buy it myself for this reason nor did my uncle who really wanted to buy it before (he said he'll buy it once and if EA decides to sale it for 10 Euro). Many gamers like to play old games now and then and knowing that there is a 3 activation limit is really a turnoff. It also makes burrowing the game to a friend more or less impossible as it take one of only 3 activations and while that might be goal, I feel violated in my rights as german citizen to burrow and even sell (remember EULAs are mostly void here) any product I bought without artificial measurements to decrease the value of the product in the burrowing/selling process. As much as Publishers don't like that people burrow games to their friends it is considering like burrowing books or any other product here in germany. 

To be honest I don't mind to put a CD in my drive to play the game, without is better  but that would never be a reason to not buy a game.

Impulse Activation is okay and would be even cooler if multiplayer games (at least those published by stardock) would come with a multiplayer spawn client. You might call it piracy when there are 8 guys on a private lan, 7 of them have a specific game and give it to the 8th to be able to play this game togehter but as games with good multiplayer usually focus on multiplayer (where you need a legit copy to play online), the 8th guy will buy the game if he likes it, and if he doesn't like it, it isn't a lost sale either. A multiplayer spawn would make this a lot easier.

Being someone who is actually on the UK official Spore fourm can say the main problem before release was people did not want to “rent” the game with its 3 activations

A lot of the problems after Spores release were a load of rubbish and people not bothering to actually find out what caused it and just made posts blameing "The reincarnation of the devil SecuROM&EA" An example is someone being too stupid to look at the system requirements on the back of the box and seeing his graphics card is not supported.

What really ticked me off last week was the fact that a purchase of Crysis Warhead through steam also came with EA's SecuRom. I actually bought it on Steam because I though that surely, they wouldnt use any protection there as steam is enough protection and annoyance as is. Why would that ever be necessary? I can only play games from Steam when I am logged in or have a valid profile anyways. So next to the authorisation required by Steam I can also only install that game 5 times. So yeah, its 5 installs which you wont use any time soon. But if you buy a game, you want it to be free of any restrictions. Like mentioned before in this thread, it feels like you havent actually bought anything, you pay for 5 installs. So it is indeed more like renting the game.

So there you are, payed for a game. I have to load this silly Steam program before I can play and I'd better not mess up or change my PC's too often or I cant even play it at all.

Another problem with these activations and sneaky programs/drivers being installed to enforce 'publishers law' is that you dont even know about it, untill you either run into problems with the game or read about it on the internet somewhere. It should clearly state that when you pay for such a game, that you are actually purchasing x amount of installs. Basically, the publishers should say "Hey, nice of you to buy this product, thanks for the money.. once you have it installed we'll screw you over and cause problems. Muhahahaha!".

I have bought Mass Effect before as well, and only found out about its 3 installs limit later. Funny btw, that Spore caused so much more public uproar about the exact same activation policy being used. Or maybe Mass Effect's activation led to people actually paying attention when purchasing Spore? Like I should have done with Warhead appearantly.

If I had known beforehand, I would have thought twice about buying the game, that and Warhead. It would have been a pity too as they're great games that deserve to be payed for. 

The irony remains that people that actually do pirate never have any of these problems. 

To me, proper activation for a game, is that you register your key online, linked to one account, if you want to play online, or if you want to receive updates. Anything else will just annoy the user.

Personally I think that with the retail discs wide open, and no-arbitrary-limits activation only required for updates, we've got a pretty good system. The only people who have issues right now are those without internet at home (which we're working on a solution to), and those who object to Impulse on general principle (honestly, not much we can do there; some will object to anything short of completely unprotected http downloads).

I might get slammed for this, but I don't even mind the requirement for having the CD in reader in order to play as long as it's a good enough game.  Games like Midtown Madness need them in both computers if you want to race head to head. Of course, being a "classic", you can get the CDs for about $9.00 or less.  Probably even cheaper by now, so losing a CD isn't the end of the world.

Stardock has a great system.  A CD key to get updates.  With SDC, having the option to archive to your hard drive was nice.  I'm not sure if Impulse has that feature enabled yet, but if it does, that's a nice safe way to store the backup. Even if Stardock goes under, the backup can be restored to any computer and the serial number is safely stored, unencrypted in the registry of the original computer.  If you want, Stardock will send the serial number to you via email for a permanent electronic record.  This is superior by far to any other protection scheme from the customer's viewpoint.  Or at least, it should be.

Having limited installations and having to call the company to override sounds like a potential problem, but if the company looks like it'll be around for a few years, I'm even ok with that.  If Spore is from EA, I'd think it'd be safe to say they'll be around a while. 

I think needing to have to contact the company via internet or whatever means every time you want to play a single player game would be going over the top.  I have no games like that in my collection and hope to never have one.

I'd be really interested in some "sound" survey data on this point, and I wouldn't at all make a bet either way without it. I've not bothered with Amazon b/c I shunned them years ago for their severe flip-flop on privacy rights. But I've posted several times here, and the ongoing conversation has been very interesting to me.

To answer Frogboy's Q about why I rejected the current SPORE/SecuROM combo, it is both the "rental" thing via activation limits, and, perhaps more importantly, that wacky idea that you have to connect every time you play and you lose your activation if you don't play every 10 days. Just the notion that EA found that a reasonable tactic left me very much on the boycott side.

The funny part is that I'm turning out to be grateful for that "bad" decision. I was hooked by that long video demo from several years ago also--when Will Wright toured that earlier version of the game, it truly looked like I might get my wish to have SimEarth married to Civ and MoO/GC. For grownups. Now, that appears to be a pipe dream, or at best something that will take years to get at a reasonable price (8-pack megaversion in the discount bin).

As to Brad's thread-title question, (c) opponent that I am, I have to say, "What the market will bear." Like almost all law, (c) depends on people accepting that it is reasonable and obeying. There is no viable (sustainable) option for enforcing (c) b/c computer technology naturally enables and encourages copying. I hope Stardock's current model gains traction both because I want them to keep making games I like and because I believe it could be a good first step to abandoning the whole stupid regime as we currently practice it. Software users and producers need to acknowledge and sustain their mutual dependency through service contracts, not the delusion that knowledge can be property. Rights of attribution are essential for the progress of "the arts and sciences," but rights of property are not.

To me, the biggest problem by far is the arbitrarily small number of activations.  This has kept me from getting Mass Effect (really want that game), and would keep me from getting Spore (if I really wanted to get it).

There's a large issue with peace of mind if I'm only given a limited number of activations and would have to structure such activities such as computer reformats, and upgrades around how many activations I have on such a game.  Heck, while the abitlity to deauthorize activations is an improvement, I would still much rather not have to worry about doing such things in the first place.  I encountered such a problem with Rhapsody where I had authorized it on a laptop that I had since thrown away (it was 6 years old and didn't work very well), I had also reformatted my main computer a few times without deauthorizing first, and so I encountered my authorization limit and that bugged me quite a bit.

I just don't want to have to worry about all this stuff.  I'd like to reformat my computer without making sure I deauthorize every program I've had installed on the machine.  Same goes with upgrading my computer.  I mean, one of the bonuses to buying a legitamite piece of software should be that it's more convenient.  I mean, in a world where the sad fact is that legitamite software has to compete with illegal software, the legitamite software should be able to offer things that are better than the illegal software, and convenience should be among the easiest to implement.

That said, I'm glad many are switching away from such things such as requiring the CD in teh drive, and storing your cd-key online.  I'll tell you, I had to buy a copy of Starcraft alone I think four maybe five times because I either lost the cd or the cd-key.

Now, if I'm to buy something like Mass Effect, all that I would ask is that the activations be increased to something less imposing (3 or even 5 is too little in my opinion), have the ability to deauthorize activations, and automatically restore an activation after a given period of time, say 6 months.  My only concern then would be the servers not being available in say 5 years or so, but I can live with the above for now.  

Well, this topic has been covered in at least a few other threads on the Stardock sites, but. . .

Personally, I have Spore. I installed it without a hitch, and so far, with maybe an hour-and-a-half of play under my belt, I can say that I like it a lot. Whether you like the game or not, I strongly suspect, depends on your expectations, but that's not really relevant to the topic. I have read on Spore's website that the activation limit only affects different computers, not mulitple installs on the same computer. While I've been known to reinstall games from time to time (I actually had to reinstall Age of Empires III two or three times), I don't have three computers at home, let alone five. So I don't see an activation limit of 5 (it's been raised from three to five as I understand it) as being particularly onerous. It is my personal belief that many people don't have three to five computers at home, but maybe I'm being naive.

Activation limits do impact the resale market, but that's also a pretty trivial concern to me, especially as the internet is the only real way to resell games in my area, and for the most part, it's not worth it.

So where Spore is concerned, it really does seem to me that this was some sort of broad-based protest against both the concept of DRM in general and EA's use of it in particular. (There seem to be a large number of people who really intensely dislike EA.) So what's a practical alternative to activation limits?I don't know. Stardock's system works well for me, and it's about the laxest system on the market today (at least of which I'm aware). I have SoaSE installed on my home computer and my work laptop right now. I rarely play it on my home computer, but it's pretty much the only thing I play on the laptop, because I could install it without having an optical media drive (which the unit lacks). Only having that computer while my power was out for two weeks made me actually appreciate Sins a bit more as a game. 

Questions have been raised about the concept of DRM in general and the fact that it rarely, if ever, stops people from pirating games. In other threads, people have compared downloadable software to MP3 downloads. I could only suggest that the market value of a song is about 30 to 50x less than that of a PC game, so it only makes economic sense that a company that has invested the kind of capital (millions of dollars for some games) required to make that product should have some (at least) minimal means of protecting it.

There is no way of making sure things go your way without "really-pissing-off" everyone who needs things to go another way...

Gamers need to protect their investment...

...and Developers need to protect their assets

These two alone are not in conflict, but when you add the Pirates... (who aquire and/or distribute assets illegally), then the situation is complicated for everyone, and it becomes a Zero-Sum game...