Over 3000 negative posts about Spore on Amazon

[MrMugg]

In just one day, there are over 900 one star posts on Amazon.com about Spore.  I'm sure some of those are double/triple posts, but my goodness people are pissed off.  Did anyone manage to buy or get an "arrr" version of Spore?  Is it "all that and a bag of chips", or was it over-hyped goo?  The reviews that I did read explained that the game was too easy, boring, and character creation had no impact on the game.

Question:

I know that the "arrr" version specifies not to connect online.  To avoid SecuRom, could you buy the game and use the "arrr" version to register your code and account?  If the game is good, I wouldn't mind owning it and going online to see other creations, but I don't want to deal with activation limits and crapware installed on my computer.

[Zazazu]

See thread in RetardoLand for impressions.

I've heard that the answer to your question is yes, and I see no reason it shouldn't be. As I have no valid registration code I can't test it. Honestly, I don't want people's crap in my game. You can still get creations from other players on your game by going to the site, clicking on the featured creations, and browsing from there. Just save the .png files in the corresponding folders in your My Spore Creations folder.

[vecki]

Check out the Reviews on Amazon.com A 1 star rating, all courtesy of SuckuROM!  Just goes to show, it really does fuck up your game, EA.

Check out a google search of the publicity the review-bomb is getting

I lurrve it.

[kaitco]

I was reading through some of those this evening and was actually a little disappointed that very few people actually talked about the game itself. To say that the DRM on the game is an understatement, but I think (and I could be very wrong about this as a laymen in gaming) most people who know enough about the DRM to fully understand its impact, know the ways to A) remove SecuRom from his or her system and B) know how to acquire a crack without it. What would probably make this attack of low reviews have the greatest impact is if the reviewers discussed how "great" the game is, but that people should stay away from it specifically because of the DRM.I also read that the series of negative comments was part of a coalition, of sorts, to have people speak out en masse about DRM, but what is still discouraging is that even with all the negativity, the game is still Number One on Amazon.

[lemmiwinks]

Who is this kaitco person? If DRM/SuckuRom comes with the game, it is part of the game. Therefore the game sucks. Get rid of the crap and then you can honestly review it on its own merits.

[Inge]

Anyway, ignorance of how to get round Securom doesn't mean you won't have problems *with the game itself*.  For instance, I would not have been able to play Freetime at all once it finally started refusing to load, and once just having the disk in my drive stopped all use of both CD and DVD drive for anything at all.  I would have still given the game a bad review because as far as I was concerned it would have been unplayable due to refusing to let me read its CD.   And that would be all be without ever having heard of Securom.

[Hellyes]

Hellno, SucuROM doesn't stop Hellyes!  I can haz none of that SucuROM!

  I have a feeling that's the anti-SucuROM brigade. 

SucuROM aside, I've been playing Spore for about five days, and I would have to say that it's rather repetitive.  I thinkz I will get bored of it before too long.

[MaryH]

I've been reading about this mess..and I read some of the comments on Digg-one of which was a full review of it. Scathing, and extremely negative about the game and gameplay.
I even went to the trouble of posting it on Reclaim Your Game (I'm a mod there)-and it doesn't sound very fun.
The Anti-DRM crowd did us all a favor by doing this. I'm not going to naysay them at all. Perhaps EAxis will finally listen to us, because now it's hitting the mainstream press, and they cannot afford to piss off investors. An article ran today in the Financial Times about the debacle, and I'm pretty sure that EA investors read that.
Just because we can crack the damned thing does not make it right that EA is doing this deliberately to their customers. They are the leading DRM propagators, and they have to be called to account for their stupidity.

[Tigerlilley]

This is awesome.  They've been ignoring the Sims community for long enough, they can't ignore everyone now!

[Zilla]

I've been reading about this mess..and I read some of the comments on Digg-one of which was a full review of it. Scathing, and extremely negative about the game and gameplay.
I even went to the trouble of posting it on Reclaim Your Game (I'm a mod there)-and it doesn't sound very fun.
The Anti-DRM crowd did us all a favor by doing this. I'm not going to naysay them at all. Perhaps EAxis will finally listen to us, because now it's hitting the mainstream press, and they cannot afford to piss off investors. An article ran today in the Financial Times about the debacle, and I'm pretty sure that EA investors read that.
Just because we can crack the damned thing does not make it right that EA is doing this deliberately to their customers. They are the leading DRM propagators, and they have to be called to account for their stupidity.

When the Securom crap started heading downstream with BV, somebody said that it was the stock holders that "made" EA use a different type of anti-piracy software. I've never been able to confirm whether that was fact or fiction and I'm certainly not going to buy EA stock just to find out.  If it was the stockholders,  I hope all of them are walking around with massive bruises on their foreheads due to repeatedly smacking their hollow heads off of a wall.

As far as EA listening, I doubt it.  They made billions of dollars in profits last year, screaming about Spore certainly isn't going to break the bank.  It may make a few EAxis employees twitch in their seats, but EA change for the benefit of peace between them and customers? Not likely.  Then of course there is the issue of them putting out bug infested games that all of us are all to familiar with.  I'm not sure how buggy Spore is, but it's almost guaranteed that patches will muck something up.  It's just EA's way of saying " Ha-Ha! You bought our crap and now we're going to fuck it up!"

[Hellyes]

OMG. It's an avalanche.    As of right now, out of the 1,371 customer reviews on Amazon only 61 are above 2 stars.  A google search with Spore, DRM, and Amazon produces 139,000 hits.  There is tons of write ups about it all over the net.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2558

But, unfortunately, EA is so stubborn they'll totally ignore it. 

[NothingToSee]

But, unfortunately, EA is so stubborn they'll totally ignore it. 

I read somewhere (may have been on PMBD) that EA made Amazon uk remove all the negative reviews. Seeing as the only review on Amazon UK is just one five star review, I can well believe it.

I also believe that there are similar cover-up tactics going on elsewhere. It stinks and I'm glad that Amazon.com aren't being cowed!

[MidnightVoyager]

It's... kinda depressing to me.

Hey, they tried something different... and are being punished for something that the idea people probably had no control over. Just the stupid corporate morans. I'm afraid that this will be interpreted as "Trying something different = bad" and "New ways of doing things in games = bad" by the people who can't see past "SecuROM stops piracy, no, really" in the first place. It seems like they will blame it on anything other than SecuROM.

[Pythia]

There are no reviews at all for Spore now on Amazon.co.uk. However the tags for the game are quite interesting.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Electronic-Arts-Spore-Mac-DVD/dp/B000FN7K2S/ref=pd_ts_vg_h__1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames

Subversion FTW

[Zazazu]

It's... kinda depressing to me.

Hey, they tried something different... and are being punished for something that the idea people probably had no control over. Just the stupid corporate morans. I'm afraid that this will be interpreted as "Trying something different = bad" and "New ways of doing things in games = bad" by the people who can't see past "SecuROM stops piracy, no, really" in the first place. It seems like they will blame it on anything other than SecuROM.

They may try. However, EA has proven that they will ignore or naysay anything presented to them against their use of DRM...specifically SecuROM. To me, this means that the only way they will listen up is if it hits them in their pocketbooks.

Ok. Fine. No money for them.

But then you have the problem: How does EA know why they are getting less money? So what if a few people have written them letters or emailed them. Everyone knows that pissed off people are more vocal, so it's quite possible that they only lost a few hundred/thousand sales to continued use of SecuROM. So what if they see posts around forums from fans saying they are pirating the game due to the DRM? Everyone knows they are just thieves anyways, looking for any excuse.

You make it so obvious they can't help to see that their use of the DRM is affecting not only long-time fans who would normally buy the product, but also prospectives who see this information freely shared at the point where they would be making their purchase. And you do it somewhere very, very public.

This campaign is extremely obvious. It's also extremely effective. Who doesn't glance at the rating for something before purchasing? When seeing a low rating, who doesn't glance at the comments?



MidnightVoyager, it's always the idea people who get punished for the decisions the "suits" make. This is the world we live in. While it's not fair, it's nothing new.

[jsalemi]

As of right now, 1393 out of 1490 reviews are 1-star on the US Amazon site. Only 34 5-star reviews.

There are no reviews at all for Spore now on Amazon.co.uk. However the tags for the game are quite interesting.

They're back up to 9 reviews right now, with 3 1-star and 2 2-star.

[HomeschooledByTards]

You make it so obvious they can't help to see that their use of the DRM is affecting not only long-time fans who would normally buy the product, but also prospectives who see this information freely shared at the point where they would be making their purchase. And you do it somewhere very, very public.

This campaign is extremely obvious. It's also extremely effective. Who doesn't glance at the rating for something before purchasing? When seeing a low rating, who doesn't glance at the comments?

This is shades of Microsoft's XP activation scheme from a few years back, when it was said that you could only fiddle with your hardware five times before being forced to beg for another try from Microsoft. The average user buys a prebuilt computer and never adds an extra hard drive, upgrades their video card, or add more ram. As such, the average user wasn't really going to be affected by this activation scheme. Microsoft still received numerous bad reviews and had quite the media blitz about it (in the tech media anyway). I believe they eventually scrapped the activation scheme due to public outcry.

More people will be affected by Spore's activation scheme than they would have been by XP's simply because people reinstall non-OS software much more often than they make hardware changes. Run out of diskspace? Get tired of the game for now? Get a new computer? Uninstall and reinstall later.

I'm going to be getting a new computer in the next few months, and I'm not thrilled that I'll have to reactivate my game and only have one more activation available. I miss the "good old days" when copy protection was "type the fourth letter of the fifth page of this manual". It was a lot less invasive than SecuROM.

[jsalemi]

I believe they eventually scrapped the activation scheme due to public outcry.

Actually, no -- MS still uses that activation scheme. I ran into a problem with it when I built my new computer earlier this year and had to do multiple XP installs due to various hardware issues.  They made it easier to solve, though -- just a phone call and an automated response system that reactivated your installs.

I'm going to be getting a new computer in the next few months, and I'm not thrilled that I'll have to reactivate my game and only have one more activation available. I miss the "good old days" when copy protection was "type the fourth letter of the fifth page of this manual". It was a lot less invasive than SecuROM.

Not really -- go to gamecopyworld and get the no-cd.exe. Problem solved -- you can still connect online to get new stuff from the user community if you like, but won't have the SecuROM issues or limited count.

(latest Amazon stats - 1,487/1,596 1-star reviews)

[syberspunk]

I'm going to be getting a new computer in the next few months, and I'm not thrilled that I'll have to reactivate my game and only have one more activation available. I miss the "good old days" when copy protection was "type the fourth letter of the fifth page of this manual". It was a lot less invasive than SecuROM.

Not really -- go to gamecopyworld and get the no-cd.exe. Problem solved -- you can still connect online to get new stuff from the user community if you like, but won't have the SecuROM issues or limited count.

(latest Amazon stats - 1,487/1,596 1-star reviews)

Wait... just to clarify:

1)  So... limited activations include... if you ever have to re-install?  i.e. if I ever have to reformat, it will count as one of the 3 time only activations?


2)  I can understand how the cracked version would allow you to circumvent SecuROM... but does it actually let you re-install multiple times?  I mean... wouldn't you still need a serial/activation #?  I would imagine that each serial/activation # still only has 3 time only activations.  Unless the cracked .exe actually does something to prevent the activation from counting?

OR... does it only NOT count if you DON'T play online.  in other words... you can activate and re-activate, whether you use your valid paid for serial/activation # or whether you use a cracked/key-gen'd one, so long as you NEVER go online?


Ste

[HomeschooledByTards]

Actually, no -- MS still uses that activation scheme. I ran into a problem with it when I built my new computer earlier this year and had to do multiple XP installs due to various hardware issues.  They made it easier to solve, though -- just a phone call and an automated response system that reactivated your installs.

Ah. I haven't kept up with what's going on in the computer world since I left my network admin job back in 2000. I'm not really surprised (we are talking about Microsoft after all) that they haven't gotten rid of it. I have an ARR'd version of XP installed on my computer, which is probably why I never ran into problems.

Not really -- go to gamecopyworld and get the no-cd.exe. Problem solved -- you can still connect online to get new stuff from the user community if you like, but won't have the SecuROM issues or limited count.

Getting the no-cd is on my list of things to do tonight (1. Get no-cd. 2. Remove SecuROM 3. Play Spore. As you can see I have a long list for tonight). Is it verified to work with the EA Store direct download version?

I already activated it once, but if I install it on my next computer and use the no-cd before I run it for the first time that will keep it from activating the second time right?

[Alex]

It's quite an incredible backlash. EA deserve hell for this one. 3 installs? The nerve of them! But EA have had their head up their own ass, with their fingers in their ears going "lalalala" for long enough now. The word is spreading, the pirate numbers are growing. At this rate, EA will have to change if they don't want to lose their precious sales. They've been treating their paying customers like utter crap, and finally the sheeple have had enough. This may just be the revolution we've been waiting for.

But yeah, SecuROM is part of the package. People don't want it and it ruins the game experience, therefore the 1 star reviews are justified. The game as a whole is that bad for consumers purely because of the DRM, in the same way atrocious graphics that make the game impossible to see will ruin an otherwise excellent game with fantastic gameplay (example).

[jsalemi]

1)  So... limited activations include... if you ever have to re-install?  i.e. if I ever have to reformat, it will count as one of the 3 time only activations?

2)  I can understand how the cracked version would allow you to circumvent SecuROM... but does it actually let you re-install multiple times?  I mean... wouldn't you still need a serial/activation #?  I would imagine that each serial/activation # still only has 3 time only activations.  Unless the cracked .exe actually does something to prevent the activation from counting?

OR... does it only NOT count if you DON'T play online.  in other words... you can activate and re-activate, whether you use your valid paid for serial/activation # or whether you use a cracked/key-gen'd one, so long as you NEVER go online?

1) Yup, that's what it means.  ANY re-install counts as one of the 3.

2) Unless you're ONLY trying to avoid SecuROM, you generally wouldn't register or play online with the cracked .exe. If you want to add other folks creations to your game, you'd do it manually by downloading them from the spore site, or pretty much any fan site that has shared creatures and content.  And thus you can install as often as you like.


@jesslla: right -- see #2 above.


(latest Amazon stats - 1,657/1,792 1-star reviews)

[BrokenRobot]

My faith in humanity just jumped up a notch.  Maybe the masses really aren't going to let entertainment companies stomp all over them like I thought they would.

[Gus Smedstad]

My problem with all the SecuRom Hate on Amazon is that it doesn't look credible to a casual observer, since it's all by people who haven't actually played the game.

I'm thinking about putting up a review myself, sharing the fact that I couldn't play at all due to the copy protection until I got a crack.  Except that with all the similar comments from people who haven't played, it'll probably get completely lost in the noise.

 - Gus

[asthehind]

The .co.uk reviews have increased to 15, and the rating is down to 2.5 stars. There are a fair few hacked off people on the messageboards too.