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Will Wright's 'Spore' Slammed by Reviewers for Copy Protection

by Tim Stevens on September 13, 2008 at 01:34 PM

Will Wright's Masterpiece Spore Slammed by Reviewers for Copy Protection
EA's 'Spore,' the latest from 'Sims' creator Will Wright, was hailed by critics as being revolutionary when it was announced -- back in 2005. Since then, it's been delayed and delayed some more, but somehow the hype just continued to grow and grow. The game is now released on the PC and Mac platforms, receiving some mediocre scores from game reviewers who can't quite find a point to it all. More disastrously, though, is the overwhelmingly negative reviews gamers are giving the game at Amazon due to its "draconian" copy-protection system.

The game has to "dial home" to activate itself when installed, which means if you can't play the game if you don't have an Internet connection. More of an issue is that it will only activate itself three times; after that you're stuck calling EA's customer service, who may or may not activate the game for you. Then there's the life-cycle concern: Even if you still have activations left, if in 5 years EA decides to take its activation servers offline will, you be stuck with a useless game?



Irritated buyers are striking back by giving the game one-star reviews on Amazon, and with 1,355 reviews currently lodged, the average is indeed a single star. So, Amazon shoppers at least will know what they're getting themselves into when it comes to copy protection. Will they know just how generally average the game is otherwise, though? [Source: ars technica]

Tags: amazon, ea, sims, spore, will wright, WillWright

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