Amazon's Spore reviews vanish in 'glitch', return soon after

by Ludwig Kietzmann { Sep 12th 2008 at 6:00PM }

We're not sure if Amazon is secretly displeased with its recent transformation from major online retailer to caustic protester staging ground. Gamers dissatisfied with Spore's "draconian" digital rights management attacked the game's reputation en masse earlier this week, dragging its user rating down and posting scathing reviews targeted at the three-installation limit imposed by the included SecuROM software. The slate was suspiciously wiped clean today, only to be restored moments before the publishing of this article.

Glitch, or conspiracy? As much as we'd like to point to the latter, Amazon tells us it was nothing more than a "site glitch." Says Amazon: "Amazon did not knowingly or consciously choose to remove the reviews. The team is working on resolving this issue now and restoring all the reviews on the site.

"Per our policy, Amazon doesn't censor or edit customer reviews and we'd only remove a review if it fell outside our guidelines." Regardless, we hope Spore publisher EA has heard the angry cries of legitimate game owners entangled in an anti-piracy net.

[Thanks to everyone who panicked and sent this in!]

Full Amazon statement:

You might have noticed that the customer reviews on the Spore details page were missing today. I wanted to let you know that we experienced a site glitch that resulted in the removal of the reviews. Amazon did not knowingly or consciously choose to remove the reviews. The team is working on resolving this issue now and restoring all the reviews on the site.

Per our policy, Amazon doesn't censor or edit customer reviews and we'd only remove a review if it fell outside our guidelines.

Tags: Amazon, Angry-Internet, DRM, EA, Maxis, Spore, Will-Wright

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Jakka(Free Mr.ESC!) @ Sep 12th 2008 6:04PM

If it's back, who gives a shit?

Anticrawl @ Sep 12th 2008 6:41PM

This isn't the first time Amazon has cencored customer reviews.I forget the lady who was on Fox pointing the finger at Mass Effect for turning young boys into heartless sex hounds but she did so to grab attention to her book. Gamers posted negative reviews on Amazon and while they did have a right to remove said reviews they actually went ahead and cleared out other said legit reviews to further raise the books rating. Who knows how many other instances there were like this. I doubt it was a site glitch, they just figured we would take it lying down but realized we wouldn't so covered their tracks.

Immortal Technique PSN: johnnynumber5 @ Sep 12th 2008 7:19PM

Her name was Cooper something .. Lawerence maybe?

I paid $10.00 for my Spore demo "creature Creator" about a month ago. That shit sucked so bad I never even considered getting this game.

Question -

Wasn't Spore originally slated to be on all the consoles as well?

chispito @ Sep 12th 2008 9:57PM

I'm all for Amazon deleting the reviews by people who obviously haven't played the game. Too bad they came back.

Snowblind @ Sep 13th 2008 5:49AM

It had nothing to do with people playing the game or not though, it had to do with the DRM. And rightly so, EA should NOT be allowed to get away with this crap.

Tiptup300 @ Sep 13th 2008 12:11PM

Heres how the glitch happened,

Slightly lower manager: "Wow, their really tearing it apart, I think I'll just do this for now, nobody should mind"

*Later on*

[Other manager busts through door]
Higher Manager: "Dude, WTF DID YOU DO!?"
Slightly lower manager: "What?"
Higher Manager: "YOU DO NOT DO THAT, DO NOT, did you delete the spore reviews or just hide them?"
Slightly lower manager: "oh.....I kept them"
Higher Manager: "Now what are we going to do with the news sites, *sigh*"

Something along those lines.

Clinton RRoD sept.3 @ Sep 12th 2008 6:16PM

well ea gonna learn sooner or later but not if people keep buyin spore. i personally couldent care less about this game

bobartig @ Sep 12th 2008 6:17PM

Tons of the reviews don't really meet the guidelines, since they're people whinging about the DRM and how they won't buy it, which is just a general protest about DRM, and not an account of the reviewer's experience with the product.

Of course, people can also just lie and say that they purchased the game, and that the DRM gave them rectal cancer, or whatever, but many of those reviews should legitimately be removed.

Pheeel @ Sep 12th 2008 6:20PM

Legitimate users concerned about a 3 install limit? The people complaining are kids who want to share it with their friends

Jakka(Free Mr.ESC!) @ Sep 12th 2008 6:26PM

I'd love to tell you how wrong you are, but I'm pretty sure that Sheppy will soon come in and elaborate better than I ever could.

Oh and FYI, I format my PC at least three times a year.

Lone Starr @ Sep 12th 2008 6:44PM

Actually, I'm complaining but don't fit your "kid" description so you should change your name from Pheeel to Phail. :P

Anticrawl @ Sep 12th 2008 6:45PM

I wipe my computers once a month, of course I have a ghosting method and backup my files on external storage so my situation is a bit different. Having my game gimped and being forced to call EA's customer service to verify my copy (which actually costs the user) is insane.

Pheeel @ Sep 12th 2008 6:47PM

You format your PC three times a year? I think there's something wrong there

moo083 @ Sep 12th 2008 6:52PM

I own the game (actually twice, my wife has a copy, as do I). I hate the DRM. I want to be able to go anywhere, log in and play my game. So far, you can only log in to one computer. Period. Thats really dumb. Why can I only play on one computer? If I log in, it should check if the login credentials are linked to a authentic activation code, and thats it. There should be no link between activation code and the software. Only between the activation code and the account.

Trulz @ Sep 12th 2008 8:03PM

Yeah, because kids probably have such a hard time figuring out how to pirate things!

fred @ Sep 12th 2008 8:06PM

Pheel is apparently new to computers

Anticrawl @ Sep 12th 2008 11:17PM

Pheeel must use a mac. Mac users, the genetic scum of the earth. Either rednecks, mindless trendy folk, or attention whores that troll the local coffee shops pretending they are important.

Tamer Brad @ Sep 13th 2008 4:46AM

Anticrawl, not all of us Mac users are pretentious Apple apologists. I hate them as much as you do. :S

Isaac @ Sep 12th 2008 6:21PM

Amazon is totally justified in getting rid of every review until they can sort through them and keep the ones from people who actually bought the game.

Its not exactly a review if the person never bought the game. If you buy it, hate the DRM and return it then I understand. But just ranting about DRM on amazon's dime, well, I can see why they wouldn't want that.

moo083 @ Sep 12th 2008 7:00PM

Its kind of a grey area. Generally, games are very subjective. Its hard to say something is amazing. I mean, there are ways, but often times, other software is a lot easier to review from an objective standpoint. The DRM portion of the game is VERY easy to review from a objective standpoint. If it affects the way you play the game at all, its annoying as hell. That is the case here. And since we know exactly how the DRM functions, you can review that section of it and if that is enough to reduce the score to 1 regardless of the actual game content, then buying the game would only support the company instead of teaching them a lesson. I understand that its unfair that the game gets such crappy reviews over something thats not really the devs fault (I'm sure it was EA, not Maxis or Will Wright), but people should know that if a super hyped game comes out, gets 2000 reviews of 1 star, then something is up.

Immortal Technique PSN: johnnynumber5 @ Sep 12th 2008 7:22PM

Ike -

Kind of hard to return a PC game. Point is that this method of DRM is beyond unnecessary.

m @ Sep 12th 2008 10:06PM

Ridiculous. Complaints about DRM are completely legitimate. Besides, look at the five star reviews, those are the ones that should be deleted. What an overrated game!

Linkdead @ Sep 12th 2008 6:56PM

Yea this DRM scheme worked great. Spore was up for download a WEEK before it launched fully cracked.

If I was a rich man I'd burn as many copies as possible and drop them attached by tiny parachutes over major cities.

BigD145 @ Sep 12th 2008 9:01PM

No, Australia got Spore a week earlier than the US and THAT was cracked.

Tiptup300 @ Sep 13th 2008 12:14PM

It can't be stopped, all they really need is a really thin layer of DRM on it. Just to make sure a casual user can't figure out how to crack it without the internet.

John @ Sep 12th 2008 7:03PM

After all these reviews basically saying this game is overly simplistic crap, I now don't feel the stigma that not giving a shit about this game carried for all the time up until its release.

So, basically, to all you who were trumpeting how this game would change gaming forever, yada yada yada,

you can suck it.

John @ Sep 12th 2008 7:04PM

Ridgecity @ Sep 12th 2008 7:51PM

Is the dvd the same thing or just the download?

WilsonGoneWild @ Sep 12th 2008 8:11PM

This wasn't Amazon. They were BLASTED on the Kindle even before people had bought it and they never removed those reviews, and that was THEIR OWN product. So if they didn't mess with those, I have no reason to believe they did it here.

BigD145 @ Sep 12th 2008 9:02PM

If it's only a DRM issue, why wasn't Mass Effect hit in the same way?

Nushio (NDF - Blue) @ Sep 12th 2008 9:08PM

Can't speak for the masses, but I think its related to the fact that Mass Effect is available on Xbox and is nowhere near as famous and controversial as Spore.

DriveBy @ Sep 12th 2008 10:41PM

It was, though not quite as severely.

Questworld @ Sep 12th 2008 11:27PM

The three install limit is what bugs me the most about these games. I can live with online activation but to actually limit the number of installs is ridiculous. It's the reason I was happy enough to get Bioshock (at least it had that revoke tool and ultimately didn't bother with install limits) and why I'm still waiting for Mass Effect.

Roto13 @ Sep 12th 2008 11:28PM

I think it's fine not to buy Spore and I think it's fine to say exactly why, especially since it's such a big issue (as opposed to not buying it because you don't like the gameplay or something). It's fine to spread the word on websites where people buy the game. While it probably won't be responsible for destroying the sales of this game or anything, you can be sure it'll turn quite a few people away.

But I think the best way to do it is to send a letter to EA detailing exactly why you won't be buying this or any other EA game with such horrible DRM. And do it every time they release one.

primefalcon @ Sep 13th 2008 12:42AM

I for one will never buy this game because of such extreme DRM controls and I know a lot of gamers who feel the same

meist3r @ Sep 13th 2008 1:39AM

My DRM critical remark on the German Amazon site (the only one I'm entitled to post on) was removed with about 20 odd other reviews of a similar nature. There's definitely some "cleanup" going on. I think whatever the reaction from EA/Maxis' side will come from this it can't save their reputation whatsoever. Many people seem to have chosen NOT to buy this game because of all the ruckus and in my view that's a good thing. It's the "fight against windmills" here I think everyone that posted on Amazon knew that but at least now the millers might know that some of the townsfolk won't be getting their flour from them in the near future.

Ryan LN @ Sep 13th 2008 1:57AM

The reviews on Amazon (and the free exchange of ideas made possible by sites such as this) have served their purpose: while I am just as easily caught up in the hype machine as the next person (Halo 3, anyone?) I will not be buying a game so obviously gimped by DRM as Spore. The really dubious part of the equation is that but for the internet, I never would have known until it was too late- it wasn't mentioned in the fawning piece that I listened to on NPR, or the bit on the nightly news- I had to depend on my fellow gamers to help me out when it came to critical information that seriously effects gameplay. I respect EA's right to do whatever they want with regard to how they see fit to protect their product, but when you drastically curtail the flexibility of your product it needs to come with a big assed red warning label.

whistlepig @ Sep 13th 2008 10:09AM

if you dont like ea why do you keep buying their stuff ?

Kuuma @ Sep 13th 2008 11:12AM

Of course they censored the reviews, it's nothing but a flash mob protesting the DRM, instead of actually reviewing the game, which probably doesn't deserve such harsh reviews.

BUT, that's what happens when a bully-company like EA creates something like the DRM and screw over their customers. They get pissed.

Josh @ Sep 13th 2008 5:02PM

DRM is the bane of modern media.

Oreo @ Sep 13th 2008 10:31PM

Who cares?! Amazon is for buying crap, not for reading reviews.

Psaakyrn @ Sep 13th 2008 11:15PM

Whaty's wrong with DRM? I think it's a fallacy to automatically assume you should get all rights for the software you purchased.

Let's start a proper arguement here, a retional analysis on why DRM is, or is not, acceptable.

My case:
a) Software is inherently different from hardware: Due to negligible reproduction costs, giving a person the all rights to software is practically giving a person the whole product line. When hardware reaches a similar point, the same could be implemented with hardware.
b) The assumption that a person gains the product in the entirety on purchase is flawed: Governments reserve the right to restrict the rights of the citizen to benifit society. The DRM is an extension of current legislation to benifit society; without DRM, the software/data industry would collapse.
c) The image of DRM is flawed: Even open source contracts uses DRM, even if the implementation is inversed: instead of limiting traditional rights, one is usually limited from limiting rights (e.g. you cannot edit then hide the codes, for example).

Ball's at your court.

s256 @ Sep 14th 2008 5:32PM

DRM becomes a problem when it affects legitimate usage in a negative way.

I think the information that you're only allowed a limited number installs on the "license" should be prominently available. It's not obvious. They're screwing around (just because they can) because people don't read EULAs.

Same with any other software that has this sort of limitation.

Nerdy Life @ Sep 14th 2008 12:13AM

Spore has been a lot of fun.

Kevin Ghadyani @ Sep 14th 2008 12:19AM

I'd like to know what kind of a "glitch" this was that just happened to hit THAT certain game it seems. I don't believe it till they tell the entire truth.

wizard @ Sep 14th 2008 3:29AM

The three install limit is for different machines. You can install as many times as you want on the same machine.

omar @ Sep 16th 2008 4:00PM

OMG, only 3 installs before calling customer support! Such a total travesty that I can't have my whole family use my copy. I totally don't get how developers make money, let's go pirate, I mean share,this game!

WTF, bunch of dumb n00bs. The game took forever to come out, no matter how much you love it if the developer doesn't see any benefit from it, why the heck would they ever do a huge project like this again?

Hint: The Sims games that were so successful that allowed this project to happen had very high SALES figures. Not torrent-stealing-n00b-whining figures.