Spore will allow more than one user per account

They've been testing the waters to see what they can get away with. There's nothing "good" about what they do from here on out.

Agreed @ Big

EA is the Devil of the game industry.

No Red, all companies pull sh!t like this. EA happens to be one of the ones that doesn't even bother trying to be apologetic about it.

I'm going to give two words to describe what EA has inflicted upon its users: Stockholm Syndrome.

*cough* Steam

*cough* Didn't read the post fully, *cough* having heartattack. *cough* *cough* *gurgle*

In 10 years you'll be able to play Crysis Warhead on a toaster.

Maybe it'd make sense to post up a patch on the interwebs to disable it when they take down the servers

@Alex

Indeed, it's odd to think that stuff from only 7 years ago can probably now be run on an iphone.

Then again, we'll probably look back at Crysis when playing it on the computers built into the soles of our shoes and think "the graphics on this are awful".

Actually I think we're at the point where graphics isn't all about realism, It's more about how the art direction is. Look at Rock Band & Guitar Hero 3. GH3 is more complex, but Rock Band is so much nicer to look at.

Look at MGS4 and look at Crysis. MGS4 won best graphics while Crysis' graphics are a whole lot more realistic. I don't want realistic, I want nice looking.

I don't get how gamers can deride other forms of DRM for the entirely speculative "am I going to be able to play the game in 10 years?" argument while at the same time promoting Steam.

Steam has great features, but the DRM restrictions are the same. It verifies game ownership on launch requires authentication even for single player offline play, forces updates, doesn't work if the servers go down, individual games can be shut off like lightswitches if Valve says so, and if Valve goes out of business or is bought, the entire ecosystem could go into licensing limbo. Steam is no more certain than secuROM, and, outside of install limits (which I'd wager Steam *can* do) offers all the same limitations of SecuROM.

Steam has advantage of not behaving like malware compared to SecuROM, but from a 'Restrictions' and "Can I play my games in x years" perspectives, its the same boat. I own games with SecuROM, and the experience has been identical so far, except that Steam is more likely to force a multi-hour update, or have trouble of some kind than the SecuROM titles I've played.

I heard that the Steam version of Crysis Warhead has an install limit too..

Anyway, I'm a bit neutral towards Steam because Valve have said that if they go out of business they'll completely remove all DRM and licensing from Steam. They're a company who have done nice things free of charge before and I'm inclined to believe they'll do it again.

Although I don't see them going out of business and I imagine if they did, Google or Microsoft would be there to step in and buy Steam.

Well not exactly, families that need one copy of the game for up to three children and the wife have won. If you have more kids interested in playing Spore or if you are one of the computer guys that needs to reformat and/or update your hardware once in a while you're still stuck with the crazy 3 install limit and the risk that the game will stop working once EA shuts down the activation servers. Ah and lets not forget the virus like rootkit that opens internet connections to a third party server which you can't properly control without additional hardware.

So maybe the right answer is: No.

Oh Yeah!

just un-installed it,
lucky I dont have to deal with 3 install DrM *Wink

It says they have their own achievements, so that would seem to indicated separate saves.

who cares as long as we keep bitching about the DRM than the more they will loosen it eventually giving in completely and showing other companies that DRM never works.