Creature creater; animations; music; graphics: 9

Game play: 3  (5 sharewhare games papercliped together, with rts and fps mechanics from a decade ago).

Well the story has made the BBC but sadly no plug for SD in it. You can read the story here.

Still waiting for the NYT story to surface - you just know SD will get plugged in that one.

They won't get it so long as their games continue to sell vast numbers of copies.  DRM hasn't hurt their sales figures.  It's hurt a demographic they don't care about:

Upset people on internet forums.

Oooookay.  I guess I just dreamt that the recent games that have caused such hellstorms of anti-DRM posts sold rather well.  Thanks.

They sold well like the early Starforce games did.

Try looking up older Starforce related game sales.  Some of them number in the 100's, (Not even 6 figures or 5) quite sadly.

The requirement for activations is 'new'. Some form of copy protection isn't. I really hate putting the disk in the drive to play though.

You evil, evil person. Some poor sap will buy the returned game and only have 2 (or 4) activations left... How do you sleep at night???

I guess it is no different to me registering an account and returning the game and then someone else buying it and not being able to register their serial...

It's really more of a reflection on EB's "rental" policy then any publisher I guess...

To put it bluntly, a casual player would buy maybe one game a year.  And they would buy a game that would last a long time.

The Sims 2 was a huge success because they could buy it, start a family, and play forever.

A casual gamer isn't as stupid as you think.  A game like bejeweled 2 or Peggle would be more exciting and longer lasting then Spore.

You think casual players have time to read forums all day? They may be put off by amazon but that isn't the only place to buy spore.

When I say less mind, I was just humoursly insulting a diffrent class of players, you need to lighten up, get some skill at the internet, lol. Im regularly insulted by console players and versious other groups I meet (not the idiot 12 year olds, the good people).

I don't know about ya'll, but I like to be able to pick up my game 10 years after I get them.  I still put Earthsiege 2 and Xwing Alliance on my computer when I'm in the right mood.  If I had the ability, I'd start an Airwarrior (not 2, not 3, just Airwarrior) server if it would let me.  I miss playing with buttloads of people, and buttloads of planes.  Duke Nukem 3d?  Come get some.  Star Control?  Wel...you get the idea.

Funny thing about spore is that the pirate version has a crack that removed the securom DRM thingy and due to some australian store releasing the game early it was available to download from the internet before the release date. As bad as internet piracy is, I feel that they are shooting themselves in the foot by pissing off legitimate customers. You buy the game, you have to deal with shit like DRM + copyprotect. You pirate the game you get a nice DRM free game. It is probably faster and easier to just download the game than it is to travel to your nearest gameshop and buy it. Plus it is free. In my honest opinion if you have a choice between paying money for a DRM riddled piece of shit game or getting the thing quicker and easier for free, you are a retard if you buy it.

I have a stack of game cd's about 1foot high. I have probably spend thousands of euro on games, some are good, some are shit. At least 1 I could not install because it had starforce on it and royally fucked up my PC so I never got to actually play that one.

The way I see it. If I like a game I buy the game. But to be honest this whole war on piracy is a war to protect their profits. I would love to see EA financial figures. They are continously buying out smaller companies and releasing tons of games. Any time someone mentions piracy the gaming industry, as well as the music and movie industry immediately jump to the conclusion that piracy will utterly destroy them and drive them out of business which fortunately is complete rubbish. I have no figures on games but I can quote the top 10 highest grossing films. Titanic, $1.85 billion. lord of the rings: return of the king, $1.1 billion. pirates of the caribbean: dead mans chest, $1 billion. harry potter, $976 million etc.. (I would like to point out that on the wiki top 50 grossing films a vast majority, if not all 50, are made by hollywood studios(an american business). So why should anyone outside america care if hollywood shuts down. They are making laws and policing the entire world to protect american profits, you really think any other country cares?)

If these people are making $900m dollars a film, and that is just box office takes, they still sell dvd's and make games and all types of crappy toys and stuff, how can they justify the claim that pirates are 'destroying hollywood'. I know this argument is about games not films but the arguments game developers use are very similar. They have been doing this cry-baby act for years. Piracy has been around for years. I remember playing games on my amiga which is probably 20 years old by now and they had copy-protection on it. That is 20 years of piracy and what do we have now. A gaming industry that has gone from strength to strength increasing profits continously over the years. I remember when games were developed by small studios, sometimes even a single person, now we have EA with studios spanning the globe and sole rights to hundreds of games, making millions(probably billions) of dollars a year and, not satisfied with their profits, are now demanding the right to squeeze every penny from their customers.

I am not just ripping on EA or anything. I am just saying that the current trends toward increasing amounts of 'pirates' on the internet point to a change in the way society views the entertainment industry. Pirates were copying books when the printing press came out, pirates were copying films when the vcr came out and pirates will continue to copy games and films no matter how hard hollywood or anyone tries to stop them. You can not govern social change to protect profits, people will not allow it and will fight back.

My PoV:

When a game is sold to me that does not work on my machine despite contacting support multiple times, and in fact appears intentionally designed not to work with other legitimate programs based on that support, and no one is willing to give me all (Or even a portion of) my money back... Then I'm going to play that game, one way or another.

But yes, buy the thing first.