And now Electronic Arts has a class action lawsuit on its hands. Hell hath no fury like Spore fans scorned.
The publisher is accused of violating two laws relating to the game’s DRM. The suit claims that EA installs SecuROM without notifying consumers. Then the suit lists SecuROM’s crimes, including the fact that it’s damn near impossible to uninstall. It also claims that SecuROM hijacks a PC’s resources in order to phone home, telling EA all about your system.
The suit, which was filed in California, asks for rewards of $49.95 per class action participant, plus damages.
You’d think that publishers would find something other than SecuROM to protect its games. Maybe that’s a business opportunity, create a DRM scheme that’s not a complete pain in the ass for legitimate users? (No DRM whatsoever notwithstanding.) Any VC money in the house?
Only one thing needs to be said to and understood by companies like EA: DRM or any form of copy protection only serves to deeply annoy legitimate buyers and make them wish it didn’t exist. Crackers/hackers are never phased in the least by copy protection, therefore making the whole idea extremely counter-productive.
Most people have the whole idea of DRM’s like SecuRom and the X amount of activations all wrong.
It’s not just a simple DRM, it installs separately to the game without your knowledge…if you un-install the game…it DOESN’T un-install the SecuRom, which makes it a rootkit (malware), so if you don’t know this, you will think it’s gone because it hides in “hidden folders” and in your “Registry”, not to mention disabling of some AV’s, the damage it does to some PC hardware, and stops you from being able to use legal software that SecuRom has been programmed to black band. EA deserves to be sued over this issue alone.
The other issue I have with this type of Draconian DRM is that when you can’t afford the internet anymore, you can no longer Play a Game you Paid for, and that is wrong…most games aren’t played over the Net so why do we have to be connected to it. ( It’s to Spy on PC users, that’s why it Phones Home with Encrypted Data.)
There is a lot bigger picture than what we’re seeing here right now, this is only a baby step to the end plan. This has nothing to do with piracy, because we know that the pirates will never be stopped and it is proven once again with the amount of torrented copies of Spore downloaded so far in just one month. Why is EA adamant about continuing to use SecuRom when they know it’s not doing what they say it was intended for and is only affecting the paying customers? I will not buy anything that is put out by EA or Sony anymore, even though I would love to buy Sims2 IKEA, Sims2 Apartment Life, Spore, Red Alert 3 and many more, but I just don’t trust EA or Sony. All they have done for the last 20 months is lie through their teeth to save their neck and not a bit of concern for their paying customers.
I’m a member at Reclaim Your Game: http://www.reclaimyourgame.com/ – and we’re dedicated to helping other gamers with their issues with SecuRom and get info out to educate the public.
So please feel free to visit our site and see for yourself