It seems that the DRM implemented in Spore for the PC created some interesting debates. That being said, I would like to say something about my role in piracy. I think most of you reading my blog (which is just a few people, if any, probably), already assumed I don’t buy most of my games. As you can see from my profile, I live in Croatia, and the fact is, there is no one here who would judge you for downloading games instead of buying them, because about 99% of them do it to.
So, why do I pirate games? It’s simple. My family income is a little over 2000 HRK (about 300 dollars). For two people, this is fine for basic living, but if you take into account that the price of the average game is the same as everywhere else in the world, you can conclude that I can’t really afford games. Don’t get me wrong, I still buy the occasional original about two or three times a year, but only if I’m absolutely positive that I will like it. That is why I usually buy those that I already played illegally and really liked. I realize, there really is no excuse for breaking the law, but it’s really hard to think about moralities, when you have to decide between buying a game and paying the phone bill.
I know many people use the next argument to justify piracy, but the fact still is that any game I didn’t pay for, I probably wouldn’t buy anyway even if a downloadable version wasn’t available. I would like to say once again, I don’t think my downloading of games is justified or in any way “ok”, but I will be doing it anyway as long as I need to. When I finish college, and get a good job, I will probably buy more games than now (because I will be able to afford them).
All that being said, you can still think anything you want of me. I know why I do what I do and that’s all that matters to me. What I really want to say is that, although I still haven’t downloaded Spore illegally (and I probably will), out of all the people I know that already have it (and that’s allot of them), only a few of them where even aware of any DRM in the original. The crack that was released with the first available version on the internet, worked just fine even with the small error within it. Regardless of this, the group that released the game also released the fix for the crack a few days later. Nothing was really fixed, but the few extra bytes left in the code that did nothing where removed. The only way I’ve found out about the DRM in the game was through various game news portals and blogs. Because of the way this DRM works, I decided that the next game I buy will probably be World of Warcraft and not Spore, since I’m basically buying just three installs of it which is seriously low for someone who reinstalls his OS about three times a year.
The only people that got nailed by this new DRM are the legitimate buyers, and those “casual” pirates who make a copy of the game for their friends. The only reason I would buy this game was for the online content which is easily secured by a simple CD Key. That being said, I’m still not buying it because three installs of the game are NOT worth a large portion of my family’s monthly income.
Feel free to comment on this post, as I really would like to know what you think about all of this…
