Me too — I still don’t understand the rage over it. I mean, I’d prefer not to have it there, but I don’t mind doing it.

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Highlighting one single problem with a game (and I’m tired of arguing back and forth about the DRM and the game being separate things, even if connected) in detriment of everything else is not what a review is meant to be. That people actually do this and label them as reviews is why many are arguing this is a legitimate style of addressing a review, when they forget that, were the same rules applied to other reviews, they would be up in arms – whether they care to admit to it or not. Imagine multitudes of The Witcher reviews that only – and only – talked about, say, one issue. Be it the poor translation or the blatant machismo of scoring with female NPCs. AssCreed reviews that said absolutely nothing except several paragraphs of poor optimization.

That’s not a review. It’s a glance. At one singled out element out of the whole package.

And once again, while I agree it needed to be addressed, and people need to stamp on EA’s faces forever with this, it was extreme and vindicative. And it doesn’t come down to me being right and you being wrong or some such moral relativismo; simply, you and others seem to have no qualms about those reviews being more like footnotes on a single issue, whereas I do. Opinions, and all that. If we establish that, then it’s easier to understand where everyone is coming from and things click. If not, we may well be arguing this forevermore.

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“Ground control to Major Tom?”

“If an ENTIRE REVIEW is based on them or even one single element out of dozens more, yes. It’s hopelessly inadequate, is misinformed and while the core idea of alerting gamers is welcomed, leading them away with false assumptions and little information on everything else isn’t.”

Wrong. Its not as deep as a review YOU are personally looking for, but it highlights some issues found in the game. Its not misinformed as Spore does indeed have DRM and DRM is infact limiting the product you’re buying.

What i’m trying to say is although a pretty poor, shallow review, its not “abuse” as it is highlighting a problem with the game, which a review is meant to do. Agreed it doesn’t review many parts of the game, thus being what many would call a “poor review” it is not automatically labelled abusive and not a valid way to protest against a feature of the game.

I own Spore, legally, by the way. No assumptions here.

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Dan stated you said you didnt disagree with the protest but instead how it was carried out? You seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing.

You seem to be confusing arguing for the sake of arguing with acknowledging what he said.

I find it funny how in the same post you’re mocking someone for being patronising

Let’s see – out of nowhere, and with nothing that would indicate otherwise in my posts, Dan pops up in the topic, claims I have no knowledge of the concept of protest, and even decides to quote a definition of it – all because I disagreed with how the protest was carried out. When I poke some fun at him for doing this, I’m patronising.

Ground control to Major Tom?

Most people who have been waiting for the game would look for a review that delves a little deeper than that, but if merely knowing the game has DRM puts the person off buying, isnt that a fair choice for the consumer?

Compare “if you dislike the DRM and what it entails, you may be put off from buying it” with “Spore sucks because of its DRM”. Guess which one I support? I’ve already stated somewhere else in this very topic and the one that started it all that it’s fair game to mention how off putting the DRM can be; what I don’t agree with (yet again…) is that these warnings are not a review of Spore, the game; they’re a review of DRM, which bloody isn’t the game.

Yes. If you refuse to install Malware on your machine.

So I have to assume the people I have known for years and who have bought Spore at the time of release and have had zero issues with DRM in terms of it negatively impacting their in-game experience, are, in fact lying.

Right. That’s it, no more Poker Fridays pr wife swapping with those guys.

When reviewing other games do Choppy graphics, broken textures, slow loading screens, badly programmed engine, etc stop you playing the game you purchased? Yes or no? So mentioning them in a review is wrong then? Basing a review on them is wrong then?

If an ENTIRE REVIEW is based on them or even one single element out of dozens more, yes. It’s hopelessly inadequate, is misinformed and while the core idea of alerting gamers is welcomed, leading them away with false assumptions and little information on everything else isn’t.

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“Does the DRM prevent you from playing Spore out of the box? After installing it, could you not play the game? As you play through Spore, does the DRM affect your actual in-game experience? Yes or no.”

When reviewing other games do Choppy graphics, broken textures, slow loading screens, badly programmed engine, etc stop you playing the game you purchased? Yes or no? So mentioning them in a review is wrong then? Basing a review on them is wrong then?

It only means people will not come back to read that persons reviews in the future as the review was shallow and didn’t detail many aspects of the game, but it does highlight some actual faults with the game.

You may get a review of the same game saying “The game has some good features but it was spoilt due to choppy graphics, slow loading screens, broken textures” etc.

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“Once again, I never claimed the protest was a bad idea or that protesting was wrong. What I said was that I fundamentally disagreed with how it was done.”

Dan stated you said you didnt disagree with the protest but instead how it was carried out?

You seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing.

I find it funny how in the same post you’re mocking someone for being patronising,

“Hail the concerned and intelligent gamer, with his patronizing retort and condescending attitude.”

you then be very patronising.

“Then see who wrote it. In return, I promise I won’t poke fun at you. Deal?”

As Dan has already stated. You buy Spore legally, you get DRM. EA has shot Maxis in the back with their DRM and unfortnately Maxis have suffered because of this. This does not mean protesting against the DRM was wrong, as it was only bringing light to what the consumer was (unknowingly) buying. EA forcing the DRM on Maxis’ product was the thing that caused the issue for Maxis.

As i’ve previously stated, if a consumer reads the reviews you mentioned you had a problem with (stating “Don’t buy, DRM sucks”) and decides not buy on them words alone, thats their choice.

Most people who have been waiting for the game would look for a review that delves a little deeper than that, but if merely knowing the game has DRM puts the person off buying, isnt that a fair choice for the consumer?

Oh and by the way:

“Does the DRM prevent you from playing Spore out of the box? After installing it, could you not play the game? As you play through Spore, does the DRM affect your actual in-game experience? Yes or no.”

Yes. If you refuse to install Malware on your machine.

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Mostly on the basic question of whether this was a valid and legitimate way of protesting. You accept that it may have got results but you don’t accept that this was the right way to get them.

To quote my very first post in this topic. “High profile games are always a good target for this kind of thing, as people can take advantage of the awareness around the title to promote their goal of criticizing DRM. As such, Spore or any other AAA game using draconian digital rights management is an excellent target. However, it was incredibly juvenile and unfair to attack Spore via Amazon based on the DRM alone.”

Once again, I never claimed the protest was a bad idea or that protesting was wrong. What I said was that I fundamentally disagreed with how it was done.

This is my understanding of your basic position: you want to draw a distinction between Spore the game and Maxis the studio that created it on the one hand, and EA the publisher which implemented the DRM system on the other, and only attack the latter. It doesn’t work.

Does the DRM prevent you from playing Spore out of the box? After installing it, could you not play the game? As you play through Spore, does the DRM affect your actual in-game experience? Yes or no.

If people decide not to buy Spore because of the DRM then yes that sucks for the people who created the game

Which is pretty much where I’m getting at, yes.

but that is not the fault of the people who didn’t buy it, and it’s certainly not the fault of the people posting on Amazon to complain about it.

It most certainly is their fault if the majority of reviews are painting a bleak and biased portrait of the DRM’s influence on Spore. One user’s technical issues with Spore may not even surface for another user (such as Daemon Tools incompatibility, for instance), so why are nearly all the reviews claiming otherwise?

Not everyone has the time or IQ to sit down, play Spore, then review it on its merits and also expose DRM’s potential problems. I understand that. But we’re talking well over one thousand reviews which largely do not talk about the game; rather, many end up saying Spore is rubbish because of the DRM, when this is a lie.

And I don’t see how this particular issue would change regardless of the method used to perform the protest. The basic message, delivered by email or people outside stores or whatever, would still be ‘DRM is bad. Spore has DRM. Don’t buy Spore’ and you would still think that was wrong because it didn’t show respect to the developers who took 4 years creating this game.

Again, the issue isn’t with complaining against Spore’s DRM. It’s with how the message is being sent through the reviews. It’s being touted as “Spore’s DRM”, not “EA’s DRM”. Notice the difference? Am I the only who really has an issue with a “review” that bleats on about Spore being a “crap game” because of DRM, whereas the decision was not theirs and it fails to address the real issues – Spore’s quality as a game and EA’s flustercuck?

Is that what “concerned gamers” can really aspire to – making callous, blanket statements with no regards to the people involved in the game’s development, then proceed to justify themselves because it’s a necessity, incapable of admiting that their way of doing things – while apparently successful – is also possibly damning to a studio who has no fault in the matter? That there are no other alternatives, even if they tried none?

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More interesting to me is the particular reason for that. This is my understanding of your basic position: you want to draw a distinction between Spore the game and Maxis the studio that created it on the one hand, and EA the publisher which implemented the DRM system on the other, and only attack the latter. It doesn’t work. You can’t legally have one without the other. If people decide not to buy Spore because of the DRM then yes that sucks for the people who created the game, but that is not the fault of the people who didn’t buy it, and it’s certainly not the fault of the people posting on Amazon to complain about it.

And I don’t see how this particular issue would change regardless of the method used to perform the protest. The basic message, delivered by email or people outside stores or whatever, would still be ‘DRM is bad. Spore has DRM. Don’t buy Spore’ and you would still think that was wrong because it didn’t show respect to the developers who took 4 years creating this game.

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For the record, I did not just randomly decide to jump in. (…) On this occasion, I decided to jump in, because well, I think you’re wrong.

On what subject, really? The whole “there are other ways to fight the same battle” (which you agree yourself) or the accusation of me “not being able to appreciate what these people did” (which I’ve already disproven for those who can’t be arsed to read what I say)?

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But there’s really no point in continuing this argument. You said right at the top that “no one will convince me that a proper campaign launched across a number of media – email, gaming forums, sites and stores – would not have had the same effect, if not more of an impact“. Well you’re right, no one is convincing you, and you’re not convincing anyone else. Which is kind of a shame, because actually, I don’t think writing reviews on Amazon is necessarily the only way to do this. I do think it’s a legitimate and somewhat effective means of protest in this case, but of course there are other ways. You’re just not the right person to figure out what they are.

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I think by attaching morality to the issue, the results become less feasible. But then, I’m somewhat a fan of riots and the like.

I don’t think people, well the Angry Internet Men, care what happens to Maxis or other such ‘innocents’. They want the most bang for their buck, don’t think they’re getting it and are lashing out.

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