Hal Halpin, the president of the Entertainment Consumers Association, a non-profit consumer advocacy organization for gamers, has spoken out against EA’s DRM policies for Spore, calling the game’s restrictive DRM a breeding ground for future generations of pirates and a “giant leap backwards” for anti-piracy initiatives.In a guest column at GameDaily, Halpin wrote:

This DRM did nothing to combat the cracking of the game. In fact, it essentially helped in training legions of customers how to become pirates and legitimized their rationalization in the process. With each additional negative story – which seem to be released hourly – you can almost hear the collective cringing of anti-piracy executives who know that they have all been forced to take a giant leap backwards due to this fiasco.

Whether you agree or not with Halpin, I think we can all agree that it’s a damn shame that such an interesting and important game has been overshadowed by all this.

Tags: DRM, hal halpin, spore

• Spore Box Art Finalized
• Spore E-Card Creator Announced: Share Your Spore Universe With Friends
• Spore Galactic Edition Beaming Down
• Analyst Says Spore Likely Delayed Again
• EA: Only One Spore Account Per Copy
• Spore Pre-Orders in UK Add Extra Incentive
• Will Wright on Spore DRM controversy. “Something I Should Have Tuned into More.”
• Spore Includes Youtube Integration

1 Comment » greeneggsnsam on September 17, 2008 11:19 pm The people who the game is truly targeted at know nothing about DRM or torrents, and most likely never will. RSS feed for comments on this post. Comment Now Note: Commenting on Ripten does not currently require registration, however to be eligible for contests on the site, you must be a registered user. Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Website Commenting Rules: No hate speech allowed. If you must argue, please debate intelligently. Comments containing selected keywords or outbound links will be put into moderation to help prevent spam. Ripten reserves the right to delete comments and ban anyone who doesn't follow the rules. Thanks. Notify me of followup comments Tired of the Goomba? Upload your own custom comment avatar.