In the following article at CNET: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10054438-62.html , EA tries to claim that they've sold a million copies of the game (and bypasses the fact that they originally predicted TWO million sales); AND that saying that 500,000 copies have been pirated (um, guys? That figure is over two weeks old! Try a million pirated copies!) is a "misinterpretation of the numbers".

They apparently haven't checked any of the biggest torrent sites and the comments left by the downloaders. That game was downloaded to death

EA is so full of SH*T.

Thank you ParkerSims for your accurate post.
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I think that spore sales have dropped, but if you think about it, If they say that its a "Success" then they will get more people to buy the game won't they?
Saying its a failure will only mean less people will buy it - everyone likes the winning side....

Most of the people who seem to be pirating Spore seem to be doing so to avoid getting SecuRom on their PCs.

I disagree. People who don't pay for games don't pay for games.

Not... entirely true. Or at least, not always true. While I certainly will agree that most people who pirate games will generally just pirate games because they don't want to pay... there is a not-unsignificant percentage that are, err... pirates with principles...

Such people pirate games when those games have unreasonable anti-piracy protections that create additional hassle for those who have purchased them legitimately...

And the same people purchase games when those games have no unreasonable anti-piracy protections, thus rewarding companies with their business when they make fun, playable games that don't force their paying customers to jump through hoops.

Stardock hasn't just done well with GalCiv2 and SoaSE because they're great games (though they are) - but because they don't have any unreasonable anti-piracy protections, and gamers who are sick of having their games crippled by anti-piracy are willing to shell out for a company that doesn't treat them like automatic thieves.

There are also some who use piracy as a way to get demos of games before they purchase them. Because of the size of most modern games, most companies no longer offer free demos - but it's easy enough for someone to torrent a couple gigs, play a few levels, and then decide whether they want to buy it or not.

Of course, just to reiterate, I'm not naive enough to believe that the people who do either of the above are in the majority, but there certainly are folks out there that have a little more thought process to their piracy than just "I want games for free!"

Plus some people will pirate games just to see if they'll run on their computer - nothing sucks more than buying a game and finding out that it doesn't work. Piracy is a way to check if it works (because sometimes a game will play just fine on a machine that doesn't have the rights specs) before actually buying the game.

I think you guys should go to torrent sites and read some of the downloader comments on popular torrents. It's almost like a fraternity.

HP: It's kind of weird to see you justifying "some" piracy considering this site bans talk of even a no cd crack. Not judging you, just an observation

As someone who will admit to having pirated games before, it has never been because I was unwilling to pay for it. In fact, downloading a game where I live ends up costing me more than buying it in the store would, because we have download caps in this country. So why would I download a game instead of buying it? Exactly because I want to avoid having software installed on my computer that has conclusively caused problems for me in the past.

I am in the minority, and I'm aware of it. Most people who pirate do so simply because they have no inclination to pay for what they can get for free. I am aware that what I do is wrong, even if for my own principled reasons. But I don't do it because I don't want to pay for a game; in the end, all the Sims games I pirated, I ended up buying, just so that I could have a legitimate key and a manual.

Cheering on piracy or asking for links regarding it, etc., is pretty different from explaining a thought process behind it. I'm not really justifying it so much as pointing out that not everyone pirates simply because they want free games.

Well, I wasn't meaning that they were necessarily going to buy the game, although I have heard of a lot of people who have purchased Spore and The Sims 2 mention that they run from a cracked exe. Moreso, what I was meaning was that the fact that SecuRom is present causes people to refuse to install the legitimate game, and therefore look to piracy to avoid this. The primary reason may not be to circumvent payment, but rather to circumvent getting 'SecuRom infestation' (as I've seen it referred to). So the outcome is the same- they don't pay for it- but the cause is the piracy protection itself.

Oh I know what you meant. But I'd be willing to bet my house and a year's salary that the "good" pirates are far out numbered by the "bad" pirates

In general, yes. For Spore... I'm not so sure anymore. It's hard to tell, as the game has been downloaded almost one million times (Hmmm, a 1:1 ratio between "real sales" and "Pirates ARR!"), and I do know of people who have bought a legit copy, and used their key to activate the torrented version, and one person who wrote a nifty little program that downloads a copy, wipes it, and downloads another just to run the number of downloads up...

What I'm waiting to see is the reaction from the Warhammer, Harry Potter, and Sims 3 releases.

Just out of curiosity, what would be the purpose of this?

The more people appear to have downloaded the game illegally, the bigger a movement there appears to be against that game's DRM (at least, that's the rationale for doing something like that).

Though I think a company like EA knew that it wouldn't be favourably received, yet did it anyway. They'd already toned down the DRM scheme from requiring activation every 10 days after a big backlash, yet left in a still kinda stupid scheme, and SecuROM, which they know many of their consumers hate. So pushing up the piracy numbers in this case I think would be nothing but counter-productive... EA can easily point to it and go, "Look how many people have pirated it - clearly we need anti-piracy and DRM schemes to protect ourselves!"

I was thinking the exact same thing. The piracy numbers definitely would favor them in the court case

"The piracy numbers definitely would favor them in the court case"

Yes-but the number of gamers who have ruined their computers from SecuRom will definitely match their numbers!

Indeed, I have great respect for Stardock for this attitude and bought GalCiv2 partly because of this. I have been very tempted to buy SoaSE as well even though I generally hate RTS and didn't like the demo. I would never pirate their games.

Are they going to poll everyone who bought the game to see how many people have problems vs how many don't? Are they going to take the time to sift through data from hundreds of thousand of computer users to determine that securom is the problem for every person complaining that securom is their problem? Securom does not break computers. I have several games with securom and I don't have problems with emulation software, antivirus software being turned off, firewalls being turned off or cd burning problems. I'm not the only one.That case has no shot. Software companies have a right to protect their property

And consumers have the right to prevent unwanted software being installed without their knowledge on their computers.

They aren't worried? I really doubt...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7772962.stm
Spore and Sims 2 are the two most pirated games of 2008 according to the BBC, with a reported 1.7 mil illegal downloads of Spore and 1.15 mil of Sims 2.

Obviously re the Sims 2 figures, a (fairly large) proportion of this can be attributed to the fact that Sims is such a massively popular game and therefore legal and illegal sales figures will be higher than other games, but Spore only came out in September and it still managed to top the list. I think it's a pretty safe assumption that SecuRom played a big part in this - I personally have had no problems with it so it doesn't put me off the games but I totally understand why people don't want it on their computers. Hopefully this will 'shock' EA into rethinking the DRM software they use for Sims 3 as otherwise they will have the same situation come February.

It's like people actually want piracy to hurt spore
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