In contrast to generally favorable professional reviews found in gaming publications worldwide, the common gamer has spoken and they say this about Spore: no DRM. The Electronic Arts (EA) published game currently has a Metacritic score of 85/100, but the Amazon customer review rating is averaging only 1.5 stars out of 5 stars, after 2,816 reviews were counted. Amazon.com has become the soapbox for frustrated gamers to vent their issues with Digital Rights Management, and it’s current role in the gaming industry.

Digital Rights Management, DRM, is more recognized with its presence in Apple’s iTunes downloads, the copy protection barriers found in all sorts of mediums (like DVDs or Bluray discs), or Microsoft Windows’ anti-piracy measures. DRM is like a watched gateway that usually prevents the consumer full rights and free use of an intellectual property, like music or software. Apple had initially implemented this in their online media store iTunes to prevent the piracy and distribution of songs purchased by one user. Windows had used the same idea in a program called “Windows Genuine Advantage”, which restricted non-genuine license owners from non-critical updates for the operating system, and disables a number of features in Windows Vista; and if an XP-user is flagged as a non-genuine owner, the user is met with persistent system notifications, and will not receive non-critical updates. Both systems, just like the large majority of DRM-laden software and systems, do have well-published workarounds that circumvent the entire issue.

Spore's DRM works in this fashion: for each game you are assigned one account, which requires online activation in order to start playing, this account allows you three installs of the game. Once you've installed the game three times, you need to contact EA's account services staff in order to be granted more installs for your account. Since the game's initial release, EA has changed the direction of this DRM system, by allowing players via a patch in the “near future” to de-authorize a computer for the game to free up one install. This is similar to Apple's use of DRM. Another factor that has upset Spore players is noted within the game manual, which explains that multiple accounts on one game is possible. However, EA had retracted this from the final product, meaning that groups of players on one computer would need to purchase multiple games in order to have separate accounts. [UPDATE]EA has since allowed the creation of separate user names (5 total) under one account, to allow competitive creation among close-living gamers.[/UPDATE] Despite their immediate response, a workaround for Spore's DRM system has been found, and has widely been distributed through peer-to-peer networks: Forbes has counted over 35,000 downloads within the first day of Spore's release.

Not only has evidence of protest appeared among Amazon reviews and peer-to-peer activity, but apparently gamers have created Spore creatures within the game that mock the issue of DRM entirely. For instance, the Kotaku-favorite “veroflraptor” that sprays DRM and overhype on attackers.

The inclusion of DRM in the gaming industry is nothing new. Prior to this and other EA games' DRM systems, most games were protected by either a CD-key found within the retail package that had to be entered during the install of a game, or a game required the physical CD inserted within the computer to play. Some games still use these technologies today.

The role that DRM plays in many different industries has long been debated and discussed well before Spore was even on the horizon. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, driven to protect the freedoms of consumers and technology creators, has held a position against DRM. Their argument references interference with legal use of electronic media, the ineffective efforts to thwart software piracy, and invasion of privacy and the conflicts of security. However, the practice of DRM is supported by many software publishers, and it's encouraged by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows copyright holders to produce lawsuits on those that use or distribute workarounds to avoid restrictions brought by DRM.

Today, many of the more complex forms of DRM systems have well-known workarounds already available, which undermines the anti-piracy efforts of these systems. That doesn't stop the practice, and it is a fair expectation that DRM will remain in the electronic way of things.