There is a game I have been waiting for a very long time. Spore.
The game is about starting out as a single cell amoeba-like creature, slowly sort of evolving and eventually becoming a creature. After that you get to a tribe phase followed by a civilization phase. Finally you get to explore the galaxy. Quite epic wouldn´t you say? And quite unique for a game nowadays, it is a fresh idea.

Now, I heard a rumor. They are going to use SecuROM with Spore. What is SecuROM? It is a copy protection scheme. In theory it prevents illegal copying of the game and it requires you to activate on the internet and keep on activating it at least every 10:th day. In theory.
But in reality it does not always work, so some people will not be able to play this game they have spent 4 years waiting for. There are a lot of hardcore fans who will have a lot of trouble with SecuROM. In reality these kinds of copy protection schemes are always more trouble than they are worth, for the consumer at least. There is a probability they will physically break you hardware. Some CD players and DVD players are permanently broken by them. There is no way to know this in advance. They almost always introduce bugs and glitches into the game, slow the game down etc. The standard of quality they currently have is that if the copy protection scheme makes the game crasch more than once an hour they do something about it, but else they don´t bother. This seems to be the magic limit for when people experience the game is too buggy to play. How do I know this? Well, every single original game I have with a copy protection scheme randomly closes down in average about once an hour. All games I have that does not have a copy protection scheme do not have this problem. They run absolutely fine, and in the rare event of a crasch at least there is a real crasch and probably some error message, not this silently way of just shutting the game down, exiting to windows.
And yes, here is the funny part. Pirates do not have these problems, there games run on average better and with less bugs than original ones. Well, are they loosing customers on this? Yes, I can say so for sure because the only people who are punished by these schemes are the people who actually buy them, such as me. And I am getting sick of it. Therefor I have decided to never buy games ever again that has a copy protection scheme, and they certainly lost a customer in me. They also lost good advertisement. I will not play it and tell my friends how good it is.
So, they have a worthless protection that only make the honest ones suffer. Why don´t they just remove it? I have asked myself the same question. One game that actually used to have a copy protection but it got removed (because of above mentioned problems) is Supreme Commander. So they gained a customer in me. Another game that does not use a copy protection scheme is Sins of a solar empire.
EA, please take a hint, do not spoil this game for countless of hardcore fans by ruining it with a worthless protection.
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