Spore: DRM Backfires as Hackers Make Spore The Most Pirated Game Ever!

Forbes has an interesting article about the piracy problem facing EA over Spore, their new virtual worlds title that generated unprecedented levels of hype. Part of their efforts to curb piracy in this title came through equipping the disks with DRM protections. As is always the case, however, hackers quickly overcame these safeguards, and appeared to have punished EA for using DRM by ensuring that thousands of illegal installs take place around the world.

Here's an excerpt form the article:

As of Thursday afternoon, "Spore" had been illegally downloaded on file-sharing networks using BitTorrent peer-to-peer transfer 171,402 times since Sept. 1, according to Big Champagne, a peer-to-peer research firm. That's hardly a record: a popular game often hits those kinds of six-figure piracy numbers, says Big Champagne Chief Executive Eric Garland.

But not usually so quickly. In just the 24-hour period between Wednesday and Thursday, illegal downloaders snagged more than 35,000 copies, and, as of Thursday evening, that rate of downloads was still accelerating. "The numbers are extraordinary," Garland says. "This is a very high level of torrent activity even for an immensely popular game title."

The EA protections, which tried to limit users to three installs, appear to have backfired, and hackers across the web are pointing to their hacks as a triumph for doing the right thing.

Electronic Arts calls those criticisms unfair. "EA has not changed our basic DRM copy protection system," says corporate communications manager Mariam Sughayer. "We simply changed the copy protection method from using the physical media, which requires authentication every time you play the game by requiring a disc in the drive, to one which uses a one-time online authentication."

Electronic Arts compares its DRM solution to systems in place on services like iTunes that similarly limits the number of computers that can play a particular song. Sughayer also points out that less than 25% of EA users attempt to install the company's games on more than one computer, and less than 1% attempt to install it on more than three.

Piracy is becoming a massive problem in the game biz -- the cost of software is one factor, of course, but increasing software costs are a consequence of the constantly higher consumer demands for better action and graphical realism.

The difficulty, of course, is that DRM doesn't stop hackers...ever.

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Will Colleges Stop Helping the RIAA Prosecute Music Pirates?

Read Write Web is reporting that some colleges have decided not to continue helping the RIAA track down music pirates that steal on their networks.

Hey, piracy is wrong, and the RIAA has the write to fight it however they can. But the cost of monitoring networks has apparently become enormous for schools, so it is a natural reaction that some will object to the staff and expense required to do so. Piracy prevention is after all not a primary role of a college.

It should be an interesting turn of events. And it brings to the fore the issue of how much responsibility a connection provider has in monitoring and policing the activities of people on its network.

This is a really tough issue -- I suppose if gun manufacturers can be sued when people get shot, then networks can be sued when music is stolen. But what an incredibly complex set of legal issues this must bring up. And what about suing the car manufacturer if a bank thief uses it to get away from the crime scene.

Clearly I am not a lawyer, eeh?

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US GameMakers Don't Want to Sue Customers. Sounds Like a Sound Decision To Me.

ARS Technica is reporting that US gaming companies are rather reluctant to follow the lead of UK gamemakers, who are suing P2P game sharers over copyright infringement.

Peter Moore, head of EA Sports, makes this poignant statement:

"If we learned anything from the music business, they just don't win any friends by suing their consumers," he told Eurogamer. "Speaking personally, I think our industry does not want to fall foul of what happened with music."

Now clearly piracy is a problem for gaming companies, and will become even more so as bandwidths of broadband connections continue to grow. But US gamemakers are focusing on innovation rather than lawsuits to mitigate the problem. Says the same ARS Technica piece,

EA actually has some plans in that direction, including free, microtransaction-based games like Battlefield Heroes and of course MMOs like Warhammer Online, games that are functionally impervious to piracy.

Since MMOs are clearly the key growth area of the industry, these seem wise steps indeed.

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