It seems to me that lately the PC games industry and pirates have been waging war on one another.  From my perspective, it's just like an arms race.  One side increases their arms and the other "needs" to increase theirs also to keep up.  All the while both sides are screwing themselves.  The industry is losing customers and the pirates are encouraging developers to stop developing on the PC.  The term mutual self destruction comes to mind.  And as usual the actual paying customers are caught in the middle and are taking collateral damage.  Spore is just the latest high profile game to use a pretty restrictive DRM scheme.

I keep hearing a lot of people say Spore's DRM sucks so much that they are going to pirate the game.  I have mentioned many times why this is a really bad idea, but here's another: you are supporting the pirates in this stupid war.  You have just helped them increase their arms and if things keep going like they are, the industry will respond with even worse DRM.

If you don't like internet activation, limited installs, and other types of restrictive DRM, teach them an actual lesson.  If you buy a game like this, you are telling the developer you are ok with the DRM.  If you pirate the game, you are encouraging the pirates and teaching the developers that their DRM needs to be stronger. 

Even better is don't buy that specific game AND don't pirate it either.  Don't support either side in this war.  Go find one of the countless games that has perfectly reasonable DRM or none at all.  Hint: indie games are typically very good in this respect.

Comments