DarkSpore - Pulled Off Steam and DRM Problems
 

IncGamers has a new article about DarkSpore being pulled off steam, and the games constant drm woes. Tell me again DRM bothers no one and that cloud based gaming is the future again.

More information.

Well done EA :thumbsup:

It is funny though how companies create these kind of problems purposely. Like they could have not predicted the outcome.

Everyone knows that internet connections aren't always reliable and yet these companies constantly push this moronic idea of cloud server saving. Its a freaking singleplayer game, so being online doesn't add any functionality, benefit or purpose to the gamer.

Until people get some self-control and stop buying, things wont get any better. You cant even blame EA. It seems to work for them.

Did anyone even play this anymore?

Did anyone play it ever? I've never even heard of it.

I did on release but regardless happy 11,111 post Dart.;) I foresee many more posts from you, and more games we can't play in the future because of DRM.

Haha, I believe JDR and Alrik are ahead of me ;)

Then again, I'm clearly in the lead when it comes to quality content ;)

DRM and "cloud storage" is the future.

You know - PROGRESS.

People are just stupid trying to hold on to the inefficient past.

Things like DarkSpore will happen again - but we all know it's pretty rare. Not a big deal at all.

Yes progress is good but the company that pulls the plug on my games better beware.

Also I still don't think being forced online just to play is necessary for SP games. I will never agree with you on this topic.
:cm:

Hehe, you seem to be under the impression that consumers have the power.

They would have if they weren't so stupid ;)

Ain't that the truth. Gamers rights get lesser every year. I'm waiting for the day I need to register my DNA for every game just to play.:shakefist:

Ooh, another stellar EA game not available on Steam? Such a pity…
You must gather Origin malware before venturing forth worked for ME3. Then again, ME3 wasn't a differently packed grinder made by Maxis.

Patience, Sony is developing it already.

I read somewhere in their forums ''First install Origin…''
Ouch. Any sentence that starts like that can't be good.

Also new ways for companies to restrict our rights,worsen our overall experience so that they can make more profit is now called ''The Future''.

. . . and developers just can't fathom why gamers pirate games. Go figure.

Yeah exactly, with this online DRM crap I always feel I'm guilty till proven innocent whenever I boot up a game.

I play a lot of MMOs and don't think I've ever got an Error 73003. So you can hardly blame always online connections for that, it's just poor implementation is all. And a lot people will nick anything that isn't tied down and then brag about it, so I'm pretty sympathetic with DRM. Has anyone wondered why practically the only large budget games for PC are MMOs and most everything else is written for consoles? No prizes for guessing the answer to that one.

I look at this story and I wonder "Why now?". Darkspore was released 2 years ago…

they do, its just that under the free market system it can seem slow. thanks to gas prices there are more electric cars on the road and there's an explosion in natural gas exploration.

From EA's POV this game no longer has any ROI, so why should they spend any money on it. Why did KotOR2 only get one beta patch?

Worse still, from their POV allowing this game to work means people aren't spending money on new games. Its very short sighted and the corporate culture at EA must be pretty bureaucratic to allow this to happen.

The marketplace will win out. Smaller companies spring up with new models. ie. crowdsourcing is like the Prius.

yes, without DRM the game wouldn't be pirated. Roq here says it best:

Its also because console games sell better.

They sell better because they are harder to steal - there are a hell of a lot of PCs out there. There's a parallel in the mobile market: Android devices outsell IOS about 5 to 1, but developers make more money on IOS, since the app store is better controlled. Many devs don't even bother to port their games to Android and there's hardly a game on the platform that wasn't first released on IOS. I've heard all the arguments that the pirates wouldn't buy the games anyway, but really they are nonsense… Developers don't put DRM on their games for the fun of it.

This 10x. I fear this is the future of gaming. But the average gamer, with an attention span of a gnat, isn't going to care.

Apparently it's back up, now, so EA hasn't abandoned it entirely. But the woes that have plagued it should be a warning about where this road goes. Not that the average gamer is gonna care, I guess.

There were many games that had vanished from the face of the earth. Then we had abandonware sites. Then we got GOG. Now even Steam has many of them and we see "HD" releases and remakes. Forgive me, but I am not worried. Games that are worth it will find a way to survive. Maybe illegally for some time, but who cares.

Imagine if I was a pirate. Would I really bother to pirate smartphone games? Really and honestly, would I?
I've just emptied my trashcan. I need no junk, even if it's a "freebie". There is your answer Roq.

Would pirates really deal with crap from smartphones? If not for the reason above, then for a reason if someone is really stupid to pay for those stuff, then let him enjoy his stupidity and moneywasting.

If you were a pirate, I'm sure that you'd have all smartphone gamers walking the plank. Now what was your point?

LOL
Nah, I could never kill one just because he chooses to be stupid. Instead, I'd make them pay at least double for smartphone crap they buy.

I don't understand the comparison with IOS and Android since with a quick check you can see that there is much more piracy of IOS games then Android games and it is at least as easy to do it on IOS as it is on Android.

PS. Joxer: Unlike what you and other people on here think not every mobile game is a stupid piece of crap and there are some decent rpgs on it.

care to suggest your personal favorites? say top 5?

That's nonsense as any non partial research should tell you (just ask the devs!). People argue that the reason for the much higher Android piracy rate is that Google's distribution is faulty so many users couldn't buy the apps even if they wanted to. Maybe, maybe not, but reasons don't matter to the devs that make the apps, what matters is how many apps they sell. Really arguments that piracy doesn't affect software sales are about as coherent as the ontological argument for the existence of god.

Wow, so you're congratulating DArtagnan on his 111,110 post? ;)

This was quite an interesting escapade. I had completely forgotten about this game being a Maxis game. It makes all their problems in Sim City even less excusable now. It's also another black eye for EA - a company that has somehow managed to generate three times as many black eyes as they have employees in the company.

But another interesting thing is that EA/Maxis DID turn around and fix this thing. Steam drops the game from their catalog, the media gets in on it, and all of the sudden man hours appear from nowhere to fix the game. I wonder if Amazon and others dropped the game, too? They certainly won't be pleased when EA is giving them keys to sell for a game that is dead.

I can't guess what their reasons were, but I could imagine the bad optics of a fairly recent game (2 years old-ish?) being dropped like that and becoming the poster child for why Always On DRM is a horrible idea must have been a contributing motivator to the sudden, quick fix…

I really hadn't checked in awhile but it looks like in the last few months the amount of Android games available to pirate has grown exponentially since just a few months ago I had actually checked on how much pirated games were on the internet for Android games and found far more IOS games then the Android games I was actually looking for but now it is much easier to find Android games then it was before. It doesn't really matter much though since most games you can just get for free right off of Google Play and you only need to buy a few games.

PS. I can't remember what games I was playing on my phone since I haven't really tried to put them back on since I had to re-flash my firmware after it had stopped working awhile ago.