Wed, Oct 15, 2008 | 15:40 BST
Tiny minority cares about DRM, says Riccitiello
Speaking to PaidContent, EA head John Riccitiello has claimed that the controversy surrounding Spore DRM was kicked up by “.2 percent” of users, and that the vast majority of customers would never even notice the measure was in place.
“We’re still working out the kinks,” he said on the subject of disc protection. “We implemented a form of DRM and it’s something that 99.8 percent of users wouldn’t notice. But for the other .2 percent, it became an issue and a number of them launched a cabal online to protest against it.
“I personally don’t like DRM. It interrupts the user experience. We would like to get around that. But there is this problem called piracy out there.”
More through the link.
5 comments
#1
Doomsayer
15/10/08, 4:02 pm
Sounds to me like “Tiny majority has brains”
#2
MesserWolf
15/10/08, 5:36 pm
These DRM are useless against piracy … They only manage to enrage customers and to kill the used/rent market .
#3
David
15/10/08, 9:03 pm
DRM is bypassed so easily. DRM doesn’t work against piracy fact.
#4
sickpuppysoftware
15/10/08, 11:30 pm
The tiny majority who care about DRM are called publishers. The rest of us think it’s shit.
World of Goo comes with no DRM as a small easily copyable file.
Number of people I’ve passed World of Goo onto : 0
I can recommend people go and buy World of Goo, it’s great. I can’t recommend Spore as I haven’t played it and I’m not likely to.
#5
Esha
15/10/08, 11:31 pm
David: I have to point out that that’s not entirely true, because one form of DRM was a resounding success: Star Force. The only reason it worked though was because it literally stole the PC away from the person who happened to have it secretly injected into their system. And due to inevitable flaws within Star Force, it was just handing said system over to clever crackers.
And that’s the catch. DRM can either truly protect games whilst at the same time overtaking a user’s computer and making it vulnerable to goodness knows how many flaws and issues, or as you’ve fairly pointed out it can act as a placebo to corporate bodies so they think their game is protected.
One of these days, I think I might start a DRM firm that does little more than add “I FEEL RICH!” to executables, I’d put all my money into marketing and men who can technobabble, then I’d convince the corporate folks that my DRM was ten times more effective than SecuROM. And if games protected by my DRM got released via torrents? Well, that’s just naughty bloody pirates for you.
On a more serious note though, I do wonder which way it’s going to go. Either we could get a DRM-free PC environment (please!) or we could see the birth of another Star Force.