Being limited to 3 is retarded. My sister is into Sims, so I want her to check it out. I want to play it on my laptop, where it's installed now, but my laptop also needs to be formatted. I would have done that first, but I don't have all of the proper software to do that at the time. So if I reinstall then, theres my 3 times..and what if something happens to my laptop?

My problem also is creating an EA account - it simply doesn't work. It asks me for my email, password and to pick an EA username..so I fill it all out and click the continue arrow to CREATE MY ACCOUNT and it tells me my ACCOUNT INFO IS NOT IN THEIR SYSTEM. NO SHIT! Maybe because I HAVEN'T CREATED IT. And before you make a smart remark, yes, I'm at the account create window, not the sign in window.

Because it introduces a bunch of new bugs that I always hate to deal with but thats just the way extra code works.

My problem with the 3 install limit is that I will absolutely run into it time and time again. I have a tendency to format my harddrives because I either did something stupid (and knew what happened next) or I just feel like cleaning out the large number of files I will never use again and don't know where they are to delete them.

My other problem is I tend to keep PC games a long time bit fall in and out of love with them. I have played Masters of Orion 2 for going on the better part of my life. I have had to migrate from more PCs than I can hope to remember. It would be an unbelievable pain in my ass to have to call Micropose every couple years because I would have to relook the number up every time (and Micropose is out of business).

And of course there is the normal blah blah blah about me buying the game etc etc. It doesn't really bother me though because I can just pirate a copy after I buy it and remove the DRM that way.

I'm not familiar with this at all. Please explain to me, is it so that when I buy Spore, and I install it, get a new computer 3 times, I can't install Spore anymore on my 4th computer at all?

If that's true, then fuck it, no Spore for me. If I buy a game, I want to be able to still play it 10 years from now. What kind of nonsense is this?

It's not driving me to piracy, I just won't buy it. Any game that has this sort of anti-customer rubbish on I simply won't buy. I've got loads of games from the nineties onwards that I've installed and re-installed God knows how many times, there's no guarantee I'll be able to do that with Spore.

I went to gamestop to buy a PC game last night.

I looked at Spore, a couple of the employees there told me how fun it was, then I bought Diablo 2.

I still have games on floppy disk that I can install if the desire strikes me. I won't buy a game that limits paying customers in such a way sorry.  I also bought the "inferior" 360 version of Mass Effect over the PC version for the exact same reason.

 You can install it as many times as you want. You just need to authenticate the fourth installation over the phone.

If it is possible to install on two computers... and play both at the same time then I suppose that is illegal.

@OP... I have uninstalled and re-installed GTA3 5-6 times, 2 of those were because it wasn't running properly and kept crashing... I assumed for a long time it was because my laptop doesn't officially have the required specs for it, but recently I bought Vice City and it seems to work fine, so unless Vice City had lower specs?

Also what is wrong with the game requiring the disc to be in to play it?... that way you don't need to have limited installs etc.

I frankly dislike the notion of anything installing on my system I don't know about. any DRM system that operates on that I'll give a miss. Install limiters on games is completely retarded, if they did that in the 90s there'd be a heap of games I brought in the 90s I wouldn't be able to play without cracking them because the companies that created the games don't exist anymore (some cases even the publisher). This gives Publishers virtually control to flick a switch and 'force' people to buy new versions of their game (ie EA sports game disabling pref years game servers requiring you to buy the updated version).

Steam is a step in the right direction because
1. I choose it.
2. it works offline as well.

I'm quite familiar with the way it works, it's just the principle of it.  I followed this quite closely when the DRM was added to Bioshock (then removed) and Mass Effect.  It won't force me to pirate the games but I will choose to not spend my money when there are so many other good games out there to play.

EDIT:
@Shinlock

I agree that Steam would solve all their problems :P

Valve doesn't seem to be very vocal in their complaints of piracy...

Because it is very, very easy to get around that system.