From: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3169899
EA Frustrates Spore Fans with Single Account Policy
Even on the same PC, extra copies needed for each family member who wants a new profile.
By Chris Pereira, 09/12/2008
As if there was any need to further incite angry gamers with Spore's DRM issues, The Consumerist yesterday ran a story on how -- in addition to the many other restrictions the game's DRM presents gamers with -- a copy of Spore provides you with only a single game account. In other words, if you've got multiple people in the same house who want to play Spore and have their own individual online personas, you'll have to buy an additional copy of Spore for each person.
Forget what you may have read on the manual -- particularly that part on page 53 which reads, "You may have multiple Spore accounts for each installation of the game." An EA spokesperson going by the name "EA_Violet" has clarified questions regarding the matter on the official Spore forums, providing us this disappointing revelation:
"That section in the manual was a misprint and will be corrected in future printings of the manual. There is one Spore registration/account per game/serial code so you are correct in that you cannot make multiple accounts at this time. I have sent your guys' feedback to the game team though since I can understand the desire to share a game on a system that you entire family uses."For a "misprint" the language seems pretty clear, and it is common practice for games to allow different user profiles so you can login and play with your own data/saves(naturally, with only one instance of the game running at any given time). One can't help but wonder whether this feature was removed so late in the process that the manual had already gone to print. Regardless, if this policy sticks after the game team reviews the feedback noted in the post it will only fan the fires of gamers frustrated with EA's handling of Spore. While we stand staunchly against piracy, requiring each member of a household to buy their own individual copy of the game seems like one of those policies that could backfire, driving people who otherwise wouldn't dream of it to potentially consider it as an alternative. But maybe this is simply an example of not having thought things through.
Should it hold true, this revelation also calls the game's strict installation restrictions into question. If each game serial code only authorizes a single account registration that should render how many times you install the game fairly moot.
We've contacted EA for a comment on the story but have yet to receive a response.
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First response down, link to the Pirate Bay torrent. Seems like the best way to go with this game so that everyone in your family can enjoy it simple, just pirate the game, and if you really want the online deal buy one copy and since all the monsters are just .png file copy and paste them from one to the other over the network, easy deal. EA is just screwing their customers over by the day.
There is really no excuse for this. It's not like either EA or Maxis are having duget problems, it's not like The Sims alone could probably sustain the entire company with its sales, but we still see this. Stuff like this just make me appreciate companies like Valve and Blizzard even more.
Tag(thx fkusumot) - "Yet again I completely fail to see your point..."
HD vs Wii, PC vs HD: http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=93374
Why Regenerating Health is a crap game mechanic: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=3986420
gamrReview's broken review scores: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=4170835
