Spore at top of the piracy charts

[oldoldman]

BBC NEWS | Technology | Spore at top of the piracy charts

Will Wright's evolutionary epic video game - Spore - has been named the most pirated PC game of 2008, according to the TorrentFreak weblog.

The site used data provided by the peer-to-peer sharing protocol, BitTorrent, to compile a list of the 10 most downloaded PC games in 2008.

The site reported 1.7m illegal downloads of Spore since the game was released in September 2008.

Electronic Arts (EA) said it sold nearly 2m copies of the game.

Will Wright's other big-selling title - The Sims 2 - came second on the list with 1,150,000 copies downloaded.

TorrentFreak said that Spore's Digital Rights Management (DRM) software - which came in for considerable criticism when the game was released - was one of the reasons the game was so prolifically pirated.


TOP 10 PIRATED GAMES OF 2008

1) Spore
2) The Sims 2
3) Assassins Creed
4) Crysis
5) Command & Conquer 3
6) Call of Duty 4
7) GTA San Andreas
8) Fallout 3
9) Far Cry 2
10) Pro Evolution Soccer 2009

Source: TorrentFreak

Spore's original DRM (Digital Rights Management) limited customers to only three activations after the game was installed, preventing legitimate customers from having free use of the game and effectively killing the second-hand market.

The hacked version that emerged less than 24 hours after the game shipped came without any DRM, and within 10 days of the games launch, more than half a million people had downloaded a pirated version of the game.

EA subsequently released a "DRM-lite" version that allowed an unlimited number of installations, but the public relations damage was considerable.

Freelance games journalist Paul Pressley told BBC News that pirating games was inevitable.

"The best [games publishers] can do is come up with measures that stem piracy as much as they can, without impeding legitimate customers."

"The PC market is getting smaller in terms of single-player games and publishers do overstate the problem."

"The majority of their sales are console-based, which makes piracy much harder and while pirates will take a small percentage of their sales, the majority of people will buy a legitimate copy of the game," he said.

Conspicuously absent from the list are online-only games.
uTorrent client software screen
Sophisticated client software makes accessing BitTorrent files very simple

World of Warcraft has more than 11m subscribers worldwide, and Warhammer Online shifted more than 1.2m units in the first few weeks after its launch.

Unlike single-player games, these require an active subscription - rather than a legitimate copy of the game - to play.

But with game developers withdrawing or scaling back on creating new PC titles and a seemingly watertight subscription model for online gaming, pirates could yet sink the concept of single-player PC gaming below the waterline.

Can't help but feel like the only reason it hit the top of the charts was because of the DRM and people "sticking it to the man". Which makes it that much more fucking awesome.

[Dayson]

I ended up buying my copy of the game and DLing it from EA's website. I was not happy at all after learning about the DRM post install. I typically like to buy my games instead of torrenting them, but in this case I wish I had done the latter. I should have done some more research.

And damn if the game didn't get boring and repetitive. I ended up just bullrushing my ship into the center of the galaxy and met Bob, or Joe, or w/e god's name was and promptly gave up on the game.

[Metah]

Spore: Most pirated game of 2008
Spore: Shittiest, most overhyped game of 2008

Phew, dodged a bullet there.

[Katlan]

Spore deserves this title whole-heartedly

[Lordwafik]

As someone who bought spore, I can say Spore deserves this whole heartedly.
I hope all the people who pirated it did it on the principle more than the fact they wanted to play a game that was stripped from over 50% of it's content promised by Will Wright during development (some of the creature stages completely stripped, creature/tribal/civ stages just way too short in gameplay), and the fact the DRM hurt the legitimate user more than anyone.

[Kuya]

Wasn't Kaylia who said around here that Spore seemed like overhyped shit? God, whomever argued against him must feel so silly now.

[Lordwafik]

I think I argued against him, the game is fun but not worth playing for more than 10 hours, so for the price tag it got, it's not that good, especially since the online patches add nothing, and looking back, we got a very empty game.

[Katlan]

to play a game that was stripped from over 50% of it's content promised by Will Wright during development (some of the creature stages completely stripped, creature/tribal/civ stages just way too short in gameplay)

All that is for DLC... oh wait

[Correction]

As someone who bought spore, I can say Spore deserves this whole heartedly.
I hope all the people who pirated it did it on the principle more than the fact they wanted to play a game that was stripped from over 50% of it's content promised by Will Wright during development (some of the creature stages completely stripped, creature/tribal/civ stages just way too short in gameplay), and the fact the DRM hurt the legitimate user more than anyone.

And how much does Spore cost in Australia? :D

[BRP]

evolutionary epic

The game is already out, you can't fool people anymore.

[Kaylia]

Wasn't Kaylia who said around here that Spore seemed like overhyped shit? God, whomever argued against him must feel so silly now.

I did argue Spore was overhyped, but you might confuse it with an argument I had about Little Big Planet. I don't remember seriously arguing about this one.

Spore was horrible in almost every way. The game was glitching a lot, had shitty controls and was just not fun outside the character editors. There is hundred of flashgames on the net that are more addictive than this.


I was more or less wrong about Little Big planet tho. Game might be short, but I had lot of fun. I still don't think it has the awesome replay value people are saying it would have tho.

[Dezzimal]

Wasn't spore like 80 USD too? Thats pretty farking expensive.

[The Stig]

Didn't this game also generated a new form of porn called "Spornagraphy" I believe? Haha...

[Elcura]

"Spornagraphy"

Say what?

[Pikarya]

I'm highly surprised Dead Space isin't on that list.

[The Stig]

Say what?

These:

Feature: Penis Monsters Invade Spore - ComputerAndVideoGames.com

Video game's user content spawns naughty Web 'Sporn' - CNN.com

[thestalkmore]

Always thought this game was going to be shit. Good riddance.

[Valkrish]

My brother made a few sporns - .-;

[|BBT|Knowledge]

My brother made a few sporns - .-;

I hope it wasn't gay sporn >.>

[Kerberoz]

YouTube - Spore creation - Big Willy
YouTube - Spore creation - Astrolohumpicus

my sporns >.>

Spore was the hugest gaming disappointment I've ever had. So many years of development and promises for such a shallow and boring game... what happened to all the depth? The space stage is just moving a fucking arrow around to terraform then dropping random shit on the planet.

This just proves that people don't like paying money for shitty games.