Over at Gamasutra, Leigh Alexander serves up a revealing interview with John Riccitiello.
The Electronic Arts CEO dishes on the Spore DRM controversy, EA's abortive merger attempt with Take-Two, and EA's reputation in the gaming community.
Most noteworthy are Riccitiello's comments on the furor whipped up by Spore's much-maligned copy protection scheme:
I personally hate DRM. I don’t like the whole concept; it can be a little bit cumbersome. But I don’t like locks on my door, and I don’t like to use keys in my car... I’d like to live in a world where there are no passports. Unfortunately, we don’t – and I think the vast majority of people voted with their wallets and went out and bought Spore...
Everyone gets that we need some level of protection, or we’re going to be in business for free... [But it was] a minority of [anti-DRM] people that orchestrated a great PR program. They picked the highest-profile game they could find. I respect them for the success of their movement.
I'm guessing that half of them were pirates, and the other half were people caught up in something that they didn’t understand. If I’d had a chance to have a conversation with them, they’d have gotten it... There are different ways to do DRM; the most successful is what WoW does. They just charge you by the month.
1st of all, having SecuROM DRM downactive on ones PC is like having your car weighed by an additional half a ton and have it expend 30L of gas instead of 9L.
SecuROM will first install all its components without notifying the user, then it will allow its core files to have a highest system priority (thus slowing your computer down considerably), it will forbid you to own any CD/DVD virtualization software (sometimes even CD/DVD burning software). It may (or may not) also cause conflicts with various software - which in some cases it may make your Windows unbootable upon reset.
Its also interesting to point out that its us (the customers) who are expected to pay for this digital rights management piece of crapware - we have to invest more $$$ in a dual/triple/quad core processor and in more system RAM because of SecuROM. Furthermore, since pirates crack SecuROM in what seems to be a couple of hours upon the initial leak, SecuROM tends to become a problem solely for the paying customers. They too (well, most of them anyhow) are therefore forced to download and use various (illegal) cracks. This is warring with ones own customers.
On the other hand we have games that feature no DRM and still make a buck (Sins of a Solar Empire) and MMOs which provide content through online services, thus making you pay for online access (this proved to be the most effective method to date).
Warcraft III was a fine example of how its done; after having immediately installed a NO-CD crack (so I wouldn't have to have the original CD in the drive at all times) - notice that if I didn't have an original CDkey I would have not been able to access Battle.net services in spite of the "no-cd" crack.
The entire idea (of DRM) is destined to fail as noone can foretell what may happen once one of the DRM companies goes out of business, will all games protected via DRM become unplayable?
EA implemented another ludicrous protection into Spore - you are allowed to install the game 3 times on different computers, without a clear definition of what a new computer may be. This means that you will have to reactivate (up to 3 times total) your Spore as soon as you buy a new hard drive or say, a new gfx card. This also makes EA games unusable as far as the gaming establishments are concerned - like for instance various internet lounges etc.
Calling your customers (who don't want to be shafted for buying your game) pirates or dumbasses will doubtlessly have a negative impact on your brand. Indeed we (the customers) have voted with our wallets, and here is the result:
As far as I know, EA have since nerfed their DRM and are to allow more than 3 activations for Spore. This is a late reaction to customers voting with their wallets and making Spore the #1 most pirated game ever.
Grats EA! Those are some brilliant business tactics!
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