Petition Regarding Spore Copy-Protection

The purpose of this petition is to demand that Electronic Arts (EA) remove or alter their declared method of copy-protection for the upcoming, highly-anticipated game Spore.

Derek French is a technical producer for BioWare, which is producing another game for EA that will use the same anti-piracy technology as Spore. He stated that both games will use a version of secuROM that will require online validation every ten days for the game to continue functioning. In other words, once the game is installed it must be activated by allowing secuROM to communicate with computers at EA via the Internet. From then on, it must repeat this procedure every ten days in order to continue working.

This totalitarian method of copy-protection has several potential drawbacks. Chief among them is that it unfairly penalizes law-abiding gamers who do not have an Internet connection. Such players will be unable to play Spore. Similarly, gamers who only have a laptop computer with no permanent Internet connection will be unable to play it as well.

Another possible problem is high traffic on EA's servers. If a large number of players attempt to validate their copy of the game at the same time during the game's launch, EA's servers could potentially become overwhelmed, and players may find their game unable to validate itself, or even potentially locked if something goes wrong with the validation process.

A further potential issue is lack of support: what happens a few years down the road when the game is no longer selling well, and EA decides it's not cost-effective to continue supporting it and the validation it requires? They will surely deny that they would ever do so, but it's impossible to predict future events or decisions. If EA ever deactivated its validation servers, then anyone who bought the game would be, quite simply, out of luck.

Additionally, a kink in EA's plan is that it is likely to have the opposite of the intended effect; namely, Spore may in fact end up being pirated more frequently because of this anti-piracy protection. A great many gamers will feel outraged by it and be looking for ways around it. Indeed, the outrage is already very visible throughout the community of websites that have sprung up in anticipation of Spore's release; many fans previously excited about Spore have publicly stated they will not purchase this game if it ships with this type of copy-protection.

Finally, prior versions of secuROM included with other games have been blamed with causing malfunctions on some consumers' computers, including but not limited to causing some programs to crash or become unuseable, or preventing hardware like CD burners from functioning properly even when used for legitimate purposes.

This intrusive tactic by EA will penalize legitimete owners of the game and potentially make it unplayable for some of them. Furthermore, it will not have the intended effect of preventing piracy; virtually every game ever released with copy protection of some sort has been hacked or pirated within days of its release.

For the reasons stated above, we demand that EA reconsider their position and adopt a less intrusive and less restrictive form of anti-piracy technology, so as not to unfairly punish responsible gamers who purchase the game legitimetely. Whether or not we ever own this game may depend on it.