A few months ago, the biggest video game publisher in the world, Electronic Arts, announced that future game releases on the PC would be packed full of DRM. The company claimed this was it's way of looking out for its customers. Part of this DRM would include the software checking in with servers over an internet connection every 10 days to make sure it was still legit. If it didn't check in after so long, the game would simply stop working. So much outrage was seen around the net by this that EA finally backed off and said the DRM would be toned down.

Well, the release of one of the most anticipated computer games in ages is finally here. Spore, from creator Will Wright who designed the original SimCity and The Sims, gives users the chance to create a species from its beginings as a micro-organism through evolution to a gigantic monster. Based on sales of the $10 creature creator which was released earlier this summer, sales of the game itself looked to be huge. Then people actually got a chance to try it.

Well, EA may have backed off some of it's DRM, but the game is still so full of it that people are fighting back. Spore has a 1 star rating on the Amazon review page with just about every review citing the horrible DRM. I haven't had a chance to try it and from what I've heard, I don't feel like shelling at $50 for what many people are describing as "just a rental from EA". Out of 2,134 ratings as of the time of this writing, 1,962 are just 1 star ratings, the lowest rating possible on Amazon. The other 172 ratings are pretty evenly spread over the remaining four star ratings. That's a very sad rating for any game, especially one as highly anticipated as Spore.

The funny thing is that all this DRM according to EA is supposed to prevent pirated copies of the game. But it hasn't worked. Pirated copies are already out there and freely available to download. So are people on Amazon being unfair in their rating of the game based on its DRM? Or is this much deserved? Tell me what you think!