Why has Electronic Arts relaxed the DRM on Spore?
Because people hated it so much they were giving the game foul ratings on Amazon. And no publisher can stand aloof from that in this connected age. Especially not when it has virtually bet the company on its game's success.
The problem began when Electronic Arts (EA), mindful of the game's production cost - estimated at between $50m and $80m - decided that it really needed to keep the pirates at bay. To break even, it needs to sell somewhere between 5m and 8m copies of the game.
To that end, and mindful of its statistics which showed that 75% of people install and play a given game on only one machine, and less than 1% ever try to play on more than three different machines, EA built in restrictions so that you had to verify the licence online, and could only install it three times before you'd have to call EA and persuade them to let you install it once more - basically, like verifying Windows XP or Vista. And each copy could only have one screen name associated with its licence key - something of a downer for people who play in families.
