The fact that the rootkit was hidden on a music CD is irrelevant. If it had been a game, an office suite, an OS, a movie DVD, the vendor would have been just as liable to a big fat class action. Yes, part of the problem is that the software was a stealth install not mentioned in the license agreement, but ultimately I believe that's moot; I really doubt a license agreement saying "By using this software, you agree to let us install a rootkit on your system and make you vulnerable to worms and viruses" would hold up in court.
The issue here has not a damn thing to do with the difference between the music industry and the game industry. It has to do with the difference between XCP and SecuROM. The question is, is SecuROM as bad as XCP, and will it affect as many people? And hey, maybe the answer is "no." But I have a hunch that poorly-designed software with a history of damaging people's computers deployed to as big a market as Spore is going to have will cause problems.
Which is all irrelevant to my point, which was about stockholder perception. In the music industry services like iTunes have more or less allayed the more apocalyptic fears. They're still litigious as all hell at the RIAA, but for the most part that's a battle that has already been waged. PC gaming, on the other hand, is being declared dead or dying by analyst after analyst, declaring this the age of the console, and citing piracy as a cause. The number of people affected by software like SecuROM is inconsequential unless sales drop below a certain threshold. It has already been pointed out that many people, particularly the block of people a game like Spore is likely to appeal to, are completely unaware of the issue, and would likely continue to be so. My point, that EA and other publicly held companies involved in PC gaming must use some kind of anti-piracy just to maintain stockholder confidence, stands.
I would say that an epidemic of crippled CD burners and virus-riddled PC's would, but of course that's just as hypothetical.
The bottom line is that copy protection software doesn't work and inconveniences legitimate users, and as such is not a sustainable business model. I realize I'm an extreme example, but after my grandmother's copy of Windows locked me out because I had removed some hardware, I started switching everyone in my family over to Macs.
Again, that's an extreme example, but for a more mainstream one, take a look at the epic clusterfuck that has been WGA. I don't think there's any doubt that it's cost Microsoft far more money between development and damage control than it's saved in lost revenues to piracy -- especially inasmuch as it's still effing trivial to get a pirated copy of XP.
Yeah, as I've said a number of times previously in this thread, I fully believe that anti-piracy measures serve only to alienate customers, and empower pirates. In the post I referenced earlier, Tycho mentioned that for nearly every PC game he buys he seeks out, and of course easily finds, and cracked exe with which to free himself from any disc requirements or other problems, and I know many other people who do the same thing. That phenomenon speaks directly to the problem.
However the reality of the situation at the moment is no one with real influence in the industry has recognized that point, and taken the step of eliminating anti-piracy all together from their products. I don't think that will ever happen in a meaningful enough way to change the industry. Part of the reason would have to be that some games really are at much greater risk of being pirated, because they're in genres that appeal to pirates. First person shooters are one of the most obvious examples of that. Now, the fact of the matter is that you can't stop the pirates, but if you're making the next big shooter, your biggest fear is day zero piracy. Valve eliminated that problem entirely with Steam (you can't pirate what you don't have), but not everyone uses that service, and only Valve, to my knowledge, makes full use of it's features.
So what do you do? You have this huge investment in a platform that is guaranteed to lose you sales. You probably have a console release safety net these days, but you can't just turn to the people who funded this project and tell them you're doing nothing to protect their investment on the PC end. It just doesn't work that way. The most secure solution, from a financial standpoint, is a subscription based game, but that market only has so much room, and there's an 800 pound gorilla sitting in it. Another is a service like Steam, but of the people who have tried those, only Valve is anywhere close to right regarding execution, and many companies, such as EA and Microsoft, are philosophically incapable of going to someone else for something of that scale. Finally, you can use a service like SecuROM. It does absolutely nothing to pirates, 100% placebo, but there it is.
Care to expand on that? Is the ten-day check really the deal-breaker here and everything else A-OK?
I may actually still not buy it if there are problems. It's quite a bit more than BioShock does.
