Spore DRM attracts pissed-off pirates

The evolution sim is being targeted by bit torrent users

The controversial copyright protection system on Will Wright's Spore has encouraged people to download the game illegally, Forbes has reported. The media firm cites figures from piracy research group Big Champagne, which indicate that the title was downloaded over 170,000 times during the first 10 days of September.

While it's not unusual for a big-name game to attract this level of attention, it's rare for a title to attract these levels of piracy within such a short space of time, says Champagne. Spore was acquired 35,000 times over the course of 24 hours between Wednesday and Thursday last week - and the number of illegal downloaders appeared to be still climbing.

Comments posted on popular torrent site The Pirate Bay indicate that gamers are disgruntled with EA's DRM protection, which sets a limit of three installs for any given copy of the software.

"BY DOWNLOADING THIS TORRENT YOU ARE DOING THE RIGHT THING, YOU ARE LETTING EA KNOW THAT PEOPLE WON'T STAND FOR THEIR RIDICULOUSLY DRACONIAN 'DRM' VIRUSES BUNDLED WITH THEIR GAMES," wrote the user known as Deathkitten, posting in shouty caps. "SEED FOR THE REVOLUTION!"

And it's not just torrent users who are voicing their concerns. Spore currently has a rating of just one and a half stars on the US and UK Amazon sites, alongside hundreds of angry reviews. German Amazonians were equally unimpressed, with one shopper describing the game as "Viel Wind um Nichts" ("much wind about nothing").

You can read our review of Spore here.