Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

About a week prior to Spore's release, I obtained a pirated copy from a friend (who had downloaded it). The game was so fun and addictive, I had to pre-order it. I eagerly awaited the day when I could unlock Spore's true potential by experiencing user-generated content. The first thing I noticed after I installed my real, uncracked copy of Spore was that it failed to launch. A bit of googling the obscure error message revealed that it was failing to launch because I was running YASU. YASU is a helpful utility which lets me play other games without the discs in the tray, and has no relevance to Spore whatsoever. But Spore includes the entire filthy SecuROM DRM package, so there's no avoiding it; I have to quit YASU every time I play Spore. On top of that, I'm worried about activations. I have it installed on my desktop and laptop, so I've only got one installation left. As an avid PC gamer, frequent hardware upgrader, and user of Windows... I know I'll be reinstalling things again several times. The DRM needs to be removed, ASAP. A pirated copy will always come out for every game; haven't the developers figured out that they only hurt the paying customers with this DRM garbage? This may be another time I'll have to crack a game I paid for. (It was GRID last time, which I could never get to launch at all -- cracked copy worked fine.) I fear PC developers are going to kill the entire PC game industry with DRM, and we'll have no choice but to play everything on DRM-laden consoles with limited input and output options. It sucks. I hate to give this 4 stars with all the DRM problems, but I'd like this review to surface as the "most helpful positive". Also, the game itself is very good, even if it didn't really stand up to the hype that surrounded its development.