Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The game has been just released. But I am not going to buy it. I used to a have a standing pre-order but not anymore, that has been long canceled. I gave EA a chance to mend its ways but it failed. Here is why. This is a warning Review. Warning of the dangers of the harbored Digital Rights Management (DRM) subroutine that comes unavoidably bundled with the game. This type of DRM (SecuROM 7x with Limited Installations) is well known as it has already been used in at least two other games (BIOSHOCK & MASS EFFECT). So my review is based on first-hand experience of a core aspect of the game. Apparently EA would rather keep its customers in the dark. That is why, in the past month, EA Forums got censored, Wikipedia entries selectively edited and Amazon reviews repeatedly deleted. What is worse, Amazon (possibly without knowing it) is breaking the law which requires the full disclosure of bundled snoop-ware. LIMITED INSTALLS? Yes, LIMITED INSTALLS!!! We only get to ride this shiny pony for...3 laps! The official announcement mentions "on 3 different computers" but avoids to clarify what a "different computer" makes: will changing the graphics card trigger the loss of a token? what about attaching a new hard-drive (internal or external) or adding a new user account. All the above have been reported to subtract installation tokens from BIOSHOCK or MASS EFFECT - and EA has intentionally left this area dark gray. Moreover, in order to enforce the limited installations, exactly like BIOSHOCK, there will be IRREMOVABLE FOLDERS placed in our systems' Root that will effectively revoke our Administrator rights to our own PCs! Short of reformatting, there is no deleting them even if logged in as Administrators. Is EA trying to pave the way towards a nightmarish future where PC gaming will be a continuously-billed service (such as direct-Pay TV) and not a product? Is EA trying to trigger a lemmings stampede towards the Pay-per-Play cliff, where gamers will be regarded as herded cows to be milked over months and years? Is the Company trying to turn our PC systems (that we bought and paid for) into their proprietary consoles, hence monstrosities such as SecuROM that offer zero anti-piracy protection? According to statements by their own spokespersons (such as John Riccitiello, CEO of EA) the answer to all of the above question is YES. However, I want to make clear that none of these statements had any impact on my rating of this game. The game has enough troubles as it is... Is it fair to rate badly a game based on its short duration or bad graphics? How about its instability and bugs? How about harboring potentially dangerous subroutines that will render it useless within a 12-16 months? You see how this is going? In the end, after all is said, with SPORE it boils down to this: who will actually be owning my copy? Are we to pay $50 only to...RENT this from its publisher, be potentially pestered with the insulting need to prove our purchase forever and place our hardware and data in danger? And what makes this even harder to understand: will such extreme measures actually prevent piracy? Of course NOT! They did not work for similarly DRM-plagued BIOSHOCK or MASS EFFECT, why should they start working now? So, one has to ask: what is next in store for customers that make the mistake of buying such a product? Will they be required to pay again to buy another copy of the game when the first one expires? Is THIS the solution that EA executives came up against piracy: since they cannot stop piracy, let's make all our paying customers PAY TWICE to make up for their million dollar bonuses?! NO THANKS! No game is worth such harassment!