On September 7th, one of the most hyped games of the past three years is finally going to be released: Spore is coming. At E3 2005 and 2006, the title won the Game Critic Awards for Best Original Game, Best PC Game, and Best Simulation Game (as well as a Best Game overall in 2005). It has been critically lauded well in advance of its release. The brain child of Will Wright, Spore promises to be the culmination of many of the themes that Will Wright has explored throughout his development career. At the same time, the game has been fraught with delays and much of the early goodwill built by the game has been wasted. With all of this hype and all of this acclaim, I predict that there’s one more title Spore is going to bring home to EA: most pirated title of 2008.
With all the hype of Spore, it will be exceedingly difficult for the game to meet gamers’ expectations, but it will almost certainly be one of the most popular games of the later part of the year. Even though it isn’t quite as casual friendly as The Sim in its subject matter, the aesthetic of the game and the apparent ease of use lend it an air of accessibility. If it’s even half as good as the hype suggests, the game will sell, sell, and sell some more. And then some more.
The other thing that will happen is that the game will be pirated. Repeatedly.
Kieron Gillon, over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, did a brief study on piracy in the PC gaming market. He examined the total number of leechers for games off the very popular torrent site Mininova, and below are his results:
1) Assassin’s Creed - 25734
2) Frontlines: Fuel of War – 12688
3) Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat - 8792
4) Dark Messiah of Might and Magic - 8402
5) Lost: Via Domus - 5883
6) Turning Point: Fall of Liberty - 5183
7) Sims 2 - 4026
8 ) The Club - 3672
9) Bioshock - 3489
10) The Witcher - 3121
Piracy is a big business. What’s notable for my argument is that The Sims 2, the main game, almost three and a half years after it first came out, is still moving at a rate of 4K downloads per day (assuming people are actually able to download the full game in one day). If Spore hits the same sweet spot as The Sims 2, it’s going to be tops on the torrent leecher’s list for years to come. I doubt that EA is going to create any DRM-protection more sophisticated than what is used for Sims games, so that rampant piracy that is destroying developers is likely to affect Spore significantly.
Of course, it’s not as though the downloaded copies of The Sims 2 have prevented the game from selling more copies than 13 million copies. I don’t believe it will affect EA’s bottom line significantly because the main pirates are not the casual gamers who made The Sims such a success.
The other two platforms (aside from PC and Mac, both with known piracy issues) that Spore will be premiering on are the Nintendo DS and the iPhone. The DS was the subject of a contested report in Britain about piracy by the ELSPA. Even though the original article was a “hatchet job,” the availability of the R4 chip means that the DS has its share of pirates out there as well.
As for the iPhone, the games downloaded to it will likely be protected by some sort of DRM in the style of iTunes, so there is potentially a larger impediment to piracy. Still, it’s not as though there aren’t already hackers unlocking their iPhones to get access through other service providers. How long before people begin to post tools to circumvent the software protection that will be put in place?
Most likely none of these piracy issues will disrupt the sales of Spore significantly because most pirates are more tech-savvy and are less likely to purchase any game without something like Steam providing a barrier. Most purchasers of Spore are likely to come from demographics that, like those of the players of The Sims,
are far more willing to pay rather than deal with the hassle.
Still, I believe that, by the end of the year, analysts will be bemoaning the number of “lost” sales for EA over rampant Spore piracy.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:09 am
Considering Spore is already being pirated before release. I would agree..
September 7th, 2008 at 9:36 am
lol they had 40k+ leechers on a single spore torrent a couple days ago cause it released in Australia.
September 15th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Possible Fake, anyways that whats they get for rushing and note releasing the game at the same time on the other countries.