Darkspore Gone Forever Due to Abandoned DRM - UPDATED

[fix-the-spade]

What a future where you can't play the damn game we bought.

Explain that, you future insisting bastards.

Ahem

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.

George Orwell

Be glad the biggest boot publishers have is games released after 2007.

 

[Valok]

Oh man, Jim's gonna love this..

At any rate, just checked Origin and indeed they are still selling it, unfreakingbelievable.

 

[Abomination]

Man, the three people who bought Darkspore are going to be so disappointed. No, wait. Because even the three people who bought it would never want to boot it up again either.

Now now. I had fun the few times I actually played it.

Yeah, but what about the other two?

 

[hazabaza1]

And this is why we don't support always online bullshit unless it's exclusively a multiplayer game.

What a joke.

 

[Stainlesssteele4]

Game works fine on Origin. Launched it and ended up playing it for half an hour after reading this. Seems that the problems are just for Steam owners.
I only happen to own to because of that free 10 dollar game coupon that went around, and I haven't played much of it.

 

[RicoADF]

Oh man, Jim's gonna love this..

At any rate, just checked Origin and indeed they are still selling the freaking thing, unfreakingbelievable.

I'm tempted to buy it, check weather it works then if it doesn't get my refund

 

[CyberMachinist]

Well at least a questionably forgettable game well now be remembered as the videogames equivalent to the Alamo....... or something like it. There is a peculiar irony to this.

I don't know about irony, really. Rosa Parks was just a woman who was too tired and sore to give up her seat. She didn't think about politics when she refused, and certainly didn't think people would still be learning about her actions into the 21st century.

I'm not saying games are the equivalent of civil rights, for the record. Just using an example of someone small and unassuming becoming a rallying point.

I'm also not sure about the Alamo bit either, since people are mad today but might not be in a week. Darkspore may simply be forgotten because too few people have a pony in the race.

About that I only said the Alamo bit because I was thinking about the phrase "Remember the Alamo" To be honest I don't know much about the Alamo except it had something to do with a last stand by Mexican soldiers.... or was that American soldiers? I think i got a bastardized version of it or something.

And you just described the irony i was saying, back towards me, that something likely forgettable like this game would end up being remembered, albeit as an example for bad practices.

 

[oldtaku]

This was also the entire XBox One if we hadn't forced them to backtrack on that. 10 years from now, poof, the entire console and every game on it would have been dead unless they felt like it was worth it for them to patch out the 24 hour checkin.

 

[omega 616]

OMG DIGITAL IS SO AWESOME!

Yeah, it's fucking amazing! If this is the future we are heading towards, I would rather stay in the past. I might not play a load of games that belong on GOG but when I want to, I don't want to find the servers have packed in.

 

[Callate]

We need a law on the books such that in the event of such developments hackers are allowed to do whatever is in their power to get such a game functioning without threat of legal sanction. The hundred-plus year copyright is a travesty even without the considerations of a digital age.

 

[MrHide-Patten]

And thus ladies and gentlemen; I give you Exhibit A on why the Xbone would've been shit..ier.

 

[Irridium]

Consumers have virtually no rights these days. It's a sad state, but they can probably get away with it for a while at least. And even then, it will be consumer outrage and not laws that work. Hell, if anyone tries to contact the authorities or file a complaint, they will be called spoiled and entitled.

Well at least they'll be able to get together to file a class-action lawsuit!

Oh, wait, that's right. Damn-near every company has made everyone give up that right with their EULA.

Fixed for accuracy.

Remember: One of the first license agreements forfeiting your right to sue was Steam's. Hope that money you saved on those games was worth it.

OT: This is the future. Relish it. Drink it in. Orwell's prophecy has come true.

Re-fixed. Now even more accurate!

Also, guess it's a good thing I mainly buy physical and from GoG for that exact reason Although many physical games still require Steam. Which sucks. I complain but people tell me to just shut up and accept it because Steam isn't that bad

 

[Vivi22]

Consumers have virtually no rights these days. It's a sad state, but they can probably get away with it for a while at least. And even then, it will be consumer outrage and not laws that work. Hell, if anyone tries to contact the authorities or file a complaint, they will be called spoiled and entitled.

Well at least they'll be able to get together to file a class-action lawsuit!

Oh, wait, that's right. STEAM made everyone give up that right with their EULA.

Fixed for accuracy.

Remember: One of the first license agreements forfeiting your right to sue was Steam's. Hope that money you saved on those games was worth it.

If you were interested in accuracy at all, you'd place the blame on the courts that undermined your rights by upholding the ability for companies to do this thus ensuring every company ever would add it in as soon as it was legal. Which they all pretty much did because leaving yourself open to class action suits when you can easily stop it is just bad business. I really can't blame companies for taking advantage of the situation when your government and courts readily create such loopholes and undermine your rights for them.

But for whatever it's worth, Valve is the company I'm least worried about ever having to file a lawsuit against that adopted that clause. And I assume by one of the first you actually mean one of what, hundreds that all added it at about the same time once the court ruling was in?

 

[Atmos Duality]

And this is what you can expect from every always-on game with a single player aspect. So go ahead and try to defend it without looking like a corporate tool.

Agreed. This was not at all unforeseeable.

I just wish I could take this news into the past, find everyone who screamed "SLIPPERY SLOPE!" and "THEY WOULD NEVER DO THAT!" and ***** slap them across the fucking eyes with it.

 

[Dark Knifer]

Also, guess it's a good thing I mainly buy physical and from GoG for that exact reason Although many physical games still require Steam. Which sucks. I complain but people tell me to just shut up and accept it because Steam isn't that bad

Yeah, I'm with you on that.

Steam makes any physical copy of a game I have a pain in the ass and my internet is far too slow for digital downloads to work. I even have a mate who can't play games at all on steam even with discs because of mandatory updates and she can't get them because it would use all her internet and then some and you can't seem to switch to ofline unless you have the latest so it renders those copies completely useless.

Steam works well but certainly not for everyone and they do do some bullshit legal stuff just like everyone else.

OT: ONline does really get rid of shelf life it seems, though I wonder if it's still on origin because it might work there for some reason?

 

[kajinking]

What a shame, excuse me as I pop in my 5-year old copy of Supreme Commander Forged Alliance to numb the pain.

Gasp! The official servers are down? The company that made it went under?!

Uh no! My game is almost completely fine and playable!

 

[Roander]

I'm not convinced we can say for certain yet that a) the game is definitely broken for all players and b) it will never be fixed.

Inquisitor Laine (the guy who wrote that post) does not appear to be an EA employee. He's just a volunteer forum mod.

The only other place online I can find this story is Game Trailers (where Escapist have got it from) and they aren't citing anything other than that post by Inquisitor Laine.

Does anyone here actually own Darkspore? Can they verify that it doesn't work?

I'm only acting suspicious because gaming news sites like this have a habit of performing a variant of the [a href=http://xkcd.com/978/]Wikipedia Citogenesis[/a].

That was a good question. I own it and I was able to sign in, after going through the standard "we've updated our terms of service, please indicate that you've read and agree to this nonsense that we know you're not going to read every time we do this". Anyway, no apparently it's not broken for everyone. If there are knows bugs that make the game unplayable for some people and they have no intention of fixing those bugs it's still irresponsible to keep selling the game. Do they at least have some sort of warning posted on their site?

 

[Trishbot]

If this is "the future" so many Xbone DRM supporters were trumpeting, I'd prefer to live in the past... when I could PLAY the games I paid for.