EA's magnificent Spore has come under fire since launch for its use of digital rights management software SecuROM DRM, with a group of gamers going so far as to launch a class action lawsuit against the publisher.
Courthouse News reports that the lawsuit claims that EA is knowingly defrauding its own customers by including the anti-piracy software "which 'completely wipes their hard drive' and replaces it with an undisclosed program that prevents the computer from operating under some circumstances and disrupts hardware operations."
Spore is described in the lawsuit as a virtual reality simulation game that also contains "a second, undisclosed program [SecuROM] "form of Digital Rights Management (DRM) for computer games."
The class action suit claims that the SecuROM program is "secretly installed to the command and control center (sic) of the computer (Ring 0, or the Kernel), and surreptitiously operated, overseeing function and operation on the computer, preventing the computer from operating under certain circumstances and/or disrupting hardware operations."
The group is represented by Alan Himmelfarb with the help of legal beagles KamberEdelson
Your comments (1) Click to add a new comment
consumerlaw
September 25th 2008
1. Courthouse News is incorrectly reporting the allegations of the complaint. If you read the actual complaint, nowhere does it say that:
the anti-piracy software "which 'completely wipes their hard drive' and replaces it with an undisclosed program”
The best source of information about the allegations is the complaint itself, which may be found at:
http://www.courthousenews.com/2008/09/23/Spore.pdf
Alan Himmelfarb
Alert a moderator
Tell us what you think
You need to Log in or register to post comments