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1Up.com http://atu.ca/647

If you take a look at Spore's listing on Amazon.com 
http://atu.ca/SPORE you may be surprised to notice that the 
game (as of this writing) has an abysmal user rating of one-
and-a-half stars. But that isn't necessarily an indictment 
of the game's quality -- out of 184 customer reviews, 159 
are one-star ratings, and just about all of them have one 
thing in common: pure, vile hatred of the game's digital 
rights management, or DRM (via Destructoid).

..Spore's DRM limits owners to only three activations of 
the game after installation. The point is to prohibit 
software pirates from sharing and reusing activation codes 
over and over, but it also means that if a user happens to 
uninstall and reinstall Spore more than three times for 
completely legitimate reasons, they'll have to contact 
Electronic Arts customer support to request and have 
approved a new authentication on a case-by-case basis. 
Which is precisely what has Amazon users up in arms.

A quick scan of the negative reviews reveals some bitterly 
sensationalistic headlines: "DRM Kills another potentially 
great game," "Not a chance until the DRM goes," and "DRM 
complicates life, removes value." One reviewer, who calls 
the DRM "draconian," even likened a purchase to a rental as 
opposed to an actual ownership of the game, since a player 
could theoretically be barred from playing their copy of 
Spore if they use up their activations and EA refuses to 
allow more. "What you will be left with is a nice, colorful 
$50 coaster. And you will be required to pay for another 
copy/license if you want to continue playing," the user 
writes.

And believe it or not, this backlash comes after EA and 
Maxis made Spore's DRM less stringent, when fans decried 
the originally announced plan to require online 
authentication every 10 days. As for how much the Amazon 
debacle will affect sales of the game remains uncertain, 
but it's probably a PR problem that EA and Maxis could have 
happily lived without.