Has anyone tried Spore?

[MONODA]

As I usually check xkcd.com every monday wednesday and friday, I saw a comic a few days back which refered to the game spore. I had never heard of it before that but I checked it out and it seemed pretty cool. I thought of buying it but then checked amazon and saw that its rating was 1 1/2 stars! I read someof the reviews and they were really bad. I just wanna ask if anyone has tried Spore in linux using wine, or even at all.

MONODA

[Twitch6000]

It doesn't work well with wine,but works great with cedega.
I myself have tried the demo that cedega gives and well it isn't too great...

[NintendoTogepi]

I've logged about 70 or so hours on it on Windows XP.

Not as good as I thought it would be, but very entertaining and still great. I would reccomend it to anyone with a Windows dualboot.

[MONODA]

The only time I played it was on a friends ipod touch, it was pretty annoying trying to move the creature by tilting the ipod, but thats not the games falt.

[Paqman]

I thought of buying it but then checked amazon and saw that its rating was 1 1/2 stars!

That was because of an organised campaign of people protesting against the game's use of the Securom DRM system. The vast majority of those reviews were posted before the game was released by people who had never played it.

I've got it, and it's a lot of fun. The Wine App DB entry (http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=13652) shows that it runs with bugs on Linux. I'd recommend installing it on Windows though, as you only get 5 installs in total, due to the DRM.

[Ms_Angel_D]

The DRM aspect of the game makes me shy away from SPORE actually after discovering that EA plans on using SecuRom in all their games I'm planning on not purchasing any PC games from them, or Atari. The last SecuRom Game I bought was NWN2 and well to make a long story short, my $50.00 Preordered game ended up costing me $200.00 by the time it was all said and done because the SecuRom permently screwed my DVD-RW drives on that computer.

[earthpigg]

That was because of an organised campaign of people protesting against the game's use of the Securom DRM system.

an awesome and just organized trolling campaign.

i was looking forward to that game for years, till i started hearing about the draconian DRM they include.

as soon as EA stops being giant flaming doggie poo-poo heads and releases a non-DRM version, i will be very interested in buying.

I hereby give Spore one star. ;)

[mr.propre]

an awesome and just organized trolling campaign.

i was looking forward to that game for years, till i started hearing about the draconian DRM they include.

as soon as EA stops being giant flaming doggie poo-poo heads and releases a non-DRM version, i will be very interested in buying.

I hereby give Spore one star. ;)

Wrong, most of the people (lets say <90%) who are complaining would never bought the game in the first place, with or without DRM, they just use DRM as an excuse to illegal download it, and the Amazon action just to make them feel good about it. Remember that these are the same people where most of them say that Linux is bad without even trying it. It's got hypocrisy written all over it.

Ps: sorry about the offtopic/flame, but I REALLY hate people who are hypocrite.

[Swarms]

Yes I played it and its was fine but quite shortlived. For example the civilisation and the tribal age was way too short, and finally when I came to the space age there was no real goal and after hours of the same I just asked myself, why am I doing this?

[Archmage]

A friend of mine did try to make it work with Wine. Because of this "wonderful" copy protection the game thinks now that it has been installed more than three times and refused to work. (Once you change your system configration e.g. change the graphic card or enter a different config in Wine it thinks that you install it on a different system.)

He did call the hotline and after spending more than 10 bucks on the line they also refused to allow him to play. But he was lucky to return it (he needs to get rude against the shop owner, treating him with the police).

Acording to the software firm already 1% of the customer had problems with the 3 install rule - and this only in the firs month.

On the other hand there is a pirated version that don't have the problem with the copy protection. This is the second best downloaded game of all time (the first is Sims 2).

[M_the_C]

Wrong, most of the people (lets say <90%) who are complaining would never bought the game in the first place, with or without DRM, they just use DRM as an excuse to illegal download it, and the Amazon action just to make them feel good about it. Remember that these are the same people where most of them say that Linux is bad without even trying it. It's got hypocrisy written all over it.

Ps: sorry about the offtopic/flame, but I REALLY hate people who are hypocrite.But there are people, like me, who would have bought it, but won't due to the DRM.

I don't really care that much about SecuROM in itself, I've never had the DVD\CD-drive destroying problems people complain about. I am heartily against activations though. Apart from the people without Internet connections, (yes they do exist) it's also making you pay full price for a limited use of a product. Then there is also the problem of the activation servers. What is to stop EA closing them down in several years? Yes it's possible that they will release a patch then, but I'm hardly open to trusting them.

I shall not be buying Spore until they release an activation free version.

[Ms_Angel_D]

Wrong, most of the people (lets say <90%) who are complaining would never bought the game in the first place, with or without DRM, they just use DRM as an excuse to illegal download it, and the Amazon action just to make them feel good about it. Remember that these are the same people where most of them say that Linux is bad without even trying it. It's got hypocrisy written all over it.

Ps: sorry about the offtopic/flame, but I REALLY hate people who are hypocrite.

Not everyone is a Hypocrite there are plenty of people who are plain upset about being treated as criminals when they are paying customers. I would have bought the game for my son who has been begging me for it, But then I discovered that they we're using SecuRom and after my past fiasco with SecuRom I refuse to throw any more money at companies who employ it as a DRM strategy. DRM does not work, the only thing it does is punish the customer, and not the pirate. It has become quite obvious that no matter what DRM they put out there someone will be there to crack it and people will download it. If DRM did work, you wouldn't have pirated copies there would be no point because you couldn't play it.


But there are people, like me, who would have bought it, but won't due to the DRM.

I don't really care that much about SecuROM in itself, I've never had the DVD\CD-drive destroying problems people complain about. I am heartily against activations though. Apart from the people without Internet connections, (yes they do exist) it's also making you pay full price for a limited use of a product. Then there is also the problem of the activation servers. What is to stop EA closing them down in several years? Yes it's possible that they will release a patch then, but I'm hardly open to trusting them.

I shall not be buying Spore until they release an activation free version.

Consider yourself lucky, within a week of putting a new DVD-RW in my computer, it to stopped reading CD's even after flashing the drives, and reformatting several times over the Drives just don't work properly on that computer.

[Polygon]

i wont be buying it.....if it still has the securom stuff on it.

It might come out via steam...and if it does then ill think about getting it, but in its current state, ill put my money where my mouth is.

[darthmob]

there is a review on gametrailers.com: http://www.gametrailers.com/game/2671.html

and a review at zeropunctuation (though he focuses more on the bad things): http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/218-Spore

[davidryder]

That was because of an organised campaign of people protesting against the game's use of the Securom DRM system. The vast majority of those reviews were posted before the game was released by people who had never played it.

I've got it, and it's a lot of fun. The Wine App DB entry (http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=13652) shows that it runs with bugs on Linux. I'd recommend installing it on Windows though, as you only get 5 installs in total, due to the DRM.


Wrong, most of the people (lets say <90%) who are complaining would never bought the game in the first place, with or without DRM, they just use DRM as an excuse to illegal download it, and the Amazon action just to make them feel good about it. Remember that these are the same people where most of them say that Linux is bad without even trying it. It's got hypocrisy written all over it.

Ps: sorry about the offtopic/flame, but I REALLY hate people who are hypocrite.

Thank you!!

The game is VERY entertaining and appeals to all ages and demographics. You can play the game without having the CD in the tray and if you run out of installs (3 is actually generous compared to other licenses) you just have to call EA to reactivate.

I have had a lot of fun with the game and the online portion of it is pretty freaking awesome. Don't let the reviews taint your decision - as said before it's mostly from people that never played the game and is just upset about the DRM.

[Helios1276]

Thank you!!

The game is VERY entertaining and appeals to all ages and demographics. You can play the game without having the CD in the tray and if you run out of installs (3 is actually generous compared to other licenses) you just have to call EA to reactivate.

I have had a lot of fun with the game and the online portion of it is pretty freaking awesome. Don't let the reviews taint your decision - as said before it's mostly from people that never played the game and is just upset about the DRM.

You need a healthy dose of rage my friend.

[davidryder]

You need a healthy dose of rage my friend.

As in my post lacks rage or it's coursing with rage? :)

[Helios1276]

As in my post lacks rage or it's coursing with rage? :)

By needing a dose of it , I'm implying you need MORE. Things like DRM should not be tolerated as they are draconian, harmful and only serve to make the piracy situation worse. The customer is ALWAYS right.

[Polygon]

some drm is fine. If this game was released steam only, a few people would complain but overall the experience would be much much better. Steam is how DRM should be done. All you have to do is log in. You can install on an unlimited amount of computers, you don't need to run it 24/7, and it doesn't destroy your dvd drives =)

[Greyed]

Yes I played it and its was fine but quite shortlived. For example the civilisation and the tribal age was way too short, and finally when I came to the space age there was no real goal and after hours of the same I just asked myself, why am I doing this?

Spore should be called bore. The cell phase is pretty fun but unless you're going to be a carnivore in the other stages it's horribly unbalanced and very boring. Got to the space age in just a few hours. About an hour after than another space race declared war on my race. Then every 7-12 minutes they show up with a fleet of 2 large ships, 12 small ships to my one single ship and I spend about 5 minutes killing 2-3, dying, killing 2-3, dying, etc... And yes, I'd finish then... 2-5 minutes later be attacked by the exact same fleet composition. After about 30 of those I decided to just shelve it.

So much potential, so much hype, so much disappointment.

[Flynn555]

i was addicted for like 2 days

[bobbocanfly]

It doesn't work well with wine,but works great with cedega.
I myself have tried the demo that cedega gives and well it isn't too great...

You need to patch wine for Spore to work on it. After this, it works almost perfectly (There is a small bug which causes a random crash between Tide Pool and Vreature phase, but not much more than that).

Here is a guide for getting it working on Wine: http://www.veza.co.uk/aslant

It might seem a little daunting if you havent patched & compiled anything before but it is a handy skill to learn.

[binbash]

You need to patch wine for Spore to work on it. After this, it works almost perfectly (There is a small bug which causes a random crash between Tide Pool and Vreature phase, but not much more than that).

Here is a guide for getting it working on Wine: http://www.veza.co.uk/aslant

It might seem a little daunting if you havent patched & compiled anything before but it is a handy skill to learn.


Nice guide, i will check it out tonight.

[Ozor Mox]

This is one game I was really looking forward to, and one of those that was making me consider setting up a dual boot for. Notice I say was. My friend bought this while I was on holiday and so I got to see him playing it for a few days, and I think this review on Amazon sums it up well. It has some great ideas and is a very unique concept, but the full potential of it is definitely not realised here. The real disappointment is how little your design decisions affect the gameplay overall.


The DRM stuff is bad, very bad, but has been talked about so much it's pointless raising it as an issue in this review. Personally I don't care about it because, DRM aside I still think the game is really shallow and boring and see no reason for more than three installs...

1: Cell stage: Awesome! Ever played that free flash game by Xgen called Fishy? Yeah, that but with a customizable fish which you can add spikes, different mouths and different propulsion systems to. Too bad it last about erm... TEN MINUTES... fifteen if you're lucky enough to be bad at it. 9/10 one knocked off because of how short it is.

2: Creature stage: Definitely good fun, especially a nice surprise to see flying creatures done well. I don't like the fact that they took out all the stuff they hyped which meant how you designed your creature would have affected how it moved/speed/stealth etc. and replacing it with basic stat based parts e.g. "This mouth is better than that mouth it has 4 attack as opposed to 2" even though it doesn't look as good..., that sucks, big time. It limits what your creature can actually look like because you have to think about the points that make it move quicker and not how it stands or how long it's legs are for example. Now it's a simple RPG game. It was going to be there originally so why did they take it out?!? Ignoring what I was expecting and taking it with an open mind though, it was fun. 8/10

3: Tribe stage: It's okay for a dumbed down Age of Empires... too bad how I evolved my critter doesn't matter anymore one bit and that all my clothes don't fit properly, but have to be added if I want any kind of stat boost in order to take over other tribes... Also it's ridiculously easy if you choose the passive route. You just drop them a nice gift so they like you. Then dance at them occasionally pressing a button when it highlights until they become your allies. Military route is a little tougher but is still repetitive and boring and easy when you get the hang of it. You simply equip your little dudes with little axes and destroy their "main hut" which then explodes (along with their other little huts for some reason) and you've beaten that tribe even though they're all still alive well. Meh... 6/10

4: Civilization stage: Good points: fully customizable vehicles & buildings. Bad points: Terrible camera controls in the creator make it very frustrating to design the building how you want etc. you should at least be able to zoom out a bit to fit your whole building on the damn screen. It's as if they took the creature editor, and then tacked it onto the civ stage in order to let you make vehicles etc. by simply exchanging the parts without actually testing whether it could even be used for this task properly. Oh and, no more creature interaction at all in this stage by the way, and you could have made them limbless eyeless blobs, it wouldn't make a difference to anything as now you simply control a grand selection of three boring vehicles to do your work. About those... Yeah if you made them well they may look good, but how you design your vehicles makes zero difference to their animation besides how they move (wheels/walkers etc.) for example; you put 4 huge lazer turrets on it, it fires a homing cannon ball, upwards. You put a missile launcher on it, it fires a homing cannon ball, upwards. etc. Now whats the point in allowing me to choose different weapons for my tanks if they all shoot the same dodgy canon ball which clips from the middle of my tank upward into the sky and falls like a homing mortar until it hits whatever I right clicked on? and pretty much everything else in this stage is badly done or boring too. I'm not even going to go into the non military route of religious tanks that sing propaganda at the other tanks until they, well... explode... yeah that's right, explode O_o... Oh dear. I mean propaganda may be able to do that to some people but I've not seen it happening much in my part of town... Anyway moving on... I'll describe it as the worlds simplest and most boring futuristic RTS game. (I can't see where the civilization stuff is supposed to be here). 3/10

5: Space stage: Again, just insanely boring and repetitive, you now only control your spaceship and it's fun(ish) for a while but what you can do with it is less than I'd hoped and generally pretty dull. 3/10

TOTAL 4/10
I was looking forward to this game; I'm a casual gamer not a hardcore gamer, so low difficulty I can put up with, but when a game isn't actually fun, as Peter Griffin would say, "it really grinds my gears." I think they should of sold the cell and creature stage in a bundle for £5 as opposed to the whole pile of dung for a RRP of £40...

Don't waste your money, have a go on a disappointed friends before they run out of installs, haha.

[Paqman]

Got to the space age in just a few hours. About an hour after than another space race declared war on my race. Then every 7-12 minutes they show up with a fleet of 2 large ships, 12 small ships to my one single ship and I spend about 5 minutes killing 2-3, dying, killing 2-3, dying, etc... And yes, I'd finish then... 2-5 minutes later be attacked by the exact same fleet composition. After about 30 of those I decided to just shelve it.


Space phase has been patched and the wars and disasters are now a lot more manageable. Thank god.

[Mr. Picklesworth]

Space phase has been patched and the wars and disasters are now a lot more manageable. Thank god.

It's a sad state of affairs when that kind of garbage slips past QA and needs a hotfix after release. Says a lot about the state of that game. They must have spent that extra year of development time reverting all the code they were demoing, specifically to shaft the buyers. If Maxis had used Bzr, they would have been able to ship it way earlier.

I agree entirely with the review that Ozor Mox quoted, although I think the Space phase is described wrong. It isn't that there's nothing you can do, it's that Nothing Does ANYTHING. Terraforming a planet is the same poorly abstracted junk as the creature designer became. You press a few buttons until the little ball on your ecosystem meter gets close to the middle, interrupted only by the occasional "OMG we're being attacked by pirates again and we're helpless little morons!" or the need to recharge or buy new stuff (which requires an overwhelmingly long detour across planets to buy sell spice).

What Spore is forgetting is that creativity is not just what you output. The creative output looks pretty to someone else, but if I took photographs just to come out with pretty pictures, I would not do it! By the Spore developer's logic, one may as well pull open Paint which came free with Windows and play with that for a few hours.
No, the most important part of creativity, for a game, is the process. I was really excited about Spore because the early demos seemed to capture that, but what we see today absolutely fails at it.

[Polygon]

i see. thanks for all the reviews guys, you just saved me 50 dollars or however much the game cost =)

but i seriously think the PC gamer review of this game got...bought out or something. They gave it a 91%, and crysis and half life and battlefield 2 got 96% or something (the highest they have given a game)....and they basically sang nothing but praise for it, and they also made NO MENTION of the draconian securom DRM, which in previous reviews they spent half of it ranting about how they could not even install the game cause they had like some nero emulation tool installed on their computer that securom complained about, and in the review for spore, no mention of it at all

[davidryder]

but i seriously think the PC gamer review of this game got...bought out or something. They gave it a 91%, and crysis and half life and battlefield 2 got 96% or something (the highest they have given a game)....and they basically sang nothing but praise for it, and they also made NO MENTION of the draconian securom DRM, which in previous reviews they spent half of it ranting about how they could not even install the game cause they had like some nero emulation tool installed on their computer that securom complained about, and in the review for spore, no mention of it at all

A lot of it has to do with hype. This game was being awaited for years. It's like GTAIV: a lot of review sites gave the game the highest score they have given any game in over a decade and it was all hype-based. The game simply did not live up to its hype.

When I first started playing Spore a lot of my excitement was from the new experience. It was awesome going through the game but it wasn't exciting enough for a second play through.

That said, I think it's safe to say there will be a lot of expansion packs released. The game will remain to be very popular for a long time and expansions packs will just be fuel for the fire. A lot of features that was supposed to be in the game weren't ready at launch so a lot of features will be added in the future.

The DRM is not a concern for me. I know how to hack games and I also know that reactivation is a phone call away. A lot of people say it's a potential pain in the *** yet they are using Linux - one of the hardest systems to become assustomed to. We all like to tweak, reformat, reinstall, clean, upgrade, etc so I can understand some of the complaints - but certainly not to the extent of ruing the rating of the game. The whole review thing fed off of blogs. If there was no attention called to Amazons review section for the game there would be far less complaining. But now you have people that would have otherwise been uninterested in the game criticizing it.

DRM has a ways to go but at the same time it has come a long way. There were games I had to no-cd because they wouldn't start with an ISO mounting software running in the background. Those days are long gone... IMO Spore's DRM isn't that bad. It could be improved but it's far from intrusive or obnoxious.

[earthpigg]

It's a sad state of affairs when that kind of garbage slips past QA and needs a hotfix after release.

they had to fix the drm first.

god, i dont understand you people. this is just like how home recording is killing music.... when was the last time you people heard any good music on the radio?

see? thought so. (yes, this entire post is sarcastic.)

[davidryder]

they had to fix the drm first.

god, i dont understand you people. this is just like how home recording is killing music.... when was the last time you people heard any good music on the radio?

see? thought so. (yes, this entire post is sarcastic.)

:confused:

[earthpigg]

:confused:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_taping_is_killing_music

not that i support or practice piracy, but piracy is not significantly hurting video gaming.

[earthpigg]

sorry for the double post... had to attach these two bad boys.

[davidryder]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_taping_is_killing_music

not that i support or practice piracy, but piracy is not significantly hurting video gaming.

Piracy affects different industries differently. As far as the video game industry: many studios are going out of business and attributing it to piracy. This wasn't the case 5 years ago. On the same token artists aren't going bankrupt and blaming piracy. They are completely different animals.

Many studios are simply turning to console gaming as piracy isn't as prevalent there. For games the only revenue the studios get is from the purchase of software. CD and DVD sales are just a small portion of the revenue collected from albums and movies.

[Ms_Angel_D]

Piracy affects different industries differently. As far as the video game industry: many studios are going out of business and attributing it to piracy. This wasn't the case 5 years ago. On the same token artists aren't going bankrupt and blaming piracy. They are completely different animals.

Many studios are simply turning to console gaming as piracy isn't as prevalent there. For games the only revenue the studios get is from the purchase of software. CD and DVD sales are just a small portion of the revenue collected from albums and movies.

That's wrong even EA had to admit Pirated Copies don't equal lost sales.

SEE HERE (http://news.softpedia.com/news/EA-Admits-Pirated-Copies-Do-Not-Equal-Lost-Sales-94516.shtml)

DRM Just doesn't work, the only thing it does is punish the customer and not the pirate.

[earthpigg]

is it that people are pirating computer games, leading to lower sales and less money...

or that its cheaper to make console games and a lot more people are buying consoles than gomputers-to-play-games-on that is leading to lower computer game sales?


keep in mind, of course, that for any company making games primarily for computers it is in their best interests to use the highest possible estimate of pirating frequency...


That's wrong even EA had to admit Pirated Copies don't equal lost sales.

SEE HERE (http://news.softpedia.com/news/EA-Admits-Pirated-Copies-Do-Not-Equal-Lost-Sales-94516.shtml)

DRM Just doesn't work, the only thing it does is punish the customer and not the pirate.

thanks, i was about 90% sure they did indeed say that but was to lazy to look it up :)


the company is getting ready to shift its approach so that it rewards the customer rather than punishing everyone for the sins of pirates.

Now, we're talking. All that needs to happen is more stuff like the Amazon.com fiasco. Gotta be firm with these vidya game companies, and they will cooperate... eventually.

EA and the rest need me and you to earn a living.
You do not need video game companies to earn a living.

[Ms_Angel_D]

@earthpigg: Your welcome ;)

It may just have something to do with this whole economic thing we're going through right now. People may not be buying as many games because there are other things they have to worry about spending their money on.

[davidryder]

That's wrong even EA had to admit Pirated Copies don't equal lost sales.

SEE HERE (http://news.softpedia.com/news/EA-Admits-Pirated-Copies-Do-Not-Equal-Lost-Sales-94516.shtml)

DRM Just doesn't work, the only thing it does is punish the customer and not the pirate.

I don't believe that every pirated copy of a game is the exact eqivalent of a lost sale and that's what their press release indicated. That doesn't mean that piracy isn't hindering sales though.

I have a hard time believing that anyone could honestly say that if piracy wasn't an option they would never buy a game. I also have a hard time believing that all the PC gaming studios that have recently gone under are 100% full of it when they say it's because of piracy.

[earthpigg]

of course they arent 100% full of it... few things are ever 100% black and white.

if your company is going out of business, would you rather blame it on your own failed business or crime?

especially if you and your employees want their resumes to look good for future job apps.


i came from a company that was destroyed primarily by crime and piracy.
vs

i came from a company that was poorly managed and made mediocre products and thus failed. o, and something or other about the market too.

what do you want on your resume?

[Ms_Angel_D]

I'm sure a small percentage of the loss can be attributed to piracy, but I really don't feel it's as big a problem as they try to lead us to believe it is.

I think that with DRM tatics such as SecuRom these companies are really shooting themselves in the foot. When the simple act of installing a game can compromise the usability of someones $500 to $1000 dollar computer people are not going to want to buy it. This is what happened to not only myself but a lot of people who pre-ordered the pc/dvd version of Neverwinter Nights 2.

My Husband plays Battlefield 2 on a regular basis and was very excited to hear that EA is going to be releasing a Battlefield 3, however now he's refusing to buy it as we all now know that EA is planning on Continuing to use SecuRom on all it's games.

So yes piracy may hinder a small percentage of the sales but in the end I think the company is doing the most damage to themeselves.

[billgoldberg]

some drm is fine. If this game was released steam only, a few people would complain but overall the experience would be much much better. Steam is how DRM should be done. All you have to do is log in. You can install on an unlimited amount of computers, you don't need to run it 24/7, and it doesn't destroy your dvd drives =)

I agree.

Steam is the only form of DRM I tolerate on my pc.

[binbash]

I'm sure a small percentage of the loss can be attributed to piracy, but I really don't feel it's as big a problem as they try to lead us to believe it is.

I think that with DRM tatics such as SecuRom these companies are really shooting themselves in the foot. When the simple act of installing a game can compromise the usability of someones $500 to $1000 dollar computer people are not going to want to buy it. This is what happened to not only myself but a lot of people who pre-ordered the pc/dvd version of Neverwinter Nights 2.

My Husband plays Battlefield 2 on a regular basis and was very excited to hear that EA is going to be releasing a Battlefield 3, however now he's refusing to buy it as we all now know that EA is planning on Continuing to use SecuRom on all it's games.

So yes piracy may hinder a small percentage of the sales but in the end I think the company is doing the most damage to themeselves.

Well said...

[davidryder]

I guess we can tell ourselves whatever it takes to make us feel ok with, well, you know... ;)

[markbuntu]

The whole idea for spore drm is stupid. They own the servers, they can make their money on subscribers and give the game away. That's where all the console game makers are getting their money, online subscribers. My nephew spends ALL his money to play his xbox games on line. He has spent far more than the games cost.

The spore people's revenue model for that game is just wrong and stupid, wrong worng wrong, stupid stupid stupid. There could be a million people playing that game online right now if they gave it away, all paying $12 a month to connect.

[davidryder]

I think there would be faaaar more complaints if the game was subscription-based. I have enough monthly bills to worry about paying for a subscription for every game I have.