EA Gets Two More Lawsuits For SecuROM Use

It doesn’t seem like EA ever wants to listen to its customers. EA continues to bundle their PC games with the intrusive DRM known as SecuROM. The latest game including SecuROM is Spore.

As a result, two class-action lawsuits have been filed against EA claiming the DRM is installed intrusively and is virtually impossible to uninstall. One of the lawsuits is filed by Richard Eldridge, who claims, “Consumers are given no notices whatsoever that the FREE trial version of the game [Spore] includes Digital Rights Management technology.”

The second lawsuit was filed claiming months of computer problems, and eventually required a reformat of the computer to get rid of SecuROM. The key points to the lawsuits are the fact that the consumer is unaware that SecuROM is installed on his computer, and there is no directions or options to install SecuROM once it is installed.

I have gone through my run-ins with SecuROM, including Bioshock and Spore. In both instances I decided to never play the games again. And after installing both games, I eventually just reformatted my hard drive to get rid of SecuROM.

I have SecuROM removal directions posted in the forums, but they don’t seem to always get rid of SecuROM completely.

The question that I always have is why game companies think they are protecting their product by installing intrusive DRM? Not only is it simply a pain in the ass to deal with, in most instances it comes with limited installs of the game. WTF is that about? Since when is purchasing a game equivalent to renting? Spore was the last game I bought on the PC platform, and is likely one of the last. I’m sticking to consoles for a while until the PC world decides to lower prices and gets rid of the DRM bullshit.

Source: ars technica; EA hit with two more lawsuits over use of SecuROM

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