EA Games had to face more than a handful of angry customers and a lawsuit after they launched the game Spore, which contained an unadvertised, unannounced copy protection program that installed on your computer and could not be erased.

The troubles for EA Games started when buyers realized that EA Games had added a program that was automatically installed on your computer when you installed the game. The program, called SecuROM, is a copy protection program, part of EA's digital-rights management policy. It takes up a lot of space, it slows down your computer, it interferes with hardware operations, is surreptitiously operated, overseeing function and operation of the computer, and preventing the computer from operating under certain circumstances, reads the complaint filed against EA Games. To add to the list of grievances, SecuROM limits the times you can install Spore on your computer to three. EA Games, however, raised this number to five after dealing with irate complaints from extremely unsatisfied customers.

Moreover, one cannot disable SecuROM. Uninstalling Spore does not uninstall SecuROM, which thusly remains permanently installed on your computer, and it does not have an uninstalling option of its own. By removing Spore from your computer, you are just decreasing the number of Spore installations you have left. The only way to erase this program is to reformat or replace your drive.

The filed complaint also states that SecuROM takes over a significant piece of your computer’s processing resources, resources allegedly used to send information back to EA. One cannot help but wonder what information SecuROM is sending and, most importantly, why does EA Games need information from its customers’ personal computers? Furthermore, is this kind of data transfer legal? The outcome of the trial might answer these questions for us.

The answer to EA’s actions were negative reviews on countless forums and blogs, as well as an increase in downloading the game for free from illegal file sharing sites. This is of course also due to the installing limitations the EA Games executives saw fit to implement. The plaintiffs ask for a $49,99 refund (the game's purchasing price) plus damages.