The much anticipated new Electronic Arts game “Spore” has managed to stir up quite a storm on Amazon.com, since its digital rights management (DRM) terms only allow three activations of the game.

Moreover, users have been informed that a single online account per computer is permitted. As an outcome to this anti-piracy scheme, more than 2,000 gamers logged on Amazon.com to give “Spore” the worst rating and thus show their disapproval of the policy.

This week, “Spore” started out as the topselling video game on the aforementioned website, but by the end of it, sales had registered a decrease. Also, the game’s version for the iPhone, which was released for $9.99, was the number one selling app at iTunes.

Nevertheless, the DMR issue gave rise to a spree of illegal downloads, peer-to-peer research firm Big Champagne reveals. According to them, since September 1, „Spore” has been illegally downloaded 171,402 times via BitTorent, which is a huge number even for a popular game such as „Spore,” Big Champagne chief executive Eric Garland informs.

Despite this, EA has no intention to change the DMR copy protection system, corporate communications manager Mariam Sughayer reasoning that less than 25% of users install games more than once and also that less than 1% of them try to install their games more than three times.

“Spore” enables players to design and control a virtual species from the moment it emerges as a cell up to the point where it is evolved enough to go on space journeys in order to encounter other life forms.