Electronic Arts (NSDQ: ERTS) has owned up to the mess it created with the DRM-heavy launch of Spore last week—a fracas that may actually have cost the gaming giant as much as $25 million in missed revenue. Gamers angry with the “draconian” content protection features opted out of the $50 a pop for Spore and copped it illegally instead, to the tune of an estimated 500,000 downloads across various BitTorrent sites. In fact, peer-to-peer research firm Big Champagne called the speed at which gamers downloaded pirated copies “extraordinary.”

 

Spore‘s DRM restrictions limited the number of times a user could activate the game, to curb piracy. But the features garnered thousands of buyer complaints and sparked a negative review frenzy on Amazon.com (NSDQ: AMZN). EA addressed the issues in an interview with MTV Multiplayer, responding to a number of gamers’ primary complaints:

http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-ea-admits-drm-restrictions-spoiled-spore-launch/