Piracy of Spore Extraordinarily High

According to Forbes magazine, Spore has been shared via bittorrent clients at an increasingly faster rate than other triple-A titles have been in the past:

As of Thursday [9/11/2008] afternoon, "Spore" had been illegally downloaded on file-sharing networks using BitTorrent peer-to-peer transfer 171,402 times since Sept. 1, according to Big Champagne, a peer-to-peer research firm. That's hardly a record: a popular game often hits those kinds of six-figure piracy numbers, says Big Champagne Chief Executive Eric Garland.

But not usually so quickly. In just the 24-hour period between Wednesday and Thursday, illegal downloaders snagged more than 35,000 copies, and, as of Thursday evening, that rate of downloads was still accelerating. "The numbers are extraordinary," Garland says. "This is a very high level of torrent activity even for an immensely popular game title."

TorrentFreak reported last Saturday that Spore had been downloaded more than 500,000 times, and at this current rate the game is likely to earn the title "Most Pirated Game Ever" within a matter of weeks.

EA can't be this stupid. They have to know that their use of SecuROM DRM schemes are not going to stop people from pirating the game. In fact, the Forbes article reveals that Spore was pirated a full three days before it was launched on September 4th, 2008.

But this may not be about piracy at all -- it may be about ending the second-hand market through technological means.