Just when you thought DRM couldn't get any worse, take a look at EA's latest game release, SPORE.

For our non-gaming audience who might not be aware, EA have taken it upon themselves to push DRM to a new level of annoyance and inconvenience. Anyone who obtains SPORE legitimately will be limited to a maximum of 3 installations. I kid you not. After that, tough sh*t if you want to keep playing the game. This means for people who rebuild their machines often (I know I do) and have to reinstall the game, the 3rd time will be the last after you will be required to buy the game again.

Gamers have been revolting lately and showing their disgust by giving the game poor ratings on several review sites, including .

But today it got worse. Although the accompanying manual clearly says that users are allowed to create multiple profiles on the game (so that someone else in the family may play without over writing your own game saves - like nearly every other game lets you do), it turns out this "was a misprint". An EA rep confirmed this in a forum:

"That section in the manual was a misprint and will be corrected in future printings of the manual. There is one Spore registration/account per game/serial code so you are correct in that you cannot make multiple accounts at this time."

Talk about shafting legitimate users. They are essentially saying "Regardless of if you purchased the game or not, we are going to assume you are all guilty of piracy anyway".

The dumbest part is that the game was leaked 4 days before launch in a state that bypasses the DRM, and since the official launch the game has been cracked in a DRM free state as well.

So what does all this mean? It means pirates get the better experience and legitimate users get anally violated by a misguided DRM implementation.

I for one, although I want the game, will have to give it a miss. I can't afford to keep buying it because of the rate I like to rebuild my PC, and I know my daughters will want to play it on their computers. I don't think it's unreasonable to want to install a game I purchased onto my PC as often as I need too, and I wont let EA treat me like a criminal.