Electronic Arts doesn't understand its community

The ruckus over the EA launch of Spore, specifically its wildly unpopular Digital Restriction Management (DRM) scheme, seems to have gotten the message across to everyone -- except EA's management. Case in point, CEO John Riccitiello says it was a "vocal minority" that didn't like the DRM.

We implemented a form of DRM and it's something that 99.8 percent of users wouldn't notice. But for the other .2 percent, it became an issue and a number of them launched a cabal online to protest against it," Riccitiello said. But interestingly, he went on to express his own dissatisfaction for the copy protection software. "I personally don't like DRM. It interrupts the user experience. We would like to get around that. But there is this problem called piracy out there.

Actually, I suspect it was a lot more than a "minority" that didn't like the DRM -- it was simply a minority that actually took action.