EA calms Spore forum threat outcry

EA has been quick to distance itself from a Spore forum moderator who threatened account bans for openly discussing the game's controversial SecuROM DRM.

"These comments are absolutely not true or in-line with EA's moderation policy. They were made by an over-zealous community volunteer who does not work for EA," the publisher told Kotaku.

"Anyone who looks at the boards will clearly see that DRM and other issues are freely discussed on the Spore forums, alongside other topics about the game."

One of the topics being discussed follows the lawsuit filed against EA for the use of the SecuROM software.

This claims that EA failed to tell customers about the separate, stand-alone SecuROM program that must be installed in order to play Spore.

And once "secretly" installed, alleges the lawsuit, the program cannot be removed from the "command and control center [sic] of the computer" unless the hard drive is wiped, removed, or reformatted. The program apparently also transmits information back to EA when the user goes online.