The freshly-launched Spore computer game that lets people play God has been hit with a lawsuit accusing its creators of slipping devilish anti-piracy software onto players' machines.
The lawsuit filed this week in a federal court in Northern California contends that players weren't warned about tenacious digital rights management (DRM) software that stays in computers even if game programs are removed.
"Spore" maker Electronic Arts told buyers that there are anti-piracy safeguards but didn't advise people the SecuROM program it used "is essentially a virus that installs itself without warning," the lawsuit alleges.
The DRM software attaches itself to the "command and control centres" of computers and tracks activities, blocks certain operations and even disrupts hardware, according to the suit filed on Monday.
A US woman was named as the plaintiff in the lawsuit, which is seeking class action status to represent all Spore buyers.
The filing demands a jury trial and wants Electronic Arts forced to pay unspecified damages as well as turn over money it has made from Spore, which went on sale in Europe, Asia, Australia and the United States this month.
Electronic Arts declined an AFP request for comment, saying it does not discuss pending litigation.
DRM software is commonly used to thwart piracy of video games as well as digitised music and films. Some video game DRM consists simply of needing to have an original game disk in a machine to play.
Spore is the latest brainchild of game legend Will Wright, maker of the world's top-selling computer game The Sims.
"You are given this God-like power," Wright told AFP in a pre-launch interview. "You can create ecosystems, biospheres ... We try to make it real science."
Players start as microscopic life forms competing for survival in primordial ooze and work their way onto land, where they evolve into creatures that build civilisations and rocket into space.
Creatures can be made to have scales, fins, wings, claws, extra appendages, additional eyes, or body parts in unexpected places. - AFP