New York - Video game publisher Electronic Arts (NASD: ERTS) has decided to loosen the digital rights management (DRM) restrictions on its new game release, "Spore," after consumers complained the terms were too onerous and a pirated version of the game began to see heavy traffic on file-sharing networks, The Wall Street Journal reported.

EA had limited installations of the game to three computers, but has now extended that number to five, and said it would expedite changes that would let consumers move the game between machines without having to contact the company.

EA told The Journal that installation limits shouldn't be a major issue, since 75% of its customers install their games on only one computer, while less than 1% try to add games on more than three machines.

Still, the DRM limits resulted in "Spore" garnering many negative reviews on Amazon.com, and a pirated version of the game available from The Pirate Bay has been downloaded more than 500,000 times.

"We've received complaints from a lot of customers who we recognize and respect," EA Games label president Frank Gibeau told The Journal.

"We're willing to evolve our policy to accommodate our consumers... [but] without the ability to protect our work from piracy, developers across the entire game industry will eventually stop investing time and money in PC titles."

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