http://hellforge.gameriot.com/blogs/Hellforge/EA-Games-to-release-DRM-free-titles-on-Steam

As some of you who use Steam may have just discovered, Electronic Arts has officially caved in to popular demand and joined Valve's digital distribution system Steam and along for the ride are a few major games like Mass Effect, Dead Space, Spore and Red Alert 3.

Seeing as how Rockstar manhandled the recent release of Grand Theft Auto IV by embedding countless DRM procedures into the game, EA Games has decided that it will not make the same mistake and has instead opted to remove the SecuROM protection from the games that it will be releasing on Steam.

The full list of games available on Steam include:
- SporeTM
- Spore Creepy & Cute Parts Pack
- Warhammer® Online: Age of ReckoningTM
- Mass Effect®
- Need for SpeedTM Undercover
- EA SPORTS FIFA Manager 2009

Further games will be made available in the coming weeks:
- Mirror's EdgeTM
- Command & ConquerTM Red AlertTM 3
- Dead SpaceTM

"It does not have SecuROM DRM, the only DRM it uses is Steam itself."
- Valve Moderator Sierra Oscar

A Valve Moderator, Sierra Oscar, recently made a post on the SteamPowered forums confirming that games like Spore will only be protected by Steam and nothing else.

Many users then posed the same question to employees of both Maxis and Bioware regarding the EA Games' decision to remove the DRM from their games. Maxis Community Manager, MaxisCactus confirmed that Spore would not have SecuROM in the Steam release on the Maxis forum.

In response to a few questions I've been getting, Spore from Steam does not have SecuROM. It uses the Steam DRM.
- MaxisCactus confirming the removal of SecuROM

Bioware's community coordinator, Chris Priestly, created a topic on the Bioware forums to inform users that Mass Effect, which is also being released by EA Games on Steam, will not have DRM on it.

The cake is not a lie.

Shame that Spore has already become the most pirated game to date! So it doesn't even do it's job!
I don't know why it's so downloaded; it's terrible ;D

I only hope TS3 will be SecuROM free or I can see it stealing Spore's crown.

Hmm.. I wouldn't go so far as to call Spore terrible. It's an extremely well-designed game. Perhaps not as well-designed as the developers and marketing crew advertised, but the same can be said for basically any game put on the shelf. It's all a matter of opinion, really.

I'm imagining that with the removal of DRM/SecuROM/what-have-you previously placed on existing titles, future titles will be the same way. The notion of DRM is totally absurd.

Pirated versions of Spore stall out in the Space stages most of the time by the way, which is the best part of the game imo... so yeah, I'm surprised people are still downloading as well.

Yeah it's not really terrible lol, but I think it was hyped too much.
I got bored halfway through the game, mainly through being frustrated with all the fighting and stuff, trying to convert other cities to your way of thinking etc... I don't like fighting games (I did love Unreal Tournament for a good few years though lol). I think I wanted more of a Sims type experience, which of course it was never going to be.