Spore

The Spore franchise continues to evolve as Maxis, an Electronic Arts studio, today revealed details about Spore Hero and Spore Hero Arena – two games built from the ground up exclusively for the Wii and Nintendo DS platforms. Building on the franchise's core tenets of creativity, exploration and adventure, Spore Hero and Spore Hero Arena will immerse Nintendo fans into all-new experiences when the games launch this year.

Gamasutra writes: Media Molecule's LittleBigPlanet leads the nominees for the ninth annual Game Developers Choice Awards with seven nominations, organizers have revealed. Number None's Braid follows closely with five nominations. Among the nominations for LittleBigPlanet is the coveted Game of the Year award. Other nominees for that category include Fallout 3 and Left 4 Dead, each of which received a total of four award nominations; Rockstar North's Grand Theft Auto IV, which earned a total of three nominations, and Lionhead Studios' Fable 2. Winners will be honored at an awards show taking place during the 2009 Game Developers Conference.

Gamerdeals.net writes: Well... what can we say... the week of Christmas is not the best time to release a new game apparently...

Now it has become apparent that for all EA's reputation destroying efforts to ensure punters bought Spore, they may have actually acted to entice gamers to pirate the game. Forced between a choice of downloading the game for free, or effectively renting it from EA, punters voted with their clicking finger. - gameplayer reports

The freshly-launched Spore video game that lets people play God has been hit with a lawsuit accusing its publisher 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 publisher 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 centers of computers and can track activities, block certain operations and even disrupt hardware, according to the suit filed this week. 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 US this month. Electronic Arts said it does not discuss pending litigation.

Kombo writes, It is a widely held belief that used game retailers are screwing game publishers and developers out of millions upon millions of dollars annually. While this may be the case, there have been some that have made the argument that the game industry would be in worse shape without these retailers selling games at discount prices. One such individual is Soren Johnson, a programmer on both the Civilization and Spore franchises. On his blog, Johnson spoke in the defense of GameStop saying...

Boomtown reports: Electronic Arts has quickly denied that Spore owners will have their accounts terminated for discussing DRM issues on the official forum. Yesterday we reported on forum posts from moderators which threatened to bring the banhammer down. Now EA has stated that banning users is not an official policy. These comments are absolutely not true or in-line with EA's moderation policy, EA told Kotaku. They were made by an over-zealous community volunteer who does not work for EA. 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.

Will Wright's universe sim Spore has sold over one million copies since its launch earlier this month, EA has just announced. Since hitting store shelves on September 7th for the PC, Mac and Nintendo DS, gamers have created over 25 million creatures, vehicles and buildings, all viewable online over at Sporepedia.

Eurogamer reports: EA has threatened to ban the Spore accounts of members discussing DRM issues on the official game forum. SecuROM has been discussed and discussed so much and it causes arguments in threads, barked a moderator. If you want to talk about DRM SecuROM then please use another fan site forum. Please do not continue to post these threads or you account may be at risk of banning, which in some cases would mean you would need to buy a new copy to play Spore.

Today, Electronic Arts have announced their UK Christmas 2008 family gaming line-up. While many of these titles will already be familiar to both Casual and Hardcore Gamers, there may also be one or two surprises...