EA confirmed Monday that two Spore expansion packs were planned for the life-creation sim title, and will be available over the next few months.

The first expansion, called the Creepy & Cute Parts Pack, will be released on November 18. The expansion will add 100 or so new parts to the wildly popular Creature Creator in two fairly obvious categories: cute and creepy. The pack is available for both the full game and the Creature Creator.
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Today Electronic Arts confirmed that the Creepy & Cute Parts Pack expansion pack for Spore will be available on November 18th. In the same press release, they also revealed that Maxis is working on a second expansion.
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Loot Ninja writes:

"I just heard back from EA with a functional workaround for installing the v1.1 patch for Spore on the Mac. I'm sure by now you've heard about all the wonderful issues with the patch. But after spending a few hours, I now have everything up and running with the newest patched version on my MacBook Pro."
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A week or two ago, something called Spore Creepy & Cute Parts Pack - an expansion for Spore - appeared on Amazon and Gamestop's online catalogues before being quickly taken down. Well, the listing is back up now along with box art.
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It looks like the first addon for Spore will arrive very soon indeed. Called the Spore Cute & Creepy Parts Pack has a retail price of $19.99 and will be available on the 18th of November.
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Kotaku Writes: "The great thing about Spore is all the stuff we can make. No, make that, the great thing about Spore is all the stuff really talented people can make. Check out these images from Korean site Ruliweb of in-Spore created Starcraft Terran faction buildings and vehicles. Check out the Vulture, Siege Tank, Goliath, Wraith and Battlecruiser! The attention to detail is astounding. There are three words for this and they are "only in Korea". Have a gander in the gallery below."
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1UP writes: "The latest DRM scandal is upon us. It seems that every few months now, PC gamers take up their pitchforks and storm the Internet with anti-anti-piracy furor. DRM, short for digital rights management, has been unpopular with a certain tech-savvy crowd for years, but the outcry over the limitations placed on this year's biggest PC game, Spore, is unprecedented. The game continues to receive a downpour of one-star ratings by Amazon.com users (average current rating: one-and-one-half stars), and many online pundits speculate that the game, which hit file sharing sites before the game's release, is well on its way to becoming the most pirated game in history. Already, two separate concessions have been made to the angry mob: Electronic Arts, the game's publisher, upgraded the number of installs customers get per disc from three (installed on different machines) to five. Later, they added the ability to allow multiple players to have their own accounts on a single copy, since in its original form, Spore wouldn't allow different members of the same household to play their own games on one disc."
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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."
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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.
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GamesIndustry.Biz writes: "Spore and Spore Galactic Edition have taken the top two spots of the US PC software sales chart for the week ended September 13, according to data provided by NPD.

EA Maxis' title knocked The Sims 2 Apartment Life down to third place, followed by Spore Creature Creator in fourth.

World of Warcraft: Battle Chest dropped down to number five, preceding The Sims 2 Double Deluxe at six, World of Warcraft at seven and World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade at eight.

Warcraft III Battle Chest secured a spot at ninth place and Crysis closed the chart off in tenth place."
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Several disgruntled Spore owners have banded together to file a class-action lawsuit against Electronic Arts, claiming that the game installs software onto the machine that cannot be removed (even after uninstalling the game) and can actually effect the performance of your computer's Operating System.
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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."
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dailygamesnews.com - This isn't the usual positive type of Star Treatment... remember when gamers went completely apeshit at the Fox News report on Mass Effect's nudity and slated the guest analyst's book on Amazon's website, through their star rating system giving it a massive amount of one star votes?

Same is happening for Spore...
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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...
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beefjack.com writes: "EA did not consider that one of the biggest things to put gamers off of select PC titles such as Spore, would actually occur before the game was even installed.

Digital rights management (DRM) is a means of controlling the amount of machines that programs can be installed onto in an effort to crack down on internet piracy......"
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Electronic Arts has released the first PC patch for their life sim title Spore, updating the game to v1.01.

The update fixes several bugs, addresses community complaints, and implements a few new cheat codes. Though it isn't explained if this patch includes the claimed DRM fix.

Here are the complete patch notes...
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Stephen Totilo of MTV Multiplayer writes: "Since "Spore" launched on PC earlier this month it's been the subject of thousands of complaints about the Digital Rights Management (DRM) measures implemented by EA to stave off piracy of the blockbuster game.

With so many issues swirling about restrictions and spyware and whatnot, I checked in with EA about the big ones and got several updates."
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MTV Multiplayer writes: "Jump to 2:08 in the video and you'll see the one part of game designer Will Wright's 2005 Game Developers' Conference unveiling of "Spore" that didn't make it into the final game. What happened to the 3D underwater stage that appeared to follow Cell Stage and precede Creature Stage? It's not in the final game.

I asked Wright about the omission during our interview two Fridays ago.

He said: 'We were originally going to have underwater civilizations. You could play Tribe and Civ underwater. But we did a lot of prototyping of that, and we never got a satisfactory interface. It was really way too hard to use. So we ended up cutting that and forcing the player onto land primarily for usability reasons.'"
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Now that the furor over SPORE's DRM is starting to subside it's a good time to look at how the game is doing in the market.

One good way to check is how a game ranks on Xfire, and SPORE comes up big as number 5 on the Xfire most played list. In fact, over 3.7 million minutes per day are spent playing SPORE.

One could argue that this proves the DRM issue is a non-issue; or on the flip side, this number would be double or more if the DRM debacle hadn't happened.
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GI.Biz writes: "Titles for both Nintendo and PC platforms have dominated the Spanish and German software sales chart for the week ended September 7, according to data provided by Media-Control GfK International.

PC titles occupied five of the top ten places in German software sales chart, with EA Maxis' Spore coming in at number one and followed by The Sims 2: Apartment Life at number two.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky secured fourth place, while the Settlers: Rise of an Empire came in at six and Spore Galactic Edition at eight.

The Spanish chart was more centred around Nintendo titles and saw Wii Fit take the first place, followed by Wii Play at number two. The Sims 2: Apartment Life came in third, while Mario Kart Wii and the DS title Cooking Guide: Can't decide what to eat? came in fourth and fifth places respectively."
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