14 DAY TRIAL // Do you have kids? A significant other? A close friend that you consider important enough to allow them to create a separate account on your Spore game? Well, tough luck because it seems that Electronic Arts believes that multiple accounts for different people are a luxury that gaming should not allow.
Even if the game manual clearly states that “You may have multiple Spore accounts for each installation of the game”, representatives from Electronic Arts are now saying that this is not true and that only one account can be created for each copy of the game bought. EA_Violet, who seems to be a spokesperson for the company, has stated that “There is one Spore registration/account per game/serial code so you are correct in that you cannot make multiple accounts at this time. I have sent your guys' feedback to the game team though since I can understand the desire to share a game on a system that your entire family uses”.
Want your kid to be able to manifest his own personality in the creatures and spaceships he creates? Well, buy another copy of Spore. This is what Electronic Arts wants you to do and this is what you will do.
MaxisLucky, who is a member of the development team, further detailed why the system works as it does by saying that “There were many reasons why we chose to have one account per copy of the game - some had to do with how saved games work and some had to do with limiting the online feature only to the one person who bought the game. We aren't charging a subscription fee for the online features and given the load to our servers we were very interested in making the experience for paying customers not be slow and laggy because of many multiple accounts per copy of the game. 2x to 1000x the number of people with accounts per game equals 2x to 1000x the number of creations on the server”. What MaxisLucky seems to miss is the fact that even if people create multiple accounts for one copy of the game, the load of the servers will not increase exponentially because only one account can be active and played at the same time.
I really think that this new controversy, combined with the DRM issues that the release has, can sink a game like Spore, mainly if Electronic Arts does nothing to address its customers’ complaints.