If EA/Maxis views are each person should have a registered account then I hope that they sell cheap sub-license's for gamer's to buy so they can have multiple users.

But in all honesty if EA were never going to allow multiple users they should of done this from the very start with Creature Creator, instead of all these arguments coming now. Especially when a lot of people have installed the game and can't get refunds--how many game stores will take back an open Spore game knowing that the installation limit on it will of decreased? Not a lot I guess.

I just hope EA can come good on this and offer some sort of compromise.

mauljunior wrote:1) actually, multiple users could log in from the same computer.

if a friend was over at my house and had Spore, he could make something on my computer, log in with his account, and upload it by his name.

That's because your account is connected to your CD-key and your friend's account is connected to his CD-key - but we were promised to create multiple accounts with one CD-key.

maxislucky wrote:I understand that you folks are upset about this - but this is a misprint in the manual and it will be changed in the next printing.

And, in fact, each and every box (both of the Core Game and the Galactic Edition) states "Only one registration available per game" on the back.

There were many reason 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.

Please don't take it out on the mods. They are just trying to keep things civil.

-MaxisLucky

1) Accounts and registrations are not the same. The handbook states "Only one registration available per game", too. So this is not concerned with the issue.
2) So you have a perfomance-issue if Spore sells well? What if you sold 4 million copies? Would the Spore-servers crash? Will our game experience become laggy?
As far as I know, the framerate of my game doesn't depend on how fast the server's running. Only on my computer. The number of creations that are being downloaded while I play the game depends on it - and I can't say there are too few creatures in my game.

I really think you made a great game - I really like it. But how you treat us, your customers, is not very nice.

Hi EA

Firstly I think it's pretty disgusting that nobody from EA is replying (or even reading?) to any of the posts on the http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/spore/ forum

I've viewed the vast majority of topics and honestly not seen a single reply (bar the stickies)

If EA think ignoring the issue means it will go away, you're mistaken.

I also need to link two accounts (created in creature creator by myself and partner) to my single copy of Spore. This is stated as possible in the manual and was possible in the CC.

This needs to be rectified. This does not affect the 3 installations so EA has no anti-piracy excuses for not allowing this. What's the point of letting people create their own CC accounts on the same PC if they then cannot do that with the full game.

Surely EA aren't expecting people to buy another copy for each family member, that would make them seem to be some over-bloated money orientated publisher. Besides how would you even install two copies of the game on one PC?

Unhappy and unimpressed.

Thinking about it, I'm guessing the reason they've changed it is this.

1) buy a copy of Spore
2) install on your PC (2 installs remaining)
3) register game to your Spore account
4) go to friends house and install game on that PC (1 install remaining)
5) register game to friends Spore account

Unless my thinking is flawed. This is of course still totally unacceptable as someone that wants to pirate the game, will just download it anyway. The only people being affected by this, as per usual, are the honest paying customers.

EA why don't you implement something like having a master account linked to the game verification key. Then any other user account can be a sub-account linked to the master account. For every install the master account MUST exist as well as any sub-account. Thus people can still only install 3 times.

Even if this meant the master account had to login to authenticate every week is better than the situation we currently have.

My sons hate me for not being able to register their creatures. way to go EA breaking up my happy family!!!

miikel wrote:My sons hate me for not being able to register their creatures. way to go EA breaking up my happy family!!!

^^^This is what I'm talking about.^^^

I've emailed tech support almost 48 hrs ago. No answer or reply.

I've called tech support but the message says their phone system is having technical difficulties.

And some forum moderators try to shut us up my calling the fiasco a misprint. And they do not bother to inform me as to how I can play my account on my computer. Still it's only possible to access one account on my computer, and there is no solution being presented by EA.

Do they seriously want me to buy another copy of Spore, install it on a separate PC, then be able to have two accounts on one machine. This seems like the only solution and it's ridiculous. I'm not going to purchase another copy of Spore. I fully expect to utilize the copy I already paid good money for. And I sure as hell shouldn't have to pull out another computer because EA is too greedy to fix this problem, or even provide a realistic solution to use my account on the same PC carrying my daughter's account.

Now I understand this is all about greed. They gladly take my money, but are too lazy to address this concern in a professional manner.

Heints wrote:

miikel wrote:My sons hate me for not being able to register their creatures. way to go EA breaking up my happy family!!!

^^^This is what I'm talking about.^^^

I've emailed tech support almost 48 hrs ago. No answer or reply.

I've called tech support but the message says their phone system is having technical difficulties.

And some forum moderators try to shut us up my calling the fiasco a misprint. And they do not bother to inform me as to how I can play my account on my computer. Still it's only possible to access one account on my computer, and there is no solution being presented by EA.

Do they seriously want me to buy another copy of Spore, install it on a separate PC, then be able to have two accounts on one machine. This seems like the only solution and it's ridiculous. I'm not going to purchase another copy of Spore. I fully expect to utilize the copy I already paid good money for. And I sure as hell shouldn't have to pull out another computer because EA is too greedy to fix this problem, or even provide a realistic solution to use my account on the same PC carrying my daughter's account.

Now I understand this is all about greed. They gladly take my money, but are too lazy to address this concern in a professional manner.

nice to see you again Heints haha

to be fair, its probably not the forum moderator's fault. you have to believe that they were told to say it was a "misprint." i doubt they just came up with the excuse by themselves, ya know?

from the properties file in the

C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\SPORE\Data\Config


#######################################################
# Login
#
# Set directly by network
property UserName 0x040512ef string8
property Password 0x040512f4 string8
property PlayOffline 0x040e3d98 bool
property PromptOnStartup 0x0440a514 bool

maxislucky wrote:
And, in fact, each and every box (both of the Core Game and the Galactic Edition) states "Only one registration available per game" on the back.
-MaxisLucky

I have ONE registration of Windows Vista -- 6 Users ACCOUNTS
I have ONE registration of Quicken -- 5 Data Files for 5 different peoples ACCOUNTS
I have ONE registration of MS Office -- 6 Users

So don't tell me that "Only one registration" = "Only one account"

valmiki wrote:

maxislucky wrote:
And, in fact, each and every box (both of the Core Game and the Galactic Edition) states "Only one registration available per game" on the back.
-MaxisLucky

I have ONE registration of Windows Vista -- 6 Users ACCOUNTS
I have ONE registration of Quicken -- 5 Data Files for 5 different peoples ACCOUNTS
I have ONE registration of MS Office -- 6 Users

So don't tell me that "Only one registration" = "Only one account"

well put.

I know it's all been said before, but I have to chime in on this. The more of us who do so, the more likely it is EA will change this absurd policy.

I've been looking forward to this game for a while. I bought it mainly for me, but my wife would also like to play, and ideally, she'd be able to keep her creations and achievements separate from mine. This is entirely reasonable, as we're not looking to install it on multiple PCs or both play at the same time using our one license.

The thing that really gets me is, this can only be a money-grab on EA's part; they're actually hoping that people will plunk down an extra $50 per additional user just to be able to keep their creations separate. There is *NO* technical reason for this. I'm a database administrator and I can say with some degree of certainty that the additional overhead on their servers of more users per household would be negligible. Because the real load is not managing users, it's managing creations - each user creates MANY creatures, buildings, vehicles, etc, so that's where the real load on their systems comes from. Furthermore, if multiple people in a household are going to play the game ANYWAY, the exact same number of creations will be hitting their servers, whether from one account or multiple accounts. 100 creations is 100 creations, whether it comes from 4 accounts or 4 people using one account. This might sound simplistic, but it's valid: 4 is a much, much smaller number than 100. Plus the 100 will grow as people play, while the 4 won't unless they have a kid. Plus the accounts only need to track login info while the creations contain actual data that needs to be stored.

Yes, this is just EA being EA, unfortunately. But it's also total crap. People at work have been pushing me to get Tiger Woods 09 so we can play online together, but I'm not really inclined to give EA any more money until this absurd problem is fixed. I encourage many of you to do the same, and let them know you're doing it.

itsmoirob wrote:If EA/Maxis views are each person should have a registered account then I hope that they sell cheap sub-license's for gamer's to buy so they can have multiple users.

But in all honesty if EA were never going to allow multiple users they should of done this from the very start with Creature Creator, instead of all these arguments coming now. Especially when a lot of people have installed the game and can't get refunds--how many game stores will take back an open Spore game knowing that the installation limit on it will of decreased? Not a lot I guess.

I just hope EA can come good on this and offer some sort of compromise.

Agreed 100%.

There should at least be some kind of much much cheaper option for those of us who can't afford to go out and buy multiple copies of the game just so the rest of our household can play.
I'm not about to shell out $50 more so my gf can use her account to play, and neither is she.

They should have done this from the very start with the CC.
As it is, they hooked multiple people with the CC, then screwed them over by saying "Sorry! Only 1 account per game. Gotta go and buy yourself multiple copies if you want to play with the online features that badly!"
It's a money-grab issue, as has been said before in this topic.

I'm not asking for 100s of accounts being tied to a single game purchase.
I'm only asking for at least 1 account for each "allowed" installs of the game(the original installs, of course. Not the added ones you get after calling EA to get it reset because of their DRM bull-***).

I support this thread completely. I also now have a divided family who can't access their creatures they made in the CC.

Also, one of the things we were looking forward to was being able to compare our creations in our own seperate accounts. A little friendly competition.

Now something that we virtually took for granted as a cool aspect of Spore has been taken away from us for reasons that are unclear and suspiciously greedy.

As long as we don't give up protesting this, it would seem impossible for anyone in EA or Maxis not to take notice (I only blame EA though).

Okay, folks... For starters, the reasoning behind locking it down to one registration = one account is agreeably asinine. If two family members sitting at the same computer want to upload their creations separately, this will cause absolutely NO more load on the EA servers than if they were to buy two completely separate accounts. The fact is, it would actually cause LESS of a load.

The argument that this would allow piracy is equally asinine. People are no more likely to give their friend their registration information than they are to give their friend their WoW account information. Blizzard doesn't seem to throw a fit about this (despite the fact that with Blizzard, you can create 5 separate characters ON EACH SERVER.)

This is not about web space/server loads, it's about money.

Now, I *was* quite curious as to how Spore was going to handle the web trading stuff, and assumed for awhile that it would be a peer to peer setup, never imagining that their servers would actually have your content uploaded to them, and then distribute the content from the servers. My guess is that *this* is where the real problem comes in. The idea sounded good until the first week showed over 11 million objects uploaded. I just don't think they were anywhere close to ready for the result, and someone at the last minute realized that the servers were going to cost them, so this was a last-ditch money grab, getting people to "pay" for the server space they were using.

My solution is this:

1.) When you bought Spore, you bought the game, ready to play, out of the box. The server usage is a privilege, not a right. Read at the EULA, not just the parts you want to hear.

2.) Allow multiple users per registration. This is standard.

3.) Charge a very small ($1) monthly fee to use the online service to "share" (read: download additional) content for the game.

Finally, for all of you that are gnashing your teeth, and shaking your fists, and jumping up and down, and threatening EA with the media and lawsuits, there's a reason they don't respond to you: They're laughing. EA, and other companies like them hear this crap ALL DAY, EVERY DAY from a billion users just like you, and absolutely NONE of them are actually going through with any of their empty threats. Quite simply put, EA is like every big business, and there's a formula that is used to determine whether the trouble is worth even looking at:

IF CostToFix > CostOfLawsuits THEN IgnoreYou

It's that simple. So sure, ONE of you might have your rent-a-lawyer draft up a threatening sounding note, which EA's law department will promptly throw in the trash, but absolutely nothing is going to change. You want to hurt EA? Start doing what I'm doing. Pirate. Spore was the last straw for me (yes, I purchased my legit copy.) It was actually easier to install/play the pirated version than the legit version. And the pirated version isn't limited to 3 installs (I upgrade/reformat my PCs quite regularly.)

And for the poor misguided soul that's convinced that pirating software is a federal offense, read your lawbooks. In the U.S., it's illegal to SELL pirated software. Downloading it and playing it is no more of an offense than shoplifting, and that's only if they want to go through the insane expense of trying to track you down by your IP, attempt to confiscate your computer, then bring a legal case against you. The fact is, there's more piracy scare bullcrap put out in the media than any substance behind it. If you really want to do something to punish EA, hit them where it hurts. In the pocket books. I'm tired of them punishing the legitimate users, and those of us that pay for our games legally. It's finally gotten to the point that it's easier to pirate than to purchase, so that's what I'll be doing from here out.

-Javin

Not to be all "me too" but, well, "me too". My sons and I had some fun with each of us creating creatures with the CC on this one computer (with multiple user accounts). Since the CC allowed that behavior, we planned on doing the same with the game. Since I ran it first, our product key is now bound to my spore.com account, and my kids can't play online under their own accounts.

This is, as many have said more eloquently, bogus. Unless this gets resolved well, no more EA products will come into our house.

I, too, contacted EA via their Web form. I'm now 48 hours into the "within 24 hours" they promised in the confirmation email, so I'm sure that tells me what (if anything) will happen as a result of that.

My son has a couple of friends who downloaded the cracked version of the game. They had it before I took him to the store to buy our copy, and don't have these issues. Stuff like this really makes my job as a parent harder, when I have to explain why it is better to do what is right in the face of apparent disregard by EA.