I’m not an angry person, but this is part one of what set me off last night. I bought myself a copy of Spore a little while ago and finally got down to start playing it Thursday night. I installed and fired up the game and was prompted to download a patch. Ok, seems normal. What PC/Mac game doesn’t have patches? What ensued started a fire-storm.
I sat there for literally an hour and a half as this patch downloaded and tried to install. Guess what? It froze up my entire MacBook Pro. Yep, good times. So, I restarted and fired up the game again. Not being prompted for the patch this time, it took (again, no exaggeration) ten minutes for me to get to a point where I could create a new game (I already have a Spore account, so all I had to do was login). After starting a new game, I entered the Cell stage. To my surprise, I had NO creature displayed on my screen. That’s right, I didn’t exist. Yay! Yet another broken piece of the puzzle.
Figuring this couldn’t be an isolated incident, I fired up Google (here’s my search). What I found is literally thousands of people who have encountered the same problem. The v1.1 patch for the Mac utterly breaks the game for every person who installs it. The installer freezes and the game flat out doesn’t work after you get it back up and running. Do you want to know the best part? You have to fucking uninstall and reinstall the game to get it working again. There’s absolutely no way to just remove the patch.
So, I sat there for yet another hour uninstalling and reinstalling Spore on my MacBook Pro. Once I got it back up and running, I chose not to download that fucking bullshit patch again. The game works now and I got through the Cell stage, but not before I smashed the ever loving shit out of my keyboard. I bashed that thing like it just made fun of my Momma.
Moral of the story: EA did no fucking testing on the Mac version of the Spore patch and everyone’s games are broken. Great job there, guys. Seriously, have we lose every ounce of Quality Assurance in the games industry? From now on, I’m not installing a single patch without reading up on it first. Ugh.
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Hello i installed in on my mac and it worked maybe u didnt install it right.
@Steve Tony – it’s not like there are install options on the Mac. You open the game and are prompted to update. It runs everything itself and just freezes. Check out the Google search. Thousands of other people are having this exact same issue.
Not to be indelicate, but did you actually pay for your copy of Spore?
@Jonah Falcon – Yes, I did. Says so in the second sentence of the article. Bought it from Best Buy.
Okay, missed that line. I remember one developer whose game got bad word-of-mouth because pirated copies crashed due to the software protection. The game got a reputation as “buggy” as a consequence.
That patch is not coming any where near my new Mac or Im flying out to Cali and having a word with the folks at Spore HQ
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[...] 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 [...]
The first patch broke on my iMac too. Locked up 2/3 the way through the patch. Watched two episodes of Boston Legal and was still @ 2/3, got it quit and restarted the computer. Spore seemed to load but was buggy as sin once I got in. Near as I can tell iPatch had probably managed to replace some of the files it needed to but not all. Anyway I had to trash and reinstall, no doubt using another activation. My saves were trashed too, I had to start from scratch. I haven’t touched it since. My heart was too broken. Way to go EA. This plus your inability to release Kane’s Wrath make me weep for Gamers Everywhere.
My copy was digital from Game Tree, there’s another point of contention. I expected to instantly get my copy, I didn’t get it for over 48 hours. I could have driven out to Cali and back for a physical copy in that amount of time douchebagios.
Yeppers. I’m on my third uninstall/reinstall right now. all because of that damn patch. When I started to get the patch the first time it never stopped downloading and just continued to take up space until it had taken up almost 20 gigs. I had to force quit and restart. Lame.
The patched crashed my Mac and I tried to reload it. No dice. Without reloading the game won’t run at all as the patch even when the download is unsuccessful crashes the game and weird display screens occur and no game is present. This is the biggest ripoff by a major company that I have ever seen and I’ve used Macs for 24 years. I don’t know how the last user got the patch to load and run.
Dear EA and Maxis,
I am extremely angry. I wait over a year for this game, pay $50.00 for this, and download this patch and the game just won’t start!!! It goes to a black screen, 5 minutes later… it says “Unhandled page fault on write access to 0×0000000c at address 0×00e5ffc9. Do you wish to debug it?” And no matter if I click “yes” or “no” the game automatically quits. THIS SUCKS. I REALLY LIKED THIS GAME BEFORE THE PATCH, BUT YOU HAD TO RUIN IT. I go on google, and it turns out that EVERY SINGLE MAC USER I HAVE READ ABOUT HAS HAD PROBLEMS. Some have no audio, some can’t download the patch, others freeze at the end of stages, and some have random crashes. They are LUCKY. I can’t even play. People say you didn’t even test it on macs. And, I’m sorry, but it says “mac compatible” right on the front. I heard that you DELETE some comments that say that you didn’t test it. And “customer services” has NO experience with macs. If you can’t make a game for a mac, then don’t try. I just wanted the new limbs for my creatures! And this isnt JUST with macs, I hear even PC users have issues. AND TO ANYONE, I REPEAT ANYONE, NEVER EVER DOWNLOAD THIS PATCH. And to EA and Maxis: FIX THIS!!!
Thank you,
GRoss