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.

Here’s the gist. You need to uninstall the game from your system. Don’t worry, your save data won’t get removed. Drag the SPORE folder from Applications to the trash. Then fire up Finder and go to “/Users/[Username]/Library/Preferences/[Game Name] Preferences/p_drive” and delete all the files there as well. Once that’s done, reinstall the game and download the patch when prompted. Now, here’s where things get interesting. This is a line from the email I received from EA:

*Please Note: This process may take a considerable amount of time. The patch process may seem to stall, but the installation of the latest update could take up to 20 minutes. Please be patient.

I did that and, after 20 minutes, the patch completed the install and Spore booted up. The game ran fine and things worked as you would expect.

So there you have it. If you try to patch your game on your Mac and it freezes up, follow these directions and you’ll be off and running. Get some.