Pushing back news from yesterday, EA's Charlie Sinhaseni has contacted GamerZone to confirm that they are still continuing support for their Diablo/Spore hybrid Darkspore, and that it has not been abandoned.
When asked about the prior message on the forum, Charlie explains that was posted by a forum moderator, and not an EA employee. If you go to the forum now, it indicates EA has, in fact, resolved the issue leading to players being unable to connect to the game, and that they should be getting future customer support from help.ea.com.
I went to the site to see what information was available. In lieu of forum support, the site has a knowledgebase for common issues with the game. The guide makes no mention of Error Codes 3 or 73003, although it recommends people with non-working registration keys to make sure they are entering the keys correctly. It does look like the FAQ is a work in progress, with parts still not completed.
The FAQ also makes some emphasis communicating that Darkspore does not have a DRM. In their phrasing, the game requires an online connection to work, but does not have DRM per se.
As of this writing, the game still hasn't come back on Steam, although it is still available for purchase through Origin.
I don't exactly like putting Maxis and EA on the spot here, but this just isn't enough information to resolve the issue. The alternate support website provided, likewise, does not give enough information to help players. Although the game is on a much lower profile, this situation has way too much in common with the SimCity debacle, and threatens to hurt Maxis' reputation even further. I do hope Maxis resolves this properly soon, with a clearer explanation of what happened, and maybe a return to Steam with all existing issues taken care of.
Again, for the sake of posterity, we're screencapping today's forum message for your benefit.
