On the back of the news that Wolfenstein developer Raven Software has been hit with a round of layoffs, it’s also been revealed that The Sims and Spore developer, and internal studio at EA, Maxis, has also been forced to reduce its staff in order to respond to “business conditions,” says a statement from EA.

The exact number of staff affected by the cut is unknown, but internet rumblings post the figure in the dozens, as opposed to lesser measurements. The full statement from EA regarding the Maxis layoffs reads:

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The Jim Henson Honors have recognised the work of Shigeru Miyamoto and the technological advances of EA’s Spore with an award each.

The Jim Henson Honors, says Jim Henson’s son, Brian Henson, are awarded to recipients who show “true creativity and commitment to innovation… They have raised the bar in their respective fields.” The program was founded in 2005 and “acknowledges organizations, individuals or products that reflect the core values and philosophy of Jim Henson and the company he founded.”

The Jim Henson Celebration Honor, the highest award, was given to Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto for his previous work as well as the re-ignition of “America’s love for gaming with the creation of Nintendo’s hugely popular Wii console.”

The Jim Henson Technology Honor was given to Spore for its creative, ground-breaking technology. Other Jim Henson Honors include The Jim Henson Community Honor and the The Jim Henson Creativity Honor, this year won by The Center for Puppetry Arts Distance Learning Center and Shepard Fairey respectively.

Previous recipients of Jim Henson Honors include former Vice President Al Gore author JK Rowling and British entrepreneur Richard Branson.

It’s being reported that Spore, EA and Will Wright’s intended masterpiece of user-generated content gaming, has broken the record for most pirated game ever.

Spore has been download 1.7 million times since its release in September, 500 000 of which occurred in the first ten days, according to a site tracking illegal torrent downloads. EA have already pointed to Spore’s apparent commercial success, but Digital Rights Management (DRM) security measures taken by EA are thought to have spurred a renewed onslaught by game pirates, due to the DRM limiting players’ access to their own game.

Interestingly, the Sims 2, another game from Spore developers, Maxis, sits at number two in the ‘most pirated chart,’ with 1 150 000 illegal downloads this year, while Assassin’s Creed sits and number three with 1 070 000 copies downloaded and Crysis at number four with 940 000 downloads. Topping the charts, but not in the way publishers and developers would like…

“It’s blasphemy, brilliance or both to take the entire evolution of a species — from a single-celled animalcule in a drop of water to a space-faring, galaxy-exploring sentient being — and turn it into a video game.”

So says Time, who have bestowed upon Spore, the game/toy about evolution from the mind of Will Wright, with the honour of being called 2008’s greatest invention. They continue the praise:

“But that’s exactly what Will Wright has done. Wright is the man who created The Sims, a game about everyday life in suburbia, but apparently he found the vast panorama of human experience too confining, because he then spent seven years creating Spore, in which players design their own life-form and then manage every aspect of its progress through the centuries, from savagery to civilization.”

You can check out the rest of the greatest invention list over here.

For all those that took the plunge and decided to create new creatures and worlds of your own in Spore, there’s a patch available to make your universe domination and gene-splicing experiences even better.

To get the patch, simply launch your EA Download Manager to automatically download and install. For a manual install, you can also get the patch over here. While this patch is only available to PC players on the minute, a Mac patch is also inbound.

Click through for a full list of Spore’s additions and features via the patch.

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Spore, the wildly ambitious game from Maxis and EA was released to the clamouring hands of Europeans last week Friday. This much you know. To no-one’s disbelief, however, the game’s servers, meant to authenticate your copy of the game as well as dynamically spread your user-made content across the web, have been swamped and have buckled. Players aren’t able to play the game due to the server’s inability to authenticate their copy of the game. It is not known when the issues will be cleared up, but players are still experiencing problems.

An e-mail from EA to the Spore’s customers: “We deeply apologise for the inconvenience that you are currently experiencing with SPORE. It appears that there is an ongoing issue with the accounts server and the registration process for the game. We would like to inform you that we are already investigating this concern and in the process of resolving this issue. We appreciate your continued patience and understanding in the meantime.”

Meanwhile, Will Wright himself has responded to some of Spore’s reviews, saying; “We were very focused, if anything, on making a game for more casual players,” continuing on to say, “Spore has more depth than, let’s say, The Sims did. But we looked at the Metacritic scores for Sims 2, which was around 90, and something like Half-Life, which was 97, and we decided - quite a while back - that we would rather have the Metacritic and sales of Sims 2 than the Metacritic and sales of Half-Life.” Spore’s current Metacritic average is 87 based on 20 reviews and it’s likely to have already become a blockbuster, sales wise, over the weekend.

One last bit of Spore news is regarding the Spore prototypes that Maxis have released to the public, giving people insight into their creative process by showing players earlier work that contributed to the final designs. You can check out the Spore prototypes here.

Spore, the stratospherically anticipated game from Maxis and Will Wright (and EA), is set for release later this week - Friday the 5th of September. This is then the last opportunity to have a look at some fresh screenshots before you get to play the game for real. If you just can’t wait, you can get a head-start by pre-installing Spore and playing it the second it’s available on the 5th.

Spore has been in varying forms of development for over 7 years, only publicly unveiled at a Game Developers Conference in 2005. Now in 2008, Spore’s level of hype has gone through several stages, from bursting at the seams through to backlash, enthusiast press at times wondering if there was actually anything more to the game than its Creature Creator, the ability to create any creature you can possibly imagine.

Over the last few years, several areas of the game have been revealed, such as the Tidepool Phase, fighting for survival in a Petri dish-like environment, the Creature Phase as your creature begins to evolve, the Tribal Phase where players control an entire tribe of your creatures, the City Phase, building cities and technology, the Civilisation Phase, seeking to dominate an entire planet and lastly, the Space Phase, tasking players with spreading their colony across the galaxy, meeting new and weird creatures along the way.

Now, Spore’s imminent release will reveal just what the people at Maxis have been up to all this time and we’ll get to see if the enormous excitement surrounding the game has been warranted.

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Although there’s still a week to go before Spore launches, you can download the game from the EA Store today.

If you pre-order the PC version of the game, you can pre-load the game and be ready to play it (with just 30 minutes install remaining) when it launches on the 5th of September in Europe and on the 7th across North America.

This pre-order offer is only available for PC owners, Mac owners will have to wait a little longer. The game is priced at £39.99.

After a development cycle of +/- 7 years, the highly ambitious Spore has gone gold and will be coming to PC on September 5 throughout Europe and September 7th across North America. Spore Creatures, for DS, and Spore Origins, for mobile devices, will also be available September 7th.

The press release sums up the game very well: “Spore gives players their own personal universe in a box, allowing fans to create and evolve life, establish tribes, build civilizations, sculpt entire worlds and explore a universe created by other gamers. Spore gives players a wealth of creative tools to customize nearly every aspect of their universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even spaceships. Players can then seamlessly share their creations with the world via the Sporepedia and explore infinite new galaxies created by other gamers.”

You can check out El33tonline’s very own Spore creature, Quizzy, at SporeVote.com - look at the ‘More Spore’ option and search by ‘Creature Name’ to find it easily.

What more is there to say about Spore other than “We want it now!”

Spore allows you to create your own creature after emerging from the Cell Phase of life. The Creature Creator tools are astounding, literally allowing you to create anything you can imagine. Your creature’s appearance affects how it interacts with the world.

The game only steps up after that as you go to the Tribe Stage building up your community, to the Civilisation Stage, building cities and industrialising your planet and then into Space, colonising planets as you see fit. You will also be able to import any creature you want from the ‘Sporepedia,’ a catalogue of Spore creatures created by players around the world, to interact with your game.

Spore releases in September on PC, Mac, Nintendo DS and mobile phones.

Maxis (an EA studio) released the Spore Creature Creator on the 17th of June. Spore fans from around the world immediately dug in, creating over 250 000 Spore creatures in just one day and more than one million creatures in one week.

The Spore Creature Creator is an introduction to Spore for the PC and Mac. It allows players to create unique creatures and bring them to life with animations as well as share them online. It is easy to create your creature with the drag-and-drop interface, you can stretch parts and paint your creation with colours and patterns before animating your creature.

Players can take the unique creatures they create on a test drive as well as snap pictures and movies of them which can be shared with friends or by loading them to the Sporepedia at www.spore.com. You can even upload your creations to the Spore YouTube Channel at youtube.com/spore.

EA contacted El33tonline in early June and asked us to participate in a Spore Sneak Preview. We were selected to have early access to Spore through a Creature Creator pre-release, allowing us to be part of the first group of people to populate the Spore universe.

75 creative innovators from around the world were chosen to participate and design their own creatures, 50 of whom were celebrities including Elijah Wood and Richard Branson. The Sporelebrities are participating in a competition that will see viewers voting for their favourite character with the winner walking away with $15 000 for the charity of their choice.

While El33tonline didn’t quite make the Sporelebrity list, you can head over to Sporevote.com to check out our creature. You will find the details under Lisa Konigkramer on the More Spore section. The website will be up until the 15th of September so make sure you check out Quizzy before then and vote for him if you like.

We had lots of fun putting the Spore Creature Creator through its paces, thanks to EA for the opportunity to participate. All it takes is a little imagination.

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Over one million creatures have been created and shared using the Spore Creature Creator in one week.

The millionth creature was created by FlamingChidori and the two-legged green creature was called Sapiusgeenus.

If you are interested in creating your very own creature, head over to www.spore.com to download the Spore Creature Creator or view creations in the Sporepedia. You can also download a free trial version which includes 25% of the creature-making parts from Spore and allows players to shape, paint and play with the creatures they create.

“Maxis is excited, humbled and inspired by the explosion of creativity that we’ve seen with the Spore Creature Creator online,” said Lucy Bradshaw, executive producer of Spore at Maxis.

“I’m amazed at the creations I see getting uploaded to the Sporepedia, whether it’s a realistic looking bird or animal, a 10-eyed alien, or something completely bizarre and unexpected like a creature that looks like a motorcycle, it’s clear that people have an innate desire to be creative, and we’re thrilled to help them express themselves.”

Spore will be available for the PC, Mac, Nintendo DS on the 5th of September across Europe and on the 7th of September across the US and Asia.

For more information on the Spore Creature Creator head over to our previous coverage or read about how over 250 000 creatures were created in a day.

EA has announced a limited Galactic Edition of Spore.

The Galactic Edition will include a ‘Making of Spore’ DVD, ‘The Art of Spore’ book, a Spore poster as well as a 100 page Galactic Handbook and ‘How to Build a Better Being,’ a DVD documentary from the National Geographic Channel.

“The Spore Galactic Edition is the ultimate backstage pass for the Spore universe,” said Patrick Buechner, vice president of marketing, Maxis.

“The Spore Galactic Edition is an incredible collection of art, video and behind-the-scenes access to the development team for fans, along with some of the coolest, most collectable packaging in years.”

The Galactic Edition of Spore will retail for £44.99 in the UK while the regular edition will set you back £39.99.

Spore will available for the PC, Mac and Nintendo DS in Europe on the 5th of September and across North America and Asia on the 7th of September.

If you can’t wait until then to try your hand at creating creatures, you can download the Creature Creator from www.spore.com. Head over to our previous coverage for more information on the Spore Creature Creator.

Maxis (an EA Studio) has announced that over 250 000 creatures have been created and shared since yesterday’s launch of the Spore Creature Creator. This amounts to Spore fans sharing more than two creatures every second since the launch.

The Spore Creature Creator is a stand-alone product for the PC and Mac. It allows players to create unique creatures and bring them to life with animations as well as share them online. It is easy to create your creature with the drag-and-drop interface, you can stretch parts and paint your creation with colours and patterns before animating your creature.

The trial version is guaranteed to keep you busy, featuring 25% of the creature-making parts from Spore and allowing players to shape, paint and play with the creatures they create. You will also be able to import creatures you make in the Spore Creature Creator into the full Spore game.

The Spore Creature Creator is now available for the PC and Mac. Spore fans can get a free trial version of the Spore Creature Creator or check out the Sporepedia now from www.spore.com. The full version can be purchased from EA Store for ₤4.99 in the UK and $10 in the US.

Spore will be available for the PC, Mac and Nintendo DS in Europe on the 5th of September and across North America and Asia on the 7th of September.

“The response to the Spore Creature Creator has been overwhelming,” said Lucy Bradshaw, executive producer of Spore at Maxis. “The creativity and passion that the community is putting into their creatures is spectacular. The development team has spent the last 24 hours checking out the amazing creations racing in from all corners of the globe – with peak volume hitting more than 1,000 creatures being shared a minute.”

For more information on the Spore Creature Creator head over to our previous coverage or check out the Spore Creature Creator trailer.

Chances are that if you take even the slightest interest in the gaming industry you would have heard about Spore. If you are wondering exactly what the Spore Creature Creator is, check out our previous coverage and the trailer below to give you an idea how easy it is to create creatures and bring them to life.

The Spore Creature Creator is now available for the PC and Mac. Spore fans can get a free trial version of the Spore Creature Creator now from www.spore.com. The full version can be purchased from EA Store for ₤4.99 in the UK and $10 in the US.

Spore will be available for the PC, Mac and Nintendo DS in Europe on the 5th of September and across North America and Asia on the 7th of September.