Spore's European Launch Hit By Bugs

The European launch of the year's most eagerly anticipated video game has been tarnished by a mysterious bug. Countless Spore players found themselves unable to login to the game's servers and share their creature creations with the online Spore community – a feature that was widely expected to boost the title's popularity.

Having been greeted with error messages ranging from "invalid login" to "you do not have the proper spore.com privileges to use this product’s online features", irate gamers flooded EA's Spore forum to voice their frustrations. In response, the EA team have admitted they are at a loss to explain the problems and unable to give a timescale for a resolution.

These early teething troubles will come as a blow to EA and their ambitious plans to match the success of their 100 million selling Maxis franchise 'The Sims'. Having invested heavily in developer Will Wright's latest brainchild, it is believed Spore will have to generate $75m to recoup the software house’s outlay.