The Little Evolution Sim That Would Not Die
Spore has a strange place in PC gaming history. When it launched back in 2008, it was hyped as a mind blowing evolution simulator where you would guide life from a tiny cell all the way to a spacefaring civilization. What we actually got was a quirky mix of minigames wrapped around an incredible creature creator and a pretty decent space stage.
For a lot of players, that gap between promise and reality turned Spore into one of the most famous disappointments on PC. Reviews picked it apart, hardcore sim fans bounced off it, and the wider gaming world slowly moved on.
But for some people it was pure magic. The writer of the original article remembers it as the first game they ever begged their parents to preorder, at the age of eight. When you are that young you do not care about hype cycles or genre expectations. You just see a game that lets you build a weird three eyed monster and march it across an alien world and you are in.
That mix of disappointment and nostalgia is basically Spore in a nutshell. It never became the deep evolution sim many hoped for, yet a lot of us still have a soft spot for it. And in 2025, somehow, Spore is still generating tiny little blips on the industry radar.
Yes, Someone Actually Bought A New Physical Copy
Here is the wild part. According to videogame industry analyst Mat Piscatella, Spore sold one single brand new physical copy in the United States this October. Not one thousand. One. As in a lone box, with a lonely disc inside, that someone decided to take home in the year 2025.
Piscatella works at Circana, the group behind a big monthly market study that tracks videogame sales. Every month he shares odd stats on his Bluesky account, including a list of games that sold exactly one physical copy. It is like a graveyard tour of forgotten discs.
Spore made that list as the only PC game in the one copy club, sharing the honor with some truly ancient console titles:
- Backyard Baseball on PlayStation 2
- Burnout Paradise on Xbox 360
- Carnival Games Wild West 3D on Nintendo 3DS
- A handful of other family and puzzle titles from older systems
The safest guess is that this copy of Spore came from some dusty discount bin at a big box store in the middle of nowhere. Maybe it was sitting there for years under a stack of shovelware and plastic guitar controllers, waiting for the right person to come along.
The article jokes that whoever bought it is going to need emotional support once they realize that the space stage and the creature creator are still the best parts by a mile. But you also get the sense of genuine affection. There is something charming about a game this old and this controversial still finding a new player in 2025.
Small Signals That Spore Is Not Completely Extinct
This lonely disc is not Spore's only sign of life recently. In 2024, the official Spore website suddenly woke up after years of silence. It was like seeing an old save file boot up unexpectedly. Along with the refreshed site came an official Discord server, which is a surprisingly modern move for a series that most people assumed EA had quietly abandoned.
That does not mean some giant reboot or sequel is right around the corner. So far it is just tiny activity here and there. But the fact that it has happened twice in such a short span after more than a decade of nothing is undeniably interesting.
Meanwhile, the rest of the industry has moved on to much bigger things. The same October market report that recorded Spore's one copy also shared a top twenty list of the best selling games of the year so far. Battlefield 6 is sitting comfortably at the top, with modern hits like Helldivers 2 hanging on at the back of the pack. In a perfect alternate reality maybe Spore would be somewhere on that list, finally getting the mainstream success its core idea probably deserved.
In this timeline though, it lives on as a cult favorite. A game that promised a grand simulation of life itself, missed the mark, but still managed to leave a weird and memorable footprint on PC gaming history.
If you are a beginner wondering if Spore is worth checking out today, here is the honest breakdown:
- Come for the creature creator. It is still one of the most playful and creative tools any game has shipped.
- Expect a simple ride. Most stages are short, shallow, and feel like basic standalone games stitched together.
- Stay for the space stage if you enjoy sandbox style exploration and light strategy.
- Do not go in expecting a deep realistic evolution sim. That game never really existed, except in the marketing.
Maybe that single new buyer in 2025 will see Spore exactly the way the writer did at age eight: not as the game it could have been, but as a charming, oddball toy about making funny little aliens and launching them into space. For a game that refuses to completely die, that might be the perfect legacy.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/sim/in-october-2025-a-full-205-months-after-the-ill-fated-life-sim-spore-first-launched-someone-walked-into-a-store-found-an-old-dvd-copy-on-a-shelf-and-bought-it/
