1 Spore?

2 That's what I'd bet on.

3 I got it working.

Not a bad game.  But EA appears to have put together a separate team of developers just to fuck things up once a games is finished and ready to ship.

Spore has copy protection (you must have the original disk in the drive to play it, and the software that controls this is essentially a rootkit), an activation code (you can only activate it three times - now increased to five), and you must register for an online account.

If something goes wrong with your online account, you get a message saying that an unknown error has occured.  If you click on the help button, you get thrown out of the game, and sent to a web page that doesn't exist.

Way to create a good first impression, guys.

4 Unfortunately at this point you've rewarded them for bad behavior. You bought their game even though you knew something like this was possible, even likely. Complaining about it now is futile. They have your money, and they aren't going to give it back. With the exception of MMOs, I haven't bought a PC game in (checking wikipedia...) 2 1/2 years (Oblivion) because of exactly this sort of problem. But I probably shouldn't really get started on this, or I'll tear out a Shamus-worthy rant on the subject, and if I'm going to do that, I really ought to get my own site for it.