It’s one of the most pirated games of all time. However, if you feel like supporting EA’s employees and giving them a break by downloading a legal copy of Spore then quite soon you will be able to as the game is being made available on Steam.

The release, which will still be DRM-ed to the teeth, is the debut first-party title from EA to be released via the digital distribution platform from Valve that is quite quickly becoming an industry standard. As of yet, only the End-User’s Licence Agreement has appeared on the Steam website - with the product page itself remaining illusive for the time being. However, the fact that so much of this legal stuff has gone through is something of an indicator that Valve and EA have got this one set in stone.

EA did release Crysis and Crysis: Warhead from third-party developer Crytek and it is unclear whether the move with Spore will be the shape of things to come. There is a very good chance that EA may be trying to save face and stop as many users as possible illegally obtaining the game by making it ultra-accessible - even if that means supporting a rival distribution platform.