Old creatures missing

[Zachariah Wildwood]

So, I installed this after years since playing and logged in to find only six of my creatures still existed - despite me uploading over 200. These six were ones that I happened to put in a list or collection or whatever they were.

So, I remembered I still had an old hard drive from 2010 or whenever it was, plugged it in and tracked down my save, which I was able to extract my old data from and paste into the new install. So now my 200 creatures are back (and I can see that they were uploaded before).

My point being that at some point my creatures must have been wiped from the servers, which is annoying. Makes me wonder how much cool stuff was lost. It's such a tiny amount of data... feels stingy. They definitely only made this game to be played for the next few years after release...

Posting this mainly so that if anyone else ever has this issue they will find an answer.

[Sovereigndrake]

MaxisLucky wrote:
Hi -

We're impressed at the sheer number of incredible creations Spore players are creating and we realize that finding quality content among 50 million creations can be quite daunting. We've also received many requests to remove auto-uploaded creations and to make it easier to find quality content online.

And we know that you want to be kept informed of major changes before they go into effect. So we wanted to give you a heads up about our next major change: we're going to implement a culling process. We hope that you will find that quality creations are easier to find with these changes.

Creations will be culled only if they meet stringent criteria. Only creations that have had very little or no interaction or attention will be eligible. Creations will only be culled from the servers. Nothing will be removed from your hard drive.

Only two kinds of creations will be culled:

--- Auto-uploaded creations that have not been updated in the last 30 days, are not in any Sporecasts, have never been the subject or object of an event, do not have any comments, and were made while using Patch 3.

--- Creations that haven't been updated in 60 days, are not in any Sporecasts, have never been the subject or object of an event, and do not have any comments.

Culling criteria may be adjusted in the future, but we'll make sure to let you know if that occurs.

Q. How can you prevent the creations you like from being culled?
A. Making any update on your creation will ensure it won't get culled for 30 days. Updated means that a creation’s name, body, paint, tags, or description has been updated. Also, If your creation belongs to a Sporecast, it won't be culled.

Q. What can you do if your creation has been culled, but you'd still like it visible on Spore.com?
A. Simply re-upload it from your computer.

Also, no creations will be culled that were authored by players who have logged in to the game or Spore.com site within the last 30 days.

This change will be going into effect next week.

Thanks -

-caryl

A LONG ass time ago.
I lost a few hundred myself, sporepedia says i have 500, but game only imports 300 ish for some weird reason.

[Zelkin764]

Oh wow. That explains a lot.
Everything goes into a Sporecast now

[Sammichu1]

Originally posted by Sovereigndrake:

MaxisLucky wrote:
Hi -
Q. What does culled mean?

[arnzod]

I'm really glad they do this. All I ever make are apex predators, and I got really sick of going up against my own previous work in the creature phase. Now I just take a month off, and all is forgotten.