Error connecting to the Spore servers (Steam)

So, I'm going to post an update about this in case other people are looking for the answer to the account registration problem in the godforsaken year of 2022. I don't know how much longer this will be the answer, as it seems to change arbitrarily every so often, but yeah.

After an amount of time, for seemingly no reason, I started getting the "unknown error during registration" or whatever it says again instead of the error connecting to the Spore servers. This prompted me to do more research, and I actually found a thread from July 2021 with a solution I hadn't seen before: Apparently, there's currently a problem with the servers where you only actually get the proper entitlements to register a new Spore account if you own the Spore Creature Creator on Origin. It's normally $10, which is very unfortunate if you're strapped for cash, but I went out on a limb and bought it and that actually fixed the issue. I was finally, after a year and a half of encountering issues, able to register a new account.

So yeah, if you're like me and have tried everything else and still cannot register, that's what you need to do. It sucks, but if you really want to upload to/download from the Sporepedia, this appears to be the only option if registering your copy of Spore to your Origin account doesn't work. Also, this should really go without saying, but I really wouldn't hold out hope for EA fixing this problem. It's a miracle Spore's servers are still running in the first place, considering how old the game is and how it was a financial disappointment for EA (at least, from what I understand).