Spore crashes on Windows 7 64 bit

I bought Spore and its two expansions during the Steam sale and installed them on a computer running Windows 7 64 bit.

When I started up the game, the screen would turn black, then I would be back to my desktop, with a Spore icon in my Taskbar, but nothing running. When I clicked on Spore in the task bar, it would again take me to a black screen, then promptly boot me to the desktop.

I ran it in various compatibility modes, ran it with administrative rights, etc, and nothing worked. It wasn't until I ran the game in a forced 640x480 resolution AND in Windows 7 compatibility mode that it finally booted up. Oddly enough, it does not run if I start it up with Steam or if I start it with its icon, but it only works if I boot it with the auto run application in the game's local files.

All of this is rather absurd. It would be nice if a giant company like EA could either fund the fixing of this product, or perhaps not sell it on Steam in the first place if it is so obviously broken and their apathy to their customers so great. I know I'm not the only one with these issues, because people all across the internet seem to have the same problem. So either fix it, pull it from Steam, or at least put up a notice on the page warning people of its instability.

So if people are looking for a solution, try compatibility mode for windows 7 and then have it run in 640x480 and then go into the local files and start it up from the autorun executable. Oddly enough, it doesn't actually force it into that resolution, but somehow (magically) makes it start.