I have had the same problem and have been in communication with ea since December. They promised to get back to me with a fix. They never did. Since about February, all of the communication has been one way (me to them). No response. I purchased the game in December since it said it would work on the Mac (Mountain Lion), but it clearly doesn't. I made the purchase since the version I had did not work on the Mac. Turns out that I bought the same version I already had (which was already the latest). I've uploaded all the patches, etc. etc. etc. It has been about five months since I first asked for a refund (see "February") above.
Spore is a great program, but it's too bad that the technical support sucks!
I noticed it only happens in mac, try dowloading it for PC
