FYI: yes, you're only allowed ONE login account per game purchased - I didn't know about the limitation of three installs, tho. (But read on!...)
The limitation on the login is NBD, actually, because you can initiate MANY separate characters from that one install/login. I.e. Each member of your family can create their own (set of) character (profile(s)) to play. (As far as we've seen, the actual NUMBER of character "profiles" you can create on any one account/installation may be unlimited: Each time we've created a new character, a new slot for another character has opened....)
As for the # of installs: That might simply be the # installs
over a certain time period you know....
In any case, we've installed it twice, once on each of
two different computers. (Of course, only ONE of them can be logged in at any given time....) It appears that your character profiles are there when you log in, but none of your game STATE is available!
(I.e. It knows about your character and it's state, but the environment you have on the "first" machine in which you played is totally absent. Put another way: Everything you CHANGED in the environment is LOCAL TO THE MACHINE ON WHICH THOSE CHANGES OCCURRED.)
All-in-all, this seems like a perfectly logical solution to me, to provide a family-wide play environment: My son and I can install it on each of our machines, create a common account, and then either one of us can play - independently - at any time, unless the other is already logged on.
Same scenario works in the case where you don't have multiple computers, too.... (Only it's a bit more obvious when you cannot play!
)
I haven't played it yet, but my son has completely mastered it, and gotten some of his contraptions onto the Spore pages already!
Expect to hear from him (here) about the gameplay soon....
