User blog comment:Brick425/How To Throw Away $60/@comment-28939754-20160822043145/@comment-5052737-20160822095911

The problem is, many of those expectations weren't completely unfounded.

There's a massive reddit thread with a complete list of removed features over the past 3 years of development. Some features which were present in gameplay just 4 months ago mysteriously disappeared.

People are now calling it a "new Spore" not just for the galactic part of the game, but also for the several removed features during development.