Over at the DarkSpore forums, I caught a post by the game’s team member ‘MaxisMikella’ sharing new information about how the online gameplay will span out:

I noticed you guys were wondering about our online features so I want to tell you more about them. Darkspore is a client/server online game. That means we have dedicated servers owned by EA that will simulate your games, store your creatures and inventory, and allow you to access it all anywhere. When you log into Darkspore, you start out in your own spaceship. Once there, you can chat with other players hanging out in the galaxy. In game, you’ll be able to chat with your teammates and send messages to friends. You’ll have a friend’s list where you can see who’s online, and invite them to play a game with you. We also have matchmaking to automatically put you into a 4 player co-op game, so it’s really easy to find people to play with. We’ve had really fun times here playing co-op with other Darkspore team members! I hope this gives you a better idea of the online features we’ve been implementing in Darkspore.

One of the fans commented on the fact if cheats can somehow damage the online gameplay (as cheating in online games is pretty much a scummy thing to do).  Luckily, since the game functions on Maxis’ servers, we will not have to worry about cheaters.

Since the game is being simulated on our servers, everything you’re doing is authenticated by us, right down to how much damage you should deal to an enemy. You won’t have to worry about cheaters ruining your game experience in Darkspore.

Of course, there are always game exploits that can always be found that were not meant to be intentional.  Let’s hope beta-testers will be able to catch them.