These questions pop up every once a week and the answer is that unfortunatly nobody outside of those who were involved with the development of the game knows whats really going on.
EA seems to hold the rights to the game but there must be something else going on, this certain factor might be why the game isn't released on here or any other digital destributor. It could also be that there are multiple licenses which have to be sorted out.
It also could literally be anything but I suspect that it could be a term/paragraph of the original contract that forbids a digital release of sorts. It could be worded in a way to imply that no person shall destribute it digitally to combat all sorts of digital piracy. As this game was released before the times of legal digital destribution method the language regarding this could be vague enough to seriously imply anything while giving no room for nuance.
Stuff like this come from my own experiences when it come to contracts and is by no means a universal. Perhaps people simply forgot about the game. Its certainly is a unique experience and kinda like what Spore attempted to have. A game where you can be a god certainly is a creative idea that more people persued but also very difficult to implement (lots of games with similar idea popped up but ultimately ceased to be developed further throughout their existence). However, these ideas are mostly lost in time serving as inspiration so the indie gaming communities can fullfill them.
Metaphorically, companies such as Lionhead and Maxis paved the road so its up to the indies to build the cars so we can use these roads. Using a metaphor like that makes it much easier to understand why games such as The Universim take such a long time to develop and why many other trailblazing games can take half a decade to develop. Developing these games ain't no easy task.
EDIT: Added a few things.
Post edited September 19, 2019 by Dray2k
