Feedback On Simcity Gets User Banned From EA Forums

An anonymous reader writes "EA's latest SimCity game requires users to log on online even for single player. After being unable to log on for three hours, one of its users chimed in with his very polite $0.02 opinion, only to get himself banned by EA admins. Another great victory for DRM." Update: 01/29 18:00 GMT by S : The player's ban has been lifted, and it seems to have happened for an unrelated issue anyway.

Comments

Was it EA.....

[jythie]

Was it EA that had their forum and DRM systems linked in such a way that getting banned could also lock you out of content you had purchased, or was that another company? I vaguely recall it being a thing a while back.

Re:Was it EA.....

[i kan reed]

Yes, it was EA. If you see an EA logo on a game, don't buy it.

Re:Was it EA.....

[jaymz666]

I believe the story in question was EA Forum Bans Can Lock You Out Of Games http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/11/ea-forum-bans-can-lock-you-out-of-games/

Re:Was it EA.....

[Astatine]

And the follow up.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/14/ea-forum-bans-are-still-affecting-games/

Re:Was it EA.....

[tripleevenfall]

I have no idea why anyone would buy any game, from any publisher, that required an internet connection for online play. Mind-boggling.

I love SimCity, but would never consider this game for that very reason.

Re:Was it EA.....

[tonywong]

Better summary here:

https://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=beta

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought Diablo 3. Beat it, replay value sucked, and then I started having connection BS. At least Blizzard will let you get a full refund within like.. 30 or 60 days. So I did.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't been following the saga but I can definitely envision a case where always online play was a requirement that existed outside of DRM or multiplayer: when the computational power requirements of the simulation exceed the generally available computation resources of the host machine. As simulations such as these become even more complex, it makes perfect sense to me that you would want/need to distribute the computational load among a set of dedicated remote servers to further enhance the experience. I expect that this kind of distributed computation will become even more common as high/higher speed links become more available and common.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

While I do want a Simcity game, as SimCity 4 is 9 years old at this point, I can't see this new product as a Simcity game. There is no local saves. There are preset map sizes (don't mind that that much), but there is a problem here. The player is not able to edit the land. I can't level a mountain to make way for a road. I can't build a system of streams and lakes. They want players to view making a city a puzzle that also takes into account terrain and wondering how to build a road around that mountain. They want the toy (not a game by Will Wright's point of view) to play with the players instead of letting the players play freely with it. Not everyone wants their cities to be compared to the works of others.

At this rate, I doubt it will have any fun cheat codes as was a staple of the series.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no idea why anyone would buy any game, from any publisher, that required an internet connection for online play. Mind-boggling.

How else do you play an online game without an internet connection?

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

that required an internet connection for online play

I assume you meant to type 'offline' ;o)

I agree totally. I used to travel 2-3 hours a day by train to commute. As well as spending the time reading a book or listening to music, I also used to pull out my laptop plug in headphones to play games.

In such a situation always-online DRM becomes incredibly annoying. I wasn't even able to use my mobile for tethering to work around it, due to the high latency, packet loss and loss of signal in tunnels. It meant I actively avoided buying any games for those journeys that required a net connection.

The assumption the companies have is that everyone now has an always-on connection, but that's simply not always the case. Not everyone plays games exclusively at home and even there some people are still on dialup etc. They should not need to pay monthly for a broadband connection they don't want or need it just so they can play a game offline.

Re:Was it EA.....

[tripleevenfall]

I meant to say "offline"

Re:Was it EA.....

[Astatine]

Here's the direct link to the article for future convenience (it's at the top of the above link right now but I doubt it'll stay there): https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130127/19023721799/redditor-points-out-flaws-simcitys-online-only-drm-gets-banned-ea-his-troubles.shtml

Re:Was it EA.....

[jaymz666]

The latest iteration of Sim City, and Civ V for that matter before it, feel like re-interpretations of the games on which they are based. After the designers hear a rough description of what the game is they create it based on a completely different set of rules and expectations than the original game used.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Duds]

Yep, I saw the original story saying that, I stopped reading about the game. I mess about with their iOS Simpsons game and I get connection failures way too often to deal with a game that will only let me play when I can see their failservers.

Worse of course, this is EA, they retire online services for games as soon as a year after it comes out. In this case, that means "retiring" the entire game.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

>I meant to say offline.

Then your post goes from insane to sensible. It's awesome when online people turn out to not be bonkers.

Personally, I'm willing to put up with Steam's phoning home because they provide me with a really good service and deeply discounted games, but I wouldn't buy an EA game for obvious reasons.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Sable Drakon]

Or at least get it for consoles, where DRM isn't an issue.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Wookact]

I have yet to see a game that used all or nearly all of the available resources on my PC. Once they do that they can start talking about offloading the work.

Re:Was it EA.....

[pclminion]

Agreed. I only buy games from companies that enable online play through supernatural means.

Re:Was it EA.....

[fredprado]

If we weren't moving in the exact opposing way I would say you have a point. Trying to concentrate memory, processing power and bandwidth in servers is a great recipe to failure. The cost of these resources and the logistic problems associated do not escalate linearly.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Omestes]

To be fair... This is sort of inevitable with the Civ and SimCity franchises...

There has been a ton of Civ games, and pretty much all of them have been good. Yes, some were better, some were worse, but all of them were good. So what can you really do to improve it, outside of graphics? Why would I ever move beyond FreeCiv or Civ 4? Civ has pretty much covered everything now, and the only thing I really want is the Near Future stuff that was in Call To Power, along with the Religion stuff in Civ 4 and Civ 5 Gods and Kings.

SimCity is worse... How exactly do you make a better version of SimCity 4?

These are OLD franchises, probably among the oldest, if not they oldest gaming franchises that are still being made. Civ came out in 1991, and SimCity in 1989. I still have the original disk for the C64 version.

The always on bit does suck, though. And makes me mad, I would love to play some SimCity, but sadly SimCity 4 doesn't modern hardware/software, and all the clones are pretty bad or boring (CitiesXL, almost good.). I will probably still buy it, though I will grumble the whole time.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Rakhar]

I made the mistake of buying Diablo 3 without doing my homework. I didn't know about the always online requirement. Never again will I participate in a game that forces you to connect to a server to play by yourself. There is no benefit to the consumer, only headache and inconvenience. I'm sorry that they are having problems with piracy, but there are limits to how much I will inconvenience myself over someone else's problem. When a game causes more stress than it relieves it is no longer worth playing.

That's without even taking into account the fact that I will not buy an EA game any time soon, no matter what the title or how much I loved the franchise in years past. I have had nothing but had experiences with them for years now. I really don't want to boycott ANY game company. Even SOE has redeeming moments. EA though, has consistently screwed me over each and every time I've given them a chance.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no idea why anyone would buy any game, from any publisher, that required an internet connection for online play. Mind-boggling.

I love SimCity, but would never consider this game for that very reason.

Probably because it's hard to have online play without an internet connection.

I'm more curious as to why people tolerate games that require an internet connection for solo play.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Jessified]

In fact, go out of your way to pirate EA titles. Even if you don't like the games.

Re:Was it EA.....

[g0bshiTe]

I choose to pirate all my EA games, have for years now.

Piracy is wrong, this is why other game houses releases I purchase.

Re:Was it EA.....

[luxifr]

sadly SimCity 4 doesn't modern hardware/software

it does... it even does run at 1080p...

Re:Was it EA.....

[Omestes]

I read somewhere that it had odd problems and instability issues... If it doesn't, I'm off to Steam... unless I can find some disks somewhere...

If this is true, I revise my point: why bother getting a new one, when you can just plat SimCity 4? Whats the difference between a new game, and a game you haven't touched in almost 10 years?

Re:Was it EA.....

[HaZardman27]

FWIW, while playing Civ V, my (at the time) high-end gaming PC would take forever to generate turns towards end-game. That may have had something to do with poor optimization of the Python code they ended up using for much of the game, however.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Lumpy]

Then get the torrent and crack from Pirate bay. It's more stable and safer to run than when you get from EA directly.

Re:Was it EA.....

[jaymz666]

I just installed SC4 deluxe on my 64bit windows 7 machine last night and it seems to be working OK. But yeah, an update to modern hardware specs would be nice.
CitiesXL is boring....

While I understand the games need to evolve or die, the games from Maxis are over-promising and under-delivering. Spore was nothing like it was described as. There was no evolution, it was Intelligent design at best.

My desire for a good game in this mould is being left unfulfilled.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

>I have no idea why anyone would buy any game, from any publisher, that required an internet connection for online play.

Well it's a good thing you're not a game publisher or designer, because it'd mean you completely misunderstood your market/userbase. See: Steam.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I loaded it onto a Win7 x64 Home Premium laptop from Steam and it ran fine, no issues whatsoever. It's a Dell Studio 17. First gen mobile i7, 4 GB RAM, ATI HD 4650, 2x 320 GB HDDs.

Re:Was it EA.....

[HaZardman27]

It's even worse with EA now that they've decided that they can beat Valve at their own game and require you to use the awful Origin system. There is literally no incentive to use Origin over Steam, except that many of EA's games can only be run through Origin. Unfortunately for EA, it's rare for them to release a game worth using Origin for. Mass Effect 3 was the only one for me, and now that I rarely boot into Windows, it's unplayable (not because the game doesn't work with WINE, it does, but because Origin won't work with WINE).

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to run just fine, but it doesn't run any faster than it did 10 years ago, even on brand new hardware.

SimCity 4 is still a great game, with a gazillion mods (make sure to get the NAM). However the game always had some balance issues and is overly-focused on micro-management options. If you've never played SimCity before, I'd recommend either SC 3000 or the new one over SC4.

Re:Was it EA.....

[BlackPignouf]

that required an internet connection for online play

"online". It doesn't mean what you think it means. :D

Re:Was it EA.....

[zarmanto]

Or at least get it for consoles, where DRM isn't an issue.

Incorrect. DRM is still an "issue" on consoles; it's simply an issue which is so completely integrated into the system, that most people aren't even aware of it... but the reality is that console DRM is even harder to (ahem) "work around" than PC DRM. As an example: Try to make a copy of one of your console games, and then give that copy to your best friend, so that the two of you can play online together. Go ahead... we'll wait.

Well, not really... nobody is waiting for you. But then, why should we wait, when you're exceptionally unlikely to succeed at making that copy? The thing is, the process required to make a legitimate "backup" of a game (in order to have a fail-safe should your game disc ever become scratched or damaged) is exactly the same as the process required in the piracy scenario described above. This applies pretty much to all modern consoles -- and in some cases, the DRM isn't only applied to the games, but also to the saved game data and downloadable content. One recent story which highlights this with respect to Nintendo is over at ArsTechnica.com, but these issues exist to differing degrees on both PlayStation and XBox as well.

Re:Was it EA.....

[nedlohs]

How do you propose online play working without an internet connection?

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Granted you get to play the game, but they will still keep the strange policy of forcing you to be online to be able to play. In the meantime there's plenty of other games out there without such restrictions which can be played without any hassle.

To put it this way, if they see that their online-only-required games don't sell all that well, and even stranger, people don't bother pirating it; they are going to sit down and look at ways to change. Especially when they see lots of games which doesn't require Internet connection being popular.

We get games with sane requirements, they get happy customers win-win.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Dachannien]

SimCity is worse... How exactly do you make a better version of SimCity 4?

You take your hints from the mod community, which did some awesome things with SC4 in terms of expanding road building, architecture, etc. You combine that with the new developments in automata simulation (everything in the new SimCity is a fully-simulated automaton), and you leverage increased computing power for a more accurate experience.

Instead, the new SimCity *reduces* player flexibility in these areas. You can build dirt roads up through avenues, but that's it. There are no highways in the city; the only highways depicted are in the region map, shown passing by the various city plots but not actually passing through them and not buildable by the player.

That's really the thing that kills me. It may be better than SimCity Societies, but it's still SimCity Lite, and I have no interest in going on a Sim Diet. So I guess it's back to SC4 and the various player mods.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Zcar]

The issue here appears to be many of the calculations to run the city are offloaded to EA servers and don't exist in the code you've installed on your system. Thus, offline single player is not possible and a connection is required during the whole game.

Annoying and unlikely to be worked around with a pirated version.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Cinder6]

I have no idea why anyone would buy any game, from any publisher, that required an internet connection for online play. Mind-boggling.

Assuming you mean "offline play". I've bought two games that require an Internet connection for single player--Starcraft II and Diablo 3. In both those cases, I was willing to "put up with it" (put in quotes because I never had any actual problems) because those games do sport an extensive online component, and at least in the case of D3, I spent most of my time playing with others.

That said, I wouldn't knowingly buy a single-player game that required a constant Internet connection. Why? Because I don't trust most companies to keep the authentication servers running for even a "reasonable" amount of time--neither do I trust them enough to release an official patch that removed the DRM. The only publisher I might trust would be CD Projekt Red, given the fact that they removed DRM from the retail version of The Witcher 2 two weeks after release, and because they had a DRM-free version available from day one.

Anyways, EA are clearly in the wrong here. This goes beyond ignorance of customer frustration and rushes into willful ignorance of the same. This is akin to burying your head in the sand and pretending everything is okay. Hopefully someone at EA will reverse the ban and that someone in authority will actually take this poster's message into consideration. I'm not holding my breath, though.

Re:Was it EA.....

[stephanruby]

Update: 01/29 18:00 GMT by S : The player's ban has been lifted, and it seems to have happened for an unrelated issue anyway.

Personally, if I had been EA I would have prevented the player from participating in any future *closed* betas (and I wouldn't be surprised if that's what they tried to do in this case). Clearly, that player knew he was in a "closed beta", he mentioned that fact twice at least, but apparently he doesn't seem to understand the meaning of that word "closed".

In a closed beta, the feedback you provide stays private. That's the entire point of a beta being closed. Either you email the company directly, or you post in a private forum (designated only for closed beta players), but you do not post your feedback in their public forum.

Sheesh!! The standard is becoming so high, even that word beta doesn't seem to mean anything anymore.

Re:Was it EA.....

[geminidomino]

You'd never guess to look at it, but the most hardware-taxing game I've played in years has been Minecraft.

I know chunks are deceptively large, but I still wonder if there's not some brute-force coding going on...

Re:Was it EA.....

[TheRaven64]

Alpha Centauri could take several minutes for the AI players to take their turns on a 550MHz P3. And this game was released in February 1999, several months before the 550MHz P3 was launched at a price of $700. On the other hand, back then I was paying per minute for Internet, so I probably wouldn't have wanted to offload then game engine to a big server farm somewhere...

Re:Was it EA.....

[Bogtha]

How about an execution that isn't awful? I love the Civ game series, but I've always felt let down when I go to play one and it's a buggy piece of crap, or worse, a buggy, incredibly slow piece of crap that appears to have been designed by somebody who hates users.

Re:Was it EA.....

[idontgno]

DRM is a non-issue for consoles like water is a non-issue for fish.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, i had paid for the Digital edition for 79.99, with all the additional content. I have just finished cancelling that order. EA/Origin just lost a customer until they allow me to use this game and other in the airport whiel waiting for my flight. Its a software toy for gods sake, i want to be able to use it to occupy my time when I have no other pressing business...

WTG EA

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, logos are bad. If you see something with logo on it, you should probably just start shooting wildly in all directions.

Wait a minute, is that a logo I see on your gun? OMG you're one of them! (Fires wildly in all directions).

Re:Was it EA.....

[Evtim]

That's weird! I played without much trouble Alpha C. on a slow processor (compared to 550MHz P3). No kidding. I am from poor country and at that time I could afford only slow PCs. No idea if it had anything to do with the fact it was a pirated game (how could we afford to buy the software if we hardly had the money for crappy hardware?).

The games I remember never being able to play properly because could never upgrade that fast were the Elder's scrolls. From Arena, which I tried on my first PC (386 40MHz, 4MB RAM) all the way to...wait a second, until today! Well, those guys are consistent. That is why I play now Oblivion and even Morrowind.

BTW, I got Alpha C. from GOG few months ago and they added the expansion recently, for free. What a game, I have forgotten how delicious it was! Now, I could read the manual, for instance, and was very pleased to see little touches, like that parts of it resembled popular scientific article that explained what happens on this new world (geology, ecology, etc.). Great stuff....they don't make them like that anymore.

Re:Was it EA.....

[nighthawk243]

DRM is totally an issue on Consoles, especially with EA's grudge against GameStop. Want to take your copy of Madden/FIFA/NHL/NBA/Basketweaving 2013 to your friends house to play during a party AND play online? Not gonna happen unless you want to scrounge up the 10 bucks to get a new online pass code for each friend's console.

Re:Was it EA.....

[ThurstonMoore]

To get Sim City 4 to work on a multi-core processor you need to set it to only use one core. Then it won't crash after running for a little while.

Re:Was it EA.....

[hairyfeet]

And ya know what? despite what so many have written poo pooing the idea of a boycott "poo poo they never work poo poo" the fact that EA is on the selling block along with Activision's parent company looking to restructure tells me that boycotts DO work, they just take awhile to be fully felt.

And if nothing else at the very least you aren't paying to be treated like shit. I refuse to buy any game that has always online DRM and make it clear to the company whose product I'm avoiding not only WHY I'm avoiding them but what competitor got the money earmarked for them. When D3 came out with always online DRM I wrote Blizzard a nice letter telling them that despite buying both of the previous products several times (for myself and for family/friends) this time I would be giving my money to Torchlight II instead which I bought several copies of. While ultimately nobody in a position of power may read my letter at least they know where several sales went and if enough people do the same they can certainly feel it on their bottom line.

Ultimately even if the corp doesn't hear us we have to make sure the Internet media hears us, so that the corps can't use that old scapegoat piracy as an excuse to demand more draconian copyright laws like DMCA. As it is now if we do not speak up some PHB will be trotting out a PPT and while pointing at the numbers say "If you see here we sold X number of our previous product and our focus groups say X+Y play games of that genre today so the fact that we didn't sell X+Y just proves its those dirty pirates".

But I make it clear on any discussion of the game/s I'm boycotting that neither me nor my family will have this product as long as its anti-consumer, we won't buy it, download it, it won't be allowed in our home. So make your voice heard, speak up and let the world know when you refuse to buy a game because of shitty practices and no pirating it either, that just gives them more ammo to use against us.

Re:Was it EA.....

[xeromist]

The assumption the companies have is that everyone now has an always-on connection

Not exactly. These people are smart enough to make incredibly complex games so they are aware that not everyone in the world has a constant connection...they just don't care. The majority of their potential customers have an internet connection so they are willing to piss off the minority who don't for the sake of better DRM. And the number of people who actually have the willpower and desire to boycott DRM on principle is smaller yet, albeit vocal. It's a calculated business decision to deliberately alienate a small number of potential customers for a (real or perceived) greater return.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Evtim]

Do you think it is possible to make both games more interesting by making them (much) more complicated and even more closer to reality? Let me think how to say it properly....imagine that you seriously built city planner simulation for real life cities. Now, this would probably be quite complicated, so take the light approach, the popular version so to speak, but still include as much reality as possible. Like Alpha C. but to the power of Alpha C. Go really hardcore on the "simulation" thingy.

No idea how complicated or expensive this might be. I guess you can "stretch it" almost indefinitely, until one day it is a tool for "psychohistory" calculations ;). What was the name of that device, anyway.? I have the books only in my native language; haven't read them in English and can't even remember how it was called in my language.

Maybe money would not be the biggest problem since the budgets of some recent games were worthy of Hollywood. On the other hand, would it sell so well to cover big investment? If every nerd promises to buy one, maybe they'd try:)

Re:Was it EA.....

[Githaron]

Most likely.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a calculated business decision to deliberately alienate a small number of potential customers for a (real or perceived) greater return.

It's a calculated business decision to deliberately alienate all potential customers for a perceived greater return. When in reality, it just encourages what are normally paying customers to turn to piracy.

FTFY

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure they'll have codes.

They'll be something like SDFX3-ABSD3-54DFF-24DFD to show, you bought the DLC for an alien attack, a bargain at only 5.89. And so on, for every feature that used to make a full game.

Re:Was it EA.....

[mattventura]

beta doesn't seem to mean anything anymore.

Half the time, "Beta" nowadays means "Software we aren't anywhere close to done with but still want to make public in order to generate publicity and/or revenue" (looking at you Valve).

Re:Was it EA.....

[TheNinjaroach]

that required an internet connection for online play.

I hate having to be online to play online!

Re:Was it EA.....

[Spiridios]

You'd never guess to look at it, but the most hardware-taxing game I've played in years has been Minecraft.

Minecraft seems ok, even on my underpowered server (though it does peg that CPU occasionally). Dwarf Fortress, however... Get 200 dwarves, all their pets, and livestock, then break into hell while a siege is going on. Easily goes from real-time to turn-based. And none of it is graphics processing.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Omestes]

That was always the endearing thing about the Civ games, I love them in spite of themselves. They always feel "kludgy". I think it might because they are pretty complicated, and they try to shove as much stuff under the hood (its a civ simulation, its a tabletop wargame, its educational, its a resource management game, its a social simulator, its turn based strategy...) as humanly possible. You generally have to fight with the interface for an hour or so, then you get sucked into a 10 hour gaming session. I've noticed all "4X" games fall into this, none of them have good UI, or well explained features. This has been true since Master of Orion. I've been playing GalCiv for almost a decade, and still have no clue if I'm missing something important that might be hiding behind an option, hidden on a screen I've never seen before.

How would design an easy and intuitive interface for a game as complicated as Civ?

And, too be honest, I think the creaky complexity is part of the appeal for some. 4X and strategy gamers generally relish the appearance of complexity as a thing in itself. Have you seen some of the more niche 4X games out there? There is software running at NASA or CERN with more usability, and less options. Hardcore strategy gamers are masochists, at heart.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Omestes]

I won't miss highways... I always hated them, since they were big, inflexible, and a pain to plan in advance. They also didn't have enough benefit to be worth the hassle. I generally stuck with a single ring road of them, or a single one running from border to border. Mostly I ignored them.

That said, looking at the EA forums does make me very worried. I used to enjoy SimCity on mostly a causal level, farting around with cities then sending UFOs after them when I got bored. This game sounds good for that. But occasionally I enjoyed trying to actively make the most efficient city I could, micromanaging as much as I could to maximize my statistics. For $60, I expect to do able to play both ways. I suppose I'll either wait for really good reviews (doubtful), or pick it up on sale at some point. Which is sad, since the interaction features sound pretty cool. And there really hasn't been anything to scratch my SimCity itch since SC4. I really wanted to like CitiesXL, but it is so bland and boring.

Re:Was it EA.....

[LordLimecat]

As it is now if we do not speak up some PHB will be trotting out a PPT and while pointing at the numbers say "If you see here we sold X number of our previous product and our focus groups say X+Y play games of that genre today so the fact that we didn't sell X+Y just proves its those dirty pirates".

I mean it probably doesnt help that a good number of posters here (and I imagine elsewhere) specifically say that they would buy the game but they prefer to pirate it.

Honestly the thought process of some people drives me crazy. Piracy is perceived as a problem, so publisher gets DRM. Gamer thinks piracy is kind of lame, but that DRM is even lamer and gets mad at publisher for blaming pirates; proceeds to pirate game in the name of "freedom". Gamer then wonders why publishers are having kittens over piracy.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

For some dumb reason I cannot play BF3 online when my Internet is not working and I can't communicate with Origin! EA SUXORZ! Wait...

PS: I can play BF3 one player while offline still! (why you want to after beating the campaign once is beyond me though...)

Re:Was it EA.....

[Dins]

I mean it probably doesnt help that a good number of posters here (and I imagine elsewhere) specifically say that they would buy the game but they prefer to pirate it.

Honestly the thought process of some people drives me crazy. Piracy is perceived as a problem, so publisher gets DRM. Gamer thinks piracy is kind of lame, but that DRM is even lamer and gets mad at publisher for blaming pirates; proceeds to pirate game in the name of "freedom". Gamer then wonders why publishers are having kittens over piracy.

Simple solution for publishers: release DRM free games and those who oppose DRM will buy them. Yep, some will pirate regardless, but those would also pirate DRM'd games. And yes, I know the type of DRM they are talking about for SimCity and the type Diablo 3 had makes it all but impossible to pirate, but you can see the negative backlash that is creating.

I recently got a free copy of Far Cry 3 with a new video card. I had to jump through major hoops creating an account just to try to get the damned thing working. Then I had to log in to that account every time and the game kept crashing. So I grabbed a cracked copy, installed it quickly and with no problems, and played hassle free offline. Publishers are just getting stupid with this shit.

Re:Was it EA.....

[xeromist]

The issue is that most gamers don't feel alienation and DRM doesn't stop them from buying games. Ubisoft would have gone out of business if that weren't true. In some cases I've had fellow gamers staunchly defend DRM and actually criticize my choice not to buy a game for that reason. In one other specific case I recall a friend complaining about Assassin's Creed DRM after he bought it because he didn't even know it was there. It blew my mind because it had been all over the gaming news but some people just don't check out a game before buying it.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

see, we have here the problem of "i will probably still buy it". and that's why they do what they do. because it works for them.

Re:Was it EA.....

[daddy32]

I don't think so. It makes sense for games where users share a "realm" (=> multiplayer games) - so all its computations are done at one place. But if every user needs his own "instance" of data and its processing, there is not much to be gained from centralization - the processing power needed would be multiplied by number of users.

Re:Was it EA.....

[RCC42]

To be fair, people *are* trying new things in the city builder genre, it's just not EA and Maxis doing it.

For example I am working with a small team to produce a city-builder that takes place on hostile alien planets. Lots of storms, caustic or absent atmospheres, earthquakes, fires, population control... sort of a Simcity meets FTL: Faster Than Light type game.

You can learn more about it here where we are crowdfunding to make it happen: http://www.indiegogo.com/terminusgame

Full disclosure: yeah it's my game and this is self promotion, but it's directly relevant to the discussion.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say most companies consider the word 'beta' to mean 'building pre-release marketing hype by allowing people to try the game and build a core group to praise your efforts while still being able to ignore all flaws by claiming it's not released yet'.

Of course, a lot of 'testers' seem to think it's nothing but a chance to play a game before the unwashed masses get to play.

It's always a bad sign if they either don't have a convenient way to submit issues, or their submission is via a poorly index forum and they insist that you don't duplicate posted issues. Even worse if they never reply or otherwise let the testers know what's going on.
(Worse still is when they finally do respond, but it's just to attack the posters that over the past several months have been getting increasingly belligerent because of the combination of lack of fixes and lack of response to the testers in the first place. It's human nature that if you act like you don't hear someone that you asked to help you with something, they will talk louder and louder, and finally start yelling names at you just to get you to respond. Don't ignore your testers. And yes, I've seen that happen several times.)

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Civ has pretty much covered everything now, and the only thing I really want is the Near Future stuff that was in Call To Power, along with the Religion stuff in Civ 4 and Civ 5 Gods and Kings.

What?

Civ has never been able to capture the rise and fall of civilizations and make both aspects feel fun. There are never any civil wars. You never splinter. New civs don't appear mid-game.

Civ still only tells half the story. There's plenty of room for more.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll play however EA wants you to play! Back to the fields, play time is over!

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

How exactly do you make a better version of SimCity 4?

Get rid of the grid. I don't want to build Upper Manhattan every game. Allow arbitrary-angle roads and odd-size property lots.

Re:Was it EA.....

[wierd_w]

No joke!

But a good deal of that could be handled better, by making DF a multithread aware application, by putting some process tasks into different threads, like say-- dwarven thoughts and happiness calculations, or fluid mechanics calculations.

DF will liquify one of the cores on a multicore system, and leave all the others untouched.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Em... Every game in the world required an internet connection for online play. What games do you play dude? Rope swing?

Re:Was it EA.....

[stephanruby]

Half the time, "Beta" nowadays means "Software we aren't anywhere close to done with but still want to make public in order to generate publicity and/or revenue" (looking at you Valve).

The publicity notwithstanding, does EA actually charge for its beta? I bet they don't.

I don't know the practice of Valve. I would be surprised if they charged for their beta as well.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Alpha Centauri to this day has a bunch of features that the Civilization series has never included, but it is so backward in so many other ways. There would be huge potential for a new release of the civ franchise that combined the best of both worlds (literally).

Ah well, I'll keep dreaming.

Re:Was it EA.....

[ArmchairGeneral]

Like you I was very interested in a new SimCity...with #4 being 9 yrs old, and still quite playable as the modding community is quite active and has done some remarkable things.

But this version isn't worth it. Like you said, no local saves, preset sizes (none of which are larger than the medium size in SC4...after 9 years they went backwards on region size?) No terrain editing?? I loved creating all kinds of different terrains for towns and cities to grow on. If it's this controlled I also believe there won't be any modding available, no mention of any BAT tools or the like. No subways. It's a piss poor next step, they might as well have let it die with SimCity Societies.

I only hope that someone else can come along and give us a real next-gen SimCity.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Mister_Stoopid]

I will probably still buy it,

Aaaaand this is why we can't have nice things.

Re:Was it EA.....

[ArmchairGeneral]

I liked the highways...but yes they definitely are a pain. I found I had to design the highway layout before building the city...but once I did that it was ok. I think we're both looking for a better implementation however. And in any regard, one of the great things about SC4...you had the option, something which is severely lacking in this upcoming version. I mean no subways even....what's the point.... although they could be overhauled as well.

And the really sad thing....it probably won't sell well and that could very well kill off the franchise with EA thinking nobody wants a city simulation. Rucking Fetards!

Re:Was it EA.....

[fafalone]

I would love to play some SimCity, but sadly SimCity 4 doesn't modern hardware/software,

SimCity 4 runs perfectly fine on modern hardware and software. I play it on Win7 x64; others have reported it runs fine on Win8. What's more, the community is still very active. Not only new buildings, but whole new transit networks... high speed rail, 2-10 lane highways. Things like the modular airport sets that let you build realistic airports that take up a whole large city tile (hell, I make an addon that uses 100 lots just to make the lines on the taxiways, and dozens and dozens of people use it). It's a whole new game. Drop by the community sites and look at what people are doing, and you'll see why there's still a huge group of players and add-on developers. We've made the real SimCity 5, and most of us won't be playing the new one.
And that leads to the biggest problem with the new SimCity- extremely limited to non-existent ability to add content and modify the game. I guarantee that 10 years from now, nobody will still be playing it, if EA hasn't shut it down beforehand that is.

Re:Was it EA.....

[ArmchairGeneral]

I like your idea for the game, it looks promising. And as a fellow Canadian living in BC I will donate to your cause. :)

P.S. The Douglas Adams reference was well placed.

Re:Was it EA.....

[RCC42]

Thank you muchly!

Be sure to let people know about it too, everyone who's seen it seems very keen but we are lacking coverage so far, so every view really helps us out.

If you liked the Douglas Adams reference see if you can spot the Carl Sagan theme in our first update video: http://youtu.be/KakpodIR0O8

(Hint: it's not very hidden)

Re:Was it EA.....

[Omestes]

Sounds good! Though it is scarily reminiscent of Outpost 2. I kind of think that we're living in one of the best times for gaming right now, not because of the big studios, but because indie devs. Probably over 60% of the games on my computer are indies, and they are probably at around 40% by play time, now...

"Moral is Terrible."

Re:Was it EA.....

[RCC42]

You nailed it,

Terminus is thematically inspired by Outpost 1/2. The number of problems with both games could fill a small book, but from a standpoint of imagination and /potential/ gameplay there is a lot to love, and love it I did. When I played Outpost 1 the game created a need that I never knew I had for that kind of grand city-sim in space, unfortunately Outpost failed to actually /satisfy/ that need it had created, so after years (NINETEEN YEARS) I'm trying to make Terminus to fill that void that Outpost initially created.

There are other inspirations, either for piecemeal mechanics (Alpha Centauri's social policy system has a parallel in Terminus for example) or for other gameplay mechanics. And with the abundance of hardware and software prowess available today the game is not technically difficult to make, allowing even an indie studio like us to tackle it.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Omestes]

Did you miss the point where I'm going to pick it up in a bargain bin, or Steam Sale? I'm not going to pirate it, and I'm not going to boycott it. Boycotts mean zero sales, which can be confused for zero demand. Piracy just makes you an entitled ass waving around post hoc excuses for your behavior. I'll wait until its $20, and then grab it. Depending on the reviews, of course. If they are bad (which it seems like they might be), then I won't grab it.

Notice I said reviews, not the internet hive mind. The internet hive mind thinks the world is on a perpetual state of collapse, and everything anyone does is the worst thing "EVAR". The internet hive mind told me to not buy Diablo 3, and I did, I enjoyed it for a good 100 hours (more shallow than Diablo 2, no reply value, but fun for the through nightmare). I don't actually mind always on-line games, if it adds something. Yes, Diablo 3 annoyed me, until I realized that playing pugs was more fun. the new SimCity has some value added bits. It isn't a deal breaker to me, I live in town with 99.999% uptime, and no caps. I don't play on the road (thats why God invented iPods and books). I should also be boycotting Guild Wars 2 and Planetside 2 right now, because I need to be on the internet? It just doesn't bother me much, except on an ideological level. I don't like DRM, but it has been a fact of life as long as I've been gaming, and for the most part its so much nicer than it was when I was a kid. Remember the silly wheels, and "whats the 15th word, in the seventh line, of page 52" crap?

It isn't a big deal. All I care about is if the game is fun. Its a game, not a manifesto. Life is too damn short to really give a shit.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Omestes]

I'm probably going to throw a couple bucks your way. I'd love a version Outpost 2 that doesn't make me want to bash my head into a wall. I always REALLY wanted to like those games, but they were so bad. Outpost 1 was... decent, I suppose. Outpost 2 is still the hardest game I've ever played. If you could make it over half an hour without moral collapsing, the economy collapsing, and a volcano erupting in the middle of your settlement, you felt like a god.

Are you going to have a disaster slider? Please... I still have PTSD from those games.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Omestes]

"i will probably still buy it" ... for under $20. Depending on reviews.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Omestes]

Civil Wars would be a horrible idea. Your busy conquering those pesky Roman infidels, and suddenly Ulan Batur, your main military hub, starts a war of independence. I suppose that the "anarchy" mechanics are supposed to symbolize that.

New civs popping up would be awesome, though. But mechanically it would be rather hard to make them relevant at any point after mid-game, since at that point you're pretty stable and advanced. It would be odd if they popped up as advanced as the average civ at that time, too. I'm not sure how it would work, but it would be cool.

I suppose I'd like them to include more "fine grain stuff", perhaps a version of Civ with every mechanic from every game included. From religion to spy-craft, to pollution and fallout. Perhaps even a changeable terrain, to we could have disasters, or global warming.

I just really want to be able to kill France's musketeers with my space marines though.

Re:Was it EA.....

[RCC42]

Yeah, we want to put in individual controls for each kind of disaster in the options menu before you start a new game. So you can control the frequency and intensity of meteors for example.

I realize that some people play the game as a challenge, to see how much crap gets thrown at them and to try to overcome it, but other people sort of want to build the perfect colony. We're designing the game with disasters strongly in mind, so while I wouldn't recommend turning them off it would be possible.

Re:Was it EA.....

[arth1]

SimCity is worse... How exactly do you make a better version of SimCity 4?

Easy: You re-make SimCity 3000 with today's graphics, sound, more RAM and faster multi-core CPUs, without dumbing down the gameplay to today's players or adding DRM that sucks so bad that it turns buyers into pirates.

Gameplay-wise, SC3000 was far better than SC4, in my opinion. I have both, and the former is what I have returned to.

Same with Civilization - III was great, IV ok (apart from ditching Nimoy from the voiceovers for the expansions, and the atrocious Civ IV Colonization kid game), and V just sucks in all aspects, in my opinion.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Omestes]

These days truly are the best days to be a gamer.

There is a nice line between safe (boring), and feeling like rnd has a personal vendetta against you. I could ask a bunch of questions, but I suppose I'll just follow the project. It sounds very promising, especially with different worlds and hazards. And epidemics, now that would be something awesome, especially with our current level of hardware and knowledge. Thats something I don't think anyone has done yet (outside of zombie-type games), and would be awesome in a city sim.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Tagged_84]

The in-depth simulation aspect of SimCity is where sim games are headed, there's a bajillion ways (actual figure!) to improve the sim genre and graphics are never a factor!

Civ V with Gods and Kings is a huge improvement over Civ IV and I've clocked up over 200 hours in Civ IV and over 120 in Civ V. I got into the Sim City beta and loved the simulation side but despise the online DRM and the extremely limited map size. GP mentioned "sizes" when it's just one single sized region. The amazing sim engine they are toting is pretty good, but far from perfect. Many times I saw citizens and cars colliding with each other and passing right through, that killed the immersion and promise of a fully simulated agent. I gather the traffic collisions they went on about in previews is just a bool flag for high traffic areas rather than an accurate simulation of rudimentary physics.

Thinking Civ has pretty much covered everything now is like thinking the introduction of Colour TV was the be-all-end-all. We've barely scratched the surface of what a real Civ could be, or any sim for that matter. Wake me up when every single AI agent is simulated in detail with urges, wants, needs, desires, disgust, hatred, genetics, a simulated lifespan from birth to death....

Re:Was it EA.....

[Omestes]

I don't mind V, that much. But I generally play it more "casually" than I played the other games. Its fun to dip into on a small map with 3-4 other civs. Its a good way to kill an evening. For "hardcore" I still reach for GalCiv2, which is a good way to kill a week.

The 4x genre isn't doing to well right now. There are some good but shallow games (Endless Space, Warlock), and some deep but horribly implemented games (SotS 2, Fallen Enchantress), but nothing that is actually just plain deep and good. Civ 5 is about as close as we get right now. I suppose the Total War Shogun games could be considered good, but they really aren't my style, transitioning to the tactics bits are too jarring for me.

Vanilla Civ 5 kind of sucks, outside of being a fun casual game. Gods and Kings does a lot to make it stand up to civ 3-4. Not quite, but at least competent.

For some reason I've completely forgot about SC 3k. My brain goes straight from 2000, to 4. I know I played it. I'm sure I enjoyed it. But...

Re:Was it EA.....

[Omestes]

GP mentioned "sizes" when it's just one single sized region.

Was that just a beta thing, or are they really limiting it to a one size, small, map? Not having map sizes, or having tiny map sizes, would be deal breaker. It would kill megatropolises, and planning suburbs, which was a major part of the fun (for me). Not having a terrain editor also scares me a bit. I hardly ever used it, but it was a nice thing to have for custom maps, and for people going for real cities.

I'm hoping that it isn't as bad as it seems. I'm going to be reading/watching every review I find after release...

Re:Was it EA.....

[Sable Drakon]

No, it's really not an issue. There's no activations, no serials, no software playing cybernanny on the user to make sure they're behaving. The DRM is the physical media the game is shipped on, which is freely exchangable to other users. PC games can't be treated like this anymore, and PC gaming is somewhat suffering for it. The PC gamer is treated like a criminal and punished, punished for something that they haven't even done. Getting caught in the crossfire isn't what I'd call a good customer experience.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Sable Drakon]

But isn't an issue. I can hand someone my copy of Dragon Age 2 for 360 to someone and the game will work without a single hassle. On the other hand, that same game for PC (which I bought before Origin released) won't work on anyone else's PC but mine. Why? Software activations and licensing being bound to my email address. That is a problem that does not exist at all on consoles.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Sable Drakon]

Actually, if you're not a complete moron, it is a non-issue. You can copy the online pass license file to a formatted USB device, take it to the friend's house and log in with your gamertag/PSN ID. Suddenly it works just as if you were at home, and it's so simple too.

Re:Was it EA.....

[dudpixel]

Does it have to be black and white like that?

To me requiring an internet connection just means it comes with a cost, and that means I might still buy it but the price must be lower to compensate for that cost.

Of course, there's the argument that companies that do this don't deserve our support. I dunno. The game might still be fun in its own right....wait this is EA? nah scratch that. In my experience, they tend to do really good looking games that are frustrating as hell.

Re:Was it EA.....

[ineffablepwnage]

Every closed beta I've been involved with has been 'closed' because it was open to limited numbers of people, not because there was some non-disclosure clause in the EULA. Most of them WANTED you to talk about it in public forums, since that's free advertising and when reviews talk about all the problems in the beta, the devs point to those and say 'hey, we fixed all that, any other complaints that aren't actually fixed?'

Re:Was it EA.....

[Cito]

Pick up Anno 2070

it's a futuristic Sim City with all the cool features...

now warning it's ubisoft so legitly it requires always on to play... even single player and continous mode.

but download the crack from kickasstorrents or thepiratebay and you can play without the DRM on. no need to login or have a uplay account or anything like steam or whatnot.

Anno 2070 and the Deep Ocean expansion are fucking awesome... and even better once you crack them to remove the DRM

the same will happen with the new SimCity, Anno 2070 wouldn't save locally, but Reloaded added a nice little redirect in the crack so it thinks of localhost as the server and drops the save file on your %home% directory.

ingenious crack for Anno 2070 and AC3

Re:Was it EA.....

[Cito]

it will be worked around

Anno 2070 by UbiSoft a much better game than SimCity btw did just that offloading save files, requiring always online.

Reloaded cracked it where it thinks of localhost as the server and offloads the savefiles locally as it should. They just simply redirect server calls to a local cracked dll that acts as the server... reverse engineered ftw.

I wanted Anno 2070 and expansion pack Deep Ocean really really bad but would not give in to the always on required even for single player campaign or continuous modes. Then I saw the reloaded crack and read comments on kickasstorrents that it worked perfectly and tried it and yup...

Pirates get the benefit of full DRM free games with much better performance, than legit players who have crippled, always on DRM that lower framerates and crap.

It's sad state of affairs that, it's that situation that has turned me into a pirate.

Re:Was it EA.....

[julesh]

While I do want a Simcity game, as SimCity 4 is 9 years old at this point, I can't see this new product as a Simcity game. There is no local saves. [...] At this rate, I doubt it will have any fun cheat codes as was a staple of the series.

Cheat codes? Who needs 'em? I always used to edit the save file and give myself a virtually unlimited budget. Guess that one's gone, too...

Re:Was it EA.....

[Omestes]

God bless the internet. The crack works on purchased copies right?

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

>Piracy just makes you an entitled ass waving around post hoc excuses for your behavior.

Nope, I just say "I pirated, so fucking deal with it, nerds". The only one acting like a faggot around here is you. Faggot.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Bogtha]

I don't think the genre is an excuse, and I don't think it intrinsically leads to the problems I see.

How would design an easy and intuitive interface for a game as complicated as Civ?

I'd hire a usability expert. Let me give you an example.

In Civ V G+K, when you found a religion, you have the ability to rename it. Clicking on the button to do so pops up a dialog box with a text entry field containing the existing name, which you can then edit.

Roughly 100% of the people who trigger this action will subsequently edit that text. Yet it isn't selected by default. You have to trigger the action, then select the text in order to edit it. Once you do so, the text edit box doesn't respond to any of the normal key combos for the platform. It doesn't respect the key delay or repeat rate configured for your preferences.

What's more, the feature itself is a bit odd. A religion is made up of a name, an icon and traits. You have to pick the traits, obviously, that's a game mechanic. But why should you be able to rename the religion? You can't arbitrarily rename the other aspects of the game. You can't rename technologies, or wonders, or unit types. And you can't change the icon. The feature appears to be there because a programmer figured it was easy to add it, not because somebody was thinking about what the user needed.

I'd start by using the standard platform controls for things like text entry. And I'd probably remove this feature altogether and leave it for mods if you want new religion themes.

From a performance point of view, it seems to hit the disk a ridiculous amount, even when it has more RAM than it knows what to do with, and the disk activity seems to block the UI. If you've got something like a time machine automatic backup running in the background, even things as simple as scrolling down a list of items becomes sluggish, which seems to be incomprehensibly daft.

It might seem petty to focus on such small things, but the entire game appears to be haphazardly slapped together from pieces like this, that don't work quite right, without regard for the user, and the cumulative effect of all of it leads to an unpleasant experience. There's no reason for this that I can see; it's not intrinsically impossible for Civ V to be pleasant to use - they just don't seem to try.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that is not what "Closed beta" means. Closed simply means it's invite only and you have to apply, instead of an open beta where anyone who wants to can sign up and test. What you are talking about is whether the beta had a Non-Disclosure Agreement, which is a separate issue.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

>that required an internet connection for online play

How else would it work? But I guess you mean offline play.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Jaysyn]

And makes me mad, I would love to play some SimCity, but sadly SimCity 4 doesn't modern hardware/software,

Odd. Im my experience not only does SimCity III & IV work just fine on my modern PC, SimCity 2000 SE for Windows works just as well.

Re:Was it EA.....

[hairyfeet]

And what pisses me off is the DRM never works, it would be different if they could trot out some numbers to show that when game X was DRM free they sold Y but when DRM was added they sold X+Y but nope, all that ends up happening is shit like this where a guy has to go and crack a brand new game that he just paid $60 for because the DRM has made just playing the damned thing impossible.

And I know EXACTLY how he feels as i have a bunch of games from the late 90s-mid 00s that I HAVE to use the pirate version just to play the game i bought because while the game itself has NO problems running on a 64bit modern OS the DRM is 16bit shit that if you are lucky just crashes, if not it'll try to jam 32bit kernel hooks into a 64bit kernel and fuck up the whole OS. Oh and to add insult to injury the remover that the DRM companies put out to get rid of their shit? Doesn't run on a 64bit OS! Argh!

Re:Was it EA.....

[Zcar]

If the dev's team explanations are correct, and actual simulation logic if off-loaded, you'd have to replace logic which only exists on the servers.

"...GlassBox works by attributing portions of the computing to EA servers (the cloud) and some on the player's local computer."

http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/The-Benefits-of-Live-Service

Re:Was it EA.....

[sys_mast]

Funny, most online games i know of do require an internet connection. Actually all of them do. Not sure why that's a surprise?

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a stupid comparison, Guild Wars 2 and Planetside 2 are MMOs, which by nature would require internet. Diablo 3 is not, its a singleplayer game with multiplayer, but they killed the singleplayer part of it by forcing it, for no proper reason, to be constantly online, so now it's only a multiplayer game where you can play alone. A singleplayer part of a game should never require internet.

Re:Was it EA.....

[HaZardman27]

That is why I play now Oblivion and even Morrowind.

For what it's worth, I still consider Morrowind to be the most enjoyable Elder Scrolls game. Skyrim is better than Oblivion, but only because they actually made the world interesting (like Morrowind; Oblivion was mostly boring to explore). The skill system in Oblivion and Morrowind is superior (IMO) to Skyrim, because Skyrim is much more streamlined with the elimination of athletics and acrobatics skills (I know I'm in the minority for preferring those skills, but I think they are fun to advance).

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I meant to say "offline"

Proofreading is JUST SO HARD.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Dachannien]

I won't miss highways... I always hated them, since they were big, inflexible, and a pain to plan in advance. They also didn't have enough benefit to be worth the hassle.

In that sense, art imitates life. There are lots of cities that today can't figure out where to build much-needed highways because the cities grew too fast and squeezed out all the available space.

As for their usefulness in SC4, they were pretty useless in vanilla, but some of the highway mods helped out a lot with that. You were still constrained to a grid, though, which tended to make interchanges turn into sprawling monstrosities. That's why I was really hoping that the next generation of SC would fix that, especially since CitiesXL was already doing curved roads a couple of years ago.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Cito]

Yea but Anno 2070 had the same thing it was offloading to the server even the main "Ark" you started with is loaded from the server.

it was reverse engineered and simulated locally on a localhost crack using a cracked drm by reloaded.

so the problem with simcity is very similar and can be cracked probably using same method.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Cito]

Yea

Anno 2070 Crack only - http://kat.ph/anno-2070-crackonly-reloaded-btarena-org-rar-t6007662.html

Anno 2070 full with crack - http://kat.ph/anno-2070-reloaded-t6007640.html

Anno 2070 Deep Ocean Expansion Pack - http://kat.ph/anno-2070-deep-ocean-reloaded-t6708124.html

check instructions on how to crack it and check comments, some tricks if using win7 or different flavor.

they reverse engineered the "server side" crap and use a dll that simulates the server and lets you play offline. The single player campaign is fun. But the sandbox "Continuous mode" is awesome, plus you have underwater building with submarines, and of course you can choose to go Eco friendly or Tech friendly
and can choose how many CPU controlled AI are in the continuous mode. And you can ally with them or not.

Re:Was it EA.....

[toddestan]

I've never played SimCity 4 but I thought the micromanagement in SimCity 3000 was excessive, making me quickly lose interest in the game. If SimCity 4 is worse, then holy cow. Maybe try SimCity 2000?

Re:Was it EA.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no idea why anyone would buy any game, from any publisher, that required an internet connection for online play. Mind-boggling.

online play without an internet connection? Now THAT is mind-boggling!

Re:Was it EA.....

[Zcar]

It would depend on how much of the actual players simulation logic is offloaded. Sure, you might be able to replace it locally, but then you have a different game.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Dyolf Knip]

It'd be fine, except that all the implementations make it so that it takes centuries to bring a new or damaged city up to speed. Master of Orion 1 did it much better; you can turn a brand new planet into a top-notch research/production node in just a handful of turns. Same thing with military units. It takes so much dedicated effort to make them that the loss of a few is just devastating. In reality, historically, whole new armies could be and were drawn up overnight. Actually, I think Civ4 had some kind of analog to this; you could conscript units instantly at the cost city population. It just had the same problem that maximum population growth was not even remotely appropriate.

Also, recapturing lost cities is always be a matter of grinding through it, when in reality you often just had to beat the army in the field and suddenly the cities in revolt would come begging to be let back into the fold. Point is, revolt was a constant problem, but there were more ways to deal with it than brute force military solutions.

By far the biggest problem were wars of succession, which really can't have much analog in a game where the same person pulls the strings for centuries or millennia of game time.

I've imagined a massively multiplayer game that ran at some small multiple of realtime, and would operate at pretty much every level from individual people to SimCity to Civilization. The players would occupy various positions of power: governors, city mayors, military commanders, warlords, kings and emperors, wealthy merchants, etc. The decision for a city or province to revolt, or for a barbarian tribe to ally with A to attack B, or for a trusted advisor to try to sabotage the leader's rule, etc would thus be made by a real person. And just like in real life, there'd be a lot of players itching to get up into a higher level of power at the expense of whoever is already there. You'd have to be real careful how much you trust your underlings. Since not much time would be passing, it'd be pretty much a historical period piece. No space marines vs musketeers, sadly.

Re:Was it EA.....

[Dyolf Knip]

> Wake me up when every single AI agent is simulated in detail with urges, wants, needs, desires, disgust, hatred, genetics, a simulated lifespan from birth to death....

I did like that part of the Total War series. The lifespan of your family members is a real concern. Train a son up into a terrifyingly competent commander, then he goes dies of old age? Fuck! Definitely a good start, though.

How about a massively multiplayer civ game? Run it at or nearly at realtime, so no tech tree. BUt every city, every army, everyone in any sort of position of power is controlled by a real person, all jockeying for MORE.

Except it isn't their latest game.

[Aquitaine]

It isn't EA's latest game - it's a beta test with rules and restrictions typical of beta tests.

The game doesn't come out until March. Being 'unable to log on' for three hours might be a worthy complaint after that.

Re:Except it isn't their latest game.

[The MAZZTer]

It IS a beta, and if you have a problem with it... such as being unable to log on... you're expected to report such problems (unless the devs already clearly know about it, maybe).

Re:Except it isn't their latest game.

[Grashnak]

Maybe, but banning someone for complaining about being unable to log in is still ridiculous.

Re:Except it isn't their latest game.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but you may well be restricted from telling hte whole internet about it.

I don't know in this case but it's not unusual to be under some form of NDA.

Re:Except it isn't their latest game.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have banned him too, for all we know they were stress testing the login servers.

Re:Except it isn't their latest game.

[Anonymous Coward]

Such problems were rampant in the FFXIV open beta.

Re:Except it isn't their latest game.

[Andy Dodd]

One valid question would be: Did they accidentally post something related to the beta in a public discussion forum instead of the private one related to the game?

Re:Except it isn't their latest game.

[Anonymous Coward]

The game doesn't come out until March. Being 'unable to log on' for three hours might be a worthy complaint after that.

"might be" you say... Is there some mitigating circumstance where it's okay for a released game to arbitrarily not work for some purchasers that puts that "might" in there?

Re:Except it isn't their latest game.

[Grashnak]

That's moronic. The point of forums is for people to talk about your game. Sometimes, the things they say will be stupid. That's what happens when people talk. Ban everyone with an incorrect or unjustified point and you'll have a pretty empty forum.

Re:Except it isn't their latest game.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, if that's what happened. EA has reversed the ban and is chalking it up to a bug.

I.E. Nothing to see here, move along.

Re:Except it isn't their latest game.

[Tridus]

Such feedback was explicitly allowed during the weekend beta. Game videos/screenshots were the only thing restricted.

Re:Except it isn't their latest game.

[ScienceofSpock]

If this was the most recent beta over the weekend, it wasn't a *real* beta, it was a preview weekend to bump up pre-orders that just happened to be called a beta test. You could only play for an hour at a time, probably half the content wasn't there, and every time the game ended, Origin would open the SimCity pre-order page in the store and it would open the pre-order page in your browser as well. There was no *required* post-game reporting, feedback or bug reports.

Re: Except it isn't their latest game.

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally! Been waiting for someone to announce this to everyone!

While I agree that DRM sucks and banning users from the forum (and the game!) is complete rubbish, is not really applicable here.

Re:Except it isn't their latest game.

[Tridus]

The weekend beta was open, and the feedback forums are public: http://answers.ea.com/t5/Feedback/bd-p/Feedback

Re:Except it isn't their latest game.

[sandytaru]

And SE didn't listen, and FFXIV flopped. At least for the 2.0 reboot they are taking that kind of feedback much more seriously.

Re:Except it isn't their latest game.

[TheCarp]

Agreed. Sure this is EAs sandbox, if they don't want to respect people who are playing/testing/etc their games and run their forums like a petty fiefdom, then more power to them.

And....more power to myself and everyone else who judges them accordingly for how they use their power when they have it....and again how they react when its pointed out how stupid they are being.

There is being within your rights, and there is acting right. The latter is a subset of the former, not the other way around.

Re:Except it isn't their latest game.

[Andy Dodd]

Well then that just isn't kosher.

Re:Except it isn't their latest game.

[amicusNYCL]

I.E. Nothing to see here, move along.

I wouldn't go that far. They have a bug in their system that causes people who opted out of email communication to instead get banned. That doesn't exactly inspire confidence that EA knows what they're doing. Regardless of whether the ban was intentional, it's reasons like this that they have such a shitty reputation.

Re:Except it isn't their latest game.

[CanHasDIY]

I would have banned him too, for all we know they were stress testing the login servers.

Then you're probably one of those pointy-headed idiots that has no business being in charge of anything.

Re:Except it isn't their latest game.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say SimCity better be really great to make up for all that.

Re:Except it isn't their latest game.

[zarmanto]

Ban everyone with an incorrect or unjustified point and you'll have a pretty empty forum.

More importantly: ban just one person who knows enough to login to his Slashdot account afterwards, and you'll end up suffering the Streisand effect. At that point, it doesn't matter in the least whether or not the complainant's point was justified... they have just had a potentially significant negative impact on your business, all because you decided to foolishly attempt to censor a respectfully submitted opinion, instead of engaging in an intelligent discourse on the matter.

Re:Except it isn't their latest game.

[Bigby]

Like how when someone says something un-PC on twitter they chalk it up to someone hacking into their account.

Re:Except it isn't their latest game.

[seventy-nine]

Well, he did write "Other wise", didn't he ?

Re:Except it isn't their latest game.

[Anonymous Coward]

Plenty to see here.

EA disables access to your games when you get banned, has low-quality development that results in random bans getting handed out, you can randomly lose access to your offline-only games because of their business decisions which place a higher priority on control of even offline games then consumer rights.

I love the SimCity series

[i kan reed]

And I have no reason to think the gameplay of this latest iteration is bad. But I'm never going to buy it. Ever. I don't care if that doesn't influence EA to stop being terrible, but all I can ever do is not buy their stuff.

If you must play this game(and you don't) please pirate it. Please.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Anonymous Coward]

At least the pirate version will work in disconnected mode.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Abstrackt]

If you must play this game(and you don't) please pirate it. Please.

Personally, I think it sends a stronger message to tell the company "your product isn't even worth pirating" than to establish that there is in fact demand for it despite the issues.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[mjr167]

I'm with you. I loved Sim City and the Sims until Origin. Now I won't buy another EA game.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[ddxexex]

If you must play this game(and you don't) please pirate it. Please.

I never like it when people suggest pirating software as a form of protest, if you think the DRM is too intrusive, don't buy the game at all. For the bad car analogy, Let's say you don't like On-Star because you think its too intrusive. You see a car you like, but it only comes with On-Star. So to protest On-Star you steal a car. That's not protesting it's an excuse to steal.

If you must play the game, buy it, feel guilty about not sticking to your morals, then attempt to forgive yourself by donating to the EFF or something.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[brxndxn]

I think it would send the strongest message if they could see the following:

- sales rates go up when games have less DRM
- piracy goes up when games have more DRM independent of sales rate
- EA sales would increase if EA stops being assholes
- EA does not see any of this because EA's head is in its ass

Re:I love the SimCity series

[The123king]

If you get a better gameplay experience from pirating software instead of buying it (as is the case here) it just shows how horribly broken the retail version is. That's the sign of poor management and terribly implemented DRM.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that there IS a demand for new Sim City games and many gamers would very much like them to continue making them.
"Buying" the DRM-free version seems like the only way to send the correct message.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[fermion]

Simcity is one of the few video games that I played and bought. They lost me when they required media to play the game. I don't pirate games, I buy then and play them. When you inconvenience me and treat me like a criminal, I don't buy them anymore.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[JamesTRexx]

I've bought the previous 3 Simcity games because I love the casual experimenting I can do with it, but when I first heard about the always online requirement I decide not to buy it, nor get a "liberated" copy.
I've bought games while running the pirated versions so I'd not be bothered by always use CD in tray, etc., but something like that I find less offensive than EA's scheme.

It's a shame that Simcity 4 will probably be the last version I'll play...

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Anonymous Coward]

But downloading a version of a game improved by a 3rd party to be able to run offline isn't stealing.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[PhilHibbs]

Why would the product not be worth pirating? If it's a good game other than the always-online side, why pretend that it isn't? If you want to send a message to a company, make it accurate. Slinging mud at every aspect of a game, when it's just the DRM that's a problem, will not get DRM issues addressed.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

If you must play a SimCity-style game, consider the alternatives like Lincity, OpenCity, or Micropolis. And let EA know why you're not going to buy their game.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[i kan reed]

Nope. I'd rather that people steal than support systematic oppression. The natural preference is for neither(as I indicated), but I have a much stronger disdain for the carefully planned and meticulous evil that corporate America is involved in.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[tompaulco]

I have always in the past bought and paid for the Simcity series. It was a fun game to me and worth rewarding them with the encouragement to make new and better versions. However, even though I bought the game, I still downloaded the No CD crack. I hate having to switch discs in and out of the tray every time I want to play something different.
With this latest version, I will be waiting for the No CD crack AND the offline play crack. With the way the game is setup, it may not even be possible for there to be an offline play crack. in which case, I just won't participate at all.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Anonymous Coward]

At least the pirate version will work in disconnected mode.

No, it'll have to be much more than just a DRM crack. A large part of the simulation is actually processed on the EA servers, so we'll need to look for someone to crack the server communication protocols and then build a counterfeit server application to fill in the missing functionality. This version of SimCity is built like a MMO, it's not just a game with DRM that forces you to be online.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would the product not be worth pirating? If it's a good game other than the always-online side, why pretend that it isn't? If you want to send a message to a company, make it accurate. Slinging mud at every aspect of a game, when it's just the DRM that's a problem, will not get DRM issues addressed.

The message that pirating the game sends is not "I disagree with your DRM" it is "your DRM is not invasive enough to force me to pay for your game."

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Lothsahn]

- sales rates go up when games have less DRM

For certain types of DRM, I would agree with you. For instance, if you're some random company that's developing a city building game and your users are unable to login for THREE HOURS and require an ALWAYS ONLINE connection for an OBVIOUSLY OFFLINE game, I think you have an argument that it's going to hurt sales. A lot.

On the other hand, DRM does have a positive impact on sales when implemented reasonably. For a well written article on how it helps, see here: http://www.windowsusers.org/piracy.html

From the article:
"Besides, the mantra kept repeating in our heads: five times as many registrations, five times, five times. I don’t think it ever was quite that good for us, but we definitely saw an increase in sales that helped Ambrosia weather some tough times."

So there are companies out there with "reasonable" (as defined by most users) DRM schemes such as Steam and Ambrosia software. This DRM prevents casual sharing but doesn't impact paying end users excessively. In those cases, DRM is a positive thing for sales. In Ambrosia's case, it may have prevent bankrupcy, which would have been bad not just for Ambrosia, but also for its paying customers (bankrupt companies cannot provide support).

Re:I love the SimCity series

[ericloewe]

Or: Buy the game and grab a pirate version that allows you to play without their Origin crap.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Anonymous Coward]

>You see a car you like, but it only comes with On-Star. So to protest On-Star you steal a car. That's not protesting it's an excuse to steal.

But what if I just copied the car, minus On-Star? Who is harmed, considering I wasn't going to buy it in the first place?

Re:I love the SimCity series

[WrecklessSandwich]

Did you seriously just go full-on YOU WOULDN'T DOWNLOAD A CAR!!!!1 on Slashdot?

Re:I love the SimCity series

[VanessaE]

Pirating IS a form of protest if you declare it as such, not that it necessarily does any good.

As for your car analogy, yours is flawed. To use your example, the more correct way to put it would be where you buy a car with OnStar, where OnStar is a feature you happen to like, but you don't like their theoretical ability to track you. So, you decide to hack[*] the car's systems to selectively disable anything that could be used to track you without compromising your ability to actually USE the rest of the service. But to do so would require changes that would put you in violation of the car's warranty, or OnStar's service agreement or acceptable usage policy (I'm sure they have one), or some obscure law.

It becomes a question of which is more ethically right: protecting your rights by any reasonable means, or only being able to use the goods you purchased according to some ridiculous, perhaps unconscionable set of rules?

[*] and I mean that in the proper sense of the word.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[zzsmirkzz]

I never like it when people suggest pirating software as a form of protest, if you think the DRM is too intrusive, don't buy the game at all.

The problem with this is the suits will blame the lost sales on a bad game, not on the DRM unless you can demonstrably show that people DO like the game and are willing to WORK to play it, so long as the DRM isn't in their way. By separating the two issues (piracy does allow this in a fuzzy-math way), one can see that a game is popular, by piracy rates, but sales for it are low and cause the bean counters to investigate why as it obviously isn't the game itself that is the problem; priced too high, DRM too intrusive, etc.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, I can think of one case where DRM would have lost two sales from my family had it been implemented:

I bought a humble indie bundle, thrown in was a temporary activation key for Minecraft Beta. I had a week to try it out, at the end of the week I was sad to see it go, but didn't really see spending the money. I logged in the last day and saw I wasn't locked out yet, so I plays some. The next morning, I thought, "I wonder if I am locked out yet?" So I logged in, got a 'failed to log in' message, with a 'play offline' button showing up. Clicked it, everything played just fine, though in the corner it said "unlicensed copy :(" I didn't worry too much about that, I figured I'd play for the day. I kept playing for a while and eventually tried to buy the game, but they had some weird issues with accepting payment and for 3 days I tried to give them my money and they kept rejecting it. The game eventually came out of Beta, and since I didn't get updates with my lack of license I eventually tried to give them my money again, because at this point I was having a blast with the game and wanted the new features. They took my money, I got the released version. Eventually, I got my wife to buy a key and we started a server, I plan to eventually get my son (4) a key as well. Had they locked me out at the end of my trial period, those two sales (and one potential sale) wouldn't have happened, and I wouldn't be addicted to Minecraft.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Jeng]

The only time to send that message is when it is true, otherwise you remove the motivation for them to do anything.

Pirate the fuck out of it and let them know as anonymously as possible that you are not alone in wanting a modified version of their product and that you would still buy the product if they fixed it.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[suomynonAyletamitlU]

I'm tempted to think that EA would not draw a distinction between enlightened users refusing to buy out of protest, and lack of demand for that type of product. In other words, if lowest-common-denominator games sell despite DRM but niche genre games do not, all they'll say is "SimCity doesn't sell", or "City building games don't sell", etc. At worst, they begin to think that ONLY lowest-common-denominator games are worth putting out.

Piracy at least says "This game WOULD have sold", even EA leadership still ascribes it to malice rather than protest.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Jeng]

Well the companies making games will have a choice to make, do they put their best effort into the game or the DRM.

Any company that cares more about their own products and customers will choose the game, any company that cares more about their shareholders opinion will choose DRM.

And I do believe that that is the primary motivation, the shareholders opinion that the company is practicing due diligence.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[mattventura]

The bean counters would investigate, and would conclude that because of the high piracy, the DRM wasn't strict enough.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time someone calls copyright infringement "stealing", the DRM goons grow stronger.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Anonymous Coward]

please point me to where i can find "well implemented DRM"

in the eyes of a legitimate user DRM is always terribly implemented.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Anonymous Coward]

If you must play this game(and you don't) please pirate it. Please.

If you must play the game, buy it, feel guilty about not sticking to your morals, then attempt to forgive yourself by donating to the EFF or something.

I'm not going to condone piracy but your argument makes no sense. You're suggesting that someone that can't stick to their morals (purchasing a game with DRM they disagree with) behave morally (doesn't pirate). Surely if they're going to feel guilt over having no morals they're not going to let morals get in the way of getting the game for free. I mean sure you can ask for them to behave otherwise, but it sounds ridiculous - you may as well ask them to buy a pony from EA.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[RocketRabbit]

"- sales rates go up when games have less DRM
- piracy goes up when games have more DRM independent of sales rate"

Why would they see these things when they aren't true? I mean, yeah, it'd be nice if they were true but they aren't.

The thing is, sure, you might get a few people to abstain from a game because of intrusive DRM as a moral decision, but ultimately they are mere drops in a bucket. The majority of people out there will buy a game because they want it, regardless.

Then the company looks at TPB and sees that their games are being pirated, whether or not they have DRM. One would suppose that this would cause a company like EA to give up on DRM but you don't understand how they think. They *know* that a portion of people pirating that game would have purchased it, had the DRM been strong enough to prevent the piracy, and so the wheel turns.

Ultimately I think sooner or later game companies will make use of trusted computing base type technologies and serve serialized, encrypted binaries from the Internet which will be locked to a given PC. Whether or not this actually increases sales is another question, but clearly EA is going to be the first to try this.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Anonymous Coward]

So to protest On-Star you steal a car.

Not really. There's no explicit difference between the car that you might have bought and the car you stole. They both have On-Star. That's not what we're talking about here. Nobody is going to download a pirated version of SimCity that still has the DRM intact.

A more accurate analogy would be that you buy (or otherwise come into possession of) a stolen car that had the On-Star removed.

Also, I'm not a huge fan of conflating copyright infringement with theft. You might as well have went with a rape analogy instead.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Daetrin]

I'm not saying people _should_ pirate the game, but your car analogy kinda sucks.

How about this, the car company comes out with a brand new car with octagonal wheels. The octagonal wheels make it harder to steal, but it does function as a car. Barely. (Except of course that a small percentage of buyers will find upon delivery that their new car actually has square wheels and won't budge at all.) The wheels are attached with special nuts that need a special tool to be removed, and the design of that tool is protected by the DMCA. So removing those nuts so you can replace the octagonal tires with round ones is a felony.

But then you discover some people have illegally gotten ahold of the plans for the car. They're willing to let you have a copy, and even use their giant 3D printer to print out the car for free. And oh yeah, they've already replaced the stupid octagonal tires in the plans with regular round ones.

It's a pretty silly thought experiment, but it would still theoretically be illegal and about matches the situation with the new SimCity. At least a lot more so than stealing a car just because you happen not to like On-Star.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[The_Revelation]

This situation reminds me of a similar issue I had (and still have) with Blizzard regarding their Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 games. Only two online DRM games I own, only two games I had to pirate AFTER I had paid money in order to be able to bloody play! Its the single reason I will never buy another Blizzard product again in my life. Thanks, Blizzard!

EA may be a completely shit gaming company, but they can't be nearly as incompetent as Blizzard.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Lothsahn]

... The game eventually came out of Beta, and since I didn't get updates with my lack of license I eventually tried to give them my money again, because at this point I was having a blast with the game and wanted the new features. They took my money, I got the released version.

But... that was DRM, and you just proved my point. Because you didn't have a valid license key, you couldn't receive software updates, join public servers, and you were getting nagged that you hadn't bought the software. That is an example of well-implemented DRM.

This is similar to the DRM that I was advocating in my post. In fact, the article I linked above, talks about Captain Hector, who's described in this link:
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/support/faqs/products/escape-velocity/Does-Captain-Hector-serve-any-real-purpose

Just like Minecraft, the DRM doesn't prevent you from playing the game if you don't pay. If the payment servers are down, you can still play for a while. However, over the next few weeks, it slowly nags you more and more aggressively until you pony up. Once you do activate the game, it's activated forever and doesn't require the internet to play. This is stronger DRM than Mojang had in Minecraft, but I consider it very acceptable. It's NOTHING like "If our activation servers aren't available right now, you can't play your game (SimCity)."

I buy games with the above (acceptable) DRM, which means that Steam, Stardock, Mojang, and Ambrosia software are all companies I would purchase from. I will not be purchasing SimCity.

Stardock's stance on DRM (and software return/quality policies):
http://www.gamepolitics.com/2008/08/29/stardock-releases-gamer039s-bill-rights-pax#.UQhQT2eS98E

Re:I love the SimCity series

[steelfood]

Actually, it's more like protesting On-Star by 3D printing a car exactly like the one you saw, but just without the On-Star integration.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Mister_Stoopid]

I think you're overestimating EA's desire to engage in actual market analysis. Piracy hysteria and frantic demands for ever douchier DRM come from corporate management and are based on ego-driven assumptions or political agendas. Factual data about who's pirating and who's buying have no relevancy whatsoever.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Pseudonym Authority]

That's a small issue. Most popular MMOs have `private' (or, `pirate', as the terms are used interchangeably) servers.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Anonymous Coward]

It is amazing how such a small event can totally cripple someone's life. I hope we can find a cure for the autism induced my minecraft soon.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Anonymous Coward]

But those fucking suck.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[AK Marc]

But it's legal to buy a car with OnStar, not pay for the monthly service, and remove it yourself. But with software, putting on a new set of tires is illegal. Not just "void your warranty" illegal, but FBI raiding your home illegal.

If you have to break the law to remove OnStar, then you might as well steal the car. If you are caught with it you'll be thrown in jail either way.

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Anonymous Coward]

Your analogy is broken. What you really mean is if people leaked the blueprints and 3D-printed their own cars without the crap in protest.

CAPTCHA: herded

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Jaysyn]

I don't know about you, but I'd download a car in a half a heartbeat.

Demolition derby FOREVER!

Re:I love the SimCity series

[WrecklessSandwich]

Ask and ye shall receive: http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/6960965/1970_Chevelle_Hot-Rod_3d_model

Re:I love the SimCity series

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Cities XL, way better and more options (and curved roads)

My $.02

[cstream_chris]

As part of the closed beta, just want to report I've had no issues at all, logging in to play the game. Granted, I didn't attempt on launch day, but it's been pretty decent. I was more upset with the limited playtime (limited to 1 hr) and inability to save anything. Also, a lot of the full game functionality is disable. Anyway, don't think it's right what EA is doing in terms of banning users posting negative reviews, but I suppose it's their site and they have every right to do as they please. Unfortunately for folks, this means fans of the game have to suck it up and deal with the EA BS, but at least they've finally released a new version of the game after years. Cheers.

Re:My $.02

[snemarch]

Unfortunately for folks, this means fans of the game have to give EA the middle finger and pirate it, or simply not buy the game, but at least they've finally released a new version of the game after years.

There, FTFY.

Re:My $.02

[Anonymous Coward]

Or stick to your principles, avoid crap like this, allow this to chip away at EA's bottom line and maybe we can get some progress....

but monkey see, monkey want...

Re:My $.02

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi chris, can you provide me your EA Forum nick? That alone would suffice.
Thanks,
- EA Forum Team

Re:My $.02

[aalex675]

He told me his nick is: ' OR 1 = 1; DROP TABLE Users

- Glad I could help

Re:My $.02

[GameboyRMH]

Dammit where are my mod points...

Re:My $.02

[Anonymous Coward]

DROP TABLE is so boring. You get a short period of server 500 errors until someone restores from a backup. For a good time try: UPDATE users SET admin = !admin

Re:My $.02

[tompaulco]

As part of the closed beta, just want to report I've had no issues at all, logging in to play the game. Have you had any luck NOT logging in and playing the game? Because that is what I am most interested in.

Re:My $.02

[zlives]

EA stock is down to 15 dollars from a high of 53 in 2008, i think they should listen to what the market has been telling them.

Re:My $.02

[AK Marc]

But Bobby Admin doesn't have the same ring.

Solution is so simple..

[Anonymous Coward]

STOP buying EA games.

Re:Solution is so simple..

[Anonymous Coward]

But they keep buying the game series and studios I like!

Re:Solution is so simple..

[rebusbakery]

Seconded. There are plenty of good games out there that this once respectable company now turned evil do not own. Too bad as I was really looking forward to playing this one. The second I saw that EA globbered it I knew it was good bye. Now I hear the game runs in the cloud (sims on EA servers,) once again showing how wrong headed the whole cloud computing concept is, except for those who think they will cash in on total ownership and control of your digital world.

Here here!

[thesinfulgamer]

I'm in the Beta. I think it's OK but they screwed the pooch for it. Really? only an hour of one map? isn't the point to test EVERYTHING in the game? Plus yeah, the always on DRM sucks ass. (I can't play because my internet is gone)

Re:Here here!

[Anonymous Coward]

Where where?

Re:Here here!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in the Beta. I think it's OK but they screwed the pooch for it. Really? only an hour of one map? isn't the point to test EVERYTHING in the game?
Plus yeah, the always on DRM sucks ass. (I can't play because my internet is gone)

But you posted on here... magic internet?

But to be serious, this isn't really a Beta test, not in the true sense of the word. It's more accurate to call it a last-minute stress test combined with a limited preview, the goal isn't to test most of the gameplay it's to drum up publicity and (hopefully) get some free word-of-mouth marketing.

As for the DRM, it's not just an online check. The simulation is largely run on their servers, much like how a MMO like WoW works, and you can't play a fully isolated sandbox city/region- you are still influencing and influenced by the Global economy. I don't like the design choice myself, but in this context any form of offline play, saves, etc. is simply an open invitation to hack the game all to hell.

Note to all pirates out there- this isn't going to be a simple DRM crack. We'll have to wait for someone to write emulated server software, in addition to a client crack, and that might prove to be a very difficult task. Unless someone manages to get access to the source code for their servers, or some kind of detailed blueprint of how the backend of their game engine works. And even then, it might prove to be too compute intensive for most systems to handle.

Re:Here here!

[Omestes]

This is a modern "Beta", and not a bona fide beta, i.e. a publicity beta. Its just like the "beta" for Diablo 3, limited content ("so, if anything is broken after the first half, of the first act or clvl 15, how will you ever know?"), the game is already finished, and they really don't care about feedback, they just want you to talk about it and post videos on Youtube. I was in the Guild War 2 beta at roughly the same time as the D3 beta, and they continually asked for feedback and bugs, they encouraged you to post every flaw or concern on the forums, and generally the devs were very receptive to all comments (outside of the whining ones). In short, it was an actual testing beta.

SimCity had a closed beta, and this was probably the real beta, where bugs got fixed, and feedback submitted (and generally ignored). Right now your just supposed be intrigued, and preorder, and perhaps tell your friends that it is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Though why anyone ever pre-orders anything is a complete mystery to me.

Re:Here here!

[thesinfulgamer]

Cellphone ;)

Clearly a terrorist

[Anonymous Coward]

"... otherwise you will be in for lot of trouble."

Who else would write such a thing but a terrorist threatening to blow up the headquarters?

Article is missing?

[erpbridge]

Where is the link to the actual article? All this posting is, is a link to EA's website and a bunch of photo-hosting site pictures. Has the user actually engaged EA's customer support over email to appeal the ban? Would like if there was an actual story, because as it currently stands, this seems to be just one person posting anecdotal information that is focused on a single person, not a widespread group.

Re:Article is missing?

[SYSS Mouse]

Well if the person is indeed banned, the post is most likely deleted.

Re:Article is missing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some things don't have to happen more than once to still be wrong. This is one of those cases.

Re:Article is missing?

[tonywong]

Original post is still cached on google.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Y48LvBtM0PgJ:answers.ea.com/t5/General-Discussion/EA-is-Suffering-from-the-Issues-of-Always-Online/td-p/418246+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Re:Article is missing?

[squiggleslash]

It also appears to be on EA's site: http://answers.ea.com/t5/General-Discussion/Last-Plea-For-Offline-Mode/m-p/418246#M2693

I'm a little confuzzled by the story. Nothing here makes sense. Is it possible EA disabled the wrong user account, and has since re-enabled it?

EA needs to wake up.

[kodabmx]

The Sims series has always been a poorly written piece of bloatware IMHO, Takes ages to load, run choppy on modern equipment, and crashes regularly. EA needs to wake up and realize their own anti-piracy implementation is alienating their customer base. There is a reason the HumbleBundle always makes money, for instance!

Your first mistake...

[Anonymous Coward]

was in buying a game from EA.

If gamers would stop buying from EA, this problem would resolve itself.

Re:Your first mistake...

[i kan reed]

The first mistake was keeping DRM legal. There should be standards of use for all consumer-grade copyrighted products, and letting companies decide is fundamentally unhealthy for a free-market economy. Any variations on such a standard license should require a physical contract signed by both parties.

Re:Your first mistake...

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM is beyond legal, it is illegal to circumvent, so DRM is not just allowed by law, it is in itself PART of the law in essence.

beta?

[DaWhilly]

Beta user complains because Beta doesn't work and criticizes the company. Company bans user from logging into the Beta game. User posts the fact they were banned and will most likely never buy the app. News how?

Re:beta?

[X0563511]

More like beta user submits valid beta feedback and is banned for their trouble.

That smells the same way asking for someone's opinion then punching them when they give it to you does.

Re:beta?

[Stoutlimb]

"We were stress-testing our beta servers so shut your mouth bitch" as a reply to that post probably would not have gotten EA any bad publicity. Deleting that post would probably never be noticed. It sounds like the forum team is due for a shareholder mandated witch hunt.

Re:beta?

[ildon]

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/17e1ap/result_of_my_previous_ea_ahq_ban_post/

Re:beta?

[X0563511]

Well, that is indeed a WTF-worthy bug, but it sounds like they are addressing it appropriately. Credit to them for that.

EA Overlords

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one, welcome our new DRM based overlords. ..but only when the DRM servers are up

DRM = NO SALE

[Kaitiff]

I was an avid Diablo and Diablo II player. Same with Starcraft. These games gave me endless hours of enjoyment in some cases decades after release. I have not and will not purchase either Starcraft II or Diablo III. I am a 'lost sale' because of the WAR on gamers by the studios. Any game I purchase, in a store or otherwise, that I can't play at my leisure now or at any time in the future because the creator or owner of the license shuts down a server, or stops supporting the game will not be in my inventory.

Re:DRM = NO SALE

[Ravaldy]

Unfortunately you're a minority because game sales have never been so high. I 100% agree with you that DRM is bad since it doesn't bring any benefits to the single player experience. I think game companies should continu providing good multiplayer experiences in hopes that drives piracy down.

Re:DRM = NO SALE

[Anonymous Coward]

game sales have never been so high

Just think of how much higher they could be. The vocal minority still costs EA/Blizzard/Ubisoft money and the apathetic majority would not be swayed contrarily by such freedom.
 
  The data mining goodness would suffer, however. AGAIN I'll say it: Once our purchase is complete, we're done. I am not your new BFF nor your data gravy train. Get out of my life!
 
I'm itching for a D2X mod tonight, methinks.

Re:DRM = NO SALE

[Anonymous Coward]

You can play Starcraft 2 Singleplayer offline as well. As long as you log in once, and authenticate your copy, the game works even if you are offline.

Re:DRM = NO SALE

[ildon]

Diablo, Diablo 2, and Starcraft 1 all had DRM. You had to have the disc in the drive (even if all data was on your hard drive) and they used cd keys to limit online play. If "DRM = NO SALE" then you can't play those games either.

Re:DRM = NO SALE

[stretch0611]

I was an avid Diablo and Diablo II player. Same with Starcraft. These games gave me endless hours of enjoyment in some cases decades after release. I have not and will not purchase either Starcraft II or Diablo III. I am a 'lost sale' because of the WAR on gamers by the studios. Any game I purchase, in a store or otherwise, that I can't play at my leisure now or at any time in the future because the creator or owner of the license shuts down a server, or stops supporting the game will not be in my inventory.

Unfortunately you're a minority because game sales have never been so high.

He may be in the minoriy, but I think it is a significant minority... I can make the same caim as Kaitiff.

Instead of Diablo III, I bought Torchight (and then bought it again for the linux version when it appeared on the humbebundle.) While I have not seen an exact replacement for Starcraft, there are a ton of different RTS games to fill the void.

As for sales, the industry is growing because the market is expanding everywhere (phones, tablets, consoles, social networks, and even app stores for web browsers). In addition, compared to 10-20 years gaming is now an acceptable form of entertainment. Its is no longer symbolized by a geek sitting in front of a computer for days on end... now anyone and everyone can game casually... and do it everywhere (thanks mostly to smartphones.) Also, while huge applications are still expensive, with app stores and indie sites, there has been a virtual explosion of games for $5 and under.

So, increasing sales is not a valid counterpoint against the idea of a growing number of gamers revolting against DRM. We may be a minority, but we are vocal, and we are significant.

As for EA, you used to be a good company... back in the 8-bit days. Now, the last game I bought from you was Command & Conquer 3. I was in the Beta Test for Red Alert 3, but avoided it due to DRM. I will NEVER buy anything else from you until DRM is gone... completely gone. That includes PopCap (which I liked until you bought them), android games, and even back titles through GOG.com. Even though some things may not have DRM,(e.g. GOG titles) I don't like the idea of EA making a profit when the company doesn't give a damn about their customers. Selling games is about making them good, not forcing people to upgrade by deactivating old titles, or suppressing honest opinions.

Re:DRM = NO SALE

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but that minority is ever expanding with this bull shit that EA is continuing to push out for all of its crapware. I have not and will not buy any game that 1 requires Origin, and 2 requires always on DRM.

So here is another lost customer for EA.

Re:DRM = NO SALE

[zzsmirkzz]

Reading comprehension test - Fail!

Any game I purchase, in a store or otherwise, that I can't play at my leisure now or at any time in the future because the creator or owner of the license shuts down a server, or stops supporting the game will not be in my inventory.

Emphasis, mine. Obviously, with Diablo, Diablo 2 and Starcraft 1's DRM, this wasn't an issue as the authentication was offline and will work for as long as you have hardware/OS that can run it.

Re:DRM = NO SALE

[antdude]

Ditto. I refuse to buy and use stuff that require DRM. No thanks. That's OK since I have no time thse days like gaming. :(

Re:DRM = NO SALE

[antdude]

Ditto. I also beta tested RA3. I did not like the game as well! C&C4 was awful. :( Frak gaming these days (also no time and energy).

Re:DRM = NO SALE

[Ravaldy]

Stretch. I second that. There are EA games I still love but they aren't DRM. So in a way I have avoided their DRM games. What happened to this user is unacceptable especially considering that his write up was very professional.

Unfortunatley for us older gamers, we are stuck dealing with those who don't care about DRM. I'm talking about the millions of kids for which games are purchased by their parents.

Re:DRM = NO SALE

[ildon]

I was pretty obviously just make a curt remark regarding your unnuanced, attention-grabbing topic.

As a longtime Sim City player, I am sad

[Isca]

This setup is the stupidest thing to come down the pike in a long time. I can understand having the DRM to be able to play online. What I don't understand is why there is not an offline mode that does not allow you to take advantage of all the online only features and who's gameplay doesn't affect the online version. And the article shows just how far they have gone into looney land - no constructive feedback allowed. This will be literally the first Sim City I will not own. I have bought literally every version of it over the years including the original Sim City.

Re:As a longtime Sim City player, I am sad

[Eightbitgnosis]

I sure there will be an offline version put out by a certain Bay with pirates in it soon enough

Re:As a longtime Sim City player, I am sad

[Anonymous Coward]

exactly this. just get the fixed version later, no drm hassle, offline mode for the singleplayer mode included etc pp.
sorry to say, but this is the sad truth. i baught the latest anno2070 version, because i really like that franchise... thanks to the drm crap, i had to get a "fixed version at the p-bay"... now, why should i even bother to buy the next allways online game? just to experience the same fucking problems again? thanks, but no thanks. i'll just get the fixed version directly next time.

Re:As a longtime Sim City player, I am sad

[alen]

from what i have read the game is always online because every city is part of the simcountry or whatever. every city will be affected by events in other players' cities

Re:As a longtime Sim City player, I am sad

[Anonymous Coward]

This will be literally the first Sim City I will not own. I have bought literally every version of it over the years including the original Sim City.

Literally? Literally literally literally? Literally literally.

I'm having a hard time picturing a complete lack of an offline mode, not when project designers have been quoted as saying that SimCity (2013) was "designed from the ground up to be moddable". Exactly how would that work in an always-an-MMOG type of game? Especially if you consider things like the Network Addon Mod in SimCity 4, which not only added a ton of traffic network stuff, but also rewrote the traffic pathfinder to fix glaring errors in it.

I also have my doubts as to how well it'll work as a persistent-world type of game to begin with. Unlike, say, WoW, the main player unit in SimCity is an entire freaking city, and those don't tend to move around much. If your city happens to be plopped down in an area surrounded by assholes and/or players who just never log in to improve their cities, either you're screwed or they have to introduce some absurd concept of cities moving freely to find new neighbors. The SimCity series has had some crazy silly elements from time to time, but something like that would shoot right the hell past "suspension of disbelief".

So, I'm holding off on buying SimCity (2013) when it hits, but I'm not entirely writing off the possibility of an offline mode just yet. As of right now, I'm convinced the no-offline-mode thing was just for the already-crippled beta, and I'm withholding judgment on that until I see a release copy.

Re:As a longtime Sim City player, I am sad

[Anonymous Coward]

I sure there will be an offline version put out by a certain Bay with pirates in it soon enough

Michael Bay?

Re:As a longtime Sim City player, I am sad

[amicusNYCL]

That's the justification that EA uses to explain why they need the DRM. In other words, that's them explaining why the DRM is actually a feature instead of a hindrance. There's no technical reason why a player shouldn't be allowed to play offline and not be part of the online community.

Re:As a longtime Sim City player, I am sad

[gl4ss]

you're the lgr dude? including bbc-micro version, educational version etc??

()

Re:As a longtime Sim City player, I am sad

[ultranova]

every city will be affected by events in other players' cities

So it's gonna be a griefer's paradise?

Re:As a longtime Sim City player, I am sad

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, I might just play Michael Bay's Sim City...

Re:As a longtime Sim City player, I am sad

[Dragonslicer]

The graphics are awesome, but the story line is terrible.

Re:As a longtime Sim City player, I am sad

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes they made a perfect single player game into a sub-par multilayer game. NOT EVERY GAME NEEDS MULTILAYER IN IT!!! there are many times that offline single player experience is much more rewarding, satisfying, enjoyable then having to deal with people online.

Sim City 2 was the pinnacle of the franchise.

Re:As a longtime Sim City player, I am sad

[fafalone]

You seem to be implying that if you bought it, you would "own" it. And you'd find out just how wrong that was in a few years when EA shuts down the server and all your cities are gone and you can no longer play the game.

Among the community that's still playing SC4 nearly ten years in, there's near universal disappointment and even anger about the new version.

Re:As a longtime Sim City player, I am sad

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the justification that EA uses to explain why they need the DRM. In other words, that's them explaining why the DRM is actually a feature instead of a hindrance. There's no technical reason why a player shouldn't be allowed to play offline and not be part of the online community.

I'm not saying you're incorrect, but you can't claim "no technical reason" when you don't have any knowledge regarding the technical requirements of the simulation engine. Regardless, EA made the design decision to make this an online only game where you never truly are isolated from the rest of the online community. If, like me, you would prefer to play in isolation then don't buy the game.

sadness

[Rob Bos]

I had not heard that Simcity was going to be always-online DRM'd. That's a little sad; I was looking forward to it. I hope that they change that policy.

Re:sadness

[Anonymous Coward]

"I hope that they change that policy."

Sorry, not trying to be a dick, but this funny saying comes to mind:

"You can hope in one hand, and shit in the other. Let me know which one fills up faster."

Re:sadness

[SuricouRaven]

Just get the pirate version.

NDA?

[addie]

I'm guessing his getting banned is more to do with openly discussing his experience in the closed beta than criticizing the DRM.

Re:NDA?

[Tridus]

There was an open beta on the weekend where discussing feedback was allowed and wide open. They even had a public forum for it: http://answers.ea.com/t5/Feedback/bd-p/Feedback

In fact DRM complaints were probably #2 on the complaint list... a mile behind the city sizes being absurdly tiny, which was the #1 complaint.

Re:NDA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe, but that's not newsworthy. Why attribute it to that when there's a much more malicious possibility that'll generate page views?

Re:NDA?

[addie]

I stand corrected.

Re:NDA?

[slashmydots]

This is EA. I seriously doubt it. There's a lot of precedence.

Consider Me Warned

[houbou]

Feedback is feedback.. the feedback I read, did not warrant getting banned. Worse, it was constructive in many ways. Finally, this is a paying customer. If this is how EA will now do business, consider me warned, I'm not buying their wares. I think it should be illegal to stop a paying customer from being able to provide feedback, especially since this customer is trying to have access to a product which he paid to used in the first place.

Re:Consider Me Warned

[charlesbakerharris]

You think he paid to get into the beta? Umm...

Re:Consider Me Warned

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of people did, they got into the beta from preordering the game. So...maybe.

Just more proof that EA is well beyond redemption

[Anonymous Coward]

They get worse and worse each day. All their franchises are being turned into generic shooters, and microtransactions/DLC are pretty much mandatory for anything they publish.

That said, I would like to see more on the story in the OP since it seems like some information is missing. Maybe the ToS forbids long ranting complaints or something?

Rant mode on...

[WilyCoder]

I am ever so close to abandoning video games as a hobby because of shit like this.

I've got a nice collection of board games and they are so much fun to play with a group of friends over some drinks and pizza. When I contrast that experience with the racist, homophobic insults I may encounter on XBOX live and other crap like this DRM, its getting harder and harder to justify that $60 video game.

As a programmer by day for a long time now, there is NO functional need for always online DRM for most game types. It benefits me, the consumer,(cough) I mean CITIZEN, in no way whatsoever. They know it, I know it, and yet they want me to buy the shit they are shoveling at me.

With these types of citizen abuse occurring in the gaming industry I hope it tanks. Not that I want to see people lose their jobs, but I want the business model to change.

The future, in my humble opinion, lies with the indie market. Look at games like FTL and Hotline Miami. Available to purchase without DRM, probably pirated to hell and back, and yet those small 1-2 man teams are each now probably millionaires. And they deserve it. Does EA deserve even a single penny for their anti-citizen activities? One of the tenets of capitalism is ownership of private property. With each new AAA game released, I own less and less of it. Fuck you EA, you are anti-capitalist and you are part of the reason why citizen rights are eroding.

Re:Rant mode on...

[SuricouRaven]

If you want a pizza-and-drinks game... Munchkin. Doesn't take up as much space as a board game, as it's nothing but cards and dice, and it's a lot of fun.

Re:Rant mode on...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to even touch this SimCity game with an eleven foot pole.

I really should order a copy of Munchkin and the expansions soon.

Re:Rant mode on...

[GeniusDex]

[...] and yet those small 1-2 man teams are each now probably millionaires.[...]

They are not. Most indie developers have very fluctuating income and usually it is barely enough to make a living. There are some exceptions though; the creators of more popular indie games do have a reasonable income, but when subtracting the costs most will not be millionaires. I expect the number of millionaires from indie games to be 1, and that person is Markus Persson.

Re:Rant mode on...

[Anonymous Coward]

When I contrast that experience with the racist, homophobic insults I may encounter on XBOX live and other crap like this DRM, its getting harder and harder to justify that $60 video game.

Don't go on XBox live? Just play PC games...

Re:Rant mode on...

[Anonymous Coward]

Although it's advertised as "like playing RPGs, but without plot or grinding," it still brings nostalgia when I play it. Ah, I remember when I sabotaged someone and even stole the boots off their feet--oh wait, I picked that up playing Munchkin.

Re:Rant mode on...

[WilyCoder]

4 friends begin a game of munchkin. An hour later they are mortal enemies with knifes at each others throats. They guests had to be forcefully removed from the host's apartment.

Re:Rant mode on...

[Anonymous Coward]

Except it's not really any fun at all. Munchkin is about as low as you can go without bringing out Monopoly.

Re:Rant mode on...

[rocket rancher]

If you want a pizza-and-drinks game... Munchkin. Doesn't take up as much space as a board game, as it's nothing but cards and dice, and it's a lot of fun.

Munchkin! great game. check out Illuminati! if you haven't tried it yet. Same great inside jokes and humor that gaming geeks love. Any game that lets you play a Russian orbital mind-control laser card is rule of cool defined.

Re:Rant mode on...

[Anonymous Coward]

As a programmer by day for a long time now, there is NO functional need for always online DRM for most game types. It benefits me, the consumer,(cough) I mean customer, in no way whatsoever. They know it, I know it, and yet they want me to buy the shit they are shoveling at me.

Let's drop using the term 'consumer' eh? it's a NWO propaganda new-speak term which needs to drop out of mainstream usage.

Also seen on Reddit

[Bogtha]

The EA developers working on this did a Q&A last month. Needless to say, the responses mentioned DRM quite a bit... this person summed a lot of them up nicely. Those are responses only from the Q&A, and he only stopped because Reddit doesn't allow longer comments.

Re:Also seen on Reddit

[steelfood]

Unfortunately, developers rarely get a say in how their game is packaged. DRM is implemented by the publisher's request.

Just don't buy it

[h4rr4r]

The solution is simple. Do not buy these games.

Spend your entertainment dollars on something else. That is the only way they will get the message.

Re:Just don't buy it

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree! i sopped buying games from Ubisoft for the same reason. Now it seems i have to add EA to the list also

don't like what I see so far

[Njovich]

It was a beta, so we should be somewhat forgiving of flaws.

Then again, where I live, 60 euro buys you the 'limited edition', which doesn't even include all the content available at launch. I'm not sure if there will be a demo, and reviews are on and off, so what exactly am I supposed to use for judging if it's worth 60 euro? As much as they see it as a Beta themselves, for lots of people this was effectively a commercial demo. I'm sure they can fix the network problems, but in terms of gameplay I doubt they'll do more than minor tweaks.

I tried the beta, it was more fun than simcity 4... but nothing that great. The tutorial is very polished, as you've come to expect in games these days. The graphics are generally viewed as good, but I don't really like this sims style cartoony stuff. I wish they could give us an interface that feels more about realism, planning and technology and less like a kids toy. I guess they decided their market is in different people, fine. They claim to have groundbreaking simulations, but in so far they have that it didn't seem to add much in terms of interesting gameplay. Animations seemed unrefined. I doubt they'll change those things so much.

Perhaps multiplayer will be fun, didn't manage to try that.

Also, as in the article, I couldn't manage to login until late in the Beta, but then again, it is a Beta so I'm sure they'll be able to fix the network problems eventually.

Use a proxy

[futhermocker]

To record traffic, then replay communication with EA, write a responder and redirect traffic to EA to responder and you're done. No more DRM... (profit?)

Re:Use a proxy

[mrbene]

If they're using the most basic of authorization schemes, yes. However, their implementation is stateful - the saved games are stored server-side, so your "responder" would have to implement at least partially the feature-set implemented by EAs servers.

It's probably not quite as complex as implementing a "responder" for an MMO, but the featureset is definitely trending in that direction with cross-city interactivity.

DRM strikes again

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the type of thing that has caused me to "vote with my wallet".

I purchased Battlefield 3 and quickly found that their DRM was a huge problem, this was painfully evident when I attended a rather large LAN party (400+ attendees) and the EA Origin servers simply didn't work. You had a whole pile of people attempting to log on to play the game they paid good money for and couldn't. My copy of BF3 has been sitting on a shelf uninstalled from my machine ever since; 3 days of not being able to access the game, especially since we had tournaments going on that relied on it, was a huge frustration.

Granted it sounds like this was a BETA, so you have to expect some issues, but I don't see this getting any better. Especially since the user was banned for a rather polite piece of feedback offering good advice. Way to reward your customers EA.

If I'm interested in a game now, I look specifically for the EA logo, if the game has it on there, I won't purchase it.

May be an honest mistake!

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently they have 'accidentally' banned a few people, according to the forum (as of now)... they have this posted :

"Heya everyone,

We had a minor tech issue which caused a handful of people to be banned who shouldn't have been. This issue is being researched by our tech team to prevent it from occurring again, and our AHQ Staff members are aware and have restored lost access to affected users.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Your Answer HQ Team
"

I wonder if he was one of those.

Re:May be an honest mistake!

[Ja'Achan]

So, translation would be: "We banned someone and got smoked in the media, UNDO UNDO UNDO"

Re:May be an honest mistake!

[Applekid]

"Heya everyone,

We forgot people can take screenshots of things and spread them around the internet. This issue was caused by clueless middle managers telling us to quiet down the negative posts by our usual means of censoring: ban and purge. Now that we've been called out loudly and our shareholders will most certainly notice, our AHQ Staff members have begun to pretend to care and have restored lost access to affected users.

We apologize for our incompetance.

Your Answer HQ Team
"

Re:May be an honest mistake!

[Quirkz]

incompetance

I see what you did there ...

i'M So happy to play only EVE Online...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and laugh at this stupid shit. I'm glad I'll NEVERNEVERNEVERNEVERNEVERNEVERNEVERNEVER buy ANY sort of EA game.

Now he knows...

[MetalliQaZ]

Don't buy an EA game. Now, I would suggest buying it and then playing the cracked version instead, however that doesn't send the message to EA that they need to hear. So my best advice is just to stay away from EA.

DO !! NOT !! FUCK !! WITH !! THE !! MAN !!

[Anonymous Coward]

He will put you down !! and KEEP YOU DOWN !!

Jury !!

Crack Hero

[Anonymous Coward]

All this will result in is a more sophisticated crack.

It will be available on bittorrent eventually.

I dont care because I dont care about EA.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have stopped purchasing EA products because of their tendency to just shit out the same old thing over and over and over again. Their horrible DRM. The way they pimp DLC for games before they even launch. They way they nickle and dime customers with purchasing in game items or letting people buy short cuts to items like in battlefield 3 or the upcoming dead space 3. I dont like the way that they do not treat their customers like customers, but instead mindless cattle and that they let developers under their banner do it as well like how bioware bashed gamers for not liking mass effect 3 and essentially told them that because they do not make games they are not allowed to have an opinion on what they think is good or bad. I think Origin is a terrible piece of bloatware that I do not wish to be installed on my pc. They let almost every game be released in poor shape with the "release now and fix it later" mentality.

So EA is on my list of publishers and developers I no longer will buy games from new at retail. If they make a game I really want to play I buy it used so they do not get any money from me at all. Also included for the same and other reasons is Capcom, Activision, Nintendo, Sqaurenix, Namco Bandai, Bethesda, Bioware, Sega, Rockstar and Ubisoft.

What EA doesn't show you is the real reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Mention of competitor's product, Diablo"
or
"Spam detected: multiple links, use of bold font."
or
"Flame bait"
or
"TLDR;"

outsourced to China?

[slashmydots]

I just heard an NPR story incredibly similar to this just this morning except it was the Chinese Communist Party suppressing all dissenting opinions and anything negative about them. Get ready for an epic level pushback/Streisand effect from this. It's already on Slashdot so really you don't have to "get ready" you get to "get popcorn" lol.

The ban was not due to his post!

[mrbene]

As he updated today, again on Reddit:

It turns out however, that EA is having really bad technical issues and managed to accidentally ban several users. The cause, they credit, is something to do with the email opt-out. (Which explains why I did not receive information regarding the ban)

ref

Always On DRM is still a reason not to buy the game, as is buggy account management. However, the day-long Slashdot lag is providing only half the story.

Re:The ban was not due to his post!

[Zero__Kelvin]

Also, they'll still respect him in the morning.

Re:The ban was not due to his post!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, when has EA ever lied?

Re:The ban was not due to his post!

[dywolf]

I find it amusing as hell that this only demonstrates yet another facet of their shoddy technical skills.
Opting out of emails preventing needed forum communications from going through.
Typical, classic EA right there.

EA shills and trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

EA is a massive company, and pays for some very sophisticated pro-active PR activity. You will notice this PR activity here, and on other relevant forums.

So, no matter how sickening (and illegal in nations like the UK) EA's activities are, you will find yourself reading posts carefully explaining and excusing these actions. The paid shills doing there job. But, another phenomenon kicks in. The PR shills know their psychology, and pretty soon a 'TEAM EA' effect starts to become apparent.

Fans of EA games start to add their voices to the PR shill posts, repeating and amplifying the defense, often with the most perverse and idiotic logic you will ever read. EA has a 'tribe' or 'mob' or 'gang' of loyalist brain-dead 'supporters who actively seek to justify any and all actions by their 'gods', and howl down anyone who attempts to suggest EA should be held accountable.

This vile, blind fanaticism is probably the greatest reason we should object to the PR shill activities of organisations like EA. Humans turned into fanatics over one cause (trivial as it may be in this case), will take that fanatical programming into real life, now experienced into giving their unthinking support to any cause that might appeal to their tiny brains.

So called 'mob rule' is NEVER the rule of the mob, but the successful manipulation of key elements of the mob by evil people who play the "end justifies the means" game, and see the unleashed power of the mob as the greatest possible weapon. EA is such an evil.

Re:EA shills and trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

Take off the tinfoil hat. Maybe the mob doesn't agree with you because your opinions or reasoning is asinine.

The rest of the story...

[Anonymous Coward]

About mid-day yesterday, I was banned from EA's Answer HQ[2] for, what I thought, was constructive criticism.
It turns out however, that EA is having really bad technical issues and managed to accidentally ban several users[3] . The cause, they credit, is something to do with the email opt-out. (Which explains why I did not receive information regarding the ban)
EA's representative did, however, issue an apology to me and I felt it only fair I set things right. (And give him credit for being an awesome guy in a place where he would normally be considered a dick)
I received a message earlier today (here on reddit) from Chris Deum[4] , the guy who heads up EA's Answer HQ, apologizing for the glitch. The message is below.
Hi Puppier,
I made a post in reply on both imgur and your reddit post, but I just wanted you to know that we've lifted your ban on AHQ. As you know, the system is sending out a lot of emails and it looks like you opted out of receiving mails from us, which for some reason is banning users. There's a few posts on it, for example here http://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Problems/Problem-with-Answer-HQ-banned-because-I-tried-to-stop-getting/m-p/419214/highlight/true#M1430[5] . It's not the biggest thread, but it's the first I could get to.
The team is working to fix the bug, but in the interim I actually have one member sitting scanning our logs for anyone that opts out, so we can unban them as quickly as possible.
Apologies again - as you mentioned. There's a lot of similar feedback to yours that hasn't been removed from the forums and the authors banned.
Feel free to give me a shout with any other feedback you have. I'll personally make sure it gets to the right people to make up for the annoyance.
Cheers,
Chris.
I finally did get SimCity to play and IMO it looks as if it will be a fun game. Although they still need to consider their always online policy, I believe that this game is looking out to be good. Thanks for all the support though and bringing this to the attention of EA!
TL; DR EA fixes false ban, EA sucks less.

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/17e1ap/result_of_my_previous_ea_ahq_ban_post/

Re:The rest of the story...

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction: EA banned people, got caught being douchebags, tries to hide it, Gullible people believe them.

Re:The rest of the story...

[Anonymous Coward]

Many years ago, I could not log into Earth & Beyond and made some statements regarding my frustration. As a result I was banned. Fortunately for me, the End Of Life for E&B was in a few days. Since then, I have boycotted them for life.

BTW: I was on a website that lasted longer than the game stating that I was banned. I did ask to have my status changed many many months later so that I could play the game that no longer existed.

Re:The rest of the story...

[ildon]

I'd like to point out this follow up was posted well over 24 hrs ago. Yet all these "gaming news" sites chose to run the story anyway without any additional fact checking.

Re:The rest of the story...

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, life must be amazing when you can just make shit up all the time.

Re:The rest of the story...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like they should make a script instead of having a guy look through logs...

Re:The rest of the story...

[KiloByte]

Because it's not the ban still being in force what matters, it's that it was possible at all.

Re:The rest of the story...

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that bugs are possible is what matters?

The horror.

Re:The rest of the story...

[KiloByte]

The fact that bugs are possible is what matters?

Bugs in a system that should not exist at all.

Re:The rest of the story...

[Anonymous Coward]

Message boards shouldn't exist?

The real lesson:

[Yosho-sama]

If you want to play offline, pirate the game.

Or pirate the game after purchasing it, freeing yourself from ridiculous DRM while maintaining moral superiority.

Until it decides you need to check it again.

[Anonymous Coward]

It will check on occasion that you are still valid.

And if you need to reinstall? Authenticate again.

So, it's absolutely NOT "log in once and authenticate".

Re:Until it decides you need to check it again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it is, you dumb shit. And obviously if you have to reinstall it you'll have to authenticate again. That's a technical limitation you retard.

He's been unbanned: It was an email software bug

[Anonymous Coward]

A careful dig through the techdirt article comments reveals that the banning wasn't on purpose at all. Apparently a bug was present in EA's email servers such that if certain emails (I'm guessing marketing, but who knows?) were disallowed, then, on a post to the forums, the user would get banned. It had been happening to a number of users, and not just on this forum, either.

EA directly contacted the guy, apologized greatly, and he and his comments are back on the EA forum.

The Reddit folks apparently downvoted his updated response, making the story relatively hard to find.

AC

It's Chargeback time

[omnichad]

Hope they paid with a credit card. At least there's a chargeback possibility.

Re:It's Chargeback time

[omnichad]

Correction - it was a free beta. He should just get over it.

Re:It's Chargeback time

[gitano_dbs]

not exactly free beta if you need to pre-order the game to get in.

Re:It's Chargeback time

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need to preorder the game to get in.

Re:It's Chargeback time

[Anonymous Coward]

not exactly free beta if you need to pre-order the game to get in.

you only had to register to get into the beta, not purchase necessary. I got to try it, enjoyed it. DRM doesn't bother me, there's never a time when my PC isn't connected to the net while using it anyway. I did a packet capture to see what was sent and it is really very little. Did I mention it's fun, cuz that's what matters to me.

Globalization

[Anonymous Coward]

I meant to say "offline"

I figured that, or sarcasm. No worries, we're not all complete dicks.

The thing is that this version of SimCity does not have a true Solo Play mode. Even when you are playing your own city, your city still is influenced by the Global Economy and neighboring regions. In previous versions when playing offline and solo, you had simulated "neighbor" cities (and then later on, regions) which would offer you deals, etc. In this one, those don't exist- you're tied into the entire world.
So really they ought to call this something like "Sim City- Globalization" as that would be a much more accurate reflection on the gameplay.

With that in mind, it makes sense to eliminate all forms of offline play, terrain "god mode" editing (it's still fully editable via in-game methods), etc. in order to ensure the integrity of the Global economy. Not that I'm agreeing with the overall design choice- I'm probably not going to bother playing it as I prefer having a completely isolated sandbox region. But this is a fundamental design departure from previous games, it's more like a MMO where you can play in a semi-isolated instance, or share control over your region with select friends.

But in regards to this story, I have noticed EA is doing as much as possible to gloss over the online-only requirements and divert discussion away from pure solo play ability. Given their past history, this story comes as no shock to me at all. They are notorious for being more than heavy-handed on their user forums, deleting, banning, etc. anything which bothers their PR department even if it doesn't technically violate their forum rules. So be warned- say nothing critical at all, no matter how nicely you put it, as it's almost guaranteed to result in a ban. Especially when the game hasn't launched yet, because they're already seeing a massive outcry from their long-time hardcore player base and will do anything to put a positive spin on things.

Re:Globalization

[MiG82au]

What's especially funny is that you can get banned on the Battlefield 3 forums for mild swearing, but the game itself has choice lines shouted out like "fuck, I'm getting my shit pushed in here!".

That's why I only buy Humble Bundles.

[pclminion]

Sometimes I buy them even if I don't want to play them (seriously). I think I bought a Humble Bundle last year that I still haven't even looked at yet. Hell, I'm not even a gamer. But I'll spend money on non-DRM software just to encourage more of it.

Re:That's why I only buy Humble Bundles.

[Jaysyn]

You aren't alone. I get all of the Humble Bundle-alikes, usually there is a game in there I like, sometimes not. I haven't even tried out anything in my recent Indie Gala purchase yet.

EA has been a bunch of rugmunchers for ages...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been against EA and their DRM scheme for a while...

However, the online pass that they started pissed off everyone I knew to the point where they stopped buying the FIFA/Madden/NHL games.

seems about right

[frovingslosh]

You bought a program that you presumably knew included this DRM. You gave the company the permission to deny you access to what you paid good money for. They did that. It was certain that they would eventually, they just did it sooner than you may have expected. Have you learned anything in general about buying games encumbered with DRM (including Steam) or is your learning limited to EA and Sim City (which they already have your money for anyway)?

Thanks, by the way, for screwing things up for those of us considered the "lunatic fringe" who refuse to buy DRM encumbered games no matter how sweet the eye candy is. You have confirmed for EA that there will always be some people who buy the encumbered programs no matter how distasteful the DRM is.

Build your own server?

[chaim79]

Just how difficult is it to create your own server for these games? Are they in the habit of encrypting or using proprietary compression schemes?

Being a software engineer I'm used to writing communications and products from a requirements document and datasheets, wondering how difficult it would be to reverse-engineer the communications protocol and blindly write what's happening on the server...

Re:Build your own server?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just how difficult is it to create your own server for these games?

Difficult, but not impossible - there have been "alternative" servers for almost every major MMO out there. There was a well-known alternative to battle.net, until Blizzard released their lawyers against it. There have been/are alt servers for Sega's online games. Et cetera.

The real issue is whether or not the company wants to destroy you. They can, and they often will, especially if you're running a server for a game that isn't merely on life support. Whether it's legal or not is a good question, but nobody who's into alt servers has had the cash to lawyer up in the face of C&D's.

Re:It's the same for Blizzard.

[AK Marc]

Steam will play in offline mode. Diablo III will not. Nor will Simshitty.

Send a letter when you vote with your wallet

[Andrio]

I too am a long time SimCity fan who will not buy this game because of the DRM.

Perhaps I should send a letter letting EA know that I voted with my wallet. See, that's a problem with "voting with your wallet" in that there's really no way to tell what someone voted with their wallet for/against. If the game sells badly because people voted with their wallets against always-on DRM, it's more likely that the higher-ups at EA conclude "There isn't a big enough market for city simulation games. Let's just not greenlight any such future games, and focus on Medal of Madden XXVI!"

You could send an email, but realistically, those things will never really be read. An actual paper letter though; that's something someone *will* look at.

Re:Send a letter when you vote with your wallet

[Anonymous Coward]

You shouldn't buy the game, not because of DRM, but because functionally, it's a HUGE step backwards from Simcity 4. More like Simcity Societies 2. No thanks.

how to make an EA game

[Anonymous Coward]

#!/bin/eacoderssuck
originalcontent = $1
newcontent = $originalcontent_$year

cp -r $originalcontent $newcontent
mkdir $newcontent/randomshittymod
echo $$ > $newcontent/randomshittymod/cost
rm -rf $newcontent/usercomplaints.txt
mkdir $newcontent/randomshittymod
echo $$ > $newcontent/randomshittymod/cost
rm -rf $newcontent/usercomplaints.txt ... ... ...

I'll just leave this here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes I buy them even if I don't want to play them (seriously). I think I bought a Humble Bundle last year that I still haven't even looked at yet. Hell, I'm not even a gamer. But I'll spend money on non-DRM software just to encourage more of it.

New Humble Bundle Is Windows Only, DRM Games

Re:I'll just leave this here...

[sandytaru]

Awwwwww dangit. I, too, usually tossed twenty bucks at the Humble Bundles even if I didn't want to play the games. But if they're including games with DRM, that's right out of the question.

Re:I'll just leave this here...

[VortexCortex]

Sometimes I buy them even if I don't want to play them (seriously). I think I bought a Humble Bundle last year that I still haven't even looked at yet. Hell, I'm not even a gamer. But I'll spend money on non-DRM software just to encourage more of it.

New Humble Bundle Is Windows Only, DRM Games

I think that was an important "test". They caught a lot of flack over it. I personally didn't buy #6, but I did buy all the others except #6. A quick search hasn't resulted in a link to #6 so I can't check the sales breakdown at the source. The current Humble Indie Bundle 7 is cross platform and DRM free. I'd be interested if anyone would post the numbers from HIB #6, for science!

Here are the sales as listed for the "recent" bundles I purchased:
#4
Total payments: $2,373,878.85
Purchases #: 435,251
Average purchase: $5.45
Average Windows: $4.87
Average Mac: $7.61
Average Linux: $10.41

#V -- Which, surprisingly, did not include VVVVVV...
Total payments: $5,108,725.09
Purchases #: 599,004
Average purchase: $8.53
Average Windows: $7.98
Average Mac: $9.99
Average Linux: $12.48

#6
Reported as $2,048,330.42 @ joystiq

#7
Total payments: $2,651,762.57
Purchases #: 395,953
Average purchase: $6.70
Average Windows: $6.23
Average Mac: $7.95
Average Linux: $10.47

It's hard comparing sales because the games vary in quality and appeal from bundle to bundle -- #V (5) Had a strong showing with Pyschonauts, Braid, and Bastion, and others.

I think "DRM free" is the strongest selling point for me, but cross platform is a strong second -- even though actual Linux "support" seems flakey w/ most HiB games I still buy under Linux because A) I want them to know I'm (trying) to use Linux to play their games, and B) I won't enter my financial details into software I haven't audited and compiled myself (yes, I'm two of the "many eyes"). I have decent boxen for each OS, but prefer Linux. I even have multiple copies of the games on various platforms, yet I still buy the bundles if they don't have DRM. As a developer I've noted that the trivial amount of additional time it takes to support Linux natively when I start a project/game with a cross platform dev environment is well worth the additional revenue Linux users are willing to pay...

When will it end..

[gallondr00nk]

The war on piracy is like the war on drugs. The arguments don't have to make sense, or even be of financial benefit to the aggressor (think of how many billions have been wasted busting and then jailing people for pot). It's all about setting this arbitrary goal, be it the eradication of piracy or the eradication of drugs, and throwing insane resources at it in the hope of achieving that goal.

Even if piracy greatly increased sales (and there's some suggestion with music at least that it does), all but a few smaller publishers will still fight the war.

We know it's futile, and they probably do too. They might even have evidence that it isn't harming their profit centres.

I imagine the only thing keeping the piracy wars fuelled is if they concede then the illusion that digital goods can still work within a economic model of scarcity (like physical media) is completely and utterly broken. Suddenly software, art, music, video, film and games are worth nothing but what someone is willing to pay for it. Of course, that doesn't sit well with their established $15 for a CD, $60 for a game etc. business model.

And so we keep on fighting.

Re:When will it end..

[VortexCortex]

The war on piracy is like the war on drugs. The arguments don't have to make sense, or even be of financial benefit to the aggressor (think of how many billions have been wasted busting and then jailing people for pot). It's all about setting this arbitrary goal, be it the eradication of piracy or the eradication of drugs, and throwing insane resources at it in the hope of achieving that goal.

No. The war on "piracy" is a war over artificial scarcity. Look, once the work is done by the developers for a set price, the Publisher tries to get as much money from their works by not adding anything of value to the product and enforcing non-features such as artificial scarcity enforcing software -- DRM.

The real war on "piracy" is happening in the reduction of artificial scarcity. What's scarce is my ability to configure the bits, not the configuration of bits itself. So, by marketing my programming/art labour directly to consumers I can bypass the Publisher's artificial scarcity. One way of doing this is crowd-sourced funding. If I set the price correctly I'll get the same $PAY for the same work be it working under a publisher or working for the public directly via Kickstarter, indegogo, etc. The difference is that without a Publisher I can actually just give the game away for free to everyone when I'm done doing the work of making it -- The work has already been paid for, and either way I'd just be getting paid when I do work...

By returning to the tried and true money-for-labour model, content creation can finally be piracy proof! You can't download that which I haven't made! I get paid for my work plus a bit of profit, just like every other labour field, like say Auto Mechanics. Mechanics give you an estimate for the work, then you agree to pay their price and only then do they do the work. This system is fair and it WORKS! Imagine if a publisher was involved there: Each fix to your car would mean you pay more each time someone else drives it... Publishers are Rent Seekers.

Unlike the War on Drugs, the War on Piracy can actually be won. It's not a war fought between content creators and end users; It's a war fought between Us (end users and developers) and Publishers. As soon as you end users and we developers realize we're both on the same side we can work out a deal between us and tell the Publishers to go fuck off and die, and thus end Artificial Scarcity and Piracy.

We're at the beginning of a transitionary period. This is the first generation of the global information publishing networks. The old models are obsolete, but there's still money to be made by them. By its very name "Kickstarter" is implying that devs should ask for less than they need to recoup costs + a bit of proffit; Thus, devs still need to engage in artificial scarcity and sell the copies after the work is done. However, you CAN ask for the amount you actually need, it just takes a strong will (and a few accountant aneurysms) to ignore profits that could be made via artificial scarcity after the work is done; Instead I'd just sell copies to supporters and also give them away, or maybe do a "pay what you want" ala Humble Indie Bundles... see? The more folks do this, the more others will need to compete with their prices and the sooner we can end Piracy.

What do devs get out of the deal that they wouldn't get under a Publisher? Job Security. Think about it, public funded projects don't get funded if the ideas suck -- That's free market research. You can avoid doing all that work of making a shitty project no one will buy and focus on the things that people actually want you to make! Of course this means being a bit more open about your in-progress work. The more renown you acquire as a developer of good games/music/movies the more fans you'll have and the more you can keep secret on trust -- See: Double Fine's Kickstarter, no prototypes, just an Idea, but the devs are beloved... Look at others w/ just ideas, no prototype footage, no funding.

Re:Beta

[Zero__Kelvin]

You might want to learn what the words beta means in this context.

Stop supporting EA.

[MaWeiTao]

This is one of the many reasons why I've long since stopped buying anything from EA. Obviously most people aren't doing the same hence why EA continues to tread with impunity.

Sure, "bug"

[Anonymous Coward]

I can almost see the report:

Status: WONTFIX

Problem: Users won't shut up when I ban them from EA's forums

Steps to reproduce: Wait for user with unwanted complaint, ban him.

Expected behaviour: User shuts up and goes away.

Observed behaviour: User starts complaining on other Internet forums, creating bad publicity for EA.

Comments: There's no way to fix it for now, wait for BrainChip biometric integrated DRM scheme for ability to ban users in real life.

online play?

[schlachter]

I have no idea why anyone would buy any game, from any publisher, that required an internet connection for online play. Mind-boggling.

Seems only natural that all games will require an internet connection for online play. I assume you mean offline play? Funny that it got modded informative and not funny.

Re:It's the same for Blizzard.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sean Connery, is that you?

don't buy them

[AndyKron]

I don't buy games anymore if I have to log in to play. That's bullshit, and no GAME is important enough for that.

Re:Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a beta and he is providing constructive feedback, goddamn you are a tool.

Vote with your Wallet

[Dark_Optiplex]

I stopped buying most games since they're no fun and too problematic.

EA Games screws up games by adding DRM and multi-player only. They only hurt the consumer and unscrupulous geniuses figure out ways around them.

I miss the good old days when you could just install, click, and play. You could reimage your PC without having to worry about weird licensing and DRM.

---
Prime example, look how they screwed up Command and Conquer 4. I uninstalled it and still play 3.

Re:It's the same for Blizzard.

[ifrag]

Steam will play in offline mode.

The degree of "play" will depend on the exact title you are using on Steam. For example, some Ubisoft games you'd be out of luck with for offline.

It would be nice if Steam started to play hard with those companies and mandate Steam's DRM only if the game was to be offered on Steam.

SC4 works on win7/modern hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

SC4 works fine for me on win7. There were some tweaks that had to be made though. For one, you have to set the resolution for widescreens manually in the shortcut parameters. Also, for ATI users there is a bug that causes buildings to disappear when scrolling. This was by design for the old cards. There is a setting in the configuration files that you can change that fixes this. I have a 7950 and the game runs fantastic now. I should mention it is also very stable too (I have yet to crash or experience any other bugs).

Breaking news

[viperidaenz]

30 year old living in mothers basement gets banned from gaming forum. Blames unrelated, yet controversial issue as the cause to gain more attention. Back to you Tom Tucker.

Re:It's the same for Blizzard.

[sammyF70]

Steam might play in offline mode. More often than not this is not the case. Believe me, I used to have a very bad internet connection and the times I was not able to play anything from my Steam account when the connection was down and Schteam was telling me to log in far outweighted the times when it happily remembered that I had played just one day before.
Steam is not nearly as evil as EA, but it still has an intrusive and often obnoxious DRM (Along with an atrocious EULA).

News Flash EA doesn't care about you.

[Ziggitz]

EA is a publisher, not a developer. As a publisher they don't give two shits about how long lived a player base is or the health of their developers. They don't care about big the modding community is for their games they don't care about making third party tools to allow the community around a game to extend it and make it better. In fact, what they want is for you to pay 60 bucks, consume the game's content and in two weeks be ready to buy another one of their titles because they want the fastest ROI possible to funnel that money into a another developer and churn out another half finished piece of crap. Not only do they not care about the popularity of a single title in a franchise or the value they are giving players in terms of replayability and quantity and quality of content, they don't care about the developers. The usual deal is EA buys up a popular developer who just released a great title that was very popular and profitable. Then they push them to release a sequel as quickly as possible. When the game is released, initial sales are high, then as people realize who awful the game is, sales drop off, excitement for the next title drops off and the developer collapses as their recent portfolio is terrible and all their goodwill is depleted. EA then buys up a new developer, rinse and repeat. When you buy EA games, you make gaming a little bit worse. Support independent developers not tied to a publisher

An appropriate error message...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://i.imgur.com/zvP8Aq2.png

Re:It's the same for Blizzard.

[AK Marc]

More often than not this is not the case.

I have a few Fallouts and some others, and I've never had anything not play just fine when it was in offlline mode. Seems like you were trying to play in online mode when offline. And yes, I've had trouble switching to offline mode from online mode when actually offline, but that wasn't the issue in question. You can go online to get a game, then go offline and never go online again.

If you did that, what games did you find that didn't work when you went into offline mode while properly online?

No-CD cracks

[detritus.]

I never like it when people suggest pirating software as a form of protest, if you think the DRM is too intrusive, don't buy the game at all.

Isn't applying no-CD cracks a form or protest? If you irreparably scratch or damage your game disc and still have it installed, you either go out and buy a new copy to play or uninstall it, right?

Not the first time

[UbuntuniX]

They did the same thing with Command & Conquer 4, and what a resounding success that was. Bought it for less than a tenner not long after release, and due to the mandatory connection among other annoyances, I have still played it for less than one hour. This company is just superb at destroying excellent games. Of course, it will only become worse when they completely drop support for these games like the many others; I guess you won't be able to play them at all?

Steam games MAY play in offline.

[Anonymous Coward]

Steam client will want updates.

Steam games may not allow offline mode.

And Steam games will kill your games if you get banned, like i said.

How the HELL did you get +5 informative???

Re:Steam games MAY play in offline.

[AK Marc]

How the HELL did you get +5 informative??

Because I'm talking about reality, not lying because I cheated and got a perma-ban. I've gone on trips and remembered to set offline mode before going and was able to play all my games for weeks. As far as I can tell, the complaints are from (1) people who forget to set offfline while they are online, and (2) cheaters who got a Steam ban and lost unrelated games because Steam banned them.

There were some non-steam complaints for Ubisoft games bought via Steam, but I haven't seen anything that points to Steam requiring a connection in offline mode to let you play anything, just the rare complaint that they allowed publisher DRM on top of theirs.

What am I to do?

[Sir_Eptishous]

I play pc games. I've always played pc games. Can't stand console(except PS...) This has caused me increasing frustration and annoyance in what it takes to play games on my pc. There is more and more logins, accounts, pw's, things to download and run and manage and forums and accounts and blah, blah, blah. All I want to do is play fucking Mass Effect.

I paid legally for the game and am punished, yes PUNISHED by all the extraneous bullshit that now goes along with pc games. I paid for the game, but am treated like I'm guilty until proven innocent.

All I want to do is play ME3. Is that too much to ask?

Re:What am I to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel the same way. After my experiences with Diablo 3, I don't think I'll buy another game that requires you to login...unless it's an MMO.

Re:It's the same for Blizzard.

[Dishevel]

Been using Steam a long time.
Once in offline mode I have had zero problems paying a game I already have downloaded and installed.
Zero.
Either you do not know how to put Steam into Offline mode or you are spreading FUD.

Re:It's the same for Blizzard.

[sammyF70]

The point that you have to be *online* to be able to go *offline* is already absurd enough, don't you think? Especially when talking about single player games (or single player mode in otherwise multiplayer capable games). Generally you play those games "offline" when you can not go online to start with (because your connection died for example) ... thus making the whole shitty procedure just a complete nuisance.

Re:It's the same for Blizzard.

[sammyF70]

you mean the correct way to go offline while being online .. yeah .. my psychic abnilities are pretty bad, I must admit, and I generally didn't know in advance back then WHEN my connection would fail.

The mind boggles. ..

After Gamespy shut down so many older games.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am one of may folks that play nwn1/nwn2. I also spent years working on a game world. Recently gamespy delisted the game making all the gameworlds unaccessable.

Requiring online DRM is fine as it does add to the bottom line in the initial 2 years of sales.

What game companies have to start doing though is turning the online DRM requirements off after say the first 1-2 years. Push a patch that takes it out after the initial period.

As an added bonus:
They also might want to give out a basic authentication server so folks can keep using the online/net ability after the publisher loses interest.

EA, when did they get so mental?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any idea when EA suddenly became a self-center don't care about the customer organization?

Re:It's the same for Blizzard.

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a widely known fix for getting to offline mode while offline.
Use your phone and Google it.
Or bitch.

Re:It's the same for Blizzard.

[sammyF70]

wow ... does Steam's Anus taste like candy? just asking, cause you seem to spend a lot of time licking it.

Re:It's the same for Blizzard.

[AK Marc]

If you find it a shitty procedure, there is a simple fix. Always be in offline mode. No problems. You had to download Steam in the first place, so going online to go offline can't be that hard.

Nah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if you have a "disregard the authorities" attitude, pirating EA titles still gives EA attention. Better that you give them the shoulder entirely and keep others from joining in. It won't make EA collapse into obscurity on its own, but maybe it'll be a start.

Ironic CAPTCHA: "prosper"

Doesn't matter if ban was lifted

[Anonymous Coward]

It is good that they did the right thing and fixed the problem. However, that it is possible at all to ban people in a way that prevents single-player mode makes me disinterested. "Always on-line" to play? Sorry. No thanks.

Steam had a similar bug (for me anyway)

[Slugster]

After it had been out for a couple months I bought Half-Life 2 on disc (at a local store) as an impulse purchase--even though I had already heard about being able to buy it online/through Steam.

People who bought the game through Steam didn't seem to have the issue. And I understand why they want to force the game to connect now and then, but needing it every time was an amazing annoyance.


I don't own any EA games however.... so I guess EA didn't lose any sales on my account. :|

Guess what EA?!? I won't buy your game...

[wakeboarder]

You think I'm going to buy your game, I was actually considering it until I read this. DRM is total crap. I have always been a simcity fan, I was excited about the prospect of playing your game, I don't have time to play games anyway, but every once in a while I buy one and play it for a few hours, just to remember what it is like. I don't feel that I need to connect to the internet and let you know every time I play your game, but then again you have plenty of money and 60$ isn't worth it to you to please one customer. When you put DRM on a game, I never know when I am going to be able to play it, and it won't work 5-10 years down the road when you decide to switch of your server.

Fuck you, EA

[llzackll]

I really can't think of anything else to say other than Fuck you, EA! That is all.

Yeah well..

[Anonymous Coward]

EA sucks dogs balls, who would have quessed? More news at.. well. all the time.

Re:It's the same for Blizzard.

[ajs]

Steam might play in offline mode. More often than not this is not the case

I've never had a problem, but then I have been using Steam heavily only for the last few months.

What I can say is that Steam isn't DRM anymore. Yes, that's one function that they serve, but Google isn't search anymore either. Successful businesses build on what they start with and go far beyond it. Steam is doing just that (well, Valve).

Just being able to install games on every platform that they support, not just the one that I bought is a huge win, but add to that the universal access to saved games (in games that support it, of course) and the upcoming Linux-based console... they're no more a DRM company than any other gaming platform. They're a gaming service provider.

Re:It's the same for Blizzard.

[cygnwolf]

You assume that staying online is as easy for everyone as it is for you. I have always online internet now, but at my previous apartment I had internet from about 1am till about 3pm. Between 3pm and 6 pm, I had a slower, but mostly ok connection, but most nights from 6pm till midnight it was pointless. and by pointless I mean login authentication for my fricken e-mail could take as long as 5 minutes. And frequently timed out and had to be retried. I wasn't using steam at the time, but if you couldn't connect to the internet at all from 6pm till midnight, that would have made it impossible to play a game that required you to log in first. So yes,,, Going offline, not hard at all. Going online first so that you can then go offline? A whole different story.

Re:It's the same for Blizzard.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, plus it has this REALLY stupid 'feature': You have to be online, to put Steam into offline mode....what the hell...

Re:It's the same for Blizzard.

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, Ubi PC games are DRM'ed to the point you're even restricted from playing. At all. See "The Settlers 7".

Steam has its own system for games integrated with it, but it doesn't stop developers from using other systems (like the Arkham games and Games For Windows LIVE) with Steam just being the storefront.

Also, don't buy Ubi PC games. You complain about how bad EA's stuff is? Ubi goes Napoleon all over the gaming scene with their DRM crap.

Re:It's the same for Blizzard.

[AK Marc]

Huh?

Read mine again. I said "Always be in offline mode" You responded that being online may be hard. Sure, and flying like a bird is hard too, but that's unrelated to my comment.

Re:It's the same for Blizzard.

[cygnwolf]

If I am always in offline mode, and it's a game that requires an internet connect to launch, that's kind of hard then, isn't it?

Re:It's the same for Blizzard.

[AK Marc]

I've asked and gotten no response. What game requires Steam be in online mode to launch? The only answers I got were things like Ubisoft games that needed to contact Ubisoft and Steam settings were not the limiting factor. So, as far as I can tell, there exists no game that requires Steam be in online mode, even if some require a connection for a 3rd party DRM, which isn't a Steam issue.