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Hacker Skips SimCity Full-Time Network Requirement
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Geek.com: "Ever since SimCity launched, there has been a suspicion that the need for the game to always be connected to a server was mainly a form of DRM, not for social game features and multiplayer. Then a Maxis developer came forward to confirm the game doesn't actually need a server to function, suggesting the information coming out of EA wasn't the whole truth. Now EA and Maxis have some explaining to do as a modder has managed to get the game running offline indefinitely." The writer names a few small ways in which the game is actually improved by being offline, too.
Not a huge surprise... Though I wonder how they're going to wriggle their way out of that one. I'm guessing they'll just try to ignore it and hope it goes away.
I gave up sigs almost a year ago.
And it'll pretend to be all just and kind, but it'll just be Maxis/EA dickery from lawyers acting to protect their client's interests.
And the law enforcement system will eat it up.
I read the article and don't see any source code, just a screen shot. Anyone have additional info?
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Call him modder and it's OK. Call him cracker and it's ZOMG! ILLEGAL! TAKING ARTISTS MONEY!!
This is probably the best thing that could have happened to SimCity 5 in order to save the SimCity franchise.
It's a pity how corporate greed can ruin an otherwise excellent product. Management at EA/Maxis was obviously incredibly detached from the product. Comments such as how surprised and unprepared they were for the massive response they got to the new product speaks volumes to the fact that the people in charge had absolutely no clue about the products they make, nor what it takes to make them successful.
The good news? At least there is one team out there that gets it!
Whew! This water sure is cold!
According to TFA you still need to go online to save your progress. So, no, he did not skip the requirement. At most it is not full-time, but "so many times itis easier to keep it on full time"
--- "When you gotta do something wrong. You gotta do it right. (Fighter)"
The only surprise is that it took this long. Seeing how much press the SimCity mess got, this hack will probably get some press as well.
This Maxis developer is clearly a a cyber-terrorist.
Send in the drones.
You can't handle the truth.
Now all he needs to do is figure out the packets sent and retrieved to the saved-game servers, their IP address and port numbers (not difficult).. then people can set up a program to act as the saved game server.
Probably.
I just don't care to spend that much effort fixing something that should have had the option out-of-the-box. EA is a big company, if they want sales, sell a finished game. Getting upset and spending my TIME trying to hack it or pirate isn't worth the $60 anymore... The have created a situation where even FREE is losing me money.
The solution is that the servers needed to JUST WORK. As a grown up, waiting twenty minutes even twice has wasted more of my money/time than the price of the game... They're jerks, fix it.
Here is what Lt. Cmdr Data thinks about this.
I was a big fan of the game since the original and thought it odd it was one of the few mega-popular EA franchises that did not get updated frequently. I was anticipating the release, but I have learned not to pre-order any video game, nor buy it until it has been out a number of months for it either to be "fixed", for customer reviews to roll in, and beta test NDA's to expire. The bigger the game company the worse the lies become.
Professional game reviewers and magazines can simply not be trusted. Shorly after release metacritic scores showed the "professional" critics giving 90's and 100's, while no customer aside from a stockholm syndrome candidate gives a good review at all. Now that it is popular to bash the title, magazines being rolling in with the poor reviews.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
It's false advertisement, no matter how you put it.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
That took longer than I thought it would.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
One week of exclusive sales!
I hope it was worth cashing in on the several years' worth of reputation-building that EA just flushed down the drain. No one will ever trust them again.
It turned out not to be all that difficult. Someone leaked the source to the UI, which happened to be written entirely in Javascript (that opened up a whole new can of worms re: was this actually supposed to be a standalone game rather than browser based) -- the phone-home check was in the UI of all places. So not even the game cared that it was online.
Over the years I've read article after article about EA Games that are too invasive, too expensive, too restrictive. Does this really surprise any of you?
Personally, when I see EA attached to any game, I tend to want to run the other way. Sure they may make some good games every once in a while, but they are too much trouble.
For those that enjoy EA Games and don't mind their restrictions, I say to you. "Game on".
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Javascript is quite capable of controlling DirectX, but Chrome doesn't expose any DirectX interface as far as I am aware so you wouldn't be able to simply write code and run it in a browser. But I'm not sure why you'd bring such a thing up - the article doesn't mention doing DirectX in Javascript anyware.
This horrible DRM has created a huge amount of negative press, and prevented piracy for around a week. Now that a hack exists, not only is piracy not prevented, but the pirates get a clearly superior version of your product. As a result, many kids will be driven to try the pirated version, and thus educated on how easy torrenting and patching a game can be. You may even have inspired some burgeoning young hackers to learn how to crack your future games!
If you pay for EA products youre a sucker, plain and simple.
Infact most paying customers are suckers anymore. If I go out and pay 60 bucks for a new game I have to register it, have constant online connection, sign up for something, enter a login, enter a cd key, put up with server downtime for my single player game, bug, glitches and so on. But if a pirate steals a game and cracks it he can play as much as he wants with no hassle at all while paying customers have to jump through a dozen hoops.
If you want real change from EA then STOP BUYING THEIR GAMES! Bitching about it online wont do a thing. If you don't like what a company does then don't buy their games, do not buy their dlc, don't visit their website, don't complain endlessly (all that does is attract more attention to them). If you must buy their game then buy it used. And encourage everyone you can to do the same.
EA, besthesda, Capcom, activision, Nintendo, gearbox, etc are all companies I do not give my money to at all because for one reason or another they pissed me off one too many times.
But stop giving EA money, that is the only thing they will pay attention to.
Regardless of the online vs offline debate - which is interesting to Slashdot readers for a variety of reasons (DRM, cloud, corporations lying to the users (do they ever not?), etc.), is it even a fun game?
After seeing videos and reports like these:
http://kotaku.com/5990362/with-simple-ai-like-this-why-does-simcity-need-cloud-computing
I'm inclined to think that the answer may well be 'no'. At which point it really doesn't matter much whether you play it online or offline, does it?
But it wont matter anyway, in a few months after this whole fiasco the very people who condemn EA for lying to them will still buy the next shiny AAA game from them anyway. They're happy being ripped off and lied to, and I can see them everywhere. Such spineless people who cant make a stand would only pretend joining the "so called game vendor is bad" bandwagon to get their "gamer" cred. They don't really care about gaming, they only identify themself as one because right now it is cool to be a nerdy gamer.
I enjoy playing games and I don't even bother to pirate *ANY* new titles, that's how much disgusted I am to gaming industry right now. The last game that I bought was released at 2006, been what.. 7 years? and I'm not even going to entertain the idea of buying or pirating any games because I've drawn my line many years ago.
For others, welcome to the future of gaming! It's a multi-billion dollar industry, you better have the money and willing to shed your principles 'cause otherwise you're not going to get your fix.
so easy to do it. so very easy. (if you know how to read that is)
The article noted that you can do everything, and better, offline except "save" and "socialize". I would bet that you can work around the save issue simply by running a virtual machine and saving the session using the virtual machines capability to preserve memory state. Unless this thing is actually monitoring gaps in the wall clock time record for DRM puproses it should be possible to use a memory image.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
There have been reports that some have played as long as 7 hours off line without a problem. But the main bitch was on line in general. So, sure you can play off line and save by getting on line again. BUT in order to start the game you have to go on line. Therein lies the problem. If you're traveling you can't START the game to play off line.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
Now we need the NAM plugin to have real highways with overpass and interchanges.
"Well that's fantastic, a really smart decision. We can put a DRM requirement into a traditionally single-player game, then we'll require a permanent internet connection to thwart piracy aaaaaand it's gone."
"Uh, what?"
"It's gone. It's all gone."
"What's all gone?"
"The DRM on your game - it was circumvented, it's gone."
"What do you mean? The game is social and computational. It requires servers to make all of those calculations and connections!"
"Not anymore it doesn't. POOF."
"Well, well what can I do to get back my customers?"
"I'm sorry sir, but this release is for DRM-employing, user-abusing companies only."
"But we're EA!"
"Do you have any DRM on your game?"
"No, you just hacked it!"
"Then please stand aside for companies who actually have a poorly-implemented DRM scheme on their game. Next please."
This is great and was inevitable. I'm still not buying SimCity and no one else should either.
EA wants your money. They don't care if you're angry when you buy their games, if you post furious blogs about their practices, they don't even care if you never open the packaging. Once money has changed hands their relationship with you is done. They know that consumers have incredibly short memories. They also know that gamers as a whole aren't all that principled and can't go without their entertainment fix.
I think it speaks to a larger societal problem. Americans love to be self-righteous. "I'm a consumer whore because companies are evil."
Except that it's always the company that suits my lifestyle which is good and noble, or at worst, a necessary evil. Nevermind that the whole notion of a company being "evil" is incredibly stupid. But it foists all the blame on them. We're not talking about a monopolistic enterprise here. We're not talking about a company engaging in slave labor, although some would argue EA does have a miserable work environment. The point is that EA's fortunes are entirely within the control of every single consumer. We don't need legislation. We just need people to stop buying their damn games.
I don't know how many more times EA needs to screw people before people take a hint. We've already gone far beyond the point of all reason.
This is the top positive review on Amazon:
You'd think I'd be mega unhappy like everyone else at the constant waiting and lack of actually being able to play a game I purchased.
Well, you'd be wrong.
The hours upon hours since launch that I haven't been able to log in, whether it be sitting in queues, or server busy messages, or just plain old not working screens, I've managed to do a heap of things that I never do when I'm locked in my man cave playing video games.
I've washed the dishes, the laundry, changed the oil in the car, mopped the floors, dusted, did a spot of gardening, greeted my children who I hadn't really seen since Christmas, walked the dog, asked how my wife's day has been and listened to the entire response, restocked the groceries and many more things! My family has never been happier that they've got a father and husband again.
In fact, I feel like Simcity has given me a new lease on life. This wouldn't have been possible without the seemingly crazy decision to have constant online connections and server side save points even for single player.
So I can only thank EA and Maxis. Your failures have been my rewards. 5 stars!
If an offline game can be brought online for the ability to save, that means the remote server needs to be updated with sufficient information to save the game state. Since that information has to be sent from the client, why can't it be trapped? The only real obstacle I can think of is if there's some sort of encryption in the save-stream. If so, it's being encrypted on the client, and can likely be bypasssed.
That being said, TFA states that many debugging features are disabled for the commercial version. Offline play happens to not be disabled. Couldn't EA just patch the game to prevent this? If that's the case, I guess the 1.0 (or whatever disc) would be a coveted item.
I think you were not online when you clicked [Submit]
They accept network connectivity for multiplayer games, knowing the downside that goes with that. But I've seen enough posts on other forums to suggest that they are getting right pissed that a single player game should require always-on connectivity
So why don't they get pissed that a game doesn't offer same-screen or LAN multiplayer, which has no strict need to connect to the publisher's server?
This is ridiculous. How GGP got modded +5 for not doing his research is beyond me.
How is this company not bankrupt? Probably spent millions on the DRM and building the servers to release a broken product that can only work when hacked, which was done a little over a week after release.
The CEO of EA should be fired if he doesn't step down first, this represents one of the biggest fails in gaming history.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
then why is one of the donation rewards "three digital copies" -- if there's no DRM, why would three copies be any different than one?
Because too many PC game developers have eliminated spawn installation from their products and instead require a household with three players to buy three copies.
it doesn't pass the sniff test that they would offload calculations from the clients onto their own servers.
A Super NES console has a ~3 MHz* single-threaded processor and 128 KiB of RAM and can run the Micropolis model that powers SimCity. A modern server is clocked about a thousand times faster than that, CPUs like the Bulldozer have eight cores, and servers have sockets for multiple CPUs. So I'll guess that each server can simulate at least sixteen thousand cities at once.
* The Super NES CPU can operate at 2.7 MHz or 3.6 MHz depending on what part of memory is accessed. Early games always ran at 2.7 MHz; as yields of faster mask ROMs increased, newer games accessed ROM at 3.6 MHz and RAM at 2.7 MHz.
I'm kind of wondering now that the game has indeed been a gigantic flop, how long those servers that you are required to use to play the game will be operational, and if EA will hasten their demise, further making SimCity a useless game into the future.
Doing DirectX in JavaScript must be fun.
ANGLE exposes DirectX to JavaScript over an interface similar to OpenGL. Have fun.
Modder, not a hacker. There is a difference.
If you're traveling you can't START the game to play off line.
Several telcos offer a service to do just that.
Shareholder: What is this I heard about from my son that a pirated version of SimCity is available because of "debug mode"?
Other Shareholder(s): {blank stares}
Frank Gibeau: It's something for testing without the online requirement for the people who wrote the game.
Shareholder: {pounds desk} If it's something that allows these a**hole pirates think they can beat us, then let's remove this "debug mode".
Frank Gibeau: It shall be done.
Shareholder: And if I find out these people re-enable debug mode or uses it for future IPs we make, for whatever reason, I want them fired!
Frank Gibeau: It shall be done.
Wow! EA got caught in a big bald-face lie..Guess those lying lessons they took from Congress and the Whitehouse paid off.. But just like Congress and the Whitehouse, they continually lie to the American people and everybody (at least the low-information voters) keep putting them in office, despite the fact that every time their lips move, another lie comes out of their mouths.. And EA will continue to get gamers with short-term-memories buying their crap, forgetting this fiasco, and of course EA is counting on this... EA's got a LONG ways to go to lie as well as Congress and "Dear Leader", but they've got a good start with this whopper.. Kinda reminds me of Microsoft stating that you absolutely could not.. it was absolutely impossible to remove IE from XP, it could NOT be done.. Then somebody (or somebodies) smarter than MS came along and made NLite, which gave you a nice slimmed down copy of XP, withOUT IE (or WMP or a bunch of other cruft)...
On another note.. Remember you heard it here first.. I'm gonna bet that EA is soooo pissed that somebody found out about their whopper lie that they'll sic their legal department on the poor schlub that discovered the lie... You know the drill.. attack him for DMCA circumvention...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
The question is how long before EA has him arrested for violating the anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA.
Who is John Galt?
Companies like this will just continue doing it.
All we can do, as consumers, is to not endorse the products of companies that do decide to be dishonest with their consumers.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I wonder how long before the big players in the software market come out with a 500+MB installation that is nothing more than an RDP or VNC etc. client ... at least _then_ they won't be lying anymore when they say the game needs a network connection ...
I for one boycott any of these programs that the companies believe they need to mess up so much by DRM ... but I guess there's still too many people that would rather be harassed and play the newest games, than just pass them bye and go with decently programmed software...
AT&T's "orange cloth" commercials may have ripped off "The Gates" by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, but they got the point across that AT&T's 2G service covers 98% of all Americans. If you're traveling to somewhere not even covered by 2G, then how do you call for help should you need to? And if you're traveling to somewhere not even covered by 2G, aren't you doing so because you need a break from electronic technology in general?
Server-side calculations? Really? I am sickened to think there was even one person thick enough to believe this.
The original SimCity was successful, because its programmer realized something profound. It is better not to even TRY to use any real simulation in a game like this. Instead, simple metrics are 'read' from the city created by the player. Simple statistics, in other words. Ratios of roads to buildings- things like this.
The trick is a psychological one. Most dedicated players will build 'sane' cities with road networks that make 'sense'. They think the correct layout plays a part in the success of their city (which it most certainly does NOT). As their city 'grows' and functions increasingly well, they assume some kind of clever simulation is happening under the hood. They couldn't be more mistaken.
Of course, in fairness, there is a HIGH-LEVEL simulation occurring. The original graphs of wealth, pollution, population density, happiness etc are the key. This is where the game makes the real calculations NOT at the level of your individual road or water pipe choice.
The original age of simcity gave way to the age of 'transport tycoon' and 'roller coaster tycoon', where low-level 'atomic' simulation was truly happening. The programmers at Maxis were far too hopeless to attempt these types of advanced games.
I should point out that the origin of simcity lies with the old text-based BASIC games that created simple simulations with 3 or 4 dependent variables that could be graphed across time. The designer of simcity realised that one could create a graphical front end for the user input that modified these variables, and that such an input could be 'abstracted' by extracting the stats from a user-crafted 'city'. The results of the resulting functions processing these variables could then feed back into the 'city' in the form of evolving building advancement. The imagination of the gamer would do the rest.
Modern day SimCity games are all about the modelling tools and graphics. Here's a clue. If the gamer has 'fun' the game is successful, and many gamers do NOT want to follow rigid rules when they lay down their city. The product NEEDS bad city designs to work as well as good ones, so it is an advantage to Maxis and EA that they do NOT do any true low-level simulation.
The real issue- the always online nonsense- is impossibly hard to fathom to anyone with a brain. Most users of the game were going to have an interconnection connection anyway, so the game could have been feeding optional online services into the experiences of 95%+ of players WITHOUT controversy. People don't HAVE to use Windows 8 online, or with a browser active, but the vast majority will do so anyway. When people are willing, do you really want to put a gun to their heads to force them?
What was EA thinking? Well, from first hand experience, I can tell you that the people that own/run the biggest game publishers are vicious psychopaths. They are far more concerned to be mean over smart. The people that produce their products- programmers and artists- are mostly subject to terrible exploitation. Poorly rewarded. Hired and fired on a whim. The publishers are 'trained' by the subservience of their 'worker ants' to be haters (it is natural to 'hate' that which you perceive as 'pathetic'). The publishers simply transfer that 'hate' to their customers as well.
You saw the same phenomenon at the recent Oscars, where VFX people were holding protests. The team that won best 'Visual Effects' for 'Life of Pi' saw their company closed down the very next day (a VFX company originally setup by the late great John Hughes- puntastically named 'Rhythm and Hues'). Scum like Spielberg take the majority of profit from effects-driven blockbusters like 'Jurassic Park' into his own personal pocket. The people really responsible for the success get squat. The more the technical people allow Spielberg types to steal all the glory and profit, the more the Spielberg types learn to despise the 'little people' who do all the real work. This is the same process that gives us 'kings' and 'peasants'.
And how much more complex is the SimCity 5 engine than the SimCity 4 one?
For one thing, EA is misrepresenting the model in the newer product by calling its newer product SimCity rather than SimCity 5 or even SimCity 2013 like it does for its sport franchises. For another, how much of a steeper learning curve* does the more complex model bring with it?
* Pedants: I mean "steeper" in the sense of X = mastery, Y = required effort.
Gosh, they lied to us! When did that EVER happen before?!?
If they had just made this the error sound when SimCity couldn't log on, it would have been an epic win.
(*and 10 minutes of "Simcopter one" sounds like it's less annoying than this game*)
You're talking about a phone or maybe a tablet.
How so? I thought I was talking about a USB cellular modem or a cellular modem with a Wi-Fi router. And even if I am talking about a phone, a lot of carriers have started to offer a tethering add-on plan allowing a phone to act as a Wi-Fi router, forwarding traffic to the Internet.
That is all.
... buy spore.
I wanted to buy spore and I would like to buy SimCity but the DRM is just ridiculous. I have had varied problems with other DRM based games and I am over it. Give me a game I can play and also make the saves to my local machine if I want to and I will buy it (if I like it of course). Bundle the game with crippling DRM, not interested. Simple as that.
I really wanted this game to be great. Due to the nature of video game releases I held off buying and waited for the reviews. Pretty amazing that EA could torpedo a beloved franchise so easily.
I am an HCI researcher and neither do they. First off, the whole concept of 'beta testing' and the larger way companies contextualize the development process is pedantic, bloated, and makes anti-user products.
Specifically, they only test a narrowly defined set of factors in their 'beta test'
It's like if automotive engineers tested a sports car by driving it around the block, parallel parking with it, then revving it's engine to max RPM while in Neutral.
Sure, they'll have reems of data...some useful (parallel parking) and even a big fat 'performance portfolio' on the engine...but as a whole the test is **shit**
So for the game, they probably tested it with everyday gamers, but the quesitons on the questionaire would explain everything. They probably had a 7-Likert scale on questions like "Did you feel excited when you began playing"...then "Do you feel that excitement diminished during gameplay?"
Then some benchmark metrics of course, but those are custom installs on super-fast machines most likely (as a final commercial build of the Game wouldn't be done at this time ;). Those performance tests are also usually shitty, but there's still a inferable relationship between actual performance curves and the lab-perfect curves...just reduced.
Then that's put in a report to the game 'producer'...yes they have titles like that...who sees what he/she expects to see.
Talk to the off-the-street testers after the test...they'll tell you all about what the didn't like and how the dumbfuck survery didn't ask them about any of it.
Science is only as good as it is rigorous.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Really. It's the only way to combat this bullshit.
Just stop buying their products.
Desktop data bits are the same as laptop data bits are the same as tablet data bits are the same as phone data bits.
The bits are the same; there's just more of them. The larger the screen, the more bits the user is expected to use. In the plans I've seen, a tethering add-on adds a few more GB to the monthly cap as well.
Root your portable modem (sometimes referred to as a "smart phone"), connect it to a VPN, and tether all you want.
By the time you've paid to replace your phone with one designed to be rootable (namely a Nexus), paid to replace all your iOS applications with corresponding Android applications if your prior phone was an iPhone, paid for a VPN, and paid for extra GB per month for your computer, you could have paid for the tethering rider.
For more Bad EA practices go to http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/9375964.page.