SimCity Mac Launch Facing More Problems

The launch of the new SimCity back in March made headlines for the problems caused by the game's always-online DRM. EA Maxis even decided that people who bought the game early deserved a free game for their trouble. They also decided to postpone the launch of the Mac version of the game. Well, the delay is over; SimCity has arrived for Macs, and players are now facing a whole new set of installation and launch problems. "Those issues include a 'mutexAlert' error, which can be resolved by switching the OS to English. Another simply doesn't allow a player to install the game once downloaded. The suggested solution for that is to re-install Origin and opt in to the new Beta version. The game also apparently doesn't currently support Mac OS X 10.7.4 nor the upcoming 10.9 beta release." There are also reports that the game won't function on high-resolution display settings.

Comments

Same shit, different day

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone expect anything less from this series of disasters?

Re:Same shit, different day

[davester666]

I pretty sure all the problems are caused by EA.

Treat the EA badge as a warning sticker

[sandbagger]

No, really.

Re:Treat the EA badge as a warning sticker

[jandrese]

The takeaway I have is that after EA buys a studio, it has maybe a 50/50 shot of their next game release being good, and after that it's all over. I've seen this time and time again with Westwood, Bioware, Bullfrog, Pandemic, Playfish, and more. EA is in the business of buying up studios, and then choking them to death in order to make a quick buck, and it has made them the biggest video game publisher in the world. They have more in common with sharky wall street banks than your traditional game company.

At last, platform equality.

[Galaga88]

Maybe they're afraid that if they gave Mac users a non-broken version of SimCity, people would accuse them of playing favorites.

Really, this level of "quality" isn't much different from what the Windows users were delivered, so EA is just trying to be fair. "Look, we put just as much effort into our OS X products as Windows. Which just happens to be little to none. Now buy more DLC!"

Hey Maxis, outsource much?

[Narcocide]

I've got an idea! Maybe if you can get some 3rd world country to train children to code your games 20 hours a day in exchange for only housing and basic sustenance then the development costs will be low enough that you can still afford cover up the huge faceplant that every game's release has become...

Re:The continuing saga. . .

[gstoddart]

Despite the vociferous pronouncements from many on here as to how high their salary's are as programmers and that you get what you pay for, it's amazing the amount of bad software, games or otherwise, the end user has to suffer with.

And you might be amazed at how much of that is the fault of management.

Between ridiculous timelines, cutting budgets for QA, management who change their minds fairly often, and salespeople who promise the world -- there's often quite a disconnect between what people are saying and what's happening.

Having spent a lot of years in and around software, I lay more blame on bad PMs, clueless management, and overly optimistic forecasts.

And the game industry is famous for the continual 'deathmarch' -- the constant scramble to finish it like the deadline is tomorrow, and when you finally get there you start all over again.

I'm more likely to believe the management at EA is lousy, and the developers can only do so much. Because that matches my direct experience in the industry.