Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#11

Post by goatforce5 » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 8:35 PM UTC

deoxxa wrote: post #8

criley wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean, when someone reverse engineers their massively multiplayer server scheme and rewrites an entire server wrapper for a game that follows the client/server paradigm? This isn't a case where a client-only software package is locked by a remote server. This is a case where core game logic is stored on servers and will have to be reverse engineered or emulated on some level to play truly offline.

I kind of started poking around at the backend protocol this morning. It's all websockets over HTTPS (very trendy stuff) and is hosted on EC2. I'm yet to dig much further than "let's see what this looks like in wireshark", but the behaviour and some of the errors I've observed in-game point to some kind of sync-every-now-and-then architecture. I wouldn't be surprised if it was really easy to do up a custom server for…

Which makes it surprising that they didn't design it so they could spool up more servers as required, and gentle shut them back down once interest in the game wanes.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#12

Post by ericcholis » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 8:36 PM UTC

Side note, it's a little odd that the additional images for a video game are all concept art.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#13

Post by fennecfoxen » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 8:36 PM UTC

So did they not even bother to look at the debacle of a launch that was _Cities XL_? Or did they imagine themselves immune?

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#14

Post by cryptoz » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 8:37 PM UTC

jpwright wrote: post #5

Nitpicking: The name of the game is just "Sim City". They dropped the numbering scheme and went for a total reboot.

> The name of the game is just "Sim City"

No, it's not. If you're going to nitpick, get it right. The name of the game is SimCity.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#15

Post by stusmall » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 8:38 PM UTC

My copy is on its way in the mail. I'm a huge SimCity fanatic and was slightly worried that when it got here I'd sink too much time in it and get behind on my work.

Thanks EA!

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#16

Post by arkitaip » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 8:38 PM UTC

fennecfoxen wrote: post #13

So did they not even bother to look at the debacle of a launch that was _Cities XL_? Or did they imagine themselves immune?

EA has a very long history of anti consumer practices. Pretty much everyone expected some kind of fubar on launch but even this level of incompetence surprised most jaded gamers.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#17

Post by BklynJay » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 8:39 PM UTC

The box-art says, "Winner of 26 PC Game awards". Is that for the series or for Sim City V? I have a hard time believing its the latter.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#18

Post by cryptoz » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 8:40 PM UTC

This could be a very big moment. EA is selling a completely broken product - and I mean that from the perspective of the average consumer, not the nerd who thinks all DRM is broken - and they're doing it for absolutely no reason. If this lasts long enough and gets enough press, it could actually be a turning point against DRM like this.

That would be so wonderful.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#19

Post by jlarocco » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 8:40 PM UTC

SimCity and SimCity 2000 were such great games, it's a bit disappointing to see how EA screwed up the rest of the series.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#20

Post by lost_name » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 8:41 PM UTC

KevinEldon wrote: post #4

The title of the 5-star review Amazon highlighted as the helpful is delightful: "Got me off my video game addiction!" If there isn't some kind of anti-DRM movement surrounding these review this game might break some kind of record for worst reviews. As of now there are 737 1-star reviews.

Spore (the last Big Game released by Maxis through EA) is currently holding that record, I believe.

   By September 14, 2008 (ten days after the game's initial Australian release),
   2,016 of 2,216 ratings on Amazon.com gave the game one out of five stars,
   most citing EA's implementation of DRM for the low ratings. [1]

Spore's DRM issues were different, however.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore_(2008_video_game)#DRM_con...