Amazon is still selling the physical version. Why would they pull the digital download and not the physical copy? Is it because there are different people responsible for it?
By the time you receive a boxed copy the servers may be fixed.
Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues
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Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues
#52This 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.
So there was a big server meltdown during the Diablo 3 launch, is this the same thing? I'm not sure how long the Sim City servers have been down but is this just initial launch problems? I'm surprised Amazon has done this as they didn't do the same for D3. How long have logins been totall down for now?
Also I think it would be helpful for reviews like this on Amazon and Spore to restrict the reviews to only verified purchases. People submitting 1 star reviews because they require you to be online just because they don't like it shouldn't be allowed to submit a rating.
Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues
#53Where's Steve Jobs when you need him? > Steve Jobs summoned the MobileMe team to the Town Hall > auditorium on Apple’s Cupertino campus for an obscenity- > laden dressing down. ‘You’ve tarnished Apple’s reputation,’ > he told them. ‘You should hate each other for having let > each other down.’ Then he named a new executive on the spot > to run the team.” http://macdailynews.com/2011/05/08/steve-jobs-to-those-respo...
Although it is more likely in this case that the EA executives mandated online only to the developers.
Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues
#54SimCity and SimCity 2000 were such great games, it's a bit disappointing to see how EA screwed up the rest of the series.
The only thing bad about SimCity 4 was the performance was less than stellar. Other than that, 3000 and 4 were just as good as 2000.
A decent size SC4 city can bring today's hardware to its knees, and the game is 10 years old.
Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues
#55Reading the comments below it sounds like there is an infrastructure scaling issue going on down at EA (I'm no DRM specialist).
If that is indeed the case: Methinks the AWS sales guy/gal on the EA account has just been handed the easiest ROI they could ask for. "Buy my cloud, and we will be able to start selling your game again."
Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues
#56This 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.
The thinking goes - without DRM, some large number, X % of the games are just copied instead of purchased. With DRM, close to 0% of the the games are copied, but some large number Y % of the games are no longer purchased because people either are (A) Philisophically opposed to DRM, (B) Want to be able to play the game offline, or now, (C) Can't play the game because the DRM breaks it. The balancing act, here, is how…
For many of the X%, purchasing was not a consideration; what's more useful to consider is how many people that were paying customers in the past STOP paying, given that they've demonstrated their willingness to pay.
Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues
#57Amazon is still selling the physical version. Why would they pull the digital download and not the physical copy? Is it because there are different people responsible for it?
I thought it might be an automatic block based on 1-star reviews, but both products have the same 88% 1-star reviews right now.
Digital: 765/866 = 88.3%
DVD: 912/1038 = 87.9%
Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues
#58This 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.
Oh, there's a reason. Like Diablo III, the point is that it's effectively impossible to crack. With enough processing offloaded to the server, would-be pirates need to write something that's almost a whole new game. This is the future that big videogame companies are rushing to embrace, one where customers do not and cannot own games, merely rent them for an uncertain period. Indies and smaller studios with Kickstart…
>Like Diablo III, the point is that it's effectively impossible to crack. With enough processing offloaded to the server, would-be pirates need to write something that's almost a whole new game.
I agree that this is a strong deterrent but given how even MMORPG servers have been reversed engineered [1] it's not impossible. If SimCity proves as enduring and as desirable as WoW we may well see it coupled with a LinCity-NG-derived [2] backend or similar.
Edit: That said, a powerful stimulus for the development of MMO server emulators was that players dissatisfied with the official servers' community simple couldn't run their own server how they'd like it for whom they like. I assume that the new SimCity is designed to be a far less community-oriented experience and people in control of the neighboring cities are largely replaceable from a player's perspective.
[1] See http://www.runuo.com/, http://www.galaxiesreborn.com/, https://launchpad.net/aurora-runescape-server-emulator, http://arcemu.org/, etc. Note how many of those are community FOSS projects, even though running them with an official client is almost always a ToS violation.
Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues
#59This 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.
Oh, there's a reason. Like Diablo III, the point is that it's effectively impossible to crack. With enough processing offloaded to the server, would-be pirates need to write something that's almost a whole new game. This is the future that big videogame companies are rushing to embrace, one where customers do not and cannot own games, merely rent them for an uncertain period. Indies and smaller studios with Kickstart…
How much of D3's processing is done offloaded? Are there any articles online that I could read about this?
Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
To be fair, the box art says SimCity with no "V". The promotional materials on the EA site says SimCity with no "V". If it actually is named SimCity V then it's easy to understand the confusion. Although I wouldn't call it a reboot necessarily since every version is more or less a reboot, so to speak.
It's actually the sixth SimCity game, not the fifth. The fifth game was SimCity Societies. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCity#Personal_computer_versi....