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Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

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Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#91

Post by Bud »

amitparikh wrote: post #70
kevinalexbrown wrote: post #42

I feel bad for the game devs who got to see their hard work turn into something they don't intend. I suppose this is a great advertising technique for small firms, startups, indie shops, etc. "Don't want this[ http://amazon-pulls-sim-city ] to happen? Work for our small team. We won't destroy your work." I know it's standard to say "you get a part in the decisionmaking process!" That's part of it. But a lot of people…

Isn't this just a technical error (bug) that is a game dev's (or infrastructure engineer's) responsibility? I understand the frustration at the DRM concept, but you can't blame this on the larger entity as a whole when it was likely just a bug in some code or a small oversight. Things were clearly working when it was in beta.

a) When it was in beta, there was presumably much less server load. b) The fact that a small bug in the unnecessary server/DRM part of the game could take the whole game down like this is precisely the point. You can certainly blame the whole entity for deciding to require a net connection and a server even for single-player use of the game.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#92

Post by caligo »

res0nat0r wrote: post #52
cryptoz wrote: post #18

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.

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…

I played Diablo 3 quite soon after launch and while there were "hiccups" (my character would occasionally jump around due to lag) I could connect fairly quickly to a server. From the reviews the Sim City servers seem to be overloaded much more than D3 servers were.

The always connected to the internet aspect was bad for D3 and it seems it is even worse for Sim City. If I remember correctly, Blizzard had legal problems in South Korea because of connectivity. My hopes is that incidents like this force companies to move away from the online only single player design.

I think that aside from the philosophical problems with DRM in general, the required internet connection aspect means that once EA shuts down the server the game could be lost forever. When making these games (good or bad) a team adds something to the cultural record of our time. Old movies may not be as good as modern movies in terms of technical execution, but they are interesting because they contain within them an aspect of a lost culture. Games should aspire to do the same.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#93

Post by driverdan »

kevinalexbrown wrote: post #42

I feel bad for the game devs who got to see their hard work turn into something they don't intend. I suppose this is a great advertising technique for small firms, startups, indie shops, etc. "Don't want this[ http://amazon-pulls-sim-city ] to happen? Work for our small team. We won't destroy your work." I know it's standard to say "you get a part in the decisionmaking process!" That's part of it. But a lot of people…

I don't feel bad at all. They know who they've chosen to work for.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#94

Post by reitzensteinm »

vyrotek wrote: post #71
ececconi wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of D3's processing is done offloaded? Are there any articles online that I could read about this?

Originally they told us quite a bit of logic was done on their servers. But then they announced that Diablo 3 would be playable offline on the PlayStation 4. Now I don't know what to believe. Could it be it was all just talk to stop us from trying?

The servers are almost certainly running from the same source base as the client. Swapping out who-does-what, compared to a console port, is trivial.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#95

Post by pc86 »

ghshephard wrote: post #80
pc86 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of games are copied, but it's a fallacy to assume that pirating a game means you won't buy it, or that attempting to pirate a game and being prevented (by DRM or some other means) means you'll buy it instead. In college I pirated games quite a bit. I never bought one, nor would I have.

Oh, I totally appreciate that - and, those people who would never have purchased the game in the first place, but copy it, provide some good word of mouth advertising for the game. The thing is though, if the number gets high enough, let's say 95% of people just copy the game (not unlikely in the age of torrents) and only 5% purchase it - might not be enough to fund a AAA game, whose budgets now run in the 100s of mi…

I agree.

I do think the effect of piracy on a company's bottom line is overstated in just about every case. It's easy for us an the HN community (generally pretty intelligent and technically inclined) to forget that downloading a torrent isn't the simplest thing in the world, particularly the lengths you need to go to in order to get some pirated games to even function properly.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#97

Post by signed0 »

vyrotek wrote: post #71
ececconi wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of D3's processing is done offloaded? Are there any articles online that I could read about this?

Originally they told us quite a bit of logic was done on their servers. But then they announced that Diablo 3 would be playable offline on the PlayStation 4. Now I don't know what to believe. Could it be it was all just talk to stop us from trying?

Or that the PS4 version is the first variant that has enough functionality built in for it to be playable offline.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#98

Post by mrgoldenbrown »

jfim wrote: post #90
amitparikh wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this just a technical error (bug) that is a game dev's (or infrastructure engineer's) responsibility? I understand the frustration at the DRM concept, but you can't blame this on the larger entity as a whole when it was likely just a bug in some code or a small oversight. Things were clearly working when it was in beta.

I don't know about this specific instance, but from what I recall from working in the video game industry, devs don't deal with copy protection; it's something that's done prior to mastering where they put your executable through SecuROM or whatever and it spits out a new binary that has copy protection/CD checks/online auth or whatever junk the publisher wants to add.

This isn't the case here. The game does significant processing on their servers, to make it useless as soon as they turn their servers off, which AFAIK they haven't promised to keep up any certain amount of time.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#99

Post by anon1385 »

kevinalexbrown wrote: post #42

I feel bad for the game devs who got to see their hard work turn into something they don't intend. I suppose this is a great advertising technique for small firms, startups, indie shops, etc. "Don't want this[ http://amazon-pulls-sim-city ] to happen? Work for our small team. We won't destroy your work." I know it's standard to say "you get a part in the decisionmaking process!" That's part of it. But a lot of people…

>I suppose this is a great advertising technique for small firms, startups, indie shops

You mean like all those small valley startups creating Rails web apps that only work when the user has an internet connection? I don't see the difference.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#100

Post by fusiongyro »

bearmf wrote: post #43
TillE wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The irony is that it is not only impossible to crack, it is now impossible to play as well. Unplayable games are impossible to crack, but this does not make them any less absurd. DRM has come to its logical and absurd conclusion, it seems.

It worked out the same way with music. For a short time the labels were experimenting with selling CDs that weren't actually audio CDs, but had been damaged in various ways to make them unplayable on a computer. The result of that experiment speaks for itself. Hopefully it will play out the same way here.
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