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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

#101

Post by Natsu »

arkitaip wrote: post #16
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.

They sold server-side processing as a "feature" for what should otherwise be a single-player game. Did anyone not see this coming when it was last discussed on HN?

I remember thinking that the servers were guaranteed to melt on launch day.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#102

Post by dman »

mortenjorck wrote: post #37

EA needs to pivot this game, fast. Even in the best case scenario, where the servers all get fixed this evening and the game works flawlessly for everyone for a month straight, the damage to the game's name has been done. The meme is hatched: SimCity 2013 has a highly brittle dependency on poorly-planned cloud infrastructure. There's a private region mode in the game (that you nonetheless can't use offline in the cur…

Only if they havent laid off the game devs after the master copy was done.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#103

Post by josephv »

I have played the last couple nights (since release) on the West Europe 2 server though I'm on the East Coast. Not ideal I guess but I've had to do the same thing for other games. Hopefully it still works when I get home in a few hours :)

Speaking of "broken" memes.

I used to play SimCity like you, until it got an arrow in the cloud. Improve on that please.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#104

Post by jader201 »

anon1385 wrote: post #99
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.

This is not a web site, it's a game. It is marketed and sold as a game.

It isn't even being marketed/sold as an MMO. For the most part, people think this is a single player experience with some multiplayer interactions.

I haven't seen the retail packaging, but does it even state an internet connection is required? And if so, is it prominent?

EDIT: According to the shot on Amazon[1], it does at least state that a "persistent internet connection [is] required to play". Not excusing them by any means, but that's better than what I was expecting from the likes of EA.

[1]http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/815mDnNUDhL._SL1121_.j...

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#105

Post by estel »

ececconi wrote: post #46

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?

It's entirely possible that Amazon have just run out of keys for the digital version...

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#106

Post by reitzensteinm »

spartango wrote: post #81

Can we talk about this more clearly? This isn't strictly "evil DRM" as people are highlighting. Unlike some other games, it's not like SimCity is just phoning home to figure out if it is licensed or not, and preventing unlicensed copies. SimCity depends on EA/Maxis' server infrastructure for a great deal of storage and computation related to the macro-scale components of each game. Not only is city state synced there…

I don't think you're adding clarity here.

People are upset about the lack of a single player offline mode, which absolutely is about preventing unlicensed copies. There is no technical reason for its absence.

The cloud based stuff sounds great, and if it were an optional extra that was unavailable at launch due to technical difficulties, I doubt you'd see a hundredth as much bad PR.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#107

Post by DannoHung »

baddox wrote: post #85
mortenjorck wrote: post #37

EA needs to pivot this game, fast. Even in the best case scenario, where the servers all get fixed this evening and the game works flawlessly for everyone for a month straight, the damage to the game's name has been done. The meme is hatched: SimCity 2013 has a highly brittle dependency on poorly-planned cloud infrastructure. There's a private region mode in the game (that you nonetheless can't use offline in the cur…

> The meme is hatched: SimCity 2013 has a highly brittle dependency on poorly-planned cloud infrastructure. To the tech-literate crowd, this will be the meme. But for the average gamer, the meme is different, and I might argue worse: Sim City simply doesn't work.

The meme I see tends to be: EA ruins everything.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#108

Post by srehnborg »

I am waiting to see what comes of this before I buy. However, They had overloaded server issues during the 1 hour beta AND the extended 4 hour beta leading up to the launch.

Hoping they can get this resolved quickly. I think we're dreaming if the fix will involve a non-DRM offline mode.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#109

Post by signed0 »

arkitaip wrote: post #16
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.

I can't understand why experienced gamers would buy it at launch if they expect there to be serious technical issues.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#110

Post by anon1385 »

jader201 wrote: post #104
anon1385 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

This is not a web site, it's a game. It is marketed and sold as a game. It isn't even being marketed/sold as an MMO. For the most part, people think this is a single player experience with some multiplayer interactions. I haven't seen the retail packaging, but does it even state an internet connection is required? And if so, is it prominent? EDIT: According to the shot on Amazon[1], it does at least state that a "per…

So your argument is really that DRM is ok as long as the user knows about it in advance?
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