And this is why I basically do not pre order anything. If I do, its pretty much considered charity in my mind (eg a kickstart -esque situation)
Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues
271–280 of 452 posts
Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues
#272I'm not sure if this will work but there's a petition for EA to remove the server requirement...
http://www.change.org/petitions/electronic-arts-inc-remove-a...
Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues
#273When a game requires an internet connection to work we call it DRM and slam it. When a text editor or spreadsheet requires an internet connection to run we call it innovation.
Requiring and supporting are two completely different animals. If text editors and spreadsheets actually requiring you to have an internet connection, then I can see people criticizing about it.
I think he is referring to Google Docs/Drive.
Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues
#274This 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…
"With enough processing offloaded to the server, would-be pirates need to write something that's almost a whole new game."
Sure, and with sufficient bandwidth and computational power you could actually hide all the game logic using a secure computation protocol. Only a complete idiot would do that for something as performance-intensive as a video game.
The problem here is that we do not have reliable or fast Internet connections. As soon as your connection has a burp, or you get hit with some bufferbloat, or half your neighborhood starts streaming the Super Bowl in 1080p, your game starts to play worse. What EA failed to realize here is that the best way to make money in games is to offer a superior online gaming platform, not to try to sell individual games as products. Microsoft figured that out with XBox Live a long time ago.
Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple didn't voluntarily stop using DRM; they convinced the labels to stop requiring it. Piracy isn't Apple's concern, but the user experience is. This is in service of saying that DRM isn't in the user's best interest and even big companies that care about user experience don't like DRM. Apple didn't ship DRM on its OSes when they were DVD based either. Yes they probably lost some sales due to piracy, but not having…
No, Amazon stopped using DRM to have a competitive advantage versus Apple, the music companies went along because it gave them a real competitor to iTunes, and eventually Apple managed to renegotiate their contracts so they could also remove the DRM.
Juicy, juicy revisionist history!
Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
In this case it's not just DRM; SimCity has social features that clearly require a server.
A social feature that isn't even relevant in solo play. You shouldn't need a network for single play.
The idea here is to force you to be reliant on the network; to move the processing onto their servers.
SimCity isn't a normal game, it's a SaaS game.
Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues
#277I 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 feel bad for the game devs who got to see their hard work turn into something they don't intend." On the contrary, this is by far the most realistic simulation of working for government that's ever been created.
I love how the anti-government mindset even blames greed based failures of private industry on the government.
Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues
#278EA 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…
This predictably happens at the release of almost every anticipated game that requires a central server connection. There is initial downtime and lag, angry gamers write lots of horrible reviews, then things eventually get better and nobody cares anymore that it used to be broken.
Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues
#279Earlier 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…
The answer was discovered long ago: online play. Starcraft had this interesting concept: you could enter a key to play in single-player mode, and even have some fun playing against the AI, but to play on Battle.net you needed a unique key. Online play is a whole different level of exciting from offline play, and Battle.net makes Blizzard a ton of money. Likewise with XBox Live for Microsoft.
That EA failed to realize that they could monetize an online Simcity regardless of whether or not people pay to play offline demonstrates a serious lapse of judgment.
Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)#DR…
For what it's worth, my son enjoyed the bejesus out of Spore, and even used his own money to get expansions.
There were expansions to spore?
Oh boy...