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SimCity Burning: A Warning to Publishers on The Dangers of Always-Online DRM

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Re: SimCity Burning: A Warning to Publishers on The Dangers of Always-Online DRM

#21

Post by danielweber »

ry0ohki wrote: post #14

Can someone confirm that the online mode offers nothing but DRM? The fact that they had to disable Cheetah speed makes me think they really are offloading some of the game simulations to the servers. It certainly feels like a much speedier game then SimCity 4 (when it works).

Parts of the game logic are run on the server.

I don't expect more game companies to stay away from this; I expect them to do this a lot more for PC gaming. Probably not explicitly, but as much as people in /r/technology insists piracy doesn't matter, the companies continue to care. With online games, the need to worry about that largely evaporates.

Instead, I expect companies to put in proper rate limiting, fallbacks, and plan for the ability to spin up extra servers in case of high demand.

Re: SimCity Burning: A Warning to Publishers on The Dangers of Always-Online DRM

#22

Post by mikeash »

potatolicious wrote: post #15
mikeash wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely those tie-ins could have been written to degrade gracefully when the servers are unavailable, rather than just refusing to run the entire game.

I'm mixed on this. I really dislike online DRM, but one of the greatest weaknesses of SimCity 4 was that the average home computer had no hope of simulating a large city. This is still true today - while most computers could handle the graphics engine behind it, the simulation engine would still eat your machine for lunch. Moving the city simulation server-side certainly has its justifications - it opens up the field…

Is this actually the case? I've seen a lot of people say it, but then I've also seen some people say that they were able to keep playing for considerable periods of time even while the servers were offline. It sounds like one of those things where marketing-speak got misinterpreted as a technical design that isn't actually how it's built, but I really haven't investigated besides reading comments.

Re: SimCity Burning: A Warning to Publishers on The Dangers of Always-Online DRM

#23

Post by jsnell »

potatolicious wrote: post #15
mikeash wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely those tie-ins could have been written to degrade gracefully when the servers are unavailable, rather than just refusing to run the entire game.

I'm mixed on this. I really dislike online DRM, but one of the greatest weaknesses of SimCity 4 was that the average home computer had no hope of simulating a large city. This is still true today - while most computers could handle the graphics engine behind it, the simulation engine would still eat your machine for lunch. Moving the city simulation server-side certainly has its justifications - it opens up the field…

That's a smokescreen, there's no way they are offloading any significant amount of processing to remote servers, compared to the local CPU power. The economics just can't work.

Re: SimCity Burning: A Warning to Publishers on The Dangers of Always-Online DRM

#25

Post by dacilselig »

ryusage wrote: post #19

It's an interesting case study. This happens with nearly every MMO and people grumble but accept it. Within a couple weeks, the server issues are mostly resolved and people don't think about it anymore. And yet, people are pissed about this. The fact that people see the game as single player seems to make a huge difference. It seems the lesson is that, if you want to do the always-on thing, you need to design your ga…

I think EA's reputation was the fuel to the fire in the case. Kind of a perfect storm.

Re: SimCity Burning: A Warning to Publishers on The Dangers of Always-Online DRM

#26

Post by Fauntleroy »

jfoutz wrote: post #12

If anyone could achieve a decent launch, it's blizzard. They have a lot of money and talent, and a real attention to detail. They're willing to wait to ship games "till they're ready" But launch still eludes them. I've purchased every game through Diablo 3, but that put me off the whole thing. Heart of the swarm will be the first Blizzard game i just don't bother with. The launch will be a disaster. Since they've tak…

I don't recall the Starcraft 2 launch being hindered in any large way, so I can't imagine the Heart of the Swarm launch being any worse.

Guess we'll all find out in a few days...

Re: SimCity Burning: A Warning to Publishers on The Dangers of Always-Online DRM

#27

Post by toki5 »

jfoutz wrote: post #12

If anyone could achieve a decent launch, it's blizzard. They have a lot of money and talent, and a real attention to detail. They're willing to wait to ship games "till they're ready" But launch still eludes them. I've purchased every game through Diablo 3, but that put me off the whole thing. Heart of the swarm will be the first Blizzard game i just don't bother with. The launch will be a disaster. Since they've tak…

> But launch still eludes them. I've purchased every game through Diablo 3, but that put me off the whole thing. Heart of the swarm will be the first Blizzard game i just don't bother with. The launch will be a disaster.

This seems to me a bold claim to make. Diablo III's launch was, in many ways, a huge new service for them, a new infrastructure to test and maintain, and they were quick to fix issues with it. Compare this to the launch of The Burning Crusade expansion pack -- it was a rough launch! -- but over time, they managed to smooth their systems out such that now, even a content launch as huge as Mists of Pandaria went smoothly.

WoW is a different game, but it illustrates their iterative healing process. Since the Wings of Liberty launch went smoothly, I wouldn't expect anything less of Heart of the Swarm, as it's being released on a system that's here, ready, polished, and tested. We might see a few hiccups, but nothing close to Diablo III.

I'd hardly call Battle.net an infrastructure that Blizzard is "just not competent to build or manage."

Re: SimCity Burning: A Warning to Publishers on The Dangers of Always-Online DRM

#28

Post by Irregardless »

> There's also the question of preserving gaming history. As we saw with THQ last month, publishers aren't immortal. They can die, and had THQ implemented always-online DRM in Darksiders II, all copies of that game might've died with it when the rights to the series weren't bought up by another publisher.

That's the part that concerns me the most. I still install (and play) lots of old games on every computer I own -- King's Quest VI, C&C: Red Alert, Worms: Armageddon, etc. And who could live without the console classics like Goldeneye or Ocarina of Time? All you have to do is pull out the disc (or cartridge), pop it in, and play.

We still don't know exactly what will happen with this new generation of games that consumers are merely "renting" from companies like EA, but piracy seems to be our only guaranteed method of preserving them. What happens if you want to play Battlefield 3 again 10 years from now? You might be able to access it IFF:

   1. Your account is still in good standing (not banned)
   2. EA still exists
   3. EA has decided to maintain support for Origin
   4. EA has decided to maintain support for Battlefield 3
   5. You remember your PW or can prove to EA you're the account owner
There's not much history to base this speculation on yet, but what little we do have shows that that's an extremely unlikely scenario. If there's any chance to preserve the games we're playing now, it's probably up to us to make it happen.

Re: SimCity Burning: A Warning to Publishers on The Dangers of Always-Online DRM

#29

Post by potatolicious »

mikeash wrote: post #22
potatolicious wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm mixed on this. I really dislike online DRM, but one of the greatest weaknesses of SimCity 4 was that the average home computer had no hope of simulating a large city. This is still true today - while most computers could handle the graphics engine behind it, the simulation engine would still eat your machine for lunch. Moving the city simulation server-side certainly has its justifications - it opens up the field…

Is this actually the case? I've seen a lot of people say it, but then I've also seen some people say that they were able to keep playing for considerable periods of time even while the servers were offline. It sounds like one of those things where marketing-speak got misinterpreted as a technical design that isn't actually how it's built, but I really haven't investigated besides reading comments.

It's tricky because of the lack of concrete information. IMO the claim is substantiated by the fact that they turned off the highest simulation speed in an effort to increase server capacity - so clearly the server is tied into the basic simulation to some degree. How deep the ties go is hard to tell. If this was purely a DRM maneuver I highly doubt server capacity would be in any way tied to game speed.

Re: SimCity Burning: A Warning to Publishers on The Dangers of Always-Online DRM

#30

Post by bradbeattie »

danielweber wrote: post #24
diminoten wrote: post #18

So can I pirate this bad boy? What's the status of the crack?

It's an online game. Pirating it is about as feasible as running a pirate copy of google.com.

Online in its final packaging perhaps, but what effort would it take to get running locally? If one can play offline for a couple of minutes, the online portion is likely not as critical as it's being portrayed.
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