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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

#31

Post by sageikosa »

criley wrote: post #10
error54 wrote: post #8

Can someone explain what exactly happened with SimCity? From the article I gather that it had something to do with DRM but the author never explained what exactly made it unplayable.

Trouble downloading and installing the game, massive login queues (that recheck the queue once every 30 minutes), trouble creating cities, troubles loading creating cities, disconnections, features have been removed to help handle stress, etc. Basically, it's hard to get it downloaded and installed. If you do that, it's very difficult to login to play. If you manage that, it's very difficult to do the tutorial or cla…

They should probably have an "achievement" for passing each of those hurdles; turn the task of running a game into a game itself...

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

#32

Post by kwanbis »

error54 wrote: post #8

Can someone explain what exactly happened with SimCity? From the article I gather that it had something to do with DRM but the author never explained what exactly made it unplayable.

They implemented a DRM scheme where you have to be always connected to the internet, and their servers. Servers fail. Game does not game.

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

#33

Post by danielweber »

Irregardless wrote: post #28

> 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 -…

but piracy seems to be our only guaranteed method of preserving them

You aren't going to pirate Sim City 5.

This is the future of gaming. Companies are just going to avoid all the grief of piracy and weird DRM by either moving to locked-down platforms (iOS and consoles) or into games that have essential online components.

It's a classic prisoner's dilemma. I'd love to by a game and install it on my PC without it taking things over, and the publishers would love to write that and not worry about DRM. But we can't get that because each of us doesn't trust the other party to defect.

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

#34

Post by Irregardless »

danielweber wrote: post #33
Irregardless wrote: post #28

> 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 -…

but piracy seems to be our only guaranteed method of preserving them You aren't going to pirate Sim City 5. This is the future of gaming. Companies are just going to avoid all the grief of piracy and weird DRM by either moving to locked-down platforms (iOS and consoles) or into games that have essential online components. It's a classic prisoner's dilemma. I'd love to by a game and install it on my PC without it taki…

> You aren't going to pirate Sim City 5.

I'm tempted to believe that due to the simulation grunt work being done server-side. But people also said the same thing about WoW and Starcraft II, yet you can easily play either of those for free with fully functioning multiplayer (just not on Battle.net).

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

#35

Post by InclinedPlane »

error54 wrote: post #8

Can someone explain what exactly happened with SimCity? From the article I gather that it had something to do with DRM but the author never explained what exactly made it unplayable.

The latest, just released, version of SimCity includes a form of DRM which basically involves hosting a part of the game's functions on a server, so that the only way to play the game is to be connected to the server. Due to whatever reason, likely poor capacity planning, a huge number of people who have bought the game have not been able to play it at all due to the servers being overloaded or inaccessible.

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

#36

Post by illuminate »

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.

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

What a silly, untrue statement. A better analogy would be "as feasible as running a copy of World of Warcraft offline", which people do.

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

#37

Post by city41 »

danielweber wrote: post #33
Irregardless wrote: post #28

> 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 -…

but piracy seems to be our only guaranteed method of preserving them You aren't going to pirate Sim City 5. This is the future of gaming. Companies are just going to avoid all the grief of piracy and weird DRM by either moving to locked-down platforms (iOS and consoles) or into games that have essential online components. It's a classic prisoner's dilemma. I'd love to by a game and install it on my PC without it taki…

how does iOS or consoles prevent piracy? Piracy is rampant on iOS and every console to date.

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

#38

Post by masklinn »

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…

> The fact that people see the game as single player seems to make a huge difference.

Indeed. And there's also the fact that MMO are — for the most part — "long term" experiences. Now single-player games can be as well, but for the most part are not, the majority of Diablo III buyers have probably moved on already to some other games, where a WoW player will be in it for years, so the rough few first weeks aren't much of an issue.

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

#39

Post by Irregardless »

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…

Server woes are a necessary evil with MMOs, and people buy the game knowing they'll have to deal with some amount of downtime due to maintenance, overcrowding or just plain growing pains.

Try telling FPS players that their game will be unavailable every Tuesday morning for 6-12 hours and they'll probably riot -- that's standard downtime in the MMO world though.

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

#40

Post by papsosouid »

danielweber wrote: post #33
Irregardless wrote: post #28

> 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 -…

but piracy seems to be our only guaranteed method of preserving them You aren't going to pirate Sim City 5. This is the future of gaming. Companies are just going to avoid all the grief of piracy and weird DRM by either moving to locked-down platforms (iOS and consoles) or into games that have essential online components. It's a classic prisoner's dilemma. I'd love to by a game and install it on my PC without it taki…

>moving to locked-down platforms (iOS and consoles)

Where piracy is rampant?

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