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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

#71

Post by akurilin »

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 -…

Same here, I love re-visiting old titles. Even dead-ish MMOs these days, such as Everquest, have 3rd party servers that still let you play something similar to the original game.

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

#72

Post by mnicole »

adimitrov wrote: post #54
masklinn wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You aren't going to pirate Sim City 5. If there's interest in it, it'll be done. The connections will be sniffed and reproduced and/or the online component will just be cracked out entirely, but if somebody wants to do it it will ultimately be done.

I fear the game might just in general not be good enough for this to happen. Replicated pirate servers barely work well enough for WoW, and that is a hugely successful, and arguably very good game. I doubt SimCity 2013 is going to develop such a cult following to allow for these kinds of cracks.

> I fear the game might just in general not be good enough for this to happen.

My thoughts exactly; Giant Bomb's hour-long video review was pretty telling of the issues in the game that a lot of people just haven't been able to deal with yet. Problems that are only around because so much time was spent trying to implement the multiplayer aspect rather than focusing on the core gameplay itself.

I want a new SimCity game just as badly as everyone else, but at this point I'm looking towards other offerings in this space - hopefully by smaller companies - to hold the torch (any suggestions here would be excellent).

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

#74

Post by betterunix »

Irregardless wrote: post #39
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.

"Server woes are a necessary evil with MMOs"

I am not sure that is true. What other than DRM stops people from setting up their own competing servers? What other than a lack of incentive for the game makers prevents community-run servers from interoperating, creating an enormous peer-to-peer universe?

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

#75

Post by hrwl »

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.

I think it's very hard to say how much of the simulation is happening online. When I was playing last night I repeatedly got messages saying I'd been disconnected and then a few minutes later that I was reconnected. The game played fine between those messages. That said, I did notice some weirdness. For example, sewage and electricity and water would be perfectly fine one moment and then the next they would be way overloaded. I could interpret this as meaning the that part of the sim was happening online, or I could chalk it up to just being how the game goes.

I also ran into what many others have seen in the first few days. I built up a large city over a few hours and then quit. When I started back up, nothing was there. The city was claimed but it was a clean slate. You might see this from any number of things. Maybe the sim is all on the computer. Maybe the saves are just borked. Maybe the saves are fine on one node but haven't been replicated to whatever node I my request got load balanced to when i reconnected.

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

#76

Post by npsimons »

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…

This is the future of gaming.

Then I guess I won't be gaming anymore. Not that I do much now, and I've mostly quit for other unrelated reasons, but if is the future of gaming, you can count me, and I'm sure many others, out.

I used to game a lot. I used to spend a not insignificant amount of money on games. If the publishers want to basically steal my money and call me the thief, then they can forget about having me as a customer.

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

#77

Post by pc86 »

jlgreco wrote: post #69
pc86 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only serverside aspect is saves and social Am I misunderstanding what you mean by saves? That seems pretty important to me.

Important yes, but also presumably fairly simple to reverse engineer.

Gotcha. If that truly is all that's punted to the server we should start seeing cracks in a few weeks, I would think.

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

#78

Post by npsimons »

jwr wrote: post #53

I treat anything that is DRM-encumbered as a rental, and make buying decisions accordingly. It is not something I own, and I do not expect to be able to use it beyond a certain time horizon (a year or two). Same goes for DRM-protected books or music.

Same here; only difference is, I don't rent books, music, movies, games or software. Sell me a copy, or lose a sale.

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

#79

Post by betterunix »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #56
danielweber wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, fallback…

"Parts of the game logic are run on the server." By which they mean: storage of save-games, and resource trading with your city-neighbors. That is ALL.

If I remember SimCity correctly, saved games are pretty important. One can only get so far without saving...

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

#80

Post by zalzane »

pc86 wrote: post #64
sbov wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is wrong. The simulation is not serverside. If you disconnect from the servers you can play your city all you want. The only serverside aspect is saves and social (including region play), which would be relatively easier to recreate.

The only serverside aspect is saves and social Am I misunderstanding what you mean by saves? That seems pretty important to me.

Not necessarily. Implementing client-side saving would be trivial compared to the other kinds of DRM that have been successfully bypassed over the years.
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