Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

ign.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 207 posts

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

#91

Post by toki5 »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #82
svachalek wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are arguing that "SimCity Online" does not sound different than a regular SimCity game, but "SimCity" does? Does not compute.

No I'm questioning why you are saying they should have come up with a different name like SimCity Online and start afresh when they did just that... But with the normal SimCity name. Maybe I didn't word it well, I'm running on 2 hours of sleep.

Because there's a semantic difference between "SimCity" and "SimCity Online."

SimCity's been a single-player offline experience since its inception. It's reasonable to believe in a vacuum that a newly-released "SimCity" game will be the same.

Lots of people are in such a vacuum -- a LOT of people hear "A new SimCity game is coming out / has come out" in their periphery and, having enjoyed its past iterations, rush to buy the new copy. Their surprise in finding that it's an entirely online experience is reasonable here.

Calling it "SimCity Online" could have dampened this effect, causing some -- if not a lot -- of people to stop and think "Wait, what makes it Online? Oh, it's more like an MMO."

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

#92

Post by CaveTech »

zalzane wrote: post #80
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.

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

Client side saving is already implemented. In a few instances where I disconnected from the server and continued to play, SimCity would try to push my work to the server on reconnect.

At times this wouldn't work and I would lose my progress, but I'm willing to attribute that to the fact that it was supposed to be a rare case backup mechanism, rather than the necessary crutch it is currently.

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

#93

Post by zerohm »

I'm sorry but as a gaming enthusiast, I'm experiencing some major schadenfreude here.

EA's tactics, ethics and influence have been the worst in the industry for the last 10 years. Pushing DRM, buying up smaller studios, releasing endless add-on packs and DLC. Thankfully I haven't been addicted to any of their games since Dungeon Keeper. That was a great game.

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

#94

Post by corresation »

sbov wrote: post #58
Irregardless wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

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.

Why did they have to disable accelerated time in the single player game? I'm not disputing what you are saying -- the notion that it had a server-side engine for single player games seemed silly -- but that aspect of the story struck me as very odd.

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

#95

Post by drobati »

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 not the future of gaming. Look at how badly SimCity flopped.

Let me compare to DotA2 which I play a lot. It's exclusively multiplayer and thus needs an internet connection, yet it's free to play. How much have I spent on it? At this point at least $75+ dollars. THIS IS THE FUTURE OF GAMING.

Valve has the right model. I know valve didn't create the F2P model but it has implemented it the best as far as I know. They have pulled more money out of me giving me a free game then they would have made if they sold me 60+ copy.

EA should of just given out free copies of SimCity. Given out free copies with enough features to keep me entertained without the need to spend money. Then releasing toolsets for modders to create items; resell them to us for profit.

The DLC will surely be created but based on how EA conducts DLC in The Sims 3, I expect expensive expansions and stuffer packs.

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

#96

Post by rozap »

I feel so sorry for guys and girls responsible for keeping the systems up and running at EA. Days without sleep, without a doubt. And I'm sure their managers are cracking the whips and blaming all the bad things an them.

It just makes me sad to think of :(

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

#98

Post by error54 »

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.

Thanks everyone for clearing that up for me!

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

#99

Post by borlak »

b3b0p wrote: post #49

If they had called this Sim City Online and marketed as not the next Sim City, but more of an MMO like Ever Quest, Guild Wars, and Star Wars Galaxies would be people be complaining as much if they knew they had to be online to play it. Sim City 4, 2000, and the original still run perfect and are extremely fun to play. Sim City 4 is on Steam even making it easy to get right now. I'm tempted to pick that up since I hav…

They could still have all these social/online features and not require internet-DRM to play.

You play your game, and if you want to do something social and the servers are down -- it sucks, but you can still play, and take part in the social stuff when it is up and working.

For online saves -- there is a local backup for when the online system is down.

These are not difficult things. They are just trying to fight an ever-losing battle against piracy.

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

#100

Post by danielweber »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #89
npsimons wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Actually it is the future, and like you I too don't buy games much any more. Your kids or your peer's kids though will play games this way because it is the only way to get them and they will think its 'normal.' Eventually you'll be called an 'old timer' and derided for all your comments about how in your day when you bought a game it didn't need to download 4GB of 'patches' nor did it require Internet access to run.…

I agree. When I said this was the future, I wasn't saying it with any cheer. We had a pretty good run for a while there, though.
Post reply on HN