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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

#121

Post by jl6 »

12 years ago I quit gaming because decent titles weren't available for Linux. I now have a great job and family, part of which I attribute to spending thousands of hours learning about life and technology instead of playing games.

Give it up people, video games = fast-forwarding your life.

(Actually I'm not really suggesting being that strict. I did return to play the occasional top title like Portal 2, but on a strictly controlled diet. Gaming should be a small enough part of your life that such DRM is a non-issue)

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

#122

Post by kd0amg »

betterunix wrote: post #79
fennecfoxen wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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...

They are, but leaving the description at "parts of the game logic" could be taken to mean the servers are being used to offload compute-intensive tasks. Centralization for the sake of performance is understandable, but not allowing offline saves sounds more like centralization for the sake of centralization.

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

#123

Post by diminoten »

apalmer wrote: post #84
diminoten wrote: post #18

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

If a working offline crack is produced BEFORE the game developers can produce a fully working version this would be a BIG development

I have faith in the cracking community. :D

That said, I don't think this is as "simple" as something like an Origins "online presence" crack. I just don't think there's enough data about what the "online" part does (specifically the processing done remotely) to actually produce a fully-working crack at this time.

Not my wheelhouse though, so maybe there's hope!

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

#124

Post by Oxxide »

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.

>barely work for WoW

flat out lie. there are multiple well run servers that often outperform the legit ones.

this is also true for all games with server emulation or otherwise private servers, they work well and often exactly the same as their legit counterparts.

If you speak from 'experience', then I would suggest you didn't try hard enough to find a decent server.

either way, don't exaggerate and lie to make a point. make the fucking point and leave it at that.

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

#125

Post by danilocampos »

jl6 wrote: post #121

12 years ago I quit gaming because decent titles weren't available for Linux. I now have a great job and family, part of which I attribute to spending thousands of hours learning about life and technology instead of playing games. Give it up people, video games = fast-forwarding your life. (Actually I'm not really suggesting being that strict. I did return to play the occasional top title like Portal 2, but on a stri…

> Give it up people, video games = fast-forwarding your life.

While I agree with you in principle – I doubt I play more than one or two games a year – I resent your sanctimonious tone.

You've no way of knowing how people are using their games. Modern games present a lot of opportunities for exploring power and morality. Even sexuality. For some, the escapism represented by games may be as close to vacation or therapy as economic reality allows. For others, they're a vacuous waste of time that could be better spent.

But you don't know, so don't claim to.

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

#126

Post by Guvante »

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 they would be able to survive except they broke the cardinal rule of online anything. Never destroy your customers data.

Players are losing save games, either getting reverted or forced to start from scratch.

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

#127

Post by RamseyMcGrath »

jl6 wrote: post #121

12 years ago I quit gaming because decent titles weren't available for Linux. I now have a great job and family, part of which I attribute to spending thousands of hours learning about life and technology instead of playing games. Give it up people, video games = fast-forwarding your life. (Actually I'm not really suggesting being that strict. I did return to play the occasional top title like Portal 2, but on a stri…

On the other hand, the only reason I first started to use Linux was so that I could run an SRCDS server for Counter-Strike and host Ventrilo. If video games were restricting you from having relationships (or "learning about life") maybe it is better that you stopped. Most normal people game with more moderation.

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

#128

Post by TillE »

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.

Yep. For any game with severely limiting DRM, the maximum price I'm willing to pay is $5, which I deem fair for an indeterminate rental with no guarantees.

I think Assassin's Creed 2 has been down to $6 a couple times on Steam sales, but I'm not quite willing to put down even one extra dollar. Oh well, their loss. Meanwhile, I've spent a couple hundred dollars on Kickstarter games in the recent past, all of which promised a DRM free option.

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

#129

Post by thebokehwokeh2 »

tobyjsullivan wrote: post #111
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 -…

I think the real mismatch for EA and Gamers is that EA is effectively selling a SaaS product but pricing it like it's an boxed product. It's not just unlikely but, in fact, impossible for the operating costs of the servers to be worth keeping on forever since no (significant) additional income will be coming in from the title after some point X. SaaS companies have been dealing with this for years quite successfully…

This is truly delusional. Your model assumes that the current model, (buy once own forever), isn't making them enough money to keep the lights on.

The issue here isn't that EA is not making enough to keep the lights on. It's that EA wants to make more, and more, and more and more, and more... And is too lazy to figure out a true solution to piracy.

Nobody will pay $60 to "rent" something for 2 years. You already pay $60 to own for life.

If it were some insane price like $10, then yes. That makes a whole bunch of sense. It's the model that Netflix, Spotify, and the iTunes Store subscribes to. Saas will only work if it provides value at an extremely minimal price.

What happened with Sim City is not a failure of the Netflix, Spotify, iTunes store model. It's just that EA, as a company, is just simply blinded with so much greed to understand the way the world works today.

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

#130

Post by lotharbot »

jl6 wrote: post #121

12 years ago I quit gaming because decent titles weren't available for Linux. I now have a great job and family, part of which I attribute to spending thousands of hours learning about life and technology instead of playing games. Give it up people, video games = fast-forwarding your life. (Actually I'm not really suggesting being that strict. I did return to play the occasional top title like Portal 2, but on a stri…

My wife did excellent work on a training simulator, and regularly impressed both the military customer and higher ups on the corporate side.

She credited three video games with building her most impressive skills: Descent taught her to visualize and maneuver in 3D space, Starcraft taught her to think about force composition and disposition, and Nethack taught her to make thousands of decisions (and type thousands of characters) without making mistakes.

She still games pretty extensively (she'll be taking Tuesday off for the SC2 expansion), and has a great job and family. And at least part of her excellence is due to the way she uses video games to sharpen her mind.

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