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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

#201

Post by dragontamer »

Kiro wrote: post #172

Am I the only one who has no problem with always-online DRM? In what situations don't you have internet nowadays?

The real question is: in what situation do you not have internet connection OR the server is down.

In this case, it appears the server has been down for a significant number of players. Therefore, many people can't play... even if everything is fine on your end.

Things get worse however. According to one of the links, EA's servers seem to have a corruption issue as well: http://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2013/03/BEvZ...

If you can't trust that your city will be there tomorrow due to EA's shoddy servers, then there is very little incentive to even play the game. I guess it might happen with a local save as well... but local saves of a game seems like an easier problem to solve.

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

#202

Post by nitrogen »

illuminate wrote: post #195
nitrogen wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Managing expectations in this case is code for convincing consumers to be happy about being ripped off.

Of course, "managing expectations" is forever about the mitigation of disappointment.

Well, it's one thing to mitigate unavoidable disappointment, it's entirely another when the disappointment is manufactured.

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

#203

Post by Maxious »

clauretano wrote: post #143
toyg wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that, realistically, "SimCity Online" would have bombed. City-building isn't a co-op game, and SimCity customers are not co-op gamers. CitiesXL tried to market itself as that, and it bombed, so now they de-emphasize the online aspects. The ugly truth remains the same: this game is "social" just as an excuse to implement hardcore DRM. Sugar-coating.

The game honestly works quite well if you do think of it as a co-op game. A real life friend made a region, and I founded a city in his region. You can do things like: - volunteer excess services such as fire trucks, police cars, trash pickup, recycling trucks. The last one there can be lucrative if you use the raw materials you collect to build processors. - buy water/power/etc utility capacity on an as-needed basis…

The co-op features do not work http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2013/03/05/why-this-is-not-...

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

#204

Post by Nikaido »

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.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternit... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/70755535/dead-state-the-... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/redthread/dreamfall-chap...

The future of gaming has a few alternatives that look very promising and they're all DRM free.

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

#205

Post by papsosouid »

rdl wrote: post #193
papsosouid wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>moving to locked-down platforms (iOS and consoles) Where piracy is rampant?

iOS and console piracy is in no way "rampant". It is possible. It is not mainstream. Most users don't pirate on those platforms, although those who do probably pirate a huge number. PC game piracy at one point was fairly mainstream, but then installing PC games at all ceased to become mainstream. Music and porn piracy is mainstream; streaming services sort of prevent that, at the cost of destroying revenue for creato…

>It is not mainstream.

Constantly advertised in every free buy&sell paper constitutes mainstream, even if you don't like it.

>but then installing PC games at all ceased to become mainstream.

The number of people installing PC games has steadily increased. Maybe posting "facts" that are the opposite of reality isn't a great base for an argument.

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

#206

Post by ptaipale »

Don't know if this is real, but some claim that EA have had fake Facebook accounts to defend them, and then someone screwed up. Link to pic on a humor page: http://naurunappula.com/1050795/ea-on-paras-d-ja-drm-d

Could happen, and if true, a bit embarrassing. If not true, shows how people want to hurt them.

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

#207

Post by jfoutz »

toki5 wrote: post #27
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. Compar…

Although you'll never see this, aside from a few achievement issues, HotS launch went well. Mea culpa.
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