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Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

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Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#251

Post by alcari »

NoPiece wrote: post #128
goatforce5 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No doubt. Doesn't mean you have to implement it badly though.

Agreed! But having worked at a company similar to EA, I know the developer may have wanted to implement certain things a certain way, but may not have been able to due to corporate mandates. For example, they may have wanted to deploy using AWS, but their CTO demanded they use the in-house infrastructure he has been working on. Obviously just speculation, but things like this happen all the time at large companies wh…

Here's the thing though: they DID use AWS (one of their EU servers is 46.137.165.11). They have no excuse besides poor architecture design for not simply doubling server capacity.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#252

Post by unsignedint »

anon1385 wrote: post #96

When a game requires an internet connection to work we call it DRM and slam it. When a text editor or spreadsheet requires an internet connection to run we call it innovation.

Requiring and supporting are two completely different animals. If text editors and spreadsheets actually requiring you to have an internet connection, then I can see people criticizing about it.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#253

Post by s3graham »

DigitalSea wrote: post #226
dclowd9901 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the auth space something a startup could occupy? "Easy DRM/Auth for games that doesn't suck?"

All DRM is eventually bypassed, why do game studios even bother?

Because every hour after release that it's not-yet-cracked equates to a substantial improvement in lifetime revenue.

They're not stupid, they know it's getting cracked. It's just a play for more time.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#254

Post by FireBeyond »

archangel_one wrote: post #229
aqme28 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is incredibly likely they were forbidden by management from answering those questions.

Kind of defeats the purpose of doing an AMA if you're not allowed to answer any of the interesting questions. I sympathise if that was the case, but people should remember what the second 'A' stands for.

Well, technically, nothing was censored. So "anything" was asked.

Now if it was "Answer Me Everything"...

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#255

Post by Tloewald »

archangel_one wrote: post #229
aqme28 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is incredibly likely they were forbidden by management from answering those questions.

Kind of defeats the purpose of doing an AMA if you're not allowed to answer any of the interesting questions. I sympathise if that was the case, but people should remember what the second 'A' stands for.

It's Ask Me Anything, not I'll tell you everything.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#256

Post by Tloewald »

Fargren wrote: post #213
cbs wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, its not that simple. Isn't this just a technical error (bug) that is a game dev's (or infrastructure engineer's) responsibility? Isn't mandating the constant involvement of otherwise unnecessary tech that is known to be error prone and unreliable just the result of a poorly thought out buisness requirement? No, its not that simple either. Because they probably did think it out, knew they were choosing the riskier…

Also known as the Diablo III strategy.

Diablo III was (I think -- not like I've played Sim City yet) worse because the online AH was built into the gameplay Imagine if WoW's loot had been designed so that raid loot would NEED to be traded via a real money AH with Blizzard taking a cut.

Of course for all we know Sim City will turn out to have that kind if BS too.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#257

Post by ryguytilidie »

anon1385 wrote: post #110
jader201 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a web site, it's a game. It is marketed and sold as a game. It isn't even being marketed/sold as an MMO. For the most part, people think this is a single player experience with some multiplayer interactions. I haven't seen the retail packaging, but does it even state an internet connection is required? And if so, is it prominent? EDIT: According to the shot on Amazon[1], it does at least state that a "per…

So your argument is really that DRM is ok as long as the user knows about it in advance?

Mayyybe I'm misreading your argument since I've read it about 5 times and am not sure if you're serious, but web apps need the web to work by design, why would a single player game need the web to work?

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#258

Post by kbolino »

khuey wrote: post #54
mhurron wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing bad about SimCity 4 was the performance was less than stellar. Other than that, 3000 and 4 were just as good as 2000.

A decent size SC4 city can bring today's hardware to its knees, and the game is 10 years old.

It would be more accurate to say that SC4 is not optimized for today's hardware. It relies entirely on single-threaded performance, which has not improved appreciably since the days when it was released. Furthermore, it is 32-bit and not large address aware, which means it is limited to about 1.5GB of memory. Needless to say, this would max out a Pentium 4 single-core system with 2GB of RAM circa mid-2000s, but it will leave your (not too) modern 4-core desktop with 8GB of RAM sitting mostly idle with lots of free memory. The game may run slow with large cities, but that's because it doesn't know how to take advantage of modern tech, not because that modern tech is being pushed to its limits.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#259

Post by nwh »

tobyjsullivan wrote: post #155
pc86 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen pirated copies of (single-player only) BF3. What about the DRM is so different between that and Sim City?

I believe BF3 used internet connectivity only for DRM which means it's easy to carve out. SimCity actually computes the game mechanics on their cloud servers.

It doesn't. The game can survive without a connection for 20 minutes. The only logic run on their servers is save/load.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#260

Post by MichaelGG »

spartango wrote: post #237
MichaelGG wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying that the client PCs are so weak, yet EA can offload it into the cloud for cheap? How exactly does that work? My 3-year-old ultralight laptop has as much CPU as an EC2 M1 large. I find it hard to believe the game is so complicated a laptop will struggle, but EA can efficiently load it onto servers? That sounds pretty hard to believe. Even if the target player is using a crappy Netbook, you're talking abo…

This is an over-simplification of the performance demands of the game. Keep in mind that there are many levels of computation involved in the simulation, from rendering loads to inter-agent complexity, to city management (i.e. taxes). It all adds up, and the graphics needs alone are the limiter in most games. But beyond the "feather that broke the camel's back" rationale for offloading compute, keep in mind that ther…

Really? You're suggesting they use a software renderer instead of the GPU? Even if 70% of the CPU was wasted on a modern machine, that's like a quarter core per user that they'd need to rent from Amazon. I don't think so.

As far as the multiplayer, I don't think anyone has a problem needing servers for multiplayer.

All I'm saying is that the suggestion that computations need to be done online to save local CPU, even on a singleplayer game, is obviously ridiculous.

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