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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

#281

Post by jstevens85 »

pale_rider wrote: post #72

I don't understand why people buy games from EA? I mean, seriously, why buy it? They have been pulling this crap for years and each new release just gets progressively worse. About a year ago I decided if it's not on Steam I'm not buying it. It really sucks to miss out on some of the games, but I refuse to support such an asshole of a company.

I'm looking forward to buying it, and I haven't bought a game in years. While there are definitely a lot of people out there who really wanted the game on day 1, and are very hurt that they might not be able to play it very much for a few days, I'm guessing the majority of people who will buy SC during its lifetime will not be affected buy it, will not care, and won't even be consciously aware that it's published by EA or its reputation.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#282

Post by VMG »

PeterisP wrote: post #230
amitparikh wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this just a technical error (bug) that is a game dev's (or infrastructure engineer's) responsibility? I understand the frustration at the DRM concept, but you can't blame this on the larger entity as a whole when it was likely just a bug in some code or a small oversight. Things were clearly working when it was in beta.

It's not a technical bug, but it's a deliberately made flaw - and it illustrates what will happen when after a couple of years they'll turn the servers off (The current list http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0L266ui... shows even games of 2011 disabled already), leaving the game that you "bought" useless. Digital Restrictions Management = Defective by Design.

isn't Steam also DRM and hugely successful and very popular with the gaming community?

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#283

Post by chongli »

aeturnum wrote: post #160
reitzensteinm wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're adding clarity here. People are upset about the lack of a single player offline mode, which absolutely is about preventing unlicensed copies. There is no technical reason for its absence. The cloud based stuff sounds great, and if it were an optional extra that was unavailable at launch due to technical difficulties, I doubt you'd see a hundredth as much bad PR.

>People are upset about the lack of a single player offline mode, which absolutely is about preventing unlicensed copies. There is no technical reason for its absence. I see this sentiment expressed pretty often, but in this case it seems flawed. From what I understand, you can't build a city that does everything, instead you rely on the other cities in your 'region.' The new Simcity is no more single player than Wor…

>I see this sentiment expressed pretty often, but in this case it seems flawed. From what I understand, you can't build a city that does everything, instead you rely on the other cities in your 'region.'

How is this any different from a single-player RPG where you control a party of characters which all depend on one another's unique abilities?

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#284

Post by NoPiece »

alcari wrote: post #251
NoPiece wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, but I'm just saying that there isn't nearly enough information to claim the devs let down the CEO (as the parent comment implied). We don't know why things are failing, or or who made the decisions that let to the problems. We don't even know if they have tried to throw more servers at the problem (I hope so).

I agree that given the narrow scope of the online plain in SimCity, they should have an architecture that scales easily. I hope they do a public post-portem.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#285

Post by PeterisP »

VMG wrote: post #282
PeterisP wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a technical bug, but it's a deliberately made flaw - and it illustrates what will happen when after a couple of years they'll turn the servers off (The current list http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0L266ui... shows even games of 2011 disabled already), leaving the game that you "bought" useless. Digital Restrictions Management = Defective by Design.

isn't Steam also DRM and hugely successful and very popular with the gaming community?

Steam also presents a risk, but it's at least actively working to make it less bad for the consumer:

1) You can play most of games offline if you have a flaky connection; 2) They don't have a standard practice of turning off servers to 'obsolete' games, unlike EA. The Steam games are expected to work as long as Steam itself works; but SimCity most likely won't work much longer after the next SimCity is released, as we can see from EA current practices.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#286

Post by NoPiece »

Irregardless wrote: post #126
kevinalexbrown wrote: post #42

I feel bad for the game devs who got to see their hard work turn into something they don't intend. I suppose this is a great advertising technique for small firms, startups, indie shops, etc. "Don't want this[ http://amazon-pulls-sim-city ] to happen? Work for our small team. We won't destroy your work." I know it's standard to say "you get a part in the decisionmaking process!" That's part of it. But a lot of people…

EA has a reputation for being more akin to a sweatshop than a place where passionate people work on things they love, and it's been that way for many years now. I do feel bad for anyone who works in that type of environment, but I don't think many (if any) of their employees are under the impression that their work will be lauded by adoring fans. Gamers resent everything that EA stands for -- especially their constan…

This cartoon is an interesting take on EA acquisitions...

http://i.imgur.com/zFrTB.jpg

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#287

Post by LandoCalrissian »

roc wrote: post #162
Irregardless wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EA has a reputation for being more akin to a sweatshop than a place where passionate people work on things they love, and it's been that way for many years now. I do feel bad for anyone who works in that type of environment, but I don't think many (if any) of their employees are under the impression that their work will be lauded by adoring fans. Gamers resent everything that EA stands for -- especially their constan…

> "Takeover by EA is usually considered a death knell for game studios..." Further to this point: Maxis, makers of Sim City, were notable for a long time as being the glaring exception when it came to EA's habit of buying and squeezing studios to death. But the writing was on the wall when THE SIMS hit so big and was.. "exploited"[1] so heavily. And when Will left... well, it's just flat-out inconceivable that anyone…

I shed a tear for Westwood studios.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#288

Post by LandoCalrissian »

dalore wrote: post #266
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…

Yep. There were probably tech guys who said you shouldn't do it, but the tech guys that said you can probably got the promotions.

It kills me a little inside to know this is probably 100% correct.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#289

Post by shadowfox »

Steko wrote: post #277
Alex3917 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I feel bad for the game devs who got to see their hard work turn into something they don't intend." On the contrary, this is by far the most realistic simulation of working for government that's ever been created.

I love how the anti-government mindset even blames greed based failures of private industry on the government.

People like narratives :)

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#290

Post by rurounijones »

chongli wrote: post #276
DigitalSea wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A social feature that isn't even relevant in solo play. You shouldn't need a network for single play.

The idea here is to force you to be reliant on the network; to move the processing onto their servers. SimCity isn't a normal game, it's a SaaS game.

SaaS Game, very well put!

Do we need a new acronym for games that required black-box server side components (Not just DRM but entire chunks of game code) not controlled by the consumer?

GaaS? (Game as a Service)?

Ubisoft did the same thing with the last silent Hunter game IIRC.

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