Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#71

Post by vyrotek » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 9:08 PM UTC

ececconi wrote: post #59

TillE wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, there's a reason. Like Diablo III, the point is that it's effectively impossible to crack. With enough processing offloaded to the server, would-be pirates need to write something that's almost a whole new game. This is the future that big videogame companies are rushing to embrace, one where customers do not and cannot own games, merely rent them for an uncertain period. Indies and smaller studios with Kickstart…

How much of D3's processing is done offloaded? Are there any articles online that I could read about this?

Originally they told us quite a bit of logic was done on their servers. But then they announced that Diablo 3 would be playable offline on the PlayStation 4. Now I don't know what to believe. Could it be it was all just talk to stop us from trying?

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#72

Post by pale_rider » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 9:09 PM UTC

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.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#73

Post by steve-howard » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 9:09 PM UTC

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #31

Seriously, how is this legal? They're obviously very open about it requiring online, and the extent to which the servers are involved, and the fact you need Origin. However, this isn't some cheap game, some small company, some inexperienced producers who didn't know what to expect. That their servers aren't up to the job is inexcusable, and clearly their fault. Even if Origin has Ts & Cs that boil down to you don't a…

From my experience with the NCAA Football line, they just don't seem to care. People have been complaining for years that that game crashes or hangs frequently and has a number of gameplay bugs, and they haven't been fixed anything.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#74

Post by ineedtosleep » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 9:09 PM UTC

cryptoz wrote: post #18

This could be a very big moment. EA is selling a completely broken product - and I mean that from the perspective of the average consumer, not the nerd who thinks all DRM is broken - and they're doing it for absolutely no reason . If this lasts long enough and gets enough press, it could actually be a turning point against DRM like this. That would be so wonderful.

EA have already launched a product like this: Battlefield 3. It was pretty unstable in the first weeks and the game required an internet connection and login to even play the game. Since it's a PC FPS that's not CoD, it didn't get too much press. I, for one, will not trust another game a DRM-laden game again due to BF3 and SimCity 2013 just reinforces that.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#75

Post by bdesimone » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 9:11 PM UTC

Short of asking for a refund, and not buying the game in the first place, who at Maxis and EA can customers write/call/etc to let them know what I feel about the business decision to force online only DRM?

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#76

Post by pc86 » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 9:11 PM UTC

res0nat0r wrote: post #52

cryptoz wrote: post #18

This could be a very big moment. EA is selling a completely broken product - and I mean that from the perspective of the average consumer, not the nerd who thinks all DRM is broken - and they're doing it for absolutely no reason . If this lasts long enough and gets enough press, it could actually be a turning point against DRM like this. That would be so wonderful.

So there was a big server meltdown during the Diablo 3 launch, is this the same thing? I'm not sure how long the Sim City servers have been down but is this just initial launch problems? I'm surprised Amazon has done this as they didn't do the same for D3. How long have logins been totall down for now? Also I think it would be helpful for reviews like this on Amazon and Spore to restrict the reviews to only verified…

The short version is that the server performance for SC was so bad that EA took them down for maintenance. The maintenance message also had an error in it, something to the effect of "Servers will return at "

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#77

Post by pc86 » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 9:12 PM UTC

ineedtosleep wrote: post #74

cryptoz wrote: post #18

This could be a very big moment. EA is selling a completely broken product - and I mean that from the perspective of the average consumer, not the nerd who thinks all DRM is broken - and they're doing it for absolutely no reason . If this lasts long enough and gets enough press, it could actually be a turning point against DRM like this. That would be so wonderful.

EA have already launched a product like this: Battlefield 3. It was pretty unstable in the first weeks and the game required an internet connection and login to even play the game. Since it's a PC FPS that's not CoD, it didn't get too much press. I, for one, will not trust another game a DRM-laden game again due to BF3 and SimCity 2013 just reinforces that.

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

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#78

Post by lreeves » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 9:13 PM UTC

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 bought Battlefield 3 from EA and all the expansions. It's been a great experience so far on the PC, and they've kept the community updated on upcoming patches and changed, worked through balance issues and cracked down on exploits and hacks. Now granted probably a lot of that is DICE, but they're as much as a part of EA as Maxis is so I don't necessarily think it's all EA.

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#79

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 9:13 PM UTC

bearmf wrote: post #43

TillE wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, there's a reason. Like Diablo III, the point is that it's effectively impossible to crack. With enough processing offloaded to the server, would-be pirates need to write something that's almost a whole new game. This is the future that big videogame companies are rushing to embrace, one where customers do not and cannot own games, merely rent them for an uncertain period. Indies and smaller studios with Kickstart…

The irony is that it is not only impossible to crack, it is now impossible to play as well. Unplayable games are impossible to crack, but this does not make them any less absurd. DRM has come to its logical and absurd conclusion, it seems.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

#80

Post by ghshephard » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 9:13 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #69

ghshephard wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thinking goes - without DRM, some large number, X % of the games are just copied instead of purchased. With DRM, close to 0% of the the games are copied, but some large number Y % of the games are no longer purchased because people either are (A) Philisophically opposed to DRM, (B) Want to be able to play the game offline, or now, (C) Can't play the game because the DRM breaks it. The balancing act, here, is how…

A lot of games are copied, but it's a fallacy to assume that pirating a game means you won't buy it, or that attempting to pirate a game and being prevented (by DRM or some other means) means you'll buy it instead. In college I pirated games quite a bit. I never bought one, nor would I have.

Oh, I totally appreciate that - and, those people who would never have purchased the game in the first place, but copy it, provide some good word of mouth advertising for the game.

The thing is though, if the number gets high enough, let's say 95% of people just copy the game (not unlikely in the age of torrents) and only 5% purchase it - might not be enough to fund a AAA game, whose budgets now run in the 100s of millions of dollars, and, at $70/pop, need about 6-10 million purchases to make up for the flops that will also occur.

The real problem, is that if it's _really_ easy to copy, and the company puts in no attempts to prevent this, then a lot of the people who would have purchased the game, don't bother and just download off the torrents.

Tough balancing act. I don't know what the answer is.