DRM and always on for a bright Gaming future - EA busted simcity release

[illram]

Poor Former EA employee.

Wasn't that proven to be bogus?

 

[Zelig]

Sure, but that was just a random example. A lot of people have their updates set up on auto. Point is, there is a lot of malicious stuff people can do to you if they wanted to.

My camera for example? Maybe it has functionality inside to break down exactly 5 years after I buy it? Who knows?

Point is you'll get nowhere worrying about all these things that can happen to you. Valve have a great track record and I trust them. I also trust the police not to taze my balls when I'm walking down the street. But hey.. they could!

There's a pretty big difference between "system won't fail unless it's made to fail" (Windows) and "system won't work unless it's made to work". (Steam)

Worrying about hidden time-bombs isn't really realistic.

 

[BvBPL]

Blah blah blah, DRM. Blah blah blah, always on-line game. Blah blah blah digital distribution channels.

None of that matters.

Sim City topped the sales charts and remains near the top. EA produced a product that people will pay money for. A minority may shout that SimRome is burning, but EA will be very happy fiddling. As well they should given the sales of their products.

Nobody cares about Chicken Littles because they are wrong. The video game world isn't ending because of DRM or whatever.

Video games are onanistic anyway. Claiming someone is trying to jerk you around when you are doing it to yourself seems absurd.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Sim City topped the sales charts and remains near the top. EA produced a product that people will pay money for.

Didnt Aliens colonial marines also top the sales charts ..... Oh GOD !

 

[BvBPL]

not a lot of incentive to produce "better" games when the present standard for quality makes ppl money

 

[King Kalmah]

Blah blah blah, DRM. Blah blah blah, always on-line game. Blah blah blah digital distribution channels.

None of that matters.

Sim City topped the sales charts and remains near the top. EA produced a product that people will pay money for. A minority may shout that SimRome is burning, but EA will be very happy fiddling. As well they should given the sales of their products.

Nobody cares about Chicken Littles because they are wrong. The video game world isn't ending because of DRM or whatever.

Video games are onanistic anyway. Claiming someone is trying to jerk you around when you are doing it to yourself seems absurd.

I laugh when EA employees try to defend their parent(companies) mistakes...it is so cute...

The point is the released a product that couldn't even function without them taking away features and REDUCING the speed....and even then you can't seem to access your saved cities from an earlier session...

would you like it if you played Civ(anything) and came back to it later and reloaded it to find it said "oh we can't find that save,but would you like to try a new game instead?"

You'd be pissed...not to mention you don't even need industry in Simcity5 to make a city work....

http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/9358082.page



proof in the ratings....SC4 versus SC2013

 

[BvBPL]

The point is the released a product that couldn't even function without them taking away features and REDUCING the speed....and even then you can't seem to access your saved cities from an earlier session...

they had to reduce the speed, and quintuple the number of servers, because the game sold so well.

proof in the ratings....SC4 versus SC2013

Proof that the game sold about twice as much as SC4.

 

[King Kalmah]

they had to reduce the speed, and quintuple the number of servers, because the game sold so well.

I guess that is why if you have more then two police cars/garbage trucks/fire trucks or buses running they get confused...They must have removed the pathfinding that came with SC4 to make it run better,,,

ohh and they must have removed the need to have citizens maintain the same home...they squat from job to residence...

Proof that the game sold about twice as much as SC4.

Many Simcity fans(myself included) waited a decade for this game(I didn't buy this garbage tho)

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/simcity-impressions-we-waited-ten-years-for-this/

even the editor for microsoft...

also consider the graph only evidence that people felt strongly enough about SC2013 to vote a 1/5...SC4 got alot of 4.5 and 4.0s...not many people go out of their way to vote on an average game...but SC4 has thosands of fans STILL playing the game...and if you check on Steam a list of top selling games you will see SC4 at number 3....

so yeah any child could see this game was a dud from day one...

 

[essmene]

[SIZE=+2]Update: Simcity AI seems to be implemented poorly[/SIZE]
SimCity PR nightmare escalates writes up details of the poorly behaving AI and the result of having to built a counter-intuitive city to cope with the bad algorythm.


[SIZE=+2]Back DRM[/SIZE]
This thread has evolved from the simcity disastrous launch to a general discussion
about DRM mechanics and what people will tolerate for the game.

I understand that a company wants to protect their investment by ensuring only a single copy of the game can be played at a time.

[SIZE=+1]One Codebook / one license[/SIZE]
They used to be printed black on red so it would be hard to photocoy the codes and when you load the game you were asked a challenge.

This meant that you would loose time to enter the game for the challenge - pirates would need to invest more time to enter the game by random guess work.

Legal consumer:

• loose a bit of time for entering the game

| Pirate:

• losses even more time to enter the game due randomness

[SIZE=+1]One Medium / one license[/SIZE]
Special - usually discs that were broken with bad sectors were later introduced for floppy and compact discs. The game would be hard to copy by normal means or the copy would not pass the security check.

Legal consumer:

• The Medium will use up a drive - with limited drives this can be troublesome
• If the Medium is lost, damaged - the game becomes unplayable

| Pirate:

• if the protection cannot be defeated the copy is unplayable
• if the protection is defeated - the game can be copied
• if the check is defeated - the game will not lock down a drive

This development started to favour the pirates. Once the protection has been defeated the game can be played by anyone.

I have to admit that I have used no-cd patches for legally bought games, as protection was so annoying - slowing down the game start - putting extra strain on the medium - due continuous changing - and even failing to authenticate the disc in 10% of the time.


[SIZE=+1]One Serial number. / one license[/SIZE]
Later game would authenticate the game locally, later online with a pre-generated serial number.

Legal consumer:

• The Medium will use up a drive - with limited drives this can be troublesome
• If the Medium is lost, damaged - the game becomes unplayable

| Pirate:

• if the protection cannot be defeated the copy is unplayable
• serial generators enabled playing the game locally

There is no advantage for a player to have legal copy as long as he is not playing on a public service (e.g. battle.net).

[SIZE=+1]bind the game to one account on a public service[/SIZE]

Legal consumer:

• The owner can use the game and consume the offered service
• Resale of the game is usually impossible and not granted by the software companies
• The Service widely varies.

| Pirate:

• cannot play the game

The caveat the added service and lack thereof.

• Battle.net offered players to take part in global challenges. The game is playable without the service
• Steam with counterstrike enabled the distribution of patches making it far convenient and easier to find public servers. "Old" counterstrike was playable without steam - So Steam offered an optional service upgrade.
• Steam Civ 5 - is a bit of a mix. Patches are easier distributed and you can install mods, earn achivements - still
• Diablo III The Service is no longer optional and forces players to be online even for a single player game.
• Ubisoft always on Settler In my opinion what I read in reviews there was hardly added service to the game and forcing an always on
• EA Simcity See above

-------------------------------------------------------------

1. I am fine with buying a good game.
2. I want to support the developer for his work and hopefully for a good service or a future sequel.
3. I am happy to use an online service as long as it provides me with additional convenience - E.g. patch or online support, an additional player base and others.
4. I want to choose if I use an online service.
5. I want to be able to play single player games offline - E.g. while travelling in the train, on vacation - where I do not have a flat rate.
6. I even want the ability the resell a bound game - once I am done with playing - as I am able to with a medium bound game.

From the developers I expect:

1. A well developed game - Meaning Bug free or sufficient support for at least 4 years for Operating system support and bug scrapping
2. If they offer any kind of Mandatory service - I expect a working service or Compensation for downtime
3. A focus on customer interests or added goodies - so I have an advantage on using e.g. their online service

So far I have to admit that the best customer support I have experienced was Blizzards. One the the worst was EA. Valve I had never to ask for support.

 

[Akka]

You could be shot tomorrow. What are you doing about that possibility?

I was not aware that being shot was legal, which is a pretty big difference with the point I'm making (that is, copyright laws and publishers practices are destroying the consumer rights).

If you want to go with this analogy, then you're not helping your case because it would end up being something like NRA trying to make shooting people legal to protect their business selling guns, me claiming "God that's insane" and you shrugging and saying "there is only a tiny amount of people being shot, so what if it becomes legal ?".

Yeah, not so clever now, right ?

Akka, what has Steam done in their history to lead you to have the sort of wild-eyed suspicions you currently have? [...]

If it's merely the premise that they have the power, as you seem to be indicating in your most recent post, US police can detain anyone at any time for any reason for up to 24 hours, IIRC.

It seems like you live in a state of fear.

They can, but again, that sounds like an unfounded fear to me. [...]

It's, again (for what, the third, fourth times ?) a point of PRINCIPLES.
I mean, seriously, my argument is (again, I already repeated it about three times) : "the problem is that people don't care their rights being trampled as long as it's done covertly enough it doesn't blow in their face".
All of your "counters" amount to : "well, it didn't blow in our face yet, so we don't care".
Hello, do you even realize you're basically repeating near-verbatim my exact point and proving me right ?

You don't seem to mind in the slightest that consumer rights are being trampled.
You also don't seem to find in any way aggravating (and you even DEFEND) a feature which only point is to restrict the use of something you bought.
You don't seem to find annoying the fact that something you bought can not be installed if you don't have an Internet connection, nor that a company datamine you, or that they keep the right and the possibility to remove your ownership if they see fit (regardless of them actually doing it, again it's a problem of PRINCIPLES, see my answer above).

This kind of submissive mindset just leaves me agape in disbelief. What kind of masochist support needless restriction to his fair use ?

Paradox sell most of their games online. A lot of those sales come through steam. As far as I know their online store just gives you steam keys. So no, they do not have a zero-DRM policy.

I just did some googling and Stardock games can be bought on steam as well. Gog indeed appears to be fully DRM-free, but as far as I know they only sell older games. So you are 1/3 in your examples, and the third one is a bit wishy washy as the service doesn't sell new games, just old ones.

GoG mostly sell old games, that is true, though they also sold The Witcher 2 at its release, and they sell indie games.

As for the two others, you yet again try to tell me I'm wrong while you're the one not knowing what he's talking about : they CAN be sold THROUGH Steam, but they don't REQUIRE Steam. There is a difference between Steam as an online distributor and Steam as a DRM, and you can use the first without the second.

 

[essmene]

To all People who believed EA that the game needs server computation:

• 
  Modder Runs SimCity Offline, Maxis Remains Silent - youtube source
  
  Ea offers a compensation in a downloadable game for simcity customers on 18.03.2013.
  
  ------------------------------------------------
  I am still not sure if that was their Public Relations department thinking up that stuff as free press...
  
  ------------------------------------------------
  There are still things surfacing about their broken logic. Civs being happy for living in a totally polluted city, because they are paying 0% taxes, ...
  
  I still get a feeling that it is similar to the Civ V release. Nice little animations, that please the eye and give a nice start into the game. Later after some hours you turn off the animation because you want to play the game and not wait for the 10 bombers to drop their load. Again the graphics are nice, but the engine below is broken. It would have been nice if the project managers would rethink back from nice looking into a solid core mechanics.
  
  Graphics are a nice addition, but if the core is rotten, game play suffers.

 

[AlpsStranger]

[*] Diablo III The Service is no longer optional and forces players to be online even for a single player game.

I have an additional gripe. As one of those insufferable Facebook abstainers I was disappointed to note that Blizzard got a bit of "Facebook flu" and decided you had to be visible to all of your friends even to play solo.

Screw that. Sometimes I want to blow off socialization and play solo. With Diablo 3 I am denied that option because of the demented "transparent society" philosophy that infects everyone with sufficient 'cool' points.

 

[King Kalmah]

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/eamax...for-attempting-to-distort-the-news-aggregate/

yep...EA really knows when to quit...(sarcasm alert)

 

[warpus]

It's, again (for what, the third, fourth times ?) a point of PRINCIPLES.

Principles are great and all, but we live in the real world, where ideology is trumped by reality.

Steam would have never been able to offer so many games for sale without offering some sort of DRM. Most of the publishers that sell games through them would have never allowed it. It would have been just too easy to pirate the games - you'd just download whatever you want and make copies for your friends. There had to be something. That is just a reality of the market and of the nature of digital media.

So they made a deal: We'll sell your games, but we really won't stand for any obstrusive sort of DRM. It will be fairly minimal, but it will be there. And the spice will flow, just trust us.

And so we got a service that makes it incredibly convenient for gamers to play their games with not too much intrusion, and the publishers are happy enough that there is at least some DRM there, even if it's minimal.

If we were having this debate in the context of principles, I would agree with you. But then we'd be ignoring, you know, reality.

I have my fair use rights. I am not limited in any way. And on top of that I'll never have to worry about another scratched CD again. I'll take this sort of setup over collecting CDs or DVDs or whatever, every day of the week.

As for the two others, you yet again try to tell me I'm wrong while you're the one not knowing what he's talking about : they CAN be sold THROUGH Steam, but they don't REQUIRE Steam. There is a difference between Steam as an online distributor and Steam as a DRM, and you can use the first without the second.

Eh, if you buy a game through steam you are forced to .. you know, use steam to play it. Aren't you?

Your claim was that these companies were DRM-free. That's incorrect, except for GOG.

 

[illram]

Akka, if your point is that we are all just blindly submitting to Steam without knowing they are walking all over us, many of us have plainly responded to this several times.

I know what Steam is, what it offers, and what it requires of me. I have to pay them to play a game and I have to have internet to do it. In return I get the game I paid for, I get to play it wherever I can download it, and I get to have a convenient online marketplace for other games, if I so choose. Yes, Steam gets to know certain things about me... just like any other online service or retailer. I know it requires an internet connection, and that is fine for me, since I am one of the 90% or so of Americans who have broadband internet available. I know what their TOS says, since I am discussing it with you.

I personally don't think my rights are being trampled with Steam, since I know how incredibly unlikely it is that Steam is just going to decide to pull my access for no reason. (And how incredibly stupid it would be for Steam to do so.)

 

[Camikaze]

I have to pay them to play a game and I have to have internet to do it.

I've only had to pay for one of my Steam games actually. The rest I've snapped up in giveaways, or are free to play. So if my access was suddenly cut off, it's not like I'd have lost much that I'd actually paid for.

 

[Zelig]

Akka, if your point is that we are all just blindly submitting to Steam without knowing they are walking all over us, many of us have plainly responded to this several times.

I know what Steam is, what it offers, and what it requires of me.

Most people aren't as smart as you.

I've only had to pay for one of my Steam games actually. The rest I've snapped up in giveaways, or are free to play. So if my access was suddenly cut off, it's not like I'd have lost much that I'd actually paid for.

Sunk cost and all that. The only relevant value is the replacement value.

 

[Camikaze]

Another relevant value is what I would've paid for it if Steam didn't exist. If the replacement value is more than $0, then that's money I've already actually saved (or not parted with) by using Steam. Though I'm not saying that that justifies draconian terms of service in their own right, but that any terms of service come as just one aspect of a whole package; a package that includes free games. That benefit definitely outweighs the ankle grabbing, if that's how your viewing the terms of service.

Also, as a side note, I'm fairly sure I've got more protection against Steam that it sounds like Americans have. A fair few consumer law provisions that cannot be excluded from contracts.

 

[Zelig]

How is that at all relevant?

Only current/future expected values of goods or services should ever impact your decisions. The amount of money that you've saved because of X has no bearing on the future. All the relevant information to your future actions is provided by the replacement value of the goods.

 

[Camikaze]

I'm talking about why I have decided to use Steam currently, not why I will continue to use it in the future. If I continue to get free games, then I will certainly continue to use it.

It seems you're trying to say that I shouldn't think Steam is good for giving me free games, because those games might cost money if Steam revokes my access (there being a future expected value).