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

[essmene]

We are told for years now that the future of gaming is locking game licences to accounts and forcing people to be always online to fight piracy.

EA has implemented all of it with its sequel of Simcity (5 or 2013):

• bound to account (Origin)
• always on - nothing works without, games are saved on server - part of the computation is done by the servers

And guess what! Game is unplayable for most on release day. Amazon.com (not .de) is offering its customers a refund - EA only for some, but not all.

Again EA behaved reactively - let´s release the game and see how our hardware will cope with it and fix it later - I mean they are the first company to do so - oh wait there was Diablo III - there was ...

• refund discussion with an EA employee
• A beta tester writing about his concerns on about the DRM and server availability on the forum gets banned.

Nathan Grayson pretty much nails most of it in his article "SimCity Vs The People: Why Apologies Aren’t Enough". If a company forces DRM onto its users it has to have a benefit for the user and must not hinder the user in his tasks.

Last but not least Sharding - using several regional servers. This has to fail. Upon release date they put up lots of servers and you can only play with people on the same server - you cannot move your save games. Once the storm has ceased there will be lots of dead end servers - where multiplayer - if there is need - is no longer possible. With lots of virtual technology it should have been possible to create a cloud that acts as one big server - even though there are computer parks around the world doing the service the customer himself should not be involved.


I am hoping for three things after reading about this utterly failed release:

1. that there will be a gamer´s lobby forming on the internet that does communicate with the software companies for better terms
2. Distributors learn their lesson and instead of reacting they have a brainstorming beforehand and have their architecture ready to withstand a release stampeded. - I mean why is there pre-order.
3. Software Companies come up with a way to sell used games - Similar to the new apple patents about selling and leases digital content
4. Smaller startups realize their chance in selling games without DRM chains attacked.
5. Concept of Servers is a thing of the past - See current MMO´s - lots of them are struggeling with server balances - either with over- or low population.

 

[bhsup]

Who's really to blame for this, though? EA or the pirates that force gaming companies down this path?

 

[essmene]

Who's really to blame for this, though? EA or the pirates that force gaming companies down this path?

Are there no exceptions?

World of Goo, Torchlight, ...?

I think the belief you can have a game with 100% legitimate customers belongs to the land of myths and dreams and as long as the companies hold on to it - they fight a loosing battle. And even illegitimate copies have a viral and advertising component.

Look at the music industry. They were fightened about piracy and opened up music shop with such a locked down DRM that hardly anybody bought a song and P2P networks were flooded with users.

Then Apple started iTunes - and not many music companies did like and but they managed to turn the tide.

Movies and TV shows are another example - companies are starting to realize they need to offer a different service to reach paying customers.

The gaming industry still beliefs that concepts that serve their interests and annoy their paying customers does in fact serve them. Unfortunately there are quite a lot of people willing to pay for these features. To me it´s similar to the movie industry warning about movie piracy in a DVD that I bought in the shop - seriously? - you warn a customer about piracy? - you mean your customer is a pirate?

I am currently waiting about 24 months for DRM games to fall below 20.- EUR. I am not willing to pay more.

 

[LamaGT]

Who's really to blame for this, though? EA or the pirates that force gaming companies down this path?

The people who pirate games are NOT lost customers because they have easy access to the game, they simply wouldn't have bought the game in the first place. EA and the other big name publishers are apparently too stupid to realize this and so they keep throwing away money in DRM development, penalizing severely the loyal customers who bought the game AND not doing anything to pirates who can get the game in pretty much the same way they always did.

Solution? Ignore pirates. No DRM can ever beat the hacking teams and meanwhile the means to achieve an impossible end are alienating their customers. I'm not saying they should drop every single protection, just keep it to a one-time serial confirmation as it was years ago.

 

[essmene]

Solution? Ignore pirates. No DRM can ever beat the hacking teams and meanwhile the means to achieve an impossible end are alienating their customers. I'm not saying they should drop every single protection, just keep it to a one-time serial confirmation as it was years ago.

In the meanwhile I read that the famous securom - bound to disc - does not work on windows 7. Lots of games lost to DRM...

 

[Truronian]

Who's really to blame for this, though? EA or the pirates that force gaming companies down this path?

They both share part of the blame.

 

[emzie]

Who's really to blame for this, though? EA or the pirates that force gaming companies down this path?

EA is. The always-on-line DRM stuff is obnoxious, but is not a deal breaker. Having horrible authentication handling capacity is a deal breaker. Imagine if everytime you wanted to play Civ5 you both had to have an internet connection, AND had to potentially wait in a queue for space on the server which runs calculations.

 

[azzaman333]

refund discussion with an EA employee

As much as I love hanging crap on EA, I'm pretty sure that's been confirmed to be a forged conversation.

 

[cardgame]

Who's really to blame for this, though? EA or the pirates that force gaming companies down this path?

Piracy aside (I'm sure I can cover this later if nobody else takes up the slack), it's entirely EA's fault for providing such a godawful user experience. More servers is a given on launch day, they have ALL the experience and know this, but they didn't implement it.

Legitimate concerns and redresses have led to many people on the official forum being banned. EA is clearly the tantrum-throwing-tyrant here.

 

[Mise]

Who's really to blame for this, though? EA or the pirates that force gaming companies down this path?

The DRM component itself doesn't require much server capacity. EA has plenty of games with server auth DRM that worked just fine on release day. The problem was that the servers are required not just for mere authentication, but also for critical game functions to work. The game is an inextricably online game, even though it was traditionally an exclusively single player game. MMOs have launch day problems all the time - it comes with the territory, and people expect the first week or so to be a slow and buggy experience for players. But this is a game that has always been a single player game, that EA had taken the bizarre decision to make multiplayer-only. If they are going to do that then they need to test the damn servers to make sure they can handle the extra load!

People who think the problem is that the DRM auth are kind of using this as an excuse to criticize DRM. It's more a problem with EA deciding to make a game inextricably massively multiplayer, but then not testing whether their servers can actually handle the so many people playing the game at once.

Sent from a phone, apols for any mistakes.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Is Sim City 5 any fun?

Also, for all the people who paid money and then couldn't play, petition this guy to make another video!

*Language warning!*


Link to video.

 

[Carras Dad]

Who's really to blame for this, though? EA or the pirates that force gaming companies down this path?

if a whisky company starts to make moonshine containing methyl alcohol because there's illegal whisky of the same low quality out there they feel they have to outcompete, who's to blame?

 

[uppi]

Who's really to blame for this, though? EA or the pirates that force gaming companies down this path?

The customers that still buy games with all these limitations.

 

[Hehehe]

Who's really to blame for this, though? EA or the pirates that force gaming companies down this path?

This comment has generated more discussion than the original post . Seriously though, blame whoever you want, the end result is the same: paying customers get screwed (by EA).

Still though, you'd think that by now, people would be smart enough not to preorder games. Wait maybe a week or a month before buying a game and see what kind of feedback the game gets. I never buy games on day one, for this exact reason

 

[shadowplay]

Is Sim City 5 any fun?

Also, for all the people who paid money and then couldn't play, petition this guy to make another video!

*Language warning!*

yt

Hey I think that guy posts here.

 

[dutchfire]

This comment has generated more discussion than the original post . Seriously though, blame whoever you want, the end result is the same: paying customers get screwed (by EA).

Still though, you'd think that by now, people would be smart enough not to preorder games. Wait maybe a week or a month before buying a game and see what kind of feedback the game gets. I never buy games on day one, for this exact reason

Yes, everyone should wait a few days before buying a game, so others will have given feedback.

 

[BvBPL]

People who think the problem is that the DRM auth are kind of using this as an excuse to criticize DRM. It's more a problem with EA deciding to make a game inextricably massively multiplayer, but then not testing whether their servers can actually handle the so many people playing the game at once.

This is more or less my opinion. It sounds like the lauch was flubbed, but I don't necessarily think it was because of the copy protection. Other elements of the online only game come into play.

Yes, everyone should wait a few days before buying a game, so others will have given feedback.

A sound idea. Caveat emptor.

 

[Core Imposter]

I simply did not buy that game.

 

[Carras Dad]

and why would you?

 

[Mise]

To set all taxes to zero, build no roads, fire stations or schools, and zone all land for all 3 usage types.