SimCity is inherently broken, let's not let this go
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 11th Mar 2013 14:46 UTC
Games "To see anyone defending EA and Maxis for the state of SimCity, even were it in perfect working order on launch, depresses me to my core. This self-flagellation-as-skincare notion, where gamers loudly and proudly defend the destruction of their own rights as consumers, is an Orwellian perversity. That it might be considered in any way controversial to call them out on their crap, to point out that no, always-on DRM is not an advantage to anyone, is bewildering. It's a sign of just how far the gaming world has fallen into the rabbit hole of the publisher's burrowing." As usual, RPS hits the nail on the head so hard it shoots through the board.
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RE[2]: Sing of the Times
by sparkyERTW on Tue 12th Mar 2013 13:40 UTC in reply to "RE: Sing of the Times"
sparkyERTW
Member since:
2010-06-09

I think it's a justifiable reason on their part. Don't get me wrong... I would never support this model for games, but I don't blame them for doing it.


I do... because in doing so they're harming their honest, paying customers. Returning to the car metaphor, what we're seeing is not "needing a key to start your car". What we're seeing is "your car must communicate with us or it won't start, and since we've just discovered the AC, stereo, and ABS brakes create problems with that, we're going to disable those. Also, your car might occasionally fail to start or lock-up randomly."

I'm sure they're getting tired of people pirating their stuff, while at the same time you have a bunch of f--ktards screaming about how piracy helps the industry. I'm sorry guys, but piracy does NOT help the industry ;) You get hundreds of thousands of people torrenting games, and then you wonder why publishers resort to the online-only DRM. Hello? WTF did you think was going to happen? They're not just going to sit back and watch while you play $60 games for free.


Yeah, I get that, and I agree the "piracy helps" argument is a lame one. But your paying customers should not be complacent about you breaking their stuff to fight that.

The main argument against this kind of DRM is that you can never make something that can't be cracked, but as more and more of the code goes server-side, I'm sure they will eventually make something that's uncrackable


No they won't. Ever. There's always going to be someone who figures out how to get around it. So rather than fight that and piss off all your existing customers as you sell them broken products, maybe your time is better spent proving your product is worth paying for.

Do I AGREE with it? No. Assuming their PC games are being pirated to the point where they would have to go out of business if they didn't resort to this model, then I'd rather see them go out of business. If I can't really own the games, I'm just not interested, unless maybe they're having a fire sale for like $10. Then it's sort of like a rental ;) Since games are only entertainment, I can easily live without them.


Agreed.

And I also think it's a bit hypocritical for people to shun this kind of DRM on one hand, and embrace Steam on the other. I'm not sure if Steam requires the 'always on' connection, but you're still 'buying' games that you don't really own, and that can be 'switched off' at somebody else's discretion.


You have a point there. You can put Steam in an 'offline' mode where it stores a local copy of your credentials, but you're right, it could be revoked when run online. But while I agree that DRM is vile in general, what makes this case extra heinous though is that given the option between loosening the DRM and harming their loyal, paying customers, they harmed their customers. And that to me is indefensible.

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