Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007VTVRFA?ie=UTF8&force-full-site=1&ref_=aw_bottom_links

by mrcharles • 13 years ago

708 434 13 years ago

samstave2• 13 years ago

I'm not going to lie: I will buy this game as soon as someone cracks the DRM and allows single, offline play.

criley• 13 years ago

You mean, when someone reverse engineers their massively multiplayer server scheme and rewrites an entire server wrapper for a game that follows the client/server paradigm?

This isn't a case where a client-only software package is locked by a remote server.

This is a case where core game logic is stored on servers and will have to be reverse engineered or emulated on some level to play truly offline.

PeterisP6• 13 years ago

It wouldn't be the first time where such game-servers are actually reverse engineered and emulated.

astrodust2• 13 years ago

It took years, but this was done with Battle.net for some older Blizzard games.

deoxxa4• 13 years ago

I kind of started poking around at the backend protocol this morning. It's all websockets over HTTPS (very trendy stuff) and is hosted on EC2. I'm yet to dig much further than "let's see what this looks like in wireshark", but the behaviour and some of the errors I've observed in-game point to some kind of sync-every-now-and-then architecture. I wouldn't be surprised if it was really easy to do up a custom server for it.

I'm going to keep poking at this thing, so I'll document what I find here: https://gist.github.com/deoxxa/5111644 - feel free to join in!

samstave2• 13 years ago

Yes. Whatever the case may be.

Ultima Online was completely reverse engineered and then re-deployed to host the cracked version at a state where lots of players liked it. Prior to the devs breaking the way some users preferred it.

Do I doubt this will happen, No. Do I expect it to happen tomorrow? No.

But I expect either this to happen, or EA to fix this problem. When its fixed, I'll buy the game.

nwh4• 13 years ago

There's absolutely no need. The game runs for 20 minutes with no internet connection. All the logic runs locally, and will be cracked. The only thing that needs to be emulated is the save/load system.

lcampbell• 13 years ago

I'm pretty sure the core game logic is not on the servers, as widely reported -- I was playing from 9-12PM CST last night, and the servers were supposedly completely down from 10-12PM -- I was able to continue playing in my city, and wasn't kicked until I attempted to interact with the region.

Granted, anything having to do with the region (imports/exports, shared upgrades, etc) was defunct.

Additionally, when you exit a city, there's a long pause where your client sends the city state to the server to be persisted (or so the UI tells me) -- another indication that the simulation is not run on the server.

My current impression is that the entire city simulation is done on the client, and the server is simply responsible for intra-city interactions and persisting game state.

Semaphor• 13 years ago

Not sure how it changed after the release, but I remember there being alpha or pre-alpha WoW servers.

KevinEldon• 13 years ago

The title of the 5-star review Amazon highlighted as the helpful is delightful: "Got me off my video game addiction!"

If there isn't some kind of anti-DRM movement surrounding these review this game might break some kind of record for worst reviews. As of now there are 737 1-star reviews.

lost_name• 13 years ago

Spore (the last Big Game released by Maxis through EA) is currently holding that record, I believe.

   By September 14, 2008 (ten days after the game's initial Australian release),
   2,016 of 2,216 ratings on Amazon.com gave the game one out of five stars,
   most citing EA's implementation of DRM for the low ratings. [1]

Spore's DRM issues were different, however.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore_(2008_video_game)#DRM_con...

treeface• 13 years ago

I actually legitimately hated Spore for its gameplay. So much promise and hype...such poor execution.

damncabbage• 13 years ago

Clearly EA suffered dearly for it, and have made sure never to repeat the mistake. :(

danielweber• 13 years ago

For what it's worth, my son enjoyed the bejesus out of Spore, and even used his own money to get expansions.

jpwright• 13 years ago

Nitpicking: The name of the game is just "Sim City". They dropped the numbering scheme and went for a total reboot.

cryptoz3• 13 years ago

> The name of the game is just "Sim City"

No, it's not. If you're going to nitpick, get it right. The name of the game is SimCity.

JTon• 13 years ago

If you're going to slam his comment, at least offer a reason why it's incorrect

talmand2• 13 years ago

To be fair, the box art says SimCity with no "V". The promotional materials on the EA site says SimCity with no "V". If it actually is named SimCity V then it's easy to understand the confusion.

Although I wouldn't call it a reboot necessarily since every version is more or less a reboot, so to speak.

jrogers65• 13 years ago

From what I can tell, OP appears to be correct in saying this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCity_(2013_video_game)

>SimCity is ... a reboot of the SimCity series.

ericcholis2• 13 years ago

Side note, it's a little odd that the additional images for a video game are all concept art.

fennecfoxen2• 13 years ago

So did they not even bother to look at the debacle of a launch that was _Cities XL_? Or did they imagine themselves immune?

arkitaip2• 13 years ago

EA has a very long history of anti consumer practices. Pretty much everyone expected some kind of fubar on launch but even this level of incompetence surprised most jaded gamers.

Natsu2• 13 years ago

They sold server-side processing as a "feature" for what should otherwise be a single-player game. Did anyone not see this coming when it was last discussed on HN?

I remember thinking that the servers were guaranteed to melt on launch day.

signed02• 13 years ago

I can't understand why experienced gamers would buy it at launch if they expect there to be serious technical issues.

fennecfoxen2• 13 years ago

Yeah, it's not even the screw-the-consumer DRM part: I expected that a competent product manager would have said "Hey, our competitors built a city-sim game that was supposed to incorporate a significant online gameplay element, and it didn't go so well for them. What can we learn from this and how can we avoid it?"

So either they didn't ask the question, or they didn't answer it well, or they didn't bother avoiding the problems after they learned it, or they managed to flub it anyway. I'd be curious to know which dysfunction they suffered from.

stusmall• 13 years ago

My copy is on its way in the mail. I'm a huge SimCity fanatic and was slightly worried that when it got here I'd sink too much time in it and get behind on my work.

Thanks EA!

BklynJay• 13 years ago

The box-art says, "Winner of 26 PC Game awards". Is that for the series or for Sim City V? I have a hard time believing its the latter.

arkitaip2• 13 years ago

Probably for the entire series but it's still false marketing.

scottcanoni• 13 years ago

It's for the entire series. The wiki pages states it has only won "8 awards out of 24 nominations".

cryptoz3• 13 years ago

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.

TillE• 13 years ago

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 Kickstarter funding are going to continue eating a bigger part of their lunch.

bearmf• 13 years ago

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.

cryptoz3• 13 years ago

I meant no 'gameplay' reason - I know that they have a financial reason to do this, or that they think they do, at least. If they lose enough sales and get enough hate, that removes even the financial reason that they thought they had for doing this. So perhaps, hopefully, maybe, they'll choose to stop doing it.

networked2• 13 years ago

>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.

I agree that this is a strong deterrent but given how even MMORPG servers have been reversed engineered [1] it's not impossible. If SimCity proves as enduring and as desirable as WoW we may well see it coupled with a LinCity-NG-derived [2] backend or similar.

Edit: That said, a powerful stimulus for the development of MMO server emulators was that players dissatisfied with the official servers' community simple couldn't run their own server how they'd like it for whom they like. I assume that the new SimCity is designed to be a far less community-oriented experience and people in control of the neighboring cities are largely replaceable from a player's perspective.

[1] See http://www.runuo.com/, http://www.galaxiesreborn.com/, https://launchpad.net/aurora-runescape-server-emulator, http://arcemu.org/, etc. Note how many of those are community FOSS projects, even though running them with an official client is almost always a ToS violation.

[2] http://lincity-ng.berlios.de/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

ececconi2• 13 years ago

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

betterunix2• 13 years ago

"With enough processing offloaded to the server, would-be pirates need to write something that's almost a whole new game."

Sure, and with sufficient bandwidth and computational power you could actually hide all the game logic using a secure computation protocol. Only a complete idiot would do that for something as performance-intensive as a video game.

The problem here is that we do not have reliable or fast Internet connections. As soon as your connection has a burp, or you get hit with some bufferbloat, or half your neighborhood starts streaming the Super Bowl in 1080p, your game starts to play worse. What EA failed to realize here is that the best way to make money in games is to offer a superior online gaming platform, not to try to sell individual games as products. Microsoft figured that out with XBox Live a long time ago.

scotty79• 13 years ago

Then when company goes belly up games die. Like Hellgate London multiplayer.

cdi• 13 years ago

>effectively impossible to crack.

hack into their servers, steal binaries of game server, modify client to work with local server.

ghshephard3• 13 years ago

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 many of those X% can be converted into purchases, and how many of those Y% valid purchases are lost.

EA may have tipped the balance here through poor execution and resulted in fewer games being sold, but, I don't work in the game industry - so I don't know how high X normally gets. (50%? 75%? 90%? 95%? I'm sure it's a pretty disheartening number)

hayksaakian• 13 years ago

For many of the X%, purchasing was not a consideration; what's more useful to consider is how many people that were paying customers in the past STOP paying, given that they've demonstrated their willingness to pay.

001sky• 13 years ago

Also a consideration: 866 reviews and a "1-Star" average.

pc865• 13 years ago

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.

prezjordan• 13 years ago

Seems like Valve is spot-on with that X%, and maybe even lowers it a little by offering such a great service and caring about their customers. That sounded fanboy-ish, but it's the truth.

scarlson4• 13 years ago

Your C point implies purchase.

It's safe to assume EA uses purchases as their success metric, as they are unlikely to complain you actually paid for the game.

belorn3• 13 years ago

See conversion rates from free vs paid. Lets use the average number of 3%. 100% is all users, which mean all who bought the game added with all who would have pirated the game, and 3% is the total amount of people who would potential spend money.

Out of those 3%, you need to remove A), people who do not pirate), people who do not compare stores and just buy from what is most convenient, and C), people who would buy if there was DRM preventing piracy.

We can now assign weight to those groups. Group B, is likely to be largest given human nature and sale numbers from places like steam. Group A would likely come second, and Group C would be smallest. Lets use the weights 3/6, 2/6, 1/6 proportions for each group. That makes Group C somewhere around 0.5% of the users which the DRM scheme might get to buy the game.

Is 0.5% additional conversion rate worth the costs of DRM scheme, additional support, and a tanked amazon review rating of 1 star?

res0nat0r• 13 years ago

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 purchases. People submitting 1 star reviews because they require you to be online just because they don't like it shouldn't be allowed to submit a rating.

pc865• 13 years ago

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 <string>"

caligo2• 13 years ago

I played Diablo 3 quite soon after launch and while there were "hiccups" (my character would occasionally jump around due to lag) I could connect fairly quickly to a server. From the reviews the Sim City servers seem to be overloaded much more than D3 servers were.

The always connected to the internet aspect was bad for D3 and it seems it is even worse for Sim City. If I remember correctly, Blizzard had legal problems in South Korea because of connectivity. My hopes is that incidents like this force companies to move away from the online only single player design.

I think that aside from the philosophical problems with DRM in general, the required internet connection aspect means that once EA shuts down the server the game could be lost forever. When making these games (good or bad) a team adds something to the cultural record of our time. Old movies may not be as good as modern movies in terms of technical execution, but they are interesting because they contain within them an aspect of a lost culture. Games should aspire to do the same.

potatolicious• 13 years ago

SimCity's problems were much like Diablo 3's character creation problems at launch.

With Diablo you had a hell of a time just getting a connection to a server - but once you were in you got to play (laggy though it may be).

With SimCity you'd bash your head against your computer connecting to a server, but even after you do that every step could possibly fail because it was doing something substantial to an internal database (presumably) that doesn't scale - creating a city, taking over a city, joining a region, etc etc.

See even once you're past the dreaded "wait 30 minutes for your turn", there's still no guarantee your game will even be functional.

katbyte• 13 years ago

IIRC with DIIIs error 37, it was just the authentication servers so once you actually got past them and into the game the game-play servers were mostly ok (albeit laggy)

With SC5 its the actual game play servers that seem to be full, and also fairly buggy (saved game corruption, unable to create regions/cities or join, losing hours of work)

ineedtosleep• 13 years ago

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.

pc865• 13 years ago

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

aqme282• 13 years ago

Battlefield 3 is a bad comparison because it's intrinsically a multiplayer franchise. No one complains that they need an internet connection to play World of Warcraft, because it's expected.

Additionally, BF3 had an offline single-player mode. SimCity could have an offline single-player mode, but elected not to.

tobyjsullivan2• 13 years ago

That would probably be wonderful but it's not going to happen. They'll take a look at what went wrong "this time" and be convinced they will not make the same mistakes next time. Then they'll try again. Too their credit, that's the definition of good business and, chances are, it will work better next time.

Some companies are just better than others at getting it right the first time (or second, or third).

I just wish this hadn't happened with SimCity. I really liked that title.

Macsenour• 13 years ago

Knowing some in charge, I can say only this: Karma.

jlarocco2• 13 years ago

SimCity and SimCity 2000 were such great games, it's a bit disappointing to see how EA screwed up the rest of the series.

mhurron• 13 years ago

The only thing bad about SimCity 4 was the performance was less than stellar. Other than that, 3000 and 4 were just as good as 2000.

khuey• 13 years ago

A decent size SC4 city can bring today's hardware to its knees, and the game is 10 years old.

jlarocco2• 13 years ago

I guess it's personal preference. For me, the new stuff in 3K didn't make it more fun, it just made it more work to get a city going. It could be I didn't put in the time to understand the new stuff, though.

barbs2• 13 years ago

Still ARE great games. And DRM free. And, in the case of the original, open-source :D

Micropolis (Simcity): http://code.google.com/p/micropolis/

SimCity 2000: http://www.gog.com/gamecard/simcity_2000_special_edition

ericcholis2• 13 years ago

Overall, this games seems like a good example of how not to launch a product:

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/simcity

Fanboy perspective: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/simcity-impressions-we...

masklinn• 13 years ago

Not really game issues (though they definitely seem to exist as well, unstable games is just par for the course these days), broken DRM and server issues.

mcintyre1994• 13 years ago

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 actually have the right to play games you buy, even if you buy them on a disc - which I'm sure they do, how is this possibly legal? The game is unplayable, it's their fault and they could have made it work if they'd chosen to.

goatforce54• 13 years ago

It would depend on your local consumer laws. Under UK law, for example, Simcity would not currently be considered 'fit for purpose' and they're clearly obliged to give you a refund:

http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/nireland/consumer_ni/consumer_...

...assuming you're buying it from a UK(/EU?) subsidiary.

Local laws will vary. IANAL.

steve-howard• 13 years ago

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.

nerdo• 13 years ago

The dev team did an IAMA on Reddit a few months ago, where this was all foreshadowed:

http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/14v8er/drama...

johnward7• 13 years ago

This sums it up http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLYLmsEBGug

ryangripp• 13 years ago

I think the real reason Amazon stopped selling it was the Amazon Buyers looked at the game and said: "What? No subways? Small City Size? We can't sell this!"

littlegiantcap2• 13 years ago

It's been fun while I've actually been able to connect to EA's servers. (which is rare). I'm not going to beat the anti-drm drum, but I will say this. If EA is going to go this route they had better have the resources available to make it happen. I for one actually don't mind it, if it was able to work.

Andaith• 13 years ago

This is all an assumption but:

With the amount of stuff that gets simulated on their servers, the sim city servers are probably more resource intensive than even really popular FPS servers.

That means they're also more expensive per person than most other game servers.

What happens when it's no longer profitable for EA to keep them running? I doubt they'll release the source code.

mortenjorck• 13 years ago

EA needs to pivot this game, fast.

Even in the best case scenario, where the servers all get fixed this evening and the game works flawlessly for everyone for a month straight, the damage to the game's name has been done. The meme is hatched: SimCity 2013 has a highly brittle dependency on poorly-planned cloud infrastructure.

There's a private region mode in the game (that you nonetheless can't use offline in the current architecture). EA needs to have Maxis crunch for the next couple of weeks to make this work offline. Yes, I've read the nebulous quotes about "part of the sim happening in the cloud." Whatever that is, they'll have to move it to the client.

Once offline play is possible, if EA wants any chance to make back its investment on this game, they're going to have to first promote the new offline mode, and then spend the next couple of months doing some post-launch rescoping of the multiplayer aspect. They can still make it work; it could still be fantastic – but they have to move fast.

bung• 13 years ago

(I just have to say, to give more than just an upvote, this is a great post.)

baddox3• 13 years ago

> The meme is hatched: SimCity 2013 has a highly brittle dependency on poorly-planned cloud infrastructure.

To the tech-literate crowd, this will be the meme. But for the average gamer, the meme is different, and I might argue worse: Sim City simply doesn't work.

DannoHung• 13 years ago

The meme I see tends to be: EA ruins everything.

dman2• 13 years ago

Only if they havent laid off the game devs after the master copy was done.

cnlwsu• 13 years ago

Diablo 3 was pretty horrible at first too for the same reason. I don't know if you will call that a success or failure though.

Bockit• 13 years ago

Anecdotally, I still have people dismiss Diablo 3 over the connectivity issues at launch, and make error 37 comments. Even from people who played through the issues and stuck around for a bit, it's the thing that stands out most for them.

Success or failure depends on your definition of success here. Successful game, sure. Successful sequel to Diablo 2, it doesn't seem to have the same popularity, and I think the connection issues at launch framed a lot of people's opinions about the game.

gambiting3• 13 years ago

I've had Diablo 3 since day one and played successfully to level 60 with two characters, never had any problems with connection. And SimCity doesn't work sometimes - it just doesn't work at all.

AlexDanger• 13 years ago

Remember EA is a business, not an offshoot of Reddit/HN. Imagine you're the SimCity product manager and the choice was between a massive refactor or provisioning a bunch of new servers. Which would you choose?

I'd love to agree with you, but I just dont think its plausible.

pdubs• 13 years ago

One-time cost vs. ongoing cost for years to come? It's not as simple as you make it out to be.

johnward7• 13 years ago

I would have fought to develop a working offline mode from the beginning

aiwinters• 13 years ago

I agree with you that adding a bunch of servers looks like the simpler (cheaper, in terms of Net Present Value) option. But I worry that however they've set it up is just not horizontally scalable.

They say that a large bunch of the simulation runs on their servers. And that each city is connected (via the graph) to every other city. What if they haven't built in clean partitioning? If cities really do interact with every other city, and they've haven't already seriously planned how to horizontally scale, they're hosed.

If it were just a matter of adding more hosts, wouldn't they have done that by now? Surely you over-provision for launch and then scale down once the first sales are over and people's interest dies down.

fooey3• 13 years ago

The answer is neither.

They've already ruined their "second day" sales, and they have the money for their uninformed first day buyers already. Their best option is to ignore the pleb's while demand dies off enough that their existing infrastructure is adequate

Kequc• 13 years ago

The game sold more than a million copies and gamers are notoriously short term memory combined with short term attention span. Not only will this game start working fine after half the people who bought this game forget about it in a week. But the people who bought it and are mad about it now, won't be in a week.

The same thing has been happening for a long time. If you are a gamer, you are sharing space with petulance. You can pretend all you want that games are designed and built with an adult in mind but adults aren't the target market.

joelmichael• 13 years ago

This predictably happens at the release of almost every anticipated game that requires a central server connection. There is initial downtime and lag, angry gamers write lots of horrible reviews, then things eventually get better and nobody cares anymore that it used to be broken.

jaredmcateer2• 13 years ago

Some of us have caught onto this cycle and are learning discipline. I personally didn't buy the game because I figured something like this might happened... problem is that the window of opportunity for EA to get my money is quickly closing as I await to see them fix the issues and make things right for the people that have suffered through it.

supercoder• 13 years ago

Absolutely none of this is going to happen.

They'd just see this as an issue with the server infrastructure , not the game. They'll just get more servers online, people will start to play and then the complaining will die down.

I dont think it will hurt their sales as much as you're implying anyway. I've just purchased it, knowing about the server issues, but also knowing it's going to come good soon enough.

norswap• 13 years ago

They won't do it. It would mean being intelligent.

speeder• 13 years ago

As a game author I am very ashamed of what the industry has been doing in the last few years.

It started with FPS mania... Then crazy DRM that destroyed your PC (Starforce I am looking to you).

Then... more crazy DRM! (SecuROM, that for example refused to launch Spore on dual-GPU laptops).

Then online only DRM...

Then DLC mania (Horse Armor, I am looking to you... unfortunately as the harbinger of something much worse past you).

Then Diablo III (and now SC5) managed to be the first games I don't want to play even borrowed, pirated or given to me. If someone give me a DIII CD, I won't even re-sell it and inflict something evil on someone, I will just throw it on the trash, because online-only DRM for Single Player game, transforming the game into a sort of cloud-based service, is one of the most evil things that companies could invent, specially because they can just yank the game from you when they wish (also you cannot have fun cheating alone or modding, cannot play when you are deployed in some war without internet on the HQ or live in the third world, cannot play if you deride EA/Activision/Ubisoft on the forums and they decide to ban you...)

InAnEmergency• 13 years ago

Can't play when the company decides to stop spending money on servers...meaning your game will actually expire and stop working one day.

MartinCron3• 13 years ago

It started with FPS mania

You could go a bit further back and say it started with Atari 2600 era shovelware.

kevinalexbrown2• 13 years ago

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 are willing to let go of the big decisions if they get to be a part of something great. But they have to trust that it will come out well in the end.

amitparikh• 13 years ago

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.

kevinalexbrown2• 13 years ago

You make a really good point. Rereading my comment, it's brusque.

I still think there's a point to be made about trust in a larger organization, but as someone who a) doesn't know precisely what the specific problem is and b) doesn't know whether I wouldn't have made the same mistakes, I'm going to acquiesce.

jfim2• 13 years ago

I don't know about this specific instance, but from what I recall from working in the video game industry, devs don't deal with copy protection; it's something that's done prior to mastering where they put your executable through SecuROM or whatever and it spits out a new binary that has copy protection/CD checks/online auth or whatever junk the publisher wants to add.

Bud• 13 years ago

a) When it was in beta, there was presumably much less server load. b) The fact that a small bug in the unnecessary server/DRM part of the game could take the whole game down like this is precisely the point. You can certainly blame the whole entity for deciding to require a net connection and a server even for single-player use of the game.

tsunamifury• 13 years ago

The point is that its a highly failure prone requirement with dire consequences. Imagine if you were designing a car and the Business Analyst told you that this car needed a constant internet connection at all times or else the engine would immediately cease injecting gas.

While you could blame the engineers for all the cars that died in the middle of highways, it'd be far more realistic to blame the Business Analyst for demanding such an arduous and failure prone requirement.

Engineers can only make things work to a point and after that some real world limitations need to be taken into account.

cbs3• 13 years ago

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 technical option and expect/expected failures to happen.

My read of the situation is that they expected the rest of the game to get a better reception overall and blunt the bad PR from the inevitable failures caused by the always-on/centralized aspects.

junkilo5• 13 years ago

Doing a massive online game takes a broad skillset and different development patterns than single player.

I'd probably place money on the fact they failed the load testing. (Yes, I'm xEA and was involved in the last simcity load test)

PeterisP6• 13 years ago

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.

driverdan• 13 years ago

I don't feel bad at all. They know who they've chosen to work for.

anon13853• 13 years ago

>I suppose this is a great advertising technique for small firms, startups, indie shops

You mean like all those small valley startups creating Rails web apps that only work when the user has an internet connection? I don't see the difference.

jader2013• 13 years ago

This is not a web site, it's a game. It is marketed and sold as a game.

It isn't even being marketed/sold as an MMO. For the most part, people think this is a single player experience with some multiplayer interactions.

I haven't seen the retail packaging, but does it even state an internet connection is required? And if so, is it prominent?

EDIT: According to the shot on Amazon[1], it does at least state that a "persistent internet connection [is] required to play". Not excusing them by any means, but that's better than what I was expecting from the likes of EA.

[1]http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/815mDnNUDhL._SL1121_.j...

dylangs10305• 13 years ago

Integral to a web app is the use of the web. It's even semantically connected. It's explicit.

But it's not even implicitly understood that a game need a web connection. It's not part of its integral operation. Why would it be?

TL;DR: Things on the internet obviously need a web connection. Things not directly related to the internet...shouldn't need one.

Alex3917• 13 years ago

"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.

paperkettle• 13 years ago

!! Sim City DRM is just part of a really deep ARG. Maybe they hired the ilovebees people?

Steko• 13 years ago

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

Irregardless• 13 years ago

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 constant profiteering and manipulation -- and begrudgingly buy their games because they're one of the few companies with the budget to create AAA titles.

Takeover by EA is usually considered a death knell for game studios...

roc3• 13 years ago

> "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 remained naive about what EA was going to get up to.

[1] http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/12/05

junkilo5• 13 years ago

Some places in EA are amazing places to work at. Others have challenges. They aren't the only game company that has seen studios do sub-standard work after being acquired.

NoPiece8• 13 years ago

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

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

_delirium• 13 years ago

My own personal anecdote is that most of my Bay-Area game-industry contacts were at Maxis: around 8-9 of them. And precisely none of them are still with EA today. Some have left to freelance, some to do indie games, some to do regular tech jobs outside the game industry entirely (e.g. would rather work for Lockheed than EA).

rhizome• 13 years ago

I feel bad for the game devs who got to see their hard work turn into something they don't intend.

"Spore" was 5 years ago, FWIW.

lloeki• 13 years ago

Although the servers did not melt at that time, the Amazon ratings and reviews are similar.

SquareWheel• 13 years ago

Maxis has totally ignored the issue. Look at their Reddit AMA when nearly every question was regarding this, and they didn't even acknowledge it.

Perhaps they were under legal obligation or pressure from EA, but I find it hard to feel sympathy.

aqme282• 13 years ago

It is incredibly likely they were forbidden by management from answering those questions.

Skoofoo• 13 years ago

They did an AMA but weren't comfortable talking about that? Talk about foresight.

dclowd9901• 13 years ago

Is the auth space something a startup could occupy? "Easy DRM/Auth for games that doesn't suck?"

DigitalSea6• 13 years ago

All DRM is eventually bypassed, why do game studios even bother?

mrinterweb• 13 years ago

Steam provides DRM and a marketplace.

belorn3• 13 years ago

Effective DRM is less about technology, and more about incentives. It would not even be hard to implement if the sole goal is to maximize revenue. Sadly, most DRM schemes has a secondary goal of control rather than revenue maximization.

So how would this work: 1) have a early launch code included in collector versions and pre-order, for something around 1 week. 2) include a special DRM system for only the pre-launch week, and announce that it will be removed after the pre-launch week.

the benefits: 1) Crackers are people, and there is little incentives for 1 week crack. A honor system could also encourage them to avoid cracking the game, if this model is made in honest. 2) Buyers are people, and those that would buy the game at launch (90-95% of revenue) will not have a pirate game to pick from. 3) pirates are people, and those that rather wait for a crack will wait here too.

pointernil• 13 years ago

True.

Yay! The Big-Enterprison teaches the youth VERY effectively why it scks by destroying their fun* with games ... this time: Simcity.

Is this "disaster" some sort of an ideological paradox intervention?

How bad can this get? I mean how do you manage to fail at such scale with a brand like this. Don't they need the money anymore? Don't they want it?

Interesting.

pcote• 13 years ago

>Work for our small team. We won't destroy your work.

A small team might not. However, they also won't have the resources typical a larger triple-A product either. Nor will your game have a marketing team behind it to draw gamer attention with.

Without that, your game has to have a combination of cleverness and buzz. The latter requires a certain degree of luck.

junkilo5• 13 years ago

Its sad they didn't use the playfish devops team that flawlessly launched simcity social.

ececconi2• 13 years ago

Amazon is still selling the physical version. Why would they pull the digital download and not the physical copy? Is it because there are different people responsible for it?

wmf2• 13 years ago

By the time you receive a boxed copy the servers may be fixed.

tantalor• 13 years ago

I thought it might be an automatic block based on 1-star reviews, but both products have the same 88% 1-star reviews right now.

Digital: 765/866 = 88.3%

DVD: 912/1038 = 87.9%

estel8• 13 years ago

If there's an automatic block, it's more likely to be related to refund requests.

cail• 13 years ago

Is there a way to filter Amazon reviews by Verified Purchase? I'd love to see these stats with only people that we know have bought the game.

I'm just curious of a way to eliminate all the people who made up their mind before the game even came out.

estel8• 13 years ago

It's entirely possible that Amazon have just run out of keys for the digital version...

toyg3• 13 years ago

From what I've read, EA is directly refunding customers of physical disks -- I guess they're forced by some law or another. No such luck for digital downloads: EA is refusing all refunds for them. Amazon dipped into their pockets for a while, returning money to disgruntled customers and taking a hit for EA, but clearly it was getting too much.

goatforce54• 13 years ago

Where's Steve Jobs when you need him?

> Steve Jobs summoned the MobileMe team to the Town Hall > auditorium on Apple’s Cupertino campus for an obscenity- > laden dressing down. ‘You’ve tarnished Apple’s reputation,’ > he told them. ‘You should hate each other for having let > each other down.’ Then he named a new executive on the spot > to run the team.”

http://macdailynews.com/2011/05/08/steve-jobs-to-those-respo...

NoPiece8• 13 years ago

Although it is more likely in this case that the EA executives mandated online only to the developers.

goatforce54• 13 years ago

No doubt. Doesn't mean you have to implement it badly though.

27182818284• 13 years ago

Why? I see this over and over again in this thread, but I don't believe it anymore because it is not just a one-off case of the developers being ignored, they're willingly doing bad practices like this over and over and over again.

Best case: They do it reluctantly, but don't care enough about their work to stop it. Worst case: They do it willingly and think it is a great idea.

jonknee• 13 years ago

... And iCloud is still weak.

FireBeyond2• 13 years ago

Sorry, but no.

I should not hate people because we weren't able to develop another new product that made you another billion.

That's not a healthy work/life balance, that's a cult.

vacri2• 13 years ago

Nice how it works, eh? Product is good, love Jobs because he created the conditions to make it. Product is bad, hate the team that let Jobs down, because we know he's only ever involved in the good stuff.

gimeq• 13 years ago

SimCity 2000/3000/4 still work perfectly, and are available for free.

estel8• 13 years ago

Since when are they available for free?

daxelrod• 13 years ago

And where?

ardacinar• 13 years ago

I think SimCity 2000 was considered abandonware, or was it only the first SimCity game? I'm not really sure about it. But the first 4 games are definitely playable without any internet connection whatsoever.

andyking• 13 years ago

Not free, but I saw SimCity 4 for sale on Steam for a small sum of about £3.99 the other week. I nearly bought it, if only to end the requirement to have the CD in to play it!

barbs2• 13 years ago

Looks like SimCity 2000 is definitely still being sold.

http://www.gog.com/gamecard/simcity_2000_special_edition

apapli• 13 years ago

Reading the comments below it sounds like there is an infrastructure scaling issue going on down at EA (I'm no DRM specialist).

If that is indeed the case: Methinks the AWS sales guy/gal on the EA account has just been handed the easiest ROI they could ask for. "Buy my cloud, and we will be able to start selling your game again."

hga• 13 years ago

Unfortunately the way this often goes is that someone who was responsible for not using AWS correctly blames AWS instead of himself and EA stops using them, or using them for future games.

Although that won't tend to work if EA is already using AWS a lot.

anigbrowl• 13 years ago

Oh dear, looks like the virtual rioters have broken out into the real world.

dakimov• 13 years ago

The brain-dead corporate douches in gray suits pulled the trendy social bullshit into the legendary single-player game and ruined it. That's unbelievable!

pale_rider• 13 years ago

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.

lreeves• 13 years ago

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.

estel8• 13 years ago

As a consumer: If my £40 game gives me £40 of entertainment, I will buy it.

This held for Mass Effect 3 and Battlefield 3. And considering the reviews it has been receiving, I'm confident this will be true for SimCity once the early server issues have been ironed out.

jstevens85• 13 years ago

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.

bdesimone• 13 years ago

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?

blocktuw• 13 years ago

The shareholders.

http://investors.morningstar.com/ownership/shareholders-majo...

PeterisP6• 13 years ago

Short their stock.

spartango4• 13 years ago

Can we talk about this more clearly?

This isn't strictly "evil DRM" as people are highlighting.

Unlike some other games, it's not like SimCity is just phoning home to figure out if it is licensed or not, and preventing unlicensed copies.

SimCity depends on EA/Maxis' server infrastructure for a great deal of storage and computation related to the macro-scale components of each game. Not only is city state synced there and shared between players, but regional dynamics and macro-scale economic systems are continuously maintained in the EA cloud. There's plenty of other features that are done server-side, and in total they represent a substantial piece of this game.

We can argue about whether these things should be computed and stored in the cloud, but I think there is a plausible, if imperfect, argument for doing so; Many players are involved and system resources are scarce relative to simulation complexity.

Regardless, the use of the cloud in this game is for more than just to deter pirates. That much is clear. And it's also clear that EA cannot "simply remove the DRM" and expect people to have a full offline experience; this is a primarily multiplayer game.

Indeed, this seems part of a trend in the games industry--that of bringing MMO(massively multiplayer online) experiences to more games. Call it social or something else, more games are working to get people to play with others. It's good business and actually creates some special experiences.

In any case, EA/Maxis have clearly not executed the launch for SimCity well. With 10 years of pent-up demand, it would have been wise to provision more server side resources to keep the experience good. It's hard to keep up with so many users, and perhaps a longer beta period would have helped.

But as a SimCity player and vet, I'll say that stripping out the online piece of this game doesn't make sense, and that piece was certainly designed for the benefit of gamers.

It's not strictly DRM or EA milking their customers.

reitzensteinm2• 13 years ago

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.

estel8• 13 years ago

Isn't:

> We can argue about whether these things should be computed and stored in the cloud, but I think there is a plausible, if imperfect, argument for doing so

Conceivably true? We could be in a world with no DRM, but there would still be a market trend moving games towards a more social, connected and integrated experience; and some developers will be looking at ways to fundamentally build their new games in a way that takes advantage of this. Why not SimCity? The Sims 3 already indicated where the Sims franchise might be heading with regards to improved connectivity with friends, I don't think it's an entirely unreasonable leap to get to where SimCity is now.

Which isn't to say that DRM wouldn't have been a business consideration at an executive level; but there's definitely an argument that SimCity's design choices, even if flawed, can be justified without considering DRM.

spartango4• 13 years ago

We lack the internal knowledge to know whether an offline mode would have been a good experience for most customers. I have no idea whether Maxis+EA tested this, and how well it worked.

That said, you can imagine a situation where doing these computations locally did compromise the experience for a certain spec of machines. Maxis has already explained that city size limits were imposed because the simulation didn't run sufficiently well on the low-mid spec machines above the allowed size.

As the owner of a higher spec machine, I find it somewhat silly that this couldn't just be a preference item (as AA and resolution are), but I can understand the decision to cut down the computational demands to keep gameplay smooth.

Games that have launched with framerate issues recently have met a huge amount of flak--see what's going on in the Planetside 2 community. You can argue that what's happening to PS2 is far worse: they released a poorly optimized game, and those issues prevented people from playing for months.

aeturnum• 13 years ago

>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 World of Warcraft. The previous games were single player, as they focused on a monolithic city. This game is designed from the ground up with the assumption that you will play with other people. There's no technical restrictions preventing Blizzard from offering single-person servers for WoW, it just doesn't follow from the game design. The same is true here.

littlegiantcap2• 13 years ago

I'd like to second what you're saying. The ability to play with my friends in our own private regions is an awesome one, and one I'm glad they included. Frankly, I would have no problem with anything they're doing if it just worked. The big mistake here, imho,is that EA is a huge company, they should have set aside the resources to make this experience great.

morsch• 13 years ago

You make a lot of good points. But I've argued this before: it seems highly unlikely that EA is doing any kind of expensive calculation server-side that couldn't be equally done offline in a single player mode.

It's possible for providers to install hardware where each player gets computational resources that rival their own -- OnLive does it. But OnLive also charges a monthly fee for it. And the offloading is only significant compared to, essentially, thin clients, not gaming PCs.

So the simulation offloading argument is just bogus. But of course it's consistent to argue that SimCity is a multiplayer game, full stop, that a single player version, while feasible, would simply be so unattractive that they aren't going to support it; just like Actiblizzard doesn't offer offline WOW. But I assume lots of people are in fact playing essentially single player in a private region, and of course SimCity was a solitary experience in the past.

nlawalker• 13 years ago

>> SimCity depends on EA/Maxis' server infrastructure for a great deal of storage and computation related to the macro-scale components of each game.

The problem is that most people's perception is that it really doesn't need to, that the core engine could have been implemented to run entirely locally and the online-only features would be optional.

It's all well and good if the game has social features or other enhancements that are only enabled if you are online. But could the game have been implemented such that the core single-player gameplay is available without an internet connection?

Most people perceive the answer to that question to be "yes". If the answer truly is yes, then implementation of the game in this way is DRM.

>> this is a primarily multiplayer game

If that's true, I'd say the one-star reviews are just as justified. This game was marketed as the continuation of a series that has been predominantly single-player. I'd say there's a reasonable expectation that the game should work without an internet connection. I wouldn't expect World of Warcraft to work without an internet connection, but I expect SimCity to. I wouldn't expect Dead Space 3's co-op to work without an internet connection, but I would expect the single-player campaign to work without one, and it does.

cbs3• 13 years ago

Regardless, the use of the cloud in this game is for more than just to deter pirates. That much is clear.

So you're right that its not "evil DRM" in the traditional sense, that shit failed and publishers moved on years ago. Online components, and preferable mandatory online components is the new AAA game anti-piracy, anti-secondary-market strategy.

EA could have designed a more resilient architecture without sacrificing the multi-player/social aspects. But they didn't, why not?

chaz• 13 years ago

> I think there is a plausible, if imperfect, argument for doing so; Many players are involved and system resources are scarce relative to simulation complexity.

Game reviewers like Polygon knowingly played prerelease code on private development server, and reported no major issues. In addition, EA recently cut back on game features and disabled the fastest game mode to help their servers cope -- some additional indication that servers are doing a fair amount of work to service the game.

I agree it sounds like a solvable problem made difficult by overwhelming demand. And for some number of reasons, they cannot increase server capacity sufficiently to solve it. This sounds more like a failure of server engineering than an overly aggressive DRM strategy.

[1] http://www.polygon.com/game/simcity-2013/2630 [2] http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/7/4075120/simcity-servers-upda...

PeterisP6• 13 years ago

Relaxing their overly aggressive DRM strategy would easily reduce the need for servers by order (orders?) of magnitude, so it would be a possible solution.

jfb• 13 years ago

No, but it's hardly confidence inspiring for the brave new world of 100% micropayment coverage that EA wants to train us to enjoy.

krelian• 13 years ago

I'll bet good money that the game was designed from scratch to require a constant connection or otherwise the project would not be approved.

overgard2• 13 years ago

Honest question: have you played the new game?

I got a few hours in before I ran into the issues everyone outlined, but after having built a pretty sizable city, my impression is that the multiplayer/online aspects of the game are pretty much worthless. It feels more like a feature box being checked than a core element of the game. I get the impression that they tried, but it ultimately feels incongruent with the core mechanics.

There's another element, which is a bit hazier, but being that this game is a sequel, there are certain expectations that people come into it with for a Sim City game -- expectations which aren't met. Sim City is a game about playing mayor, and all the social nonsense is sort of getting in the way of that experience. Especially since the whole "online" aspect has kept me from playing it today AT ALL, because the "server is full" -- despite the fact that I played 10 hours yesterday and felt no need to interact with anyone. I'd happily leave behind the whole social nonsense and just play the damn game if it would let me.

This isn't a proper Sim City game. It's like going to a restaurant and ordering spaghetti, and getting something entirely different. Sure I want the restaurant's take on spaghetti, but you can't stray too far without inventing a new dish. I wanted spaghetti, and instead I got mac and cheese. Some people might like mac and cheese, but that's not what I came here to get, and I'm disappointed.

egeozcan• 13 years ago

> This isn't a proper Sim City game.

To me it felt like I'm playing DRM with features inspired from simcity. Sadly, I'm not joking.

spartango4• 13 years ago

I've been playing the game for the last few days with a handful of friends. What I've found is that without the region dynamics, my cities have comparatively stunted growth and seem to be deficient in a few areas. Even with regions that I try and manage myself, the time freezing mechanic in unmanned cities makes progress much slower.

When my friends are building cities around me, we move really fast and the supply chain and people sharing mechanics can create some truly startling results. It's a very different experience from SC4, and I'll say its only a bad thing if you play alone.

zachinglis• 13 years ago

I can only speculate the designers said "Oh man, if we can interact with each other's city that'd be awesome" and someone higher up said "It'll always be on!"

Everyone saw this coming. Everyone. I don't understand how they couldn't prepare better?

IheartApplesDix• 13 years ago

Because EA doesn't care about their customers that much. There's no reason on doubling your launch fleet for a few days when it will hardly effect the sales of your game. Save money and let customers bitch for a few days, just more free press about your game.

salahxanadu• 13 years ago

I wonder if this is just a way to get around all of those horrible reviews. They'll probably put it up again soon with cleared reviews.

anon13853• 13 years ago

When a game requires an internet connection to work we call it DRM and slam it. When a text editor or spreadsheet requires an internet connection to run we call it innovation.

dragondilesh• 13 years ago

The situation isn't as simple as you put it. This time, there is single player game that shouldn't need forced interactivity with an internet connection. Compared to a text editor where the internet connection allowed multiple users to operate on it at the same time.

scarlson4• 13 years ago

That and I'm not spending 60$ for Google Docs access.

bsg752• 13 years ago

What editor are you using that requires a live connection? - If its cloud based: apples vs oranges - If not, get a better editor.

Online spreadsheets or docs allow you to export to a locally accessible format. SimCity does not.

robinh3• 13 years ago

There is a significant difference between wanting to do something locally and an internet connection being required and wanting to do something on the internet because it works better than what you have locally.

n3rdy• 13 years ago

> When a text editor or spreadsheet requires an internet connection to run we call it innovation.

I would be raging if my text editor required an internet connection for me to access my local files. Al Capone rage even.

unsignedint• 13 years ago

Requiring and supporting are two completely different animals. If text editors and spreadsheets actually requiring you to have an internet connection, then I can see people criticizing about it.

ryguytilidie2• 13 years ago

I think he is referring to Google Docs/Drive.

josephv• 13 years ago

I have played the last couple nights (since release) on the West Europe 2 server though I'm on the East Coast. Not ideal I guess but I've had to do the same thing for other games. Hopefully it still works when I get home in a few hours :)

Speaking of "broken" memes.

I used to play SimCity like you, until it got an arrow in the cloud. Improve on that please.

srehnborg• 13 years ago

I am waiting to see what comes of this before I buy. However, They had overloaded server issues during the 1 hour beta AND the extended 4 hour beta leading up to the launch.

Hoping they can get this resolved quickly. I think we're dreaming if the fix will involve a non-DRM offline mode.

trothamel• 13 years ago

To me, the problems we see today will pale in comparison with the problems people will experience years from now. If the game is unplayable today, what will it be like when EA decides that keeping the servers running is unprofitable, and turns those servers off?

(I think there's some sort of analog to historical preservation of art and buildings here.)

openforce2• 13 years ago

Wow, Upwards of 800 amazingly dumb people on the review page. Didn't they see the first 100 reviews <i>before</i> making the purchase?

DanBC• 13 years ago

Perhaps they bought in advance?

openforce2• 13 years ago

Thats even worse

jader2013• 13 years ago

The fundamental problem with Sim City is that it is historically a single-player, offline experience. And it didn't help that this is the first true Sim City we've seen since 2003 (Sim City 4) and many media hyped this game to be possibly the best Sim City yet, and the most realistic city simulation experience.

Yes, there may be technical limitations that required processing to happen on EA servers. And yes, they make it clear on the front of the box that an internet connection is required to play the game.[1]

But most people purchasing this game expected that for the most part, this would be primarily a single player just like the previous titles, and that the internet connection is only required for DRM and/or occasional online interaction. They don't realize that a lot of the engine lives in the cloud.

So there is a different level of disappointment because of the expectations that were there. If this had been a follow-up to an MMO, they would have known that the game heavily depended on server performance, and it may have been a little more forgivable.

But most people don't understand why the game doesn't work. "Just disable DRM for now. Or disable multiplayer interactions. Make it offline only for now."

What I can't believe is that this isn't just minor hiccups with the launch -- this is catastrophic failure. Why couldn't better load testing simulate and predict what they're seeing today?

Regardless, as many have said, this will ruin the name of Sim City, at least for a period, and will cause even more bitterness with EA than what already exists.

[1]http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/815mDnNUDhL._SL1121_.j...

dalacv• 13 years ago

But they promised...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLYLmsEBGug

kaoD• 13 years ago

Well, that's what you get for buying a DRMed game.

Stand for your rights.

smogzer• 13 years ago

dwarf fortress is the new simcity.

bane• 13 years ago

I was thinking of buying this, but meh, never mind.

(may as well just wait for the cracked version and enjoy the game with more convenience)

http://www.reddit.com/r/simcity seems to be summing up the problem pretty nicely with some clever use of the curved roads.

michaelrhansen• 13 years ago

I have been amazed at the interest level in this game. I shared in the excitement and could not wait for the Mac version. Now the bad backlash, bugs, and generally horrific reviews have significantly deflated my interest. Gaming startups - make a better one!! ;)

rabbidrabbit• 13 years ago

like this http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1584821767/civitas-plan-...

danso3• 13 years ago

I haven't been paying much attention to SCV except that it seemed to be generating a lot of hype and excitement...so I'm kind of confused why the game has to be so intricately tied into whatever (apparently faulty) online service that EA has setup.

I mean, besides the DRM. I don't get why my fake city has to be attached to a world of fake cities if all I want to do is play in the sandbox. Didn't the designers/executives consider that many people would be perfectly fine playing alone? And then slowly rolling out the multiplayer features?

I doubt we'll see it, but it'd be great to see a post-mortem of the actual bug. Was it load-related or just something extremely boneheaded?

robinh3• 13 years ago

"I mean, besides the DRM."

But that's the core issue, really.

danso3• 13 years ago

No, the core issue is: the game doesn't work. Lets face it, gamers would still be buying the game with DRM if it didn't crash.

If what you mean is: "Crashing (to the point of unplayability) is an inherent consequence of DRM"...the many wildly successful games that have DRM would indicate otherwise

adventured• 13 years ago

Three things

1) remove the online DRM 2) significantly expand the size of the ridiculously small city area (let users push the bounds of their system by choosing how big of a city to work on) 3) enable a save/load to go with the offline mode

Do it as fast as possible. And then suck up to users by providing some free DLC here and there.

Anyone taking bets that EA will do the opposite of these obvious steps?

cmelbye• 13 years ago

I was initially apprehensive about the server-based architecture of the game. However, after playing it for a few hours and being pleasantly surprised, I can now see why they did it. There's a concepts of multiplayer regions with cities that contact each other, and it's more than simply visiting the city.

It's a full economic simulation in which you can sell excess electricity supplies to other cities, lend them public services such as police or fire protection, build mass transit like commuter rail between cities, etc. Long story short, I was surprised to find that there are a lot of features that legitimately need a server. I initially expected the server-based system to be purely for the purposes of DRM, but anyone playing it can probably determine that it's a bit more than that.

Now if they can wrinkle out the bugs and get the servers running (which is, don't get me wrong, a huge huge huge issue right now), I'll be happy.

hkolek• 13 years ago

> you can sell excess electricity supplies to other cities, lend them public services such as police or fire protection, build mass transit like commuter rail between cities, etc.

That was already possible in Sim City 4. Even in older versions (Sim City 2000 iirc) you had neighbor cities and could buy and sell utilities. Those features work just as well when controlled by AI. There is just no reason not to implement it aside from the DRM benefit.

DigitalSea6• 13 years ago

"Guess what? If you'd love to experience the nonstop thrills and excitement of SimCity, then please remove $60 from your bank and promptly pay someone to kick you repeatedly in the friggin' mouth." - Ouch! Once again EA fucks up another great gaming franchise that could have made them a lot of money by implementing DRM that doesn't work. I know Blizzard did this with Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2, but at least their servers could handle the load...

Not surprised. EA is a failure of a company being run into the ground by greedy and paranoid CEO's who essentially treat their customers like criminals. I feel sorry for the developers who obviously did an amazing job, the new Simcity seems like a well-built game with smart AI developed by no doubt some of the smartest minds in development, such a shame most people will never get a chance to play the game before demanding refunds.

The uninformed will blame the developers but it's the fault of EA itself, not the developers who did an amazing job. I want to play this game, but I'm going to download the cracked version when it's released instead because it'll actually work.

omni• 13 years ago

What was wrong with Starcraft 2?

DigitalSea6• 13 years ago

Nothing. That is my point. Starcraft have always on DRM, but they did it right. You need an internet connection for single play in SC2 as well as Diablo 3 and they did it right at least. There were a few teething problems, but it worked.

cstrat• 13 years ago

I really, really wanted to buy this game. Since I was young I've always loved the SimCity series and was hoping this would be great... I was even going to buy a new PC just to play it.

Fuck you EA - you're disappointing my inner child!

Fargren3• 13 years ago

EA is offering refunds but only in some cases, with a very haphazard criteria: http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18gs2vgs50fjijpg/original.jp...

eurleif• 13 years ago

Wow. "you can of course request a refund" in a press release actually means you can request a refund, but it will be refused? Just... wow.

zcid• 13 years ago

I think that has to be the most amazing customer service interaction I have ever seen. I hope EA's payment processor hits them hard over all those charge backs.

Aissen• 13 years ago

Unlikely. If you're on Origin and ask your bank a chargeback, they'll block your account and hold all your legally bought games hostage.

That would be the same as any cloud service(PSN, Steam, Google Play, App Store…), which is a shame, and should be forbidden by law since the consumer gets zero protection in this case.

ep103• 13 years ago

You could most likely just call your credit card company and dispute the charge. If you bought the game, then can't connect to the server, then EA never actually gave you the game. Provided you give up and remove the game from your account, of course.

maerF0x0• 13 years ago

And this is why I basically do not pre order anything. If I do, its pretty much considered charity in my mind (eg a kickstart -esque situation)

blaines• 13 years ago

I'm not sure if this will work but there's a petition for EA to remove the server requirement... http://www.change.org/petitions/electronic-arts-inc-remove-a...

jasonlingx• 13 years ago

When torrenting your game offers a better user experience than paying for it, well...

CognitiveLens• 13 years ago

Looks like it's available now - any confirmation that they stopped selling it over 'game issues', or if that was just conjecture to get more clicks?

Osiris• 13 years ago

Most single-player games that have an multi-player or online component also have an offline mode for single-player use.

This game should have been a combination of a basic single-player mode (campaign style, maybe with goals to accomplish, etc) in addition to a multi-player mode that would allow for online play with other cities.

At least with a single-player mode you know there is a part of the game you'll always be able to play, long after the online components have been discontinued.

Conceptually, the online mode sounds pretty intriguing but, obviously, was poorly executed.

overgard2• 13 years ago

I wish I had read about this before I bought the game. I feel screwed over, I would have never bought the game if I knew it was like this.

There's something the game industry doesn't get in their zeal for control over users. (And lets be clear, this is about control, not just about piracy.) Here's what the game industry doesn't get: your barrier to entry is already exceptionally high. You might be able to get away with this in the short term, but it's a bad long term proposition, because I'm almost always going to choose convenience over quality (and I'm not alone). Asking me to pay $60, wait for a 12GB download, and have a very powerful rig is already a huge stretch. When you factor this mess in it's just not worth my time. I'd rather go get an indie game, or play a flash game. It's just not worth my time to deal with this, even if the game itself is impressive.

dman2• 13 years ago

Not too late for a refund

SkittlesNTwix• 13 years ago

The servers being down, I can almost forgive, but this whole affair with the DRM is very puzzling. EA has a history of angering users who buy their games. And yet, for apparently no good reason, they have incorporated into their latest offering the one element that is guaranteed to anger virtually everyone who buys their game.

It's pretty simple - I paid money for your game. Now, I own it. EA, maybe you need a tutorial on how money works. Let's not get side-tracked and start talking about whether or not I own my songs on iTunes or any of these more entrenched markets. If I buy a video game, I should be able to play it 10 years later, even if the EA Sim City Servers are long-gone and now devoted to keeping track of whatever the latest terrible incarnation of Madden does.

I didn't buy Civ V (not EA) because of DRM. I haven't bought other games because of DRM. I wanted to buy into the Sim City franchise again but I'm not buying Sim City V because of DRM. You just lost a sale and likely a future customer.

Maven911• 13 years ago

NO Longer Valid - Amazon smartened up (in terms of running a profit making business) and decided to resell the game, its the number 1 seller now after all

throwaway420• 13 years ago

The programmers will probably be thrown under the bus for this instead of the suits who dictated the game's stupid social direction and always-on DRM, but I'm glad that this game is so far looking like an epic failure. Gaming companies need to be punished in the marketplace for rampant stupidity.

They deserve this game to flop, and it's good for gaming as a whole if this is an epic failure so EA will learn a lesson.

(Though I have doubts that a company as thick-headed as EA will learn anything positive from this)

weixiyen• 13 years ago

EA for the most part does not respect the player experience.

How is it 2013 and NFL 2K5 is still the best NFL sim?

jiggy20119• 13 years ago

I'm going to disagree slightly.

The primary "DRM" in this game is not DRM in the sense of something that attempts to control your computer in such a way as you can not make copies or run an unauthorised version.

The DRM here is about moving game logic to a server under EA's control. I think this is the correct way to do DRM in that it works and does not require locked down client platforms or invasive rootkits.

I would much prefer to pay for something as a service than have some third party try and take control of my computer. After all, people don't complain about 37 signals , google or World of warcraft for their business models which essentially amount to the same sort of "DRM".

The issues here seem to be that:

EA didn't plan for the demand and make sure that enough servers were available.

Since there is no monthly service fee, there will come a point at which it is no longer economical for EA to run the servers. This will make the game unplayable unless there is some plan by which they will release the server software for download after X years.

There are certain expectations built around the SimCity brand, mainly that the games have high and timeless replayability and that they can be played in isolation. I wonder if the game had been named "Simcity online" would have changed the reception?

meisterbrendan• 13 years ago

Here's a thought: if you can't get your act together with servers during a launch, stagger the launch. IE, when you buy your game, you have a place in a queue, and when there is enough server capacity to support you, you are let into the system. That way, you can change gamers expectations such that they are being let into an exclusive party, not that the game that they purchased is defective.

_b8r0• 13 years ago

After the Tetris debacle[1] on iOS and putting obtrusive adverts into their iOS games for new ones despite me paying for them (a cardinal sin IMHO) combined with endless DRM debacles and horror stories about how employees were treated, I took the decision to never buy or install another EA game again.

Electronic Arts (which EA is the mutated-gollum-like growth of) was actually a software developer that was based on the idea of the developers being artists. They shared lavish profits with them, put the developers' faces on boxes and made some amazing games. If you want to see some highlights of Electronic Arts' back catalogue, take a look at these:

* M.U.L.E - http://www.worldofmule.net/tiki-index.php

* Desert Strike - http://www.mobygames.com/game/desert-strike-return-to-the-gu...

* Populous - http://www.mobygames.com/game/populous

* The Bard's Tale - http://bardstale.poverellomedia.com/

* F/A-18 Interceptor - http://www.mobygames.com/game/fa-18-interceptor

* Indy 500 - http://www.mobygames.com/game/indianapolis-500-the-simulatio...

* Road Rash - http://www.mobygames.com/game/road-rash

A lot (but not all) of these were games developed when Trip Hawkins was in charge. Trip Hawkins went on to found the failed 3DO console, which is where a lot of the modern 3D versions of the popular franchises (NFS, FIFA etc.) first started out.

If you don't like DRM, being nickel and dimed, or scummy company practices. I highly recommend you boycott EA and spend your money on the plenty of City building alternatives on Steam[2] instead.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_(mobile_video_game)#App_...

[2] http://store.steampowered.com/

pkorzeniewski• 13 years ago

It would be hilarious if a cracked version allowing offline play would appear on TPB :)

cedricd• 13 years ago

Looks like it's available again

Mahn• 13 years ago

Looks like Amazon sells it again.

smsm42• 13 years ago

I still see "buy and download" button and it says "Available". It has a warning about connectivity problems but the game seems to be still available for sale.

Amazon stops selling Sim City V over game issues

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