EA Exec Claims DRM Is a "Failed Dead-End Strategy"

[ritchards]

Hanlon's razor is just as sharp as ever...

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

March has been a really weird month for the game industry.

I don't know what to expect anymore from these people what with people leaving and changing their minds about certain things.

Cool beans though.

 

[theultimateend]

I know this is completely off topic, but the dude in the news thumbnail (From the main page) is cute . Really, really cute.

Look at taht.

He's...

so...

Innocent!

I bet he believes what he said...he's adorable.

 

[Deathlyphil]

I can't remember, have we always been at war with Eastasia? Or was it Eurasia?

The best games.. are those that sell you what you've bought already.

(There does indeed appear to be an element of doublethink going on in that statement..)

Wonder how long it will be before EA have appoint a new CEO, and we get a new 5 minute hate figure.

(Not that I want to hate someone, but this is the internet)

 

[Yuuki]

An MMO is a game that ceases to function when you take it offline, and no matter what you do it is virtually impossible to get it working without connecting to at least SOME form of remote server to provide the connection to other players. For e.g. WoW, you have to connect to Blizzard servers or at least some private server.

All the game files are technically on your harddrive, but a lot of the game is situated on Blizzard servers as well.

Most importantly, it depends on whether the game CALLS for MMO-style gameplay. Diablo was never an MMO (although funnily enough they removed the LAN option with D3), SimCity was never an MMO either. People never asked for it. I repeat, PEOPLE NEVER ASKED FOR IT!

In BOTH cases people just wanted an amazing singleplayer experience, neither game was around being constantly connected to other players. Those features existed solely as options.

In BOTH games the developers grasped completely the wrong end of the stick and turned them into "online games" with NO OPTION to play disconnected/alone. What a shameful step backwards!

 

[Karadalis]

And the Bullshitting of the people continues on... or atleast another try from EA to bullshit people.

 

[1337mokro]

Really? They admitted that their DRM is bullshit? Did the change of CEO really make that big of a differen.... oh nope they are right back to cop out excuses and bullshitting people smarter than they are.

We already know we can play SimCity offline without any problems, all that happens is that every 10 minutes an update gets sent to the servers and we get a little check behind our IP telling the game that we didn't steal it or else it cuts us off. That is what we call DRM dear EA CEO.

We already know that there is no continuity between cities when online unless they are directly being governed. In other words the multiplayer amounts to a chatroom with other people in it and still manages to lag behind roughly 10-15 minutes. Congratulations Maxis, EA, idiots that made this game, I don't really care who.

You made a turd.

 

[Draconalis]

Maybe if they had marketed it as an MMO rather than a Simcity sequel, things would look differently.

 

[Nazulu]

Your opinion doesn't mean shit. We already argued this way before the game was released, but you must have ignored everything. I think it would be pretty obvious that something like SimCity which doesn't drastically change in map design and game play could easily be into single player again. How long is it going to take before the clowns get a fucking clue?

 

[Formica Archonis]

"If you play an MMO, you don't demand an offline mode, you just don't. And in fact, SimCity started out and felt like an MMO more than anything else and it plays like an MMO."

So, they managed to develop an MMO with a sub-50 player cap (the MM) where not only is there no reason to sync with the server (the O), but there is also such inadequate security that the server won't verify the user input to make sure it's valid and not cheated. That's like developing a car and being surprised when people tell you that you forgot the engine and doors.

So, we're playing that game where words mean something other than what the dictionary says they mean, are we? Okay, let's go over it:

DRM = Anything our competitors do.
Service = Our DRM.
MMO = A game with "service".
Innovate = Add service!
Try new things = Ignore features present in the prequel that can be patched or DLCed in later.
At no point in time did... = You won't find any proof that...

 

[Skeleon]

In what sense did it "work for Valve"? Plenty of people - myself included - consider Steam a form of DRM and an intrusive advertising platform and we keep calling it out as that. I hate that so many games are Steam-exclusive and I support other distributors for that reason.

When does stuff like that stop being obvious DRM? When it's an MMO with no singleplayer component, as far as I'm concerned. Other than that? Not justified.

As for this game specifically? No, I don't think SimCity qualifies as an MMO. It has some multiplayer features that could easily be replaced with static cities to buy services from or actual AI-controlled cities (or, hell, just the simulation of dynamic city growth in neighbouring cities). They were really reaching when they tried to make it multiplayer-reliant.

 

[Lunar Templar]

and for a brief second I'd though EA had come to it's senses.

oh well, nothing to really see here other then more flimsy justification for ruining a franchise

 

[Falterfire]

In what sense did it "work for Valve"? Plenty of people - myself included - consider Steam a form of DRM and an intrusive advertising platform and we keep calling it out as that. I hate that so many games are Steam-exclusive and I support other distributors for that reason.

You may not use Steam, and you may consider it a distraction, but surely you're not so clueless as to realize you're in the minority? The adoption rate of Steam among PC gamers is incredibly high, and the percentage that actively complain is fairly small. There are plenty of reasons to complain about Steam (Steam-Exclusive games topping that list) but saying it didn't work for Valve is blatantly false.

 

[rasputin0009]

If the whole point was to make an MMO like game, then why not just add an "Online" subtitle? That way atleast the consumer has an idea what the focus is and what they're getting into. Is anyone really gonna complain when "SimCity:Online" needs a connection?

But then they couldn't trick unsuspecting players into buying it. It's like what they just did for announcing Battlefield 4's pre-order promotion: "Battlefield 4 Premium Expansion Pack". When I first read it, I thought it was Battlefield Premium which is more or less a Season pass. Then I read it again and realized no, it's not the same thing. It's probably just a couple of dog tags. Still pre-ordering though.

 

[rasputin0009]

Bizarre. It's a toss up between unimaginable incompetence from Maxis or online DRM demands from EA. Given the uninvolved shallowness of the online functions for Simcity it is incredibly hard to believe that "game design" decision was solely responsible for the always-online-demand.

Lets march Jim Sterling into the Maxis office with a lie detector. If the machine is expensive we can easily Kickstarter one for him. It can be used for every interview forever more.

I'm going to go with incompetence on Maxis' part. They're still in charge of implementing the servers and should have known how much of a budget they needed to ask EA for. I think Maxis got all high and mighty and thought they had a great "vision" to work towards. And EA trusted them a little too much.

 

[MiskWisk]

I was going to make a comment about the claim this is like an mmo but I have been spectacularly ninja'd on that count.

So instead, I'll talk about the line about no one forced it to be always online. If no one forced it, then why did a historically single player franchise, that had very little features ever hinting at the current design direction, change to become a sub-par city building simulator that attempted to penalise all who dared to want to play on their own?
Sounds forced to me.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

This latest tactic of "DRM is bad, but this isn't DRM, it's an MMO" will likely propel the EA team to take gold in the Olympic 4 X 100 Backpedaling.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

What? Is the sky falling in? Are pigs flying? Are the lion and the lamb laying in peace together? And have EA had an seen the light and renounced evil?

*reads article*

...Oh dear... So what he is saying is that DRM is bad except when EA do it, then it's a creative choice and offering a service? Is that right? I'm not that fluent in PR bullshit.

"you don't always know what the customer is going to want. You have to innovate and try new things and surprise people and in this particular case that's what we sought to achieve"

Well I imagine would be hard for a in IP to gauge what customers want, it is probably much easier to do with a sequel to a long established series that has a large numbers of fans who would be quite willing to offer feedback on why they like the series. Plus I imagine if said customers where very vocal about features they did not like the sound from the moment they were announced, again I imagine it would easy to work out what the customer's actually wanted.

"If you play an MMO, you don't demand an offline mode, you just don't. And in fact, SimCity started out and felt like an MMO more than anything else and it plays like an MMO."

...

EA do yourself a favour and just gag all your execs so they can't talk.

 

[mjc0961]

Damn, here I thought for a second that maybe someone at EA grew a brain, but nope. Was on the right track with the whole "DRM doesn't work" part, but then veered right back off into stupid territory with "GOOD THING SIMCITY HAD NO DRM LOLOLOLOLOL!!!" Yes it did. There was no reason to exclude an offline mode

At what point does DRM stop being DRM and start being an integral component of gameplay?

Easy answer: when the game is actually a multiplayer game. When the entire point is to directly play with or around other people.

Here's another simple concept: taking a single player game and breaking it to force multiplayer aspects into it is not the same thing as an actual multiplayer game at all. It's just a broken single player game. And that's what SimCity is: a broken single player game. There's no excuse for it not to have an offline mode, and modders already proved that it works offline too.

Can we stop asking pointless questions about the differences between multiplayer and singleplayer and get back to letting companies know we won't stand for insanely intrusive always-online DRM that breaks the game now?

 

[Baresark]

I hope this can put a rest to all the shit where everyone was blaming EA for SimCity's shitty online service. Now both Maxis and EA have said that it's all on Maxis. That said, I doubt EA is going to stop using DRM.

Gibeau's statement leads to an interesting question: At what point does DRM stop being DRM and start being an integral component of gameplay? Using Steam as a template, it's arguable that EA could claim to have abandoned DRM simply by making Origin a requirement of using its games. It's semantics, of course, but it worked for Valve - could it work for EA too?

Valve doesn't say they aren't using DRM. Steam is a service and store as well as DRM. But Steamworks is referred to as "Steam DRM". If you purchase a game on Steam, you get a layer of Steamworks on top of whatever DRM is present from the developer. The difference between what Steam does and what Maxis did was worlds apart though. They put an always online connection so you are always jacked into some for of social service. You can effectively separate Steam as a service from the DRM. You can shut down the service aspect. Lots of games don't user Steam services in any way. But the DRM is always present, which in a lot of ways is a lot more honest than what Maxis did with their always on. It's a service, but it's compulsory and not optional at all. The DRM is what it is. I can't complain about it because my Steam library is massive.