EA gets even stupider.

[Worgen]

Looks like the new simcity game requires always online connection, the save files aren't even hosted locally they are hosted on EA's cloud.

http://www.destructoid.com/simcity-cranks-the-always-online-drm-up-to-eleven-240898.phtml

Which means if you disconnect for any amount of time the game will shut you out, plus it also means that you can only play the game until ea gets tired of paying for the servers, which will probably be sooner rather than later, I think they have shutdown the multi on games that were just a year old before.

 

[Rawne1980]

Well, that's going to go about as well as selling ice to Eskimo's.

The truly sad part is people will still throw money at it.

Well, at least my wife can be safe in the knowledge that I won't be spending our money on that game .... ever.

 

[Worgen]

Well, that's going to go about as well as selling ice to Eskimo's.

The truly sad part is people will still throw money at it.

Well, at least my wife can be safe in the knowledge that I won't be spending our money on that game .... ever.

I doubt people will be throwing that much money at it, back in the day simcity was pretty popular but its not like diablo or starcraft where people will bend over and take whatever stupid drm method they want to use. City building games are more of a niche genre then blizzard games are, meaning that doing something like this could really end up hurting ea, I mean they kinda pulled something similar with C&C 4 and that game was a total flop despite being part of a rather strong even at that point brand.

 

[Vault101]

has anyone read the comicbook Preacher? (if not go do so...NOW)

theease days EA are eather the allfather (the "pope" who is so fat he consumes and makes himself vomit so he can consume more) or the child (the "saviour" a kid so in-bred he's retarded) I have trouble deciding which

 

[Professor Lupin Madblood]

Well, that's going to go about as well as selling ice to Eskimo's.

*Eskimos
*Inuit

OT: I'm speechless. I mean . . . seriously? Just, how? How does somebody look at this idea and not only not fire the idiot responsible for it, but actually greenlight it to the point of being included in the game?

God damnit that is infuriating. I am longing for the day when video games get treated as a serious art form and stuff like this is met with the proper outrage.

 

[Ryotknife]

Well, that's going to go about as well as selling ice to Eskimo's.

*Eskimos
*Inuit

OT: I'm speechless. I mean . . . seriously? Just, how? How does somebody look at this idea and not only not fire the idiot responsible for it, but actually greenlight it to the point of being included in the game?

God damnit that is infuriating. I am longing for the day when video games get treated as a serious art form and stuff like this is met with the proper outrage.

If anything the guy probably got promoted. EA seems similiar to Hollywood, you can only fail upwards.

 

[ThriKreen]

apparently EA missed the whole Ubisoft always online attempt that bit them in the ass and killed 90% of their pc sales in one fell swoop

From the sounds of it, it looks to be less a DRM issue and more of the online sharing a region with your friends, but also saving the state of your city to the cloud to continue playing anywhere feature. And add in anti-cheating as well when in multiplayer.

Of course, not everyone would care to play online or want to save their game to the cloud (i.e. traveling), and it stops people from modding their local games, which in a SP mode, who cares if they cheat?

But I can see where trying to juggle local and remote saves can be a pain in regards to syncing and such.

 

[Verkula]

Yeah, just who the hell do they think they are...Blizzard?

 

[Blunderboy]

has anyone read the comicbook Preacher? (if not go do so...NOW)

theease days EA are eather the allfather (the "pope" who is so fat he consumes and makes himself vomit so he can consume more) or the child (the "saviour" a kid so in-bred he's retarded) I have trouble deciding which

Humper de doo!

Oh man now I need to read Preacher again.

OT - Yeah that's pretty stupid.

 

[Bat Vader]

I was looking forward to the new SimCity but since it has always online DRM than I am not even going to bother with it.

 

[Baron_Rouge]

Darn it, I'd been really looking forward to this...hopefully the inevitable backlash will convince them otherwise, like it did with Ubi and their DRM and supposedly Capcom and their on-disc DLC.

 

[VincentX3]

Then somebody made a crack and everyone could save their games offline and skip the DRM bull.
Everyone was happy.

....

Except EA, their just annoying.

 

[VincentX3]

The always online thing has been known for a while now.

All the same, I love sim city, the sims (yeah screw you I like it!), ect but I am giving this one a solid pass until they fix it so its not always online and I can play singleplayer game how I want.

Edit:

Then somebody made a crack and everyone could save their games offline and skip the DRM bull.
Everyone was happy.

....

Except EA, their just annoying.

I will buy it if a crack comes out for it as well!

You know it will happen, it's inevitable.
No one should need to put up with always online bull this day and age, so EA can bite me.

 

[VincentX3]

The always online thing has been known for a while now.

All the same, I love sim city, the sims (yeah screw you I like it!), ect but I am giving this one a solid pass until they fix it so its not always online and I can play singleplayer game how I want.

Edit:

Then somebody made a crack and everyone could save their games offline and skip the DRM bull.
Everyone was happy.

....

Except EA, their just annoying.

I will buy it if a crack comes out for it as well!

You know it will happen, it's inevitable.
No one should need to put up with always online bull this day and age, so EA can bite me.

Oh sure they will crack it, but it could be highly annoying to do so like Diablo 3 was/is

See this is why I don't bother talking about cracks, because someone usually mentions "Diablo III" and the discussion that follows is a chore. So here's the "easy version" for you.

Diablo III is basically an MMO with a single player campaign, it was designed that way from the beginning.
Meaning all the GAME DATA is on blizzards servers, that's why being "Always Online" is needed.
In order to crack Diablo III, you would need to replicate the GAME DATA that's stored on Blizzard's servers, which could take months (Not counting all the updates Blizzard does to the game)

Sim City on the other hand, doesn't work that way. All the GAME DATA is stored on your PC, the difference is it stores your saves on Cloud servers instead of locally.

Hence the crack.

So yea cracking Diablo III =\= Sim City

 

[VincentX3]

The always online thing has been known for a while now.

All the same, I love sim city, the sims (yeah screw you I like it!), ect but I am giving this one a solid pass until they fix it so its not always online and I can play singleplayer game how I want.

Edit:

Then somebody made a crack and everyone could save their games offline and skip the DRM bull.
Everyone was happy.

....

Except EA, their just annoying.

I will buy it if a crack comes out for it as well!

You know it will happen, it's inevitable.
No one should need to put up with always online bull this day and age, so EA can bite me.

Oh sure they will crack it, but it could be highly annoying to do so like Diablo 3 was/is

See this is why I don't bother talking about cracks, because someone usually mentions "Diablo III" and the discussion that follows is a chore. So here's the "easy version" for you.

Diablo III is basically an MMO with a single player campaign, it was designed that way from the beginning.
Meaning all the GAME DATA is on blizzards servers, that's why being "Always Online" is needed.
In order to crack Diablo III, you would need to replicate the GAME DATA that's stored on Blizzard's servers, which could take months (Not counting all the updates Blizzard does to the game)

Sim City on the other hand, doesn't work that way. All the GAME DATA is stored on your PC, the difference is it stores your saves on Cloud servers instead of locally.

Hence the crack.

So yea cracking Diablo III =\= Sim City

So yea, they sort of, cracked Diablo 3 in July. You can play single player offline. The crackers typically also get the updates, crack them, and put them out for download as well.

I don't want to sound like a supporter of piracy but, for single player portions of games, DRM only affects honest customers. Pirates don't deal with always online requirements.

They cracked it in just the way I stated earlier, constantly debugging data that was replicated from the game
Even now it still has constant bugs and updates.

DRM effect's everyone in general, they should really spend the money they use on the game's DRM to actually making the game more stable and enjoyable.
But yea, that's basically a fairytale this day and age.

 

[VincentX3]

The always online thing has been known for a while now.

All the same, I love sim city, the sims (yeah screw you I like it!), ect but I am giving this one a solid pass until they fix it so its not always online and I can play singleplayer game how I want.

Edit:

Then somebody made a crack and everyone could save their games offline and skip the DRM bull.
Everyone was happy.

....

Except EA, their just annoying.

I will buy it if a crack comes out for it as well!

You know it will happen, it's inevitable.
No one should need to put up with always online bull this day and age, so EA can bite me.

Oh sure they will crack it, but it could be highly annoying to do so like Diablo 3 was/is

See this is why I don't bother talking about cracks, because someone usually mentions "Diablo III" and the discussion that follows is a chore. So here's the "easy version" for you.

Diablo III is basically an MMO with a single player campaign, it was designed that way from the beginning.
Meaning all the GAME DATA is on blizzards servers, that's why being "Always Online" is needed.
In order to crack Diablo III, you would need to replicate the GAME DATA that's stored on Blizzard's servers, which could take months (Not counting all the updates Blizzard does to the game)

Sim City on the other hand, doesn't work that way. All the GAME DATA is stored on your PC, the difference is it stores your saves on Cloud servers instead of locally.

Hence the crack.

So yea cracking Diablo III =\= Sim City

Please don't condescend to me, I know exactly how the game works and operates and I know it has been cracked. I just said it has the potential to be as annoying as D3, not that it is exactly the same.

And as the new Sim City has yet to be released there is very little way to tell how much of the game data is stored on the EA cloud, unless you have advance access to the stuff and can inform us otherwise.

Google?
Also the fact that every other non MMO game uses the same method for storing GAME DATA (Which has nothing to do with the method of storing saves)

Really it's just logic.

 

[Andrew_C]

This is old news if you've been paying attention to the development. They confirmed it months ago at that trade show in Germany. And hard core SimCity fans have been bitching for months about it. But this game is not aimed at SimCity fans, it's aimed at The Sims fans.

Maybe they'll change things now that Reddit has taken notice, but I doubt it because the game has a Client/Server architecture like Diablo 3, everything important happens or is stored on the server. No-way they can redesign the game this late.

Some of the things this games lacks:
1) No offline mode
2) No terraforming, so you can't create the region you want, be it a real-life area or something from your imagination
3) No subways
4) You can't place city connections where you want them.
5) Stupid border area between cities, so you can't create a sprawling megapolis out of a region.

So basically the things that make SimCiy great and creative have been ripped out. But they've simulated every shit your sims take with their Glassbox Engine?. Whoop de doo.

 

[AnnaIME]

But this game is not aimed at SimCity fans, it's aimed at The Sims fans.

There are many, many Sims fans who don't accept always on DRM either, and many of us use mods to remove all the annoying online/facebook/spam-your-friends parts of the game.

 

[Andrew_C]

But this game is not aimed at SimCity fans, it's aimed at The Sims fans.

There are many, many Sims fans who don't accept always on DRM either, and many of us use mods to remove all the annoying online/facebook/spam-your-friends parts of the game.

Sorry for the implication. What I meant was the reason Maxis/EA weren't listening to the fans of the old games (apart from not giving a damn, that is) was because they aren't the target audience for SimCity 2013.

I know what you mean about the spam your friends stuff. I can't tell you how annoyed I was when I saw that in Tropico 4 and how happy I was when I found the in-game option to totally disable it.

 

[Waaghpowa]

I for one wasn't going to get Simcity anyway, was never into that kind of thing. EA just gave me another reason.

What's with this forcing people to be social thing lately anyway? Blizz did it to Diablo which, despite having the option to be multi player, most people would play solo. These companies need to realize that some people just don't want to play with other people.