EA Offers Free Game to Early SimCity Adopters

[porous_shield]

They're selling their game less like a usual game you buy and more like a service. When you pay your $60 you get the Sim City service and right now that service is garbage and nearly unusable so they deserve every bit of hate they get for selling a service that doesn't work.

I wish they were more concrete about this free game. I bet it'll be some combination of Mass Effect, Dragon Age, or Dead Space (not the new one) that you could get on steam for about $5 when they're on sale.

 

[Petromir]

There are rumors if you accept the free game, its means you are agreeing that you cant bring this to class action lawsuit status.

If you're in the US, it doesn't matter, you already waived your right to litigate when you clicked agree on the EULA and downloaded the game. EA have been doing that for a couple of years now.

If you're in Europe they can't do that, such stunts are illegal.

EULAs are easily dismissed when taken before a real court

This is largely believed but not strictly true. Large parts of them are legal, but parts of them aren't. Which parts are depends on the law of the land. The problem for us consumers is that we don't know which is which and often it takes long costly court cases to determin if a clause is or isn't illegal.

 

[theultimateend]

I wouldn't even give Too Human, my most hated game of all time, a 0 out of 10. Diablo III, a game with forced online DRM that had server issues at launch. I was one of the people that suffered from the server issues, it took me about 3 hours to finally get logged in, yeah it was annoying, but I didn't rush off to metacritic to review bomb it in a biased rage. I waited until the issues were fixed, when they were I played it and enjoyed it.

This isn't softball. People don't get medals just for participating.

If a game doesn't work the game gets a 0.

It doesn't matter if it only didn't work on day 1. It gets a 0.

Down the road when the game works it might get more than a 0, but it earned every 0 it got before that point.

The game being able to run is directly related to the quality of the game, it is >the most important< factor. Everything else is irrelevant if the game doesn't run.

Anyone comparing this to an MMO has more problems than understanding the above though.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

Fuck you.

Trying to bribe your customers with something totally irrelevant as part of your damage control.

For shame.

Captcha: skynet knows

 

[bug_of_war]

I find it sad to see people getting pissed off at EA when EA is literally coming out and saying, "Sorry, here have something for free as compensation". Seriously people, EA could offer to give you a free high school education and I bet there would still be people complaining. Yeah, the Sim City problem is a bad one, but at leat they're acknowleding that and trying to make up to gamers who don't like how it works by offering them a free game.

 

[bug_of_war]

You know what would be better? Actually giving the people who bought SimCity day 1 a working fucking game.

This isn't kindergarten, this is business. EA don't play nice with us, so why should we play nice with them?

EA decided that they wanted to sell this game as a service, not as a product. You know what? That's their call. It's a massive kick in the balls, but but's their call. However, when they can't actually provide the 'service' they claim to be selling, then gamers have the right to get royally pissed.

No-one decided to make SimCity always online except EA. This was their call. If they couldn't handle the responsibility of letting their consumers play their games, then they should be hung on a spit and roasted.

If I buy a game, the very least I expect is to be able to play it. No matter how shit it is, no matter how broken it may be, the bare minimum I expect is to be able to start it up. EA couldn't even get that basic thing right. They have made a monumental fuck up in every way that counts, and every consumer that criticises them for it is another feather in the cap of consumer rights.

The really shitty thing is that the people most negatively affected by this are the people who decided they did want to support EA day 1. How shitty a company do you have to be to spit in the face of the one demographic who want to give you their money the day your game comes out? EA have shot themselves in the foot here. They're not going to get people as willing to sign up for their games day 1 again. They've shown that they have no respect for people who want to play their games, so why should they expect people to respect them in turn?

This whole thing is an omnishambles of the highest order.

Here's the thing though, there are people who can actually play the game. And while yes, the majority can't yad yada yada, there is still a bunch of people who can play it. So the service works for some, but no all, so they do need to fix that. They are however currently trying to apologize by saying, "Look, we're sorry, here have a fre game as compensation for your game not working". And while yes they haven't come out and said when the product is going to be fixed for the majority of people, at least this is a sign of good faith. They've acknowledged that it's fucked up, and while they either don't know or aren't telling us when the problem will be fixed they are trying to do something to quell the anger. And that is better than just sitting back and saying,"deal with it".

 

[bug_of_war]

I'm sorry, when did gaming become a random lottery?

It's a publisher's responsibility to make sure that every gamer who bought a game can play it day one, as long as they've got a machine that can run it. If the publisher can't manage that, they've failed.

Talk of 'good faith' is bollocks. This entire debacle only occurred because EA lacked any kind of faith in the first place. Maybe if EA had put some faith in their consumers, and trusted them not to pirate the gane, we wouldn't be facing this entire shitstorm.

This entire thing is caused by a lack of faith and a lack of respect from EA towards its consumers. You don't get to play the 'in good faith' argument now.

Yes, the publisher should have made sure that everyone could run the game. They didn't and now they have fans raging at them for letting the development team make a terrible game. EA is at leats trying to make amends by offering a free game and that to me is a sign of a company admiting that they fucked up and are trying to apologize by giving you something in return for your misfortune. People are acting like EA is a doctor who gave them their child, broke the kids neck, and then asked for money, but they're not, EA gave you an ice cream, your ice cream had a fly in it, they won't give you back your money but they're offering another ice cream that has no fly. Granted the ice cream is 60-100 dollars but just listen to the metaphor. They're trying to do something. That tells me that EA feel bad for their consumers annoyance and are trying to make up for their fuck up.

Also, in terms of good faith, consumers really haven't shown that we deserve it. Firstly, it seems that no matter what EA does a large group of people find a way to bash EA for doing it and try and tell everyone that EA is the devil. Secondly, when a game such as Mass Effect 3 comes out, any and all problems are blamed on EA rather than Bioware (at least thats what happened initially, before the ME crowd that hated the ending decided to hate EA and Bioware). I heard people say the ending sucked because of EA, or the story's direction sucked because of EA, and this is blatantly wrong, EA pays for the game to be made, Bioware write the story. And lastly, the fact that piracy is still a major issue shows that games for PC really need to get something done to stop people from stealing content. Yes DRM has always failed, but that doesn't mean companies should give up and just accept piracy as a thing an allow everyone to pirate games. I'm not saying they should keep this for of DRM (as it has already been cracked numerous of time etc) but they still should try and find a way to put their game on the PC without having 50,000 jackasses pirating it because they're cheap.

 

[FalloutJack]

SNIP

Hey there. I was just passing by when I heard you talking during a thunderstorm in the rain while digging a deep hole that's filling with water over your head...and I believe these items belong to you.

YOU RECEIVE:

A Bigger Shovel
A Glass of Water
A Lightning Rod

I'm sure they will serve you well.

Or, you could perhaps not get all bent out of shape because you don't like seeing people complain about being shafted. Because putting aside any ability to foresee that they might BE shafted by a company that has been rated "The Most Horrible", there is simply the fact that the average consumer should not get this. Money paid, product delivered, both sides get what they want. That's business. That isn't what happened here, though. What we have here is a fairly record-breaking screw up, the likes of which many have already remarked could have been prevented or minimized.

Argue, nit-pick, rant, rave, quibble, deny, and whatever else all you like. It will not change the fact that the ball was dropped so hard that they heard it from SPACE. It will not change that people are pissed off, or that they have the right to be so. And it will not change that people are gonna find places to express it. I suggest you give up carrying on about butthurt people 'till you HAVE been properly butthurt. I'm sure it would be most enlightening, and then we'll see how your argument fares.

 

[theultimateend]

*Epic Smack Down*

That was beautiful .

I feel like your last 11K posts were leading up to that one.

 

[Kungfu_Teddybear]

SNIP

Hey there. I was just passing by when I heard you talking during a thunderstorm in the rain while digging a deep hole that's filling with water over your head...and I believe these items belong to you.

YOU RECEIVE:

A Bigger Shovel
A Glass of Water
A Lightning Rod

I'm sure they will serve you well.

Or, you could perhaps not get all bent out of shape because you don't like seeing people complain about being shafted. Because putting aside any ability to foresee that they might BE shafted by a company that has been rated "The Most Horrible", there is simply the fact that the average consumer should not get this. Money paid, product delivered, both sides get what they want. That's business. That isn't what happened here, though. What we have here is a fairly record-breaking screw up, the likes of which many have already remarked could have been prevented or minimized.

Argue, nit-pick, rant, rave, quibble, deny, and whatever else all you like. It will not change the fact that the ball was dropped so hard that they heard it from SPACE. It will not change that people are pissed off, or that they have the right to be so. And it will not change that people are gonna find places to express it. I suggest you give up carrying on about butthurt people 'till you HAVE been properly butthurt. I'm sure it would be most enlightening, and then we'll see how your argument fares.

Until I have been properly butthurt? Okay, here we go: I bought Dead Space 3 on Origin over 2 weeks ago, before I started replying in this thread. When I purchased it it never appeared in my games on Origin, I've tried getting through to EA multiple times through Live Chat, the forums and phoning them. The first time I got through on Live Chat the chat was randomly "disconnected", after getting no replies on the forums I tried to call them and spent 25 minutes listening to shit music before I hung up because no one was answering. I got through to someone on Live Chat again and after giving them the order number etc etc and them confirming the purchase, they suggested I call the motherfucking helpline again. Guess what? I still don't have my fucking game. So, yeah, to all the people bitching about your game being broken for a few days: At least you fucking got your game.

I'm not defending EA, I'm not saying people shouldn't be pissed off at them for how the launch was. I'm defending SimCity against all these ridiculous 0 out of 10's. Because everyone is attacking the game and review bombing it on Metacritic for the DRM, but the DRM is not the game's fault, it's the developers. People that have actually played it have said good things about it, so it doesn't deserve the massive amounts of 0's it's getting.

 

[FalloutJack]

Rebuttal?

Learning to say "Thank you, sir. May I have another?" isn't how we get things done around here. If you are not properly annoyed by that, that you have essentially been not simply cheated by using up your money on a game you may not like...but on an investment with NO return and NO ability to even DECIDE whether you like what you bought or not, then it is a fact that you have decided to live with wholey-unnecessary pain. Nobody deserved the treatment, not from anybody. You can't tell people to suck it up when someone randomly kneecaps 'em. No wait. Better analogy: You cannot tell them to suck it up when their product explodes (BOMBS, get it?), injuring hundreds-to-thousands-or-even-millions. Clearly, you were in such a blast radius. I'm not laughing at you because I wasn't hit. I'm not laughing at all. I wasn't even NEAR the site of the explosion. If I - who am completely unharmed by this - feel this is wrong or show a little sympathy or just leave them alone, why can't you?

 

[Richard Eis]

So you're not allowed to get your money back on a "service" that you never received (something which should be illegal since most countries have consumer protection on physical goods already). But they will give you a game you never wanted instead... probably.

Well, doesn't that seem like a sweet deal... especially since part of the $60 price tag for Simcity will probably cover that free game.

 

[Atmos Duality]

A rather clever gesture, considering that the game will be tied to Origin...y'know, the system that failed in the first place.

"Oh, we could offer you refunds, but that would mean you can take your money elsewhere. So instead we're going to further tie you to our system."

The "gift certificate apology" is a trick as old as business, and all it does is encourage customers to accept the unacceptable.