There used to be. However, one thing EA does do is employ an army of lawyers. And after all, EA provides a 'service' not a 'product'. Different set of laws.Davroth said:
EA Removes Forum Posts for SimCity Offline Mod
- Thread starter Timothy Chang
- Start date
I think you have that the wrong way round there mate, they don't want people modding and adding content for free because then they can't sell sell you content themselves for ?9.99 a go.itsthesheppy said:
Consumer modding would not work on this game anyway if they insist on keeping it on-line only because of balance issues, on the other hand the mods could be purely cosmetic, but then that is EA's cheapest and easiest revenue stream gone, and that is not going to happen (Different country tile-sets anyone?).
Are you worried that the truth is coming out? Are you worried that your investors might see this as ANOTHER PR fiasco? Are you ready for the end, EA?
I am ready for the game to be over. Behave like a fair and reasonable company, or fail into nothingness.
I agree, you need some DRM, but "always on" is a horrible idea. It will never work because bandwidth is quickly drying-up and many of us do not want to be online all the time. Not too mention, the fact that it requires so much more work on your end. Just go back to CD keys. Just write off that some people are going to pirate no matter what you do. BUT PLEASE stop embarrassing yourselves.
PS: I wish I had money too invest so I could go to the stockholder meetings and ask some questions.
I am ready for the game to be over. Behave like a fair and reasonable company, or fail into nothingness.
I agree, you need some DRM, but "always on" is a horrible idea. It will never work because bandwidth is quickly drying-up and many of us do not want to be online all the time. Not too mention, the fact that it requires so much more work on your end. Just go back to CD keys. Just write off that some people are going to pirate no matter what you do. BUT PLEASE stop embarrassing yourselves.
PS: I wish I had money too invest so I could go to the stockholder meetings and ask some questions.
Well this is getting entertaining, it's like watching the overthrow of a brutal tyrant. My only question is whether EA will ever actually acknowledge that their business practices are anti-consumer and manipulative or just continue playing innocent till the very end.
It's currently in it infancy so most functions are screwed at the moment, however the modder is confident that he'll fix those issues as it turns out that the 'servers' EA insisted are required for gameplay do't actually do anything other than store basic information about each city.Nocturnus said:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/16/simcity-modder-tells-us-offline-regional-play-easily-done/
I expect a full offline mode that works for entire regions to happen some time in the next few weeks.
Another important thing to realise is that it is getting to the end of the financial year. That is almost certainly why the game was released practically untested, with some fairly severe bugs, and with (for example) traffic calculations more basic than those in SC4 (which were already so terrible that one really needs the NAM mod for traffic to work). They were desperate to get it out in time - an April release wouldn't boast that lovely yearly revenue figure for investors. I would not be at all surprised if server side calculations were the original intent, only for them to go client side due to the lack of time.Desert Punk said:THQ was a really big name in the industry, one bad year and a really shitty product took them down. You would be surprised how fast a big name can collapse in upon itsself.LetalisK said:
And this last few days EAs stock prices have droped over 2% alone thanks to their horrid PR
18.88-0.46‎ (-2.38%‎
Will they collapse soon? Probably not. But if they keep making stupid decisions it will likely happen eventually.
It has, however, completely bit them in the bottom. Their year end is going to be mired in PR disasters and concerns about escalating costs (to the extent that I wouldn't be surprised if SC5 ends up a loss maker in a year). Will EA collapse? Probably not. However, it could cause one hell of a wobble.
Same here, as I'd just build cities to later destroy anyway.The Artificially Prolonged said:Agreed. I'm having more fun reading about SimCity than if I had bought the gameMister Six said:
But this....they've built a HUGE city, and I get to watch the crap all over it again and again, with no effort on my part whatsoever.
I'm with brown Jamie Lee Curtis on this one.Davroth said:So.... companies are just allowed to lie into our collective faces and get caught red handed and face little to no legal consequences? Cool. Cool cool cool.
I'm so glad I resisted buying SimCity.
Yeh, don't have much else to say here, just had to post that.
This is turning into quite a saga - somebody ought to pick up the film rights. I'm sure Peter Jackson could wrangle at least a trilogy out of it....
If EA's goal is to provide a "service," then they've done a shitty job of it so far. Huge swathes of their paying customers were unable to access the product they paid for days and days after they bought it, they still are unable to activate features in the game said customers have paid for, it loses them the business of other customers for circumstances they do not always have control of (such as a shitty Internet connection), and all of these problems are caused by a feature that was both unnecessary and highly unpopular with the customer base at large. They should be ashamed, both as a game publisher and a business. And they want to consider themselves a provider of "service" on top of those things? They have to be joking. I've seen better service in skeezy gas stations at 2 in the morning.Monsterfurby said:
There is really no upside to this model of games, as far as making money is concerned. It costs way more resources on their part, so much more can go wrong, and they stop making money as soon as the servers shut down. You can go on Steam right now and buy Sim City 4, a game that came out 10 years ago now. And people still do. To this day Maxis/EA are making money off that game, and they will continue to do so as long as they don't unlist it from the store.
I don't mind the fact that they wanted to add a multiplayer aspect to SimCity. It's a cool idea. However, their execution has been a train wreck, the way they've handled it and the criticism it's brought them has been arrogant and borderline belligerent, and they could have been spared so much grief if they'd just offered an offline singleplayer mode (which we now know is possible). If any other company launched a product that was totally unusable when it came out of the box, they'd be scorned by every media outlet and they'd be giving their customers refunds and freebies left and right to stay in their good graces, and if the problem persisted for a while they would start a dialog with their customers to resolve the issue. EA has barely issued an apology, and still refuses to admit that any decision they have made was wrong or that they deserve the ire they are getting from their customers.
So if they aren't a maker of products anymore, and the services claim to provide in their place don't work, then what has EA become exactly?
For one, we absolutely know this is a mod because the person is just modifying client-side software. That's a textbook mod. They aren't going out and changing the way the servers treat them or how other people see them. Modding is generally the changing of your software whereas hacking involves external activity. If this was a modification that impacted online play or something like that then it could be considered a hack, but solo play? Nah.bringer of illumination said:
As for actual definitions on the subject:
http://www.thetechgame.com/Archives/p=834584.html
"Modding/Mod - Modding is a slang expression that is derived from the verb "modify". Modding refers to the act of modifying a piece of hardware or software or anything else for that matter, to perform a function not originally conceived or intended by the designer. The term modding is often used within the computer game community, particularly in regard to creating new or altered content and sharing that via the web.
Hacking/Hack - In common usage, a hacker is a person who breaks into computers, usually by gaining access to administrative controls. The subculture that has evolved around hackers is often referred to as the computer underground. Proponents claim to be motivated by artistic and political ends, and are often unconcerned about the use of illegal means to achieve them."
I personally find the hacking definition to be the sloppiest of the two, which is why I gave my own requirement for an external element being necessary. I would posit that both mods and hacks are mods. Hacks are just a more specific subset. Any change/editing on your machine that doesn't even cross the network (let alone the internet) will almost certainly remain firmly in the modding category.