EU release of SimCity officially bombs (who would have thunk it!)

[Cecilo]

Actually, Maxis' compensation is likely not fully settled. I recall news coming out a while ago that Obsidian missed a major performance incentive because their final Metacritic score was 84, one point short of the target of 85 (while you may not put much stock in Metacritic, for publishers the thing's basically treated like an oracle). Many devs likely have similar contracts, even fully-owned ones like Maxis.

So does that mean when the game fails, Maxis get the boot and/or don't get paid? Is that even legal?

Nah, it's just possible they won't get paid as much. They're not going to get fired/go unpaid (EA's run by jerks, but they're not some fly-by-night game mill), although some people might end up fired (the launch was severely botched, after all).

If EA works like many other publisher-developer relationships do. Maxis will be paid nothing until they put out new content. The way developing games works is like this.

Publisher Commissions a Game with a Dev team.
Gives that dev team money to make the game
Dev team makes game.
Eventually releases game
Publisher publishes game
Publisher takes all the money from said game
If it does well enough they commision more, either expansions, DLC or sequels.

Devs rarely ever make money on the actual game they make. That is the interest of Indie and steam. Steam only takes a cut, probably why EA disliked their games being on steam. If they could help it they would only have it on origin. Because.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoYWdHe4tQ4

 

[upgrayedd]

And for all the bitching people will still pre-order the next one. So they will never learn. Instances with Colonial Marines, I still want answers, 3 weeks later nobody else cares they were duped out of 70 dollars. I didnt purchase Sim City and wont pre-order anymore in the case of colonial marines, hopefully more people just wait a couple of weeks to buy video games nowdays or pirate them

 

[Nantucket_v1legacy]

I was going to buy it on release day but held back.
I eventually did purchase the game yesterday (I saw it in Tesco - DISCOUNTED! ) and bit the bullet. I was a bit nervous when I booted the game up but I had no problems.

I lost connection once for about a minute but it did not affect my game. I still continued to play and the game resumed connection promptly. It never kicked me out. I will be booting up tonight so I hope my cities are still there.

The game is a lot of fun.
EA got it seriously wrong for America but from what I can tell, from my own personal experience, the servers seem to be coping in Europe.

I'm also quite a nervous online player. I hate playing online if you're not my friend so the idea of playing with other users in regions made my stomach churn. Luckily, me being an absolute arse, hogged an entire region to myself so I could trade and do business with myself.

Note to self: when I move out - get good internet.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

They're doing the best they can and if it's not enough for us, they can't do any better right now.

And how would you know this? What is your evidence that they're doing the best they can and can't do any better?

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

I think this whole release debatable will effectively be the end of the SimCity series, which as someone who absolutely loved SimCity 3000 as a kid makes me very sad. However after the way EA & Maxis have handled things they can only have themselves to blame for this mess.

As much as I love Sim City I am still on my 6 year long EA boycott. Seems to be serving me well enough. Just disappointed that more around me aren't sticking to their guns.

It is a good attitude to have, after all there are many other game companies who are vying for our money, so why settle for the one that doesn't treat us right? If you think about it EA needs its customers more than the its customers need EA. We can always go elsewhere for games while any publisher is sunk if its customers migrate to others.

I've not bought an EA game in over two years (except for some old DRM-free, zero micro transactions games from GOG.com) and I can say I don't feel like I'm missing out on much. While me not buying EA games is unlikely to much to EA on its own I can feel good that I'm not letting myself be ripped off.