Jimquisition: SimShitty

[Nazulu]

I think your vid is just a bit late, and I think everyones outrage waited far too long as well. It's a good summary of whats already been said though. I'm sure this could reach more people, but a lot of the EA defenders don't care for anyone else as long as it works for them, which is what I see a lot of unfortunately.

I love how I hear about all this new technology bringing new potential, but instead it's being made as something we have to rely on and make things less convenient, as well as sometimes ripping off the customer. I was hoping the future would provide more options, instead I see terrible business practices over and over. I shouldn't have to do bloody research to see if new releases have annoying DRM and other shit! Fuck these greedy assholes!

 

[irishda]

I long for the Jim Sterling that had the balls to say casual gamers were better consumers than "hardcore" gamers. Now that he's got a web series, he's just become a mouthpiece for everything everyone else on the internet is already saying. Yes, thank GOD we have Jim to tell us SimCity sucked and EA was a bad company, cause NO ONE else had the guts to voice that particular controversy. Goddamn, there's being current and then there's just making a video based on whatever's hot on the forums.

 

[equalplatinum]

Jim's been on a roll recently.

BTW every time someone like Pachter wants to talk about piracy from there high horse I can't not think about how fucking greedy these publishers are. As if fairness or providing the value they should is ever a concern for them.

 

[Dire Sloth]

Question: WHY are the first two weeks so important for sales?

 

[taciturnCandid]

https://twitter.com/simcity/status/310490053803646976


I thought it might be interesting that Maxis takes the full blame and says the DRM is not the fault of EA. I wonder why they would take the blame?

 

[daxterx2005]

Is it bad before watching the video I thought of the Chinese food guy from South park >.>

 

[I.Muir]

EA and other publishers are incapable of thinking that their sales are dropping merely because their games are bad. No it must be piracy and used games that are to blame. So they introduce crippling DRM account registrations along with all the rest and in the end provide a service that is far worse than the one you can get for free. They are naive enough to think they can ever permanently beat back the pirates. They obviously think their consumers are the sheeple that will eat up anything they throw at them and do what their told so why would they try and improve their crappy games.

 

[90sgamer]

Jim! I love your theatrical hyperbole in this one. Very well done. I was looking forward for you to tear into this issue like bloody rare steak.

 

[Darks63]

I have to disagree with you on this one Jim I dont think EA did this intentionally as some sort of master fuck people over plan remember never attribute to malice what can be aducately explained by stupidy. Still great episode and your right about waiting it has saved me alot of money.

 

[Faerillis]

This is a server issue, and EA being unprepared despite the Diablo 3 fiasco. Everyone knew it was going to happen this way. I may not be fond of Always-On DRM, but so long as it's made incredibly clear that it's a requirement of the game it becomes just another PC Requirement.

That said, it does mean that the company had DAMN WELL BETTER have servers that can support the fucking game. That was the failure here. Or as Jim put it "If a game demands that we always be online, solely for its benefit, it should damn well fucking always be online for ours"

 

[Lord_Jaroh]

This sort of DRM is the solution to "piracy". It's the only truly effective scheme. They take a significant chunk of the game (in this case, the actual town simulation algorithms), and don't actually give it to you in the box. They keep that part on their own servers where they can control it.

No way to 'crack' that. Perfect protection from copying.

1 - The calculations aren't done server side, they are all actually on your computer.
2 - Pirates are not your customers, so don't design your game around them.
3 - If I buy the game, Do not saddle me with DRM designed to keep pirates at bay. I am not a pirate by the simple fact that I bought your game!
4 - Piracy is not a problem. It is a scapegoat.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

I think the only thing keeping EA from being lashed out against in the most powerful ways are the beloved smaller publishers they have still screaming to get out in their bloated belly. I know that's what stops me most times. Thing is, they are never going to be regurgitated and we all know it - but we can still see their faces pressing through the flesh and it prevents us striking the beast in the heart. A dire dilemma.

 

[PuckFuppet]

It should be noted that less than 13 hours after this game was released there was an operable, but not entirely functional, crack that allowed more gameplay than the release itself had for most gamers. That entirely aside if it is EA's intention to do everything they can to avert piracy then the quickest and most efficient way to do that is to make games that people want to pay for, I don't have any statistics to hand because I don't happen to be in possession of a large team of interns with more time than sense but I'm reasonably certain that if a game is good enough the regardless of price piracy won't be an issue for _most_ gamers. You'll always have a few who pirate, if not a few thousand, and who'll do it no matter what kind of protection you throw onto it those few will still find a way and its just a matter of time.

I'm probably repeating a good number of posters here but the point still stands, right now you can be damn sure I'd pay good money to see Alpha Centauri get a decent update to work on something like steam with all the multiplayer goodness that entails. But I'd rather not pay anything for the piece of garbage that was Civ V, until I see a very good sale offer that is.

OT: I see someone has been watching "House of Cards"

 

[mokes310]

Scumbag EA:

Says always online is needed to play the game due to calculations being done on servers.

Calculations for city building are done client side. [http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/19yoxk/simcity5_does_not_have_to_be_online/]

I'm glad I didn't get it.

*installs Sim City 3000 Unlimited and Sim City 4*

That is exactly what I did as well. I just popped in my copy of SC4 and went to town on that bad boy...oh, and guess what? It worked and I was offline the entire time I played it!

 

[Zombie Sodomy]

This is the first thing I thought of when I saw this:
"(The) Customer always gets that really big smile, as the businessman carefully positions himself directly behind the customer, and unzips his pants, and proceeds to service...the...account. I am servicing this account. This customer needs service. Now you know what they mean. Now you know what they mean when they say, "We specialize in customer service." Whoever coined the phrase "let the buyer beware" was probably bleeding from the asshole. That's business." -George Carlin

 

[duchaked]

hahaha waiting a few weeks is a partial stick-it-to-the-man method if any I suppose lol...sigh

 

[TAdamson]

The thing is if they could see this coming, and every chimp and his dog saw it coming, why didn't they go for a paid beta before moving to the full release?

Why did anybody who thought that those three "beta weekends" would be sufficient to test the servers on release day? I don't like always on DRM but I've gotten used to a connection being a requirement for so many games that I wouldn't mind so much as long as it worked.

But the utter negligence of not doing enough beta-testing of your net-code so that those who pre-ordered the game and those who bought on day one can actually play should be unacceptable. Get rid of pre-orders and get all that buy early to help you test your code in exchange for a discount and being able to play early. Don't release until the game consistantly works for all testers at peak periods.

 

[Sehnsucht Engel]

I don't even buy games from EA, and I'm hoping that they will get what they deserve one day soon. They're probably the company that deserves losing customers the most. I liked Sim City 4, but I will never buy this game. Also, the always online does make it harder to pirate. I think it took quite some time before they managed to make a working version of Diablo 3, at least more than it usually takes.

I think it took around... two to three weeks or so before it was stable enough to say there were relatively few issues, but D3 had a lot of other problems on top of it beyond that due to the RMAH. As it turns out, the entire AH aspects screwed the game over big time as the game was set up with that aspect in mind. Didn't help that drops weren't balanced either. So in theory the game ain't that good yet, it's just that the always online part is not the only big issue with it anymore.

Also on a sidenote: Where is that creepy cat chick from? I swear I've seen it somewhere before.

EDIT: Wow this thread exploded in size faster than I had noticed.

I meant it took more time for the pirates to make a working version, not that it took longer than usual for the game to work in a good way.

 

[crimson sickle2]

Does EA even own anything decent anymore? It depends on taste, but aside from Sims is there anything else? We all know Dead Space is either dead or screwed, so that isn't an option. The few IP they had that showed promise seem to have shriveled after being drained of all creative life-force.