Jimquisition: SimShitty

[SinisterGehe]

You should have seen the shit storm that started to brew at Finnish Customer Rights Bureau - friend and ex-coworker works there as a regional manager. They were one hairsplit away from having to sue EA-Finland and demand global "no excuses" refund from banks. Sadly EA-Finland couldn't be reached for a response over these accusation because the regional branch only has a communications email under EA's contact information tab.

Also I think my friend has turned alcoholic has perfectly monochrome white hair and at least 40+ years on hes age. The global legal adviser must be at least taking next 20 years worth of paid vacations at once or dead...

Good thing that SimCity -Origin edition- (not original...) is on Origin. A system which ToS is still literally illegal and whole client is considered spyware (legally) in Finland. So I ain't touching it. And by sounds of it, I ain't missing anything.

 

[Legion]

I do love it when you create videos such as this Jim, you sum up the problems perfectly. It's not criticising the games, it's not criticising the people working on them, it is pointing out that the people giving them to us do not have our best interests at heart.

Not that they should release games just to please us, but if they are going to use practices that are there solely for their benefit, at the very least they should not be detrimental to ours.

You know what's the worst thing? When this game sells poorly or is pirated to hell and back, EA will blame Maxis and say it's because simcity isn't a viable property any more and stick it in the vault forever.

And then EA will wash it's hands of the whole thing, and not learn a damn thing until the industry blows up, and then whines that it was all the consumer's fault.

Sadly this seems to be EA's modus operandi. They never blame a games problems on their decisions, but rather punish the developer or claim it's down to it not being a game people want.

 

[Costia]

You brought up diablo 3, it's a good example.
After a few days of server troubles it became stable and sold 12 million copies (source: http://diablo.somepage.com/news/1489-activision-blizzard-q4-2012-earnings-report)
I expect the same to happen here. After the rage-storm is over, people will buy it and enjoy it.

And saying that maxis\EA did this on purpose sounds ridiculous to me. Not only they are loosing money, but they are also hurting their brand, which is in trouble as it is. It's Maxis's first "MMO" title, and i don't think that blizzard was willing to share their secrets.
They screwed up. Badly. But saying that they don't care is an exaggeration.
I don't like always online DRM either, but I am not going to make stuff up to justify my opinion.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I absolutely despise corporate apologists. We have a few here, on The Escapist. People who actually bought into the whole rhetoric that video games are services. How the fuck do these apologists justify that level of naivety? How much more shortsighted can they get before we can say that they are completely blind?

 

[Jimothy Sterling]

It's true,
This sort of behaviour would be unacceptable in any other industry.
Fully backing up your rant here Jim.

Although one thing bothers me, the idea that yeah everyone IS connected all the time.
This very well may be in very urbanized areas and acommodated cities of particular zones of the world, but even now there are spots in first world countries, where internet is not the "highway of information", and It's probably not going to be anytime soon.

I love going away for the weekend up to an apartment that I've got on the beach, and internet connection there even with 3g, is almost unattainable. Why am I being forced to change this in order to enjoy a product I have purchased?

It's actually pretty common on places outside the US, Japan or Europe, that the local internet is great, but international connections are quite slow and not very reliable, causing gameplay to be rather inadecuate (Even now, I can't really play diablo 3 without constant lag-spikes even when playing solo).
So yeah, this measures might make sense commercially, but socially we are being labelled as outcasts. It's likely that someone in Argentina or Brazil will never actually get to play the game properly, and the company doesn't care and will never do anything about it.. And -this- attitude doesn't really encourage people to respecting copyright agreements.

As I've always said, I wish they'd stop preemptively fucking customers up the ass, and release good games that are worth getting, and you will see how people respond.

 

[themilo504]

It?s such a shame that simcity has always on drm since I was really looking forward to the game.

also jim is slowly starting to become the karl marx of videogames.

 

[Callate]

Sometimes half the enjoyment of the Jimquisition is listening to Sterling say things that would get one warned or suspended if you said them yourself in the comments section.

Two things that Jim touched on, though, that should be explicit:

One: What we're buying are games; whether you call them a product or a service, software or a contract, some kind of pleasure is what you're intending to purchase. It isn't a side effect or byproduct, but the point of the thing. Failure to provide that is failure on a very fundamental level.

Two: EA probably thought it could get away with adjusting the server capacity they made available post-release as they went along. That was a terrible decision, and it seems from where I stand pretty clear that they could have projected what they need based on pre-orders and actually had something closer to the server capacity they needed from day one. I wonder who made the decision that that much customer unhappiness was worth a little bit of short-term savings...?

 

[BlackStar42]

They've even managed to piss off the Prince of all Saiyans. You really, really don't want to piss off the Prince of all Saiyans.

 

[geldonyetich]

I?m pretty sure the only way we could get EA to even care is to land a massive class action lawsuit on them, and their EULA has probably done everything in its power to preemptively neuter our ability to do so.

Well, then how about a boycott? Oh, right, all but the vocal minority that cares will trundle along without participating, rendering our attempts at a boycott useless as well.

The sad thing is, it?s not like we?re blameless here. Not with piracy numbers like this [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/7225-Piracy-Numbers]. Me, I don?t pirate, but apparently this makes me a weirdo. EA probably looks at the PC gaming platform like we simply can?t be trusted, for every one ?loyal customer getting the shaft,? there?s four non-customers who are picking their pocket.

Thus, despite always-on DLC failing nearly every time it has been implemented in a AAA game, regardless of company that makes it, don?t expect it?s going anywhere soon.

In the end, I think EA?s main fault is overcharging for the game. Why are they having us pay $60 for a game that they didn't expect 4/5 of us to buy the box price of if it's supported by an online store and requires an always on connection? They weren't selling us a stand-alone single player game, they sold us a facebook game, and this stand-alone single player game price is unabashed greed.

Well, I can tell you that I did not buy SimCity at release, because I knew as they knew as Jim knows that AAA games with always-on DRM virtually never work at release. If, as Jim says, the first week of sales is important enough for a company to sit up and take notice, then here lay a slimmer of hope: if everyone learns that AAA games just won't work at release with always on DRM, our first-week boycott will happen automatically.

 

[TheSchaef]

Although one thing bothers me, the idea that yeah everyone IS connected all the time.
This very well may be in very urbanized areas and acommodated cities of particular zones of the world, but even now there are spots in even first world countries, where internet is not the "highway of information", and It's probably not going to be anytime soon.

Couldn't agree more. The idea that always-on is the default at this point is still assuming too much. Maybe if the telecomms had done something with all that fiber money they were given.

As it stands now, residing in the 15th-largest metropolitan area in the US (Columbus is smaller than San Francisco but larger than Detroit, Boston or Seattle), I am not always-on even when spending 98% of my time at either work or home. The wireless setup in our office screws with the DNS, causing us to drop Internet for 20-30 minutes on nearly a daily basis. My desktop at home is distant enough from the AP that - especially in an older house whose walls tend to scatter the signal - my connection is intermittent a good percentage of the time. And since it's a stupid AirPort, I can't just go out and pluck a cheap range extender off the shelf, so ya just dance with who brung ya. So even people in "always-on" areas are not always on, for reasons that are not entirely within their control, even leaving EA servers out of the equation.

Most of the time I can manage: Steam will sometimes allow me to start up in offline mode and play the games I paid for, but the occasional game cloud file warnings I get remind me that a lack of rock-solid connectivity potentially affects my gaming experience. If I had games with always-online DRM, I would probably be SOL. If you're going to do it this way, at least give us the courtesy of a reacharound, in the form of some kind of sync token so we can play offline until a connection is (re)established.

 

[Zen Toombs]

Spoiler: SPOILER'D for spatial reasons

EA's logic is kind of backwards. If they were really afraid of us, you'd think they'd be doing everything they could to appease us.

Not really. Appeasement is one valid option, and so is exerting control. EA's problem is not that they are trying to control the behavior of gamers, but that they are doing it poorly and that they are worried about the wrong things.

EA needs to study it's history. Pulling that kind of shit just leads to revolution, or in this case, a crash.

No disagreements there. Ea is being colossally moronic, and have been so for years.

 

[Damien Granz]

SimShitty

DRM is back again, and it's here to stay! Games are a service, so we're told, but who do they really serve?

Watch Video

Yeah, I agree the the general sentiment of your video, but I guess maybe I'm just a lot more cynical than you because I'm pretty sure that people will tolerate a lot more horseshit than you think they will (just wait for people to come in here to defend EA on this one).

Actually, I'm guaranteed that people will tolerate more horseshit than you think they will, because your own advice in this video is "Give EA your money a few days late".

I'm pretty sure buying this game, whether on the day it launched, today, or in 3 weeks is still 'tolerating EA's horseshit'. Like you said, EA's taking a tactical risk with your enjoyment, and I'm pretty sure the tactics of that risk is knowing, or at least presuming we'll cave in and buy the game a week later or even a year later.

If you want EA to not think of your wallet as it's own personal piggy bank that it has to put in no work to access, I'm pretty sure that teaching them it's not doesn't imply just delaying the opening of your wallet by 7 days.

Remember "Bought the game and is mad about it" and "Bought the game and was happy about it" to EA is both just "Bought the game" if your purchasing habits don't change.

 

[The Great JT]

I hope the EA guys all spontaneously combust. Their business practices are bad and they should feel bad.

 

[shrekfan246]

EA's logic is kind of backwards. If they were really afraid of us, you'd think they'd be doing everything they could to appease us.

I dunno, I think megalomaniacs are more likely to try exerting control than garnering praise.

Not saying it's logical at all, but you know.

OT: Well, I haven't technically supported the use of always-online DRM, so I feel comfortable in my moral superiority. I got Diablo III because of the World of Warcraft year-long subscription promotion Blizzard did, otherwise I likely would've never gotten the game in the first place because I had never played the previous two and had barely a passing interest in it. The same will go for SimCity - I'm not interested in it, so I won't be purchasing it.

Hilarious ending, though.

 

[WildFire15]

I think it's completely inexcusable to have this sort of DRM in Simcity and there's literally nothing that can be defended about the decision. Diablo 3 might have 'needed' it to keep the real money auction house from getting filled with hacked equipment, but that's not really a defence when the internet's down and you want to play on your own. Oh, and lets not forget that you can easily be lagged to death while on your own as well as I frequently did.
In Sim City, there is not a single reason for it to be always online. There's no market to balance, there isn't a potential of hacked equipment ruining the game, there is not one single reason for it to be online all the time. This shit simply isn't tolerable, though I think Jim's suggestion of waiting a week or two is a good idea as it'll give the publishers a chance to sweat and maybe even remember the fact that if we were here, they wouldn't be either.

 

[GAunderrated]

You know what's the worst thing? When this game sells poorly or is pirated to hell and back, EA will blame Maxis and say it's because simcity isn't a viable property anymore and stick it in the vault forever.

And then EA will wash it's hands of the whole thing, and not learn a damn thing until the industry blows up, and then whines that it was all the consumer's fault.

This sadly is just wishful thinking. I agree this always on DRM is BS and it is the SOLE reason I didn't buy Simcity after experiencing the mess that was D3. However, I did a quick look at amazon and see that Simcity, despite being REMOVED by amazon for a short time, is still sitting at the #1 spot.

Jim says that eventually we will get sick of it and lash back but here is the thing, people are making the decision to buy this crap despite all the DRM, problems, and bad press. They have no willpower and send the message to EA that sure some people will be upset, but you still have a thriving market who will put up with whatever crap you send their way.

I don't think those people will ever grow the balls to give up a second of enjoyment to stop any unfriendly business practices if it is an experience they want. I hate the use of the term "sheep" because it has been thrown around too much so I will just phrase it like this. As long as people are slaves to their passion, things will only continue to get worse

 

[Something Amyss]

The biggest problem in this argument is that the free market generally continues to favour bullshit practices.

I was not around back then so I can't really say.

Sure you can. It's called history. There's enough data out there that you can reasonably draw a conclusion.

The thing is, people have been calling for a crash for over a decade, ever since someone drew some specious correlation between gaming in the pre-crash market and now, and they'll predict it for another 200 years if that's what it takes. Why? the same reason people predicted the end of the world in 2012. People love to be prognosticators.

Now, I haven't watched the whole video you embedded, but it already sort of comes off like Zeitgeist or Loose Change.

While the creator is correct that ET didn't cause the crash alone, he's incorrect on multiple levels. The game itself was part of a handful of titles that did more damage through overspeculation than any consumer backlash could ever hope to do: Simply, the companies behind them thought they would sell better than they had any indicator of previously and gambled on what was then a much more expensive production process.

Contrast this with the current gaming market. SimCity alone should tell you that they tend to plan for a minimalist sort of deal, underinvesting rather than overinsvesting. He brings up Pac-Man, granted to ***** about the programming. What he ignores is that the game actually sold quite well, and there was no consumer backlash. People ate the game up like people ate games up before. However, the game sold poorly in relation to number of copies manufactured, a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THING that negates his thesis entirely.

He then dishonestly treats the quality of gaming as though it plunged suddenly, when the truth is that was never the case.

Enough about that, though. I don't know when I'll finish the video. What I do know is that video games are big business now, and a big business that plays conservatively. Bad games tend to get put out because they will sell, as did SimCity. Even AVPCM was brought out in no small part due to the risk to the license if it didn't come out, and it was crap mostly because of issues of fraud from the looks of things. Hell, we see the same thing in movie franchises all the time, and nobody's serious about a film crash.

 

[geizr]

**Puts on hermit's beard, mud-streaked hair, and loin-cloth and walks into the wilderness to shout from therein...**

Just stop buying it, people!

[capcha: A swift kick does it. So very appropriate.]