Modder Proves That SimCity Works Offline

[infohippie]

When people who PIRATE a game, get a better EXPERIENCE than people who BOUGHT a game.

Pretty much.

Pirates already knew it was playable offline...

Thing is, it hasn't been cracked yet. So there are no pirates yet. Either this will convince EA they don't need drm anymore or it will convince EA that the DRM works and they will continue doing it.

I really don't think piracy is the reason for DRM. Publisher will cry "Piracy!" as an excuse so they don't have to reveal their real reason, but I believe the primary reason behind DRM is to prevent secondhand sales. The secondhand market is far, far larger than the number of people who pirate any game and the publisher wants a few dollars from every sale. With DRM, they can decide to not allow secondhand sales at all, or allow them in exchange for a fee on each transaction, or whatever they choose.

I'm so glad I realised it was time to stop doing business with EA shortly after they stopped calling themselves "Electronic Arts" and rebranded to just "EA".

 

[llyrnion]

The rule is quite simple, actually: If you buy a game that requires an always-on internet connection for single-player playing, you're doing it wrong.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

So the devs left an off-switch in the game?
I do not know whether to laugh, or to guffaw.

There is no way EA would win a legal battle against the use of this tweak. It's not piracy by even the loosest, most generous stretch of the word and as can be seen from the DeCSS trial, even the courts agree that consumers have a right to the products they've paid for.

 

[Strazdas]

This baffles me, if a modder was able to do it, how come there is no released version on teh piratz?

He was able to build roads, but really, was he able to actually play the game to a decent extent?

 

[ChildofGallifrey]

. . .claiming that the internet connectivity was both necessary and beneficial to players.

And there's the main problem. Instead of listening to what the consumers want, EA and Maxis are telling them what they want.

 

[Church185]

For those of you who didn't watch this video on youtube, he describes posting about everything he was able to change with the debug menu on EA's forum. Sadly the post was deleted (probably to keep people from messing with their games) but there is a copy of his post linked below. If you don't trust my link you can always go click the Pastie link in his youtube description.

http://pastie.org/6506929

 

[CorvusFerreum]

Well, it seems that the region stuff is still borked. But that has most likely to do with cloudsaving. There should be no problem in allowing big cities for offline play or perhaps even allow local region play with an overhauled save sytsem. The claim that a mayor part of the calculations is running offline is just simply false. And people arguing about the balancing in challanges fail to see one thing: Why not dissable challanges for big cities and offline play. I think most people won't give a damn, like many people don't give a damn about the region stuff.
The fact that EA just keeps deleting threads discussing this topic on their forums just proves that that modder hit a nerve.

snip

snap

blubber

I really don't think piracy is the reason for DRM. Publisher will cry "Piracy!" as an excuse so they don't have to reveal their real reason, but I believe the primary reason behind DRM is to prevent secondhand sales. The secondhand market is far, far larger than the number of people who pirate any game and the publisher wants a few dollars from every sale. With DRM, they can decide to not allow secondhand sales at all, or allow them in exchange for a fee on each transaction, or whatever they choose.

I'm so glad I realised it was time to stop doing business with EA shortly after they stopped calling themselves "Electronic Arts" and rebranded to just "EA".

I don't think so. This is the PC and the used games market has basicly been shut down by the glorified DRM that is Steam (and the likes) ages ago.



Bonus content:
It seems even to be possible to mess up other peoples cities. Without syncing yet, but I think someone will figure this out to. GJ Maxis

SimCity is just a gift that keeps on giving. I'm off to get more popcorn

 

[Prosis]

This baffles me, if a modder was able to do it, how come there is no released version on teh piratz?

He was able to build roads, but really, was he able to actually play the game to a decent extent?

He could fully and completely play the game indefinitely. However, he could not save his game. Saves are maintained on the server. Thus, the game is not fully cracked.

Why people are ticked is because Maxis claimed that SimCity must be online. There are too many critical features of the game that are handled by the server.

But all that this hacker did was disable the auto-disconnect that occurs after 20minutes of being offline. Thus, the game runs fine without the online component, and all the servers do are manage save files and the various multiplayer aspects (rather than large portions of the game, like in Diablo 3).

 

[Atmos Duality]

So to summarize the SimCity Saga:

(2012)
*EA announces SimCity as an Always-Online game. Gamers advise against this, citing previous folly of UbiSoft and Blizzard
\-EA claims that the game is engineered around server-side interactions, and would be unplayable without servers
\-Promises that they will not make the same mistake Diablo 3 did with its launch

(2013, Launch)
*Launches SimCity while making the exact same mistake Diablo 3 did (c'mon, your TOR launch went far more smoothly!)
\-Refuses to consider refunds for a broken game (though this is completely within their rights)
\-Freezes advertisements and non-retail sales to stem the tide of connections so they can put more servers up
\-Outraged customers make a big stink; others endure city resets, rollbacks, corruption of their save file and phantom queues.
\-EA removes Cheetah speed to alleviate pressure on server access.
\-Some gamers demand Offline Mode, EA issues comment saying that would take considerable work to re-engineer. Maxis programmer issues a conflicting statement.


(Post-Launch)
*Several weird anomalies and behaviors pop up within the game when it's running NORMALLY
\-Strange, and often ridiculous service and traffic behavior, resulting from a lazy "shortest path" algorithm this algorithm is found as being run ENTIRELY ON THE CLIENT'S SIDE, meaning it's the client and not the server that is running most of the simulation. (Proves that EA exaggerated the necessity for servers)
\-"Sim Hive" behavior revealed via GlassBox, where Sims or "agents" occupy the first available open home or job regardless of any other fact save distance, further compounding the bad pathfinding algorithm. (SimCity 4 is 10 years old, and does it infinitely better)

(turns out, this behavior also applies to everything else in the game, causing hilarious Benny-Hill loops of buses, garbage trucks, and even sewage constantly going in circles)

\-RCI balancing is completely fucked. Someone manages to create an entire city using only Residential Zones.
(Land of the Unemployed Drones! But they're so happy they gladly keep paying taxes they shouldn't have any money for!)


(Recently)
*A modder/hacker/etc breaks into the game client, discovers all sorts of things.
\-The "Always Online DRM" is entirely CLIENTSIDE, and can be easily modded around or removed. (proving EA flat-out lied about the amount of effort; anyone with Javascript could break this DRM) *(EA gets caught in a lie here)
\-A Terraforming kit is found within the game client (Why is it here? Was EA was planning on selling access to it later as "DLC" and wanted to pre-deploy it?)
\-Debug Tools being left in the client, giving players incredible griefing and cheating powers
\-"Phantom Population" confirmed. (though this isn't really an issue; abstractions of mechanics are fine as long as the bloody mechanics work well)
\-Demonstrates that the only major contribution the servers provide is a Cloud-Save function for regions, and a hub for the new Resource element of the game. (this also all but confirms my theory that EA kept to smaller city plots so they wouldn't have to stand up so many servers on launch, since bigger cities would mean bigger save files being sent)

Did I miss anything?

 

[GAunderrated]

So to summarize the SimCity Saga:

(2012)
*EA announces SimCity as an Always-Online game. Gamers advise against this, citing previous folly of UbiSoft and Blizzard
\-EA claims that the game is engineered around server-side interactions, and would be unplayable without servers
\-Promises that they will not make the same mistake Diablo 3 did with its launch

(2013, Launch)
*Launches SimCity while making the exact same mistake Diablo 3 did (c'mon, your TOR launch went far more smoothly!)
\-Refuses to consider refunds for a broken game (though this is completely within their rights)
\-Freezes advertisements and non-retail sales to stem the tide of connections so they can put more servers up
\-Outraged customers make a big stink; others endure city resets, rollbacks, corruption of their save file and phantom queues.
\-EA removes Cheetah speed to alleviate pressure on server access.
\-Some gamers demand Offline Mode, EA issues comment saying that would take considerable work to re-engineer. Maxis programmer issues a conflicting statement.


(Post-Launch)
*Several weird anomalies and behaviors pop up within the game when it's running NORMALLY
\-Strange, and often ridiculous service and traffic behavior, resulting from a lazy "shortest path" algorithm this algorithm is found as being run ENTIRELY ON THE CLIENT'S SIDE, meaning it's the client and not the server that is running most of the simulation. (Proves that EA exaggerated the necessity for servers)
\-"Sim Hive" behavior revealed via GlassBox, where Sims or "agents" occupy the first available open home or job regardless of any other fact save distance, further compounding the bad pathfinding algorithm. (SimCity 4 is 10 years old, and does it infinitely better)

(turns out, this behavior also applies to everything else in the game, causing hilarious Benny-Hill loops of buses, garbage trucks, and even sewage constantly going in circles)

\-RCI balancing is completely fucked. Someone manages to create an entire city using only Residential Zones.
(Land of the Unemployed Drones! But they're so happy they gladly keep paying taxes they shouldn't have any money for!)


(Recently)
*A modder/hacker/etc breaks into the game client, discovers all sorts of things.
\-The "Always Online DRM" is entirely CLIENTSIDE, and can be easily modded around or removed. (proving EA flat-out lied about the amount of effort; anyone with Javascript could break this DRM) *(EA gets caught in a lie here)
\-A Terraforming kit is found within the game client (Why is it here? Was EA was planning on selling access to it later as "DLC" and wanted to pre-deploy it?)
\-Debug Tools being left in the client, giving players incredible griefing and cheating powers
\-"Phantom Population" confirmed. (though this isn't really an issue; abstractions of mechanics are fine as long as the bloody mechanics work well)
\-Demonstrates that the only major contribution the servers provide is a Cloud-Save function for regions, and a hub for the new Resource element of the game. (this also all but confirms my theory that EA kept to smaller city plots so they wouldn't have to stand up so many servers on launch, since bigger cities would mean bigger save files being sent)

Did I miss anything?

You missed the part where its still a #1 seller on amazon because people don't have enough sense to stop supporting this practice.

 

[Atmos Duality]

You missed the part where its still a #1 seller on amazon because people don't have enough sense to stop supporting this practice.

You assume I give the average consumer any credit in regards to spending intelligence.
Unless a series of products explodes in their face like a sadistic jack-in-a-box, they don't tend to do their research or pick up on the finer details.

Like companies flat out lying to them in order to make more money.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Is Amazon where people typically buy PC games? That might be a misleading statistic which doesn't represent the gaming population as a whole.

 

[MopBox]

Who knew a company with such an outstanding reputation would purposefully give its consumers misleading information!? In this day and age! Frankly, I for one am shocked.

Shocked and appalled, just shocked, really ? shocked.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

How forgettable our community is. Seems like nobody remembers Spore... <.<

Jep, my friend who pirated it never had any issues with the game. I had problems and the stupid "you can only install this X times" bullshit.
bleh

 

[GamingAwesome1]

Of course the game doesn't require online to even function. SimCity is not a game that is so finely crafted around the online mechanic such as to require it or the game just wouldn't work.

A game like that just doesn't exist yet. EA was talking shit from the start and this is basically just conclusive, unsurprising albeit vital proof.

Good on ya, modders. Now why don't you go on ahead and release that mod to the public, people should not have to put up with this bullshit.

 

[jpoon]

Damn i'm glad I didn't buy this game at release. I'll wait until the good ole hackers have their way with this bullshit DRM then I'll pick up the game once it hits like $10! xD