New SimCity Will Require Always-On Internet - UPDATED

[Weaver]

How do

But this isn't a question of Origin, which I have no problem with, but of requiring an always-on connection. If a game is going to dump me because my shitbag ISP pukes out on a near-daily basis, why am I going to spend money on it? Especially when I have zero intention of playing it online anyway.

I don't much care about SimCity, but I'm infuriated about Diablo 3, which I will not be buying because of the same idiotic requirement. It's interesting, though, that you don't hear anywhere near the same level of rage about Blizzard and Battle.net. Some people have legitimate, principled concerns about always-on DRM, but I think it's fair to say that others are a little more selective about where they point their anger.

It might be worth dropping a line to EA - a civil line - to protest this always-on nonsense and ask for the inclusion of a proper, offline single-player mode. It's still fairly early in the development process, so it might still be possible for minds to change. Worth a shot.

Where do you live?
Because i dont understand how my internet is this

[http://www.speedtest.net]good.
While i live in a small town in holland.
I just dont get it.

Andy Chalk lives in Canada (I think even in Ontario). We have pretty bad and laughably expensive internet here. We are, after all, less densely populated than Russia. Continental Western Europe has some of the best and most affordable internet in the world; why is this at all surprising?

I could of course rage on about the monopolization of the telecom industry in Canada along with the instinctual relationship they share with the CRTC allows them to function with incredibly little amount of oversight or pricing regulation, but I don't think you really want to read all that.

 

[John the Gamer]

It's a good thing I don't have a laptop which I use to game on long train rides then. OH WAIT. I do. You bastards.

I have 3 hours of train commuting to do every day, which I fill with some gaming. It's bad enough when I forget to put steam on offline mode before I leave the house, but don't take all the other games away from me as well. Please?

And here I though Ubisoft handled this stuff terribly.

 

[ph0b0s123]

need to be connected to Origin when they play, even if the game was purchased elsewhere.

Oh, yeah Maxis is an EA company, damn. Reads no further, closes article and removes game from mental listed of upcoming games wanted.

You know it will have a single player mode where there is no just reason for a permanent connection to be needed. This is what happens when you keep buying Ubisoft games, it tells other publishers you are OK with this DRM....

 

[jFr[e]ak93]

EA screws up again.
*Achievment Unlocked* - Way to screw up!

OT

New SimCity Will Require Always-On Internet

To be clear, this isn't the same as the usual quickie call home to Origin that drives so many people to distraction; that's not really a big deal, relatively speaking, since it's exactly the same thing Steam does and nobody seems to have a problem with that.

Permalink

But Steam will work off-line if asked to. This is a game that shouldn't have to be on-line all the time, but is.

 

[ph0b0s123]

ak93]EA screws up again.
*Achievment Unlocked* - Way to screw up!

OT

New SimCity Will Require Always-On Internet

To be clear, this isn't the same as the usual quickie call home to Origin that drives so many people to distraction; that's not really a big deal, relatively speaking, since it's exactly the same thing Steam does and nobody seems to have a problem with that.

Permalink

But Steam will work off-line if asked to. This is a game that shouldn't have to be on-line all the time, but is.

Oh, another false equivalently when comparing Steam vs Origin, imagine that....

 

[RipRoaringWaterfowl]

All I have to say is:

<youtube=lgI2ZQVyrBo>

Okay, more: The idea of an interconnected community of cities is good. FORCING players to be part of that through what is pretty much repurposed DRM is not. One of the ways of playing Sim City (especially with 4) is to build your own world. I want to build my own fantasy Britain with more subways and amusement parks than are probably healthy. I DO NOT want to have some dude from Azerbaijan have the pollution from his coal mining city enter the atmosphere of my beautiful fantasy London.

I'm really looking forward to this game, but playing it... at this point, not so much.

Also, side note: Maxis, include the whole of the Palace of Westminster this time. Don't chicken out and only have Big Ben.

I've sunk far too many hours into the previous SimCity games to be considered healthy (is it disturbing to get sexual thrills from a well-maintained public transport system? All those lovely train tracks...mmmm)

... Is it disturbing?... ... Nope. You know what, honestly, nope. Same thing over here.

Wierd, though. I guess we're wierd.

 

[Dogstile]

First I have to miss out on Diablo 3, now this.

I hate being a PC gamer sometimes.

You said it. I just got through reminding one of my friends why I won't be buying Diablo III, which included the thought that soon other games would attempt to follow suit. it all came down to that fact of precedence plus the fact the people I may move in with at a later date live just inside a Broadband dead zone.

... I'm not trying to be smug or anything, but apparently I subconsciously called it. Sorry traveling Sim-city fans or in the many crevices of bad internet networks. its just not for you.

I'm just waiting for the inevitable "but you're complaining online, this doesn't affect you!" argument I always get, because the other person hasn't considered my internet sometimes goes down for days at a time, usually once every two weeks.

I live in a well developed UK town to, I hate to think of what gamers in the EU have to deal with

Don't worry I live in an underdeveloped dutch Christian village. This is my connection .

[http://www.speedtest.net]
Maybe Uk internet is just bad?
We got really good internet Connections over here and it has never stopped working in the 8 months i have been using it.
Which gives me a moral dillema my internet is beast so always on is no problem for me. On a technical level at least on a moral one i just dont know the answer.

The highest i've gotten is 10mbps download. It just goes down a lot because they change up the infrastructure around here a lot and it causes a lot of faults within the network (negligent network engineers, I should know, I'm studying it).

I'm jealous of your town.

Well i live less than 100 meters from the broadcasting tower And the infrastructure in holland is really good because its so small and its affordable to place more towers.
And i got a VDSL connection because i got a hot deal from a provider.
A 100 channels for my tv phone calls and a 17 mb internet connection for the price of just the tv.
A Lan cable does not hurt either stops interference.
But still what do you reccomend on my moral dillema about always-on its kinda bugging me.

Morally I can only recommend what I think is right and just say that its unfair to treat legitimate, paying customer's like they're criminals. Especially seeing as pirates get a superior service, its no wonder piracy rates are rising. Hell, i'd even be tempted, if I didn't think i'd feel amazingly guilty for doing so.

(note to mods: I am not supporting piracy, I'm just stating I now know why they might be tempted)

 

[Dark Prophet]

They did it with C&C 4 and alienated the few fans the C&C had left and the game was cracked within a week. Outstanding EA just outstanding.

 

[BrownGaijin]

When I first read the heading:

New SimCity Will Require Always-On Internet

I was already in a pissed "WTF?" mood. And then I read on:

...players will need to be connected to Origin when they play...

Grr...

...SimCity won't support mods at launch, although it's a possibility in the future.

Yarr...

But it's worth pointing out that the reason people are still playing SimCity 4 almost ten years later is because the modding community essentially re-created it and filled it with new content and fixed bugs and made it as much of a hobby as it is a game," he said. "We're very cognizant of that - we're not idiots."

And then the only part of the article that made me happy:

How about an offline, single-player mode while you're at it? That'd be swell.

Putting in my second cent on this, while I'm sure that they thought that this would be a great idea (I remember the Will Wright interview when Sims 2000 came out) I am really not up for playing this game with other people, and if this is what the company is expecting of me, then they should not expect my money.

 

[Saulkar]

"hmm what can we do to mess with pc gamers... I know, lets copy what ubisoft has been doing, everyone loves that shit"
Fraken morons.

Buy it, crack it, use it, youtube it, gloat it.

That is my logic for showing developers how useless their anti-piracy measures are.

 

[teh_gunslinger]

Aaand that's one sale less for EA. No buy from me. If you can't trust me to play the game offline I can't trust you with my money.

 

[PH3NOmenon]

While my first reaction was "Oh boy, a whole not of needless whining about always on requirements. We're already always on people, get with it!, I don't really get the necessity of it for a Sim City game.

For Diablo, sure. It'd be too easy to cheat otherwise. But in Sim City? I never even considered wanting to play it in multi-player... And for this one, at least, it sounds like a poor excuse to add unneeded DRM.

 

[CoL0sS]

Heh, topics like this should include simple yes/no polls with questions like "Do you support single player games requiring always-on Internet connection?".

I luckily have a pretty stable Internet connection, but I'm really against these decisions. I don't want to worry about my connection breaking (however unlikely it may be), and I shouldn't wonder if I can play physical copy of a game I bought when I go somewhere with unstable/no Internet connection.

 

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

Multiplayer city building? What idiots.

Welp, time to just start a new country in Sim City 4.

 

[Rodrigo Girao]

Let me correct the headline:

"New Sim City will require cracking."

And since you will be an outlaw anyway, might as well pirate! Smart move, EA.

 

[veloper]

Why do EA still bother? SC Societies was a failure.
I lost all faith in their ability to make a SC game after SC Societies.
They'll just dumb down the gameplay and make the graphics prettier. I'll stick with old SC4. The new restrictions are just the final insult.

 

[Evil Smurf]

is origin taxing on a computer? because I have a desktop and stable Internet (13 mbs download speed). How is it not like steam? (Apart from online mode) *hides behind flame shield*

 

[isometry]

It's not like we didn't see this coming as soon as the game was announced. I didn't allow myself to get any hopes up for even a second.

And the defense of Origin in the opening post is just sad. Journalists are following publishers right down into the cesspool.

 

[laserwulf]

Hey EA, why don't you ask Monte Christo how well the online-multiplayer city-builder Cities XL did for their 15-yr. old company...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Cristo_(company)

 

[Nurb]

I paid for and kept every sim city game since I was a kid and before Maxis was bought by those bastards at EA. Yea, Fuck you EA.

The best playing experience will be for those who pirate it. Not a good business decision on their part.