SimCity Always-Online DRM Lets Hackers Play Godzilla With Anyone's Cities

from the go-go-godzilla dept

It seems that everyone is giving EA and Maxis quite a bit of grief over the SimCity debacle. The game's launch was, um, not great. The backlash against the game's producers was worse, all the more so once the lying began. But late last week, new evidence was uncovered that suggests perhaps we've all been a little bit unfair to EA and Maxis. What if I told you that the always-online game architecture enabled you to be what all of us have secretly wanted to be since we were very, very little children?

Well, hello, childhood fantasy o' mine. I didn't see you standing there.
Image source: CC BY 2.0

Yes, as Kionae alerts us, one (unplanned?) consequence of requiring online saves for your SimCity games is that anyone with a bit of hacking skill can visit your city, put some Blue Oyster Cult on in the background, and wreak the kind of havoc normally reserved for Japanese nuclear monsters. See, you can, were you so inclined, enter the save game city of another person, and then completely edit or destroy their loving creation like some kind of digital psuedo-god.

Pictured: Omnipotence

Just so we're clear, this is only possible because of the EA always-online requirement.

It's still awesome because this hack is only as destructive as it is because of EA's decision to make the game always-on. If the game hadn't had always-on DRM then this hack wouldn't be half as devastating as it is. Having EA delete these kind of topics from their forums is great damage control but don't be surprised if there's another furor when people start raging on the forums when some hacker decides to go through and Godzilla everyone's town. Enjoy.

Enjoy indeed, as long as that enjoyment happens outside of EA's forums. As noted above, the company is enforcing their TOS rules on their forums and deleting all topics relating to these kinds of hacks. Why? Well, because when a dingo is chewing on your arm, the best defense is to place your noggin lovingly into some sand to make it all just disappear. Or, if that doesn't work, you could always just apologize for what is becoming the greatest video game debacle this side of a Duke Nukem game, but I'm not holding my breath.

Filed Under: broken, destroy cities, godzilla, hacking, simcity
Companies: ea, maxis

Maxis: Your Reward For Buying Our Horribly Launched SimCity Is The Previous, Better Version Of It

from the one-step-forward,-one-version-back dept

Many of us are still waiting for a Maxis mea culpa following the horrible release of their always-online SimCity game. When last we checked in with Maxis, they were busy pretending that all of the backlash surrounding this complete mess of a release didn't exist and that tons (tons!) of people just loved all the features in the game that didn't work. Well, they're back to blogging again, and while it is only an apology in the barest sense of the word, they are offering up some freebies for their throngs of pissed off fans.

Our SimCity Mayors are incredibly important to the team at Maxis. We sincerely apologize for the difficulties at launch and hope to make it up to you with a free PC game download from Origin.

This, of course, falls short of the full apology they should be making, which would be to say that lying their faces off about why the game always needed to be online (since it didn't) was wrong, as was their presumption that their fans needed to be treated like criminals. But, hey, baby steps, I guess. So what games are you offering up for free?

-Battlefield 3 (Standard Edition)
-Bejeweled 3
-Dead Space 3 (Standard Edition)
-Mass Effect 3 (Standard Edition)
-Medal of Honor Warfighter (Standard Edition)
-Need For Speed Most Wanted (Standard Edition)
-Plants vs. Zombies
-SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition

...Really? As an apology for selling a game with an always-online requirement for a city building simulation, which we now know doesn't actually need to be online at all, you're offering up the previous version of the game which didn't have that requirement? And, based on what I can see from the general reviews, received far superior reviews? Why bother releasing the new SimCity at all, if the result is pointing people to the last iteration, a better overall product? Have we gotten to the point where you guys are just trying to make us laugh?

Filed Under: apology, free games, simcity
Companies: ea, maxis

Maxis GM: Our Vision Is More Important Than Our Customers & Lots Of People Love Our Crappy DRM

from the so,-so-much-wrong dept

Well, it's been several hours, so obviously someone must have done something stupid over at the SimCity franchise. I could run through a long list of links from our coverage of this debacle, but I'll make it easy on you. The key links are the launch debacle, the backlash, and the evidence that all of this is wholly unnecessary. That last one is important because during the initial stages of this muck up, EA/Maxis came out hard, saying that offline modes were logistically impossible because of all the cloud-based resources needed to run the games simulation calculations. The evidence in the link proves rather conclusively that that is absolutely not the case. In that post, I had suggested that it was time for the game's producers to finally come out with a strong mea culpa. Here is that mea culpa, from Maxis GM Lucy Bradshaw:

So, could we have built a subset offline mode? Yes. But we rejected that idea because it didn't fit with our vision. We did not focus on the "single city in isolation" that we have delivered in past SimCities. We recognize that there are fans – people who love the original SimCity – who want that. But we're also hearing from thousands of people who are playing across regions, trading, communicating and loving the Always-Connected functionality. The SimCity we delivered captures the magic of its heritage but catches up with ever-improving technology.

Okay, so it isn't so much a mea culpa as a, "Hey, customers, why don't you go outside and play hide and go f@#$ yourself!" It's difficult to imagine a more tone deaf statement, given the circumstances. To essentially come out and say that you understand lots of people wanted an offline version of this game, and we already know you could have made one quite easily, but you rejected the idea of filling a customer need because it didn't match with your "vision"? I'd suggest that if this launch has been a faithful representation of your vision, it may be time to get idea-glasses.

And can I ask the other obvious question? Where the hell are all the people clamoring for online only mode? I have no doubt that there are folks who wanted and still want online components to the game, but who the hell is asking for a blatant limitation on their game? There's a major difference between offering online components and requiring it be online all the time. Personally, I think Bradshaw is reticulating our splines on that one.

On the other hand, when discussing the need for the servers in Bradshaw's blog post, there was one glaring omission: server resources/calculations. It appears the game's designers have finally decided to stop lying about why the servers in the cloud are needed and instead moved on to suggest that it's just a big part of their customers that are unnecessary instead.

Filed Under: customers, drm, failures, propaganda, simcity, single player, vision
Companies: ea, maxis

No, Sim City Debacle Doesn't Mean Gamers Need A Bill Of Rights

from the vote-with-your-dollar dept

Like any good debacle, this whole Sim City SNAFU breeds all manner of hostility. The reviews have begun to reflect the incredible amount of frustration at EA's mis-forecast of their launch-date readiness. Even retailers are poking the bear, so to speak, by offering reminders that past iterations of Sim City don't have the same problems and are still super fun to play. The calls for boycotts have been getting louder. But let's be careful not to slip into the land of the silly.

And by silly, I mean launching into a diatribe about how awfully the launch was handled by EA and then concluding that all gamers obviously need a wordily constructed Bill Of Rights. The explanation of what gamers shouldn't stand for isn't bad, actually.

We shouldn't only be upset that EA didn't have enough servers running for the game's launch. We should be upset that it was unnecessarily designed from the ground up to require an always-on online component. We should be upset that a series that has always been large and single-player has been made small and multiplayer with gamers having no choice in the matter. This wasn't an issue of not enough servers and poor planning. This was an issue of ignoring gamers' needs and wants in favor of a system that treats users as children and criminals.

Hell yes! I'm pissed off about it too, and I didn't even buy the damned game. I'm just angry by proxy, the use of which would likely cause a server connection error if I actually did try to play the game! What the hell, let's do something about, comrades! What's first? Storm EA's building and issue them stern looks and wagging fingers? Tweet at them with specific insults about their lineage? Wrap aging cheese up in tin foil and mail it to their offices as a kind of methodical stink bomb? C'mon!

Because of this, I offer the Gamers' Bill of Rights. It enumerates what we should expect from game developers, publishers, and retailers, and limits the unnecessary and offensive overuse of copy-protection measures. We should be able to expect a certain level of support for the games we buy, and we should feel safe in the fact that they won't violate our computers when we run them.

Yeah! That'll teach--wait, what? So...we're essentially going to tell game publishers what we want from them? Don't we...kind of do that already? Isn't that what buying their products is? Do we not have the option to boycott, to buy elsewhere, and all that? Hey, how long is this Bill Of Rights, anyway? 355 words!?!?

You know what, let me see if I can create my own gamer bill of rights that is just a single bullet point.

1. Gamers have the right not to give money to assholes

The end.

Filed Under: gamer bill of rights, simcity
Companies: ea

Modder Makes SimCity Capable Of Offline Play Which Works Flawlessly

from the well,-that-was-easy dept

This SimCity debacle can only be described as an onion. Every time you peel back another layer, you just find yet another bitter layer underneath to make you cry. It all started, as you no doubt know, when EA decided to make the game with an always online requirement. The explanation for this was that it was in part a DRM attempt, but also SimCity was developed to be a social game, requiring an online connection, and EA had also shifted resource consumption and calculation to their own servers, ostensibly freeing up resources on the player's machine. Regardless, the launch looked more like an attempt to reporduce the Hindenburg disaster than any attempt at serving EA's customers and the backlash that followed was harsh. Most recently, someone inside of Maxis reached out to RockPaperShotgun to suggest that the online requirement was strictly DRM and that no important server-side calculations were actually being done. Despite the report, EA maintained that offline play of the game is logistically impossible.

And by logistically impossible, they must have meant that all they'd have to do is turn on the debugging mode, as that's what one game modder has done to make the game work nearly flawlessly without any online connection.

The video above shows the game being played offline. The modder states that this can be done for as long as you like without issues. The only real downside being you can’t save the game because it utilizes cloud saves. However, if you reconnect the game it does save, so you can play all day then just go online to save your progress at the end of a session.

Thanks, random modder guy, for making EA's product do what EA couldn't, or wouldn't, enable it to do themselves. Assuming this is all legit, the excuses for server-side calculations melt away like the loyalty of EA's customers when they bought this game-on-crutches. Hell, even the requirement for online saves needing a constant connection is clearly nonsense. It isn't like the game couldn't be written to only connect once a save is initiated.

Now, here's the fun part. To achieve this, the modder had to go in and edit the game code to enable debug mode, as I mentioned. Far from simply removing the online requirement, it actually made the game perform better.

In fact, it actually improves the game in some ways. City populations are actually tracked correctly and you can edit outside of your city boundaries. Those additional edits are also saved when you reconnect.

Great job, EA. You made your game worse even when it did function, which it mostly didn't, all the while lying your collective faces off to the people giving you their money. It's probably time to come out and issue a serious mea culpa.

Filed Under: drm, mod, offline mode, simcity, single-player
Companies: ea

Maxis Insider: EA Lying About Needing Servers For Single Player SimCity

from the EA-needs-some-new-talking-points dept

Throughout Simcity's massive public flameout last week, questions were raised (repeatedly) about EA's claims that an offline, single-player mode would be a massive undertaking because of the amount of calculations being done server-side. As many people pointed out, this seemed to be a choice EA had made in order to prevent piracy, rather than a necessity due to the (shoehorned-in) social aspects of the game.

Minnesota Viking's kicker, Chris Kluwe, was one of the many voices finding EA's claims dubious:

The fact that EA requires an "always on" connection is ostensibly because so many operations are taking place server side that your computer won't be able to handle it (which is a blatant falsehood, since when I was streaming the other night, the only times I DIDN'T have latency was when I was disconnected from their servers and my computer had to run all the game operations), but in reality it's to try to combat piracy.

John Walker's recent Rock Paper Shotgun piece on SimCity's "inherent brokenness" (and why gamers shouldn't let EA walk this one off) echoed this sentiment.

SimCity, of course, could be a single-player game. Ignore the utter nonsense about how some of its computations are server-side. What complete rot. As if our PCs are incapable of running the game. I'm sure some of the computations are server side! But they damned well don't need to be, as all of gaming ever has ably proven.

EA, however, continues to claim otherwise, somehow expecting PC users to believe that without its valuable servers picking up the computational slack, the game would be unplayable. (Or, more so, I guess...) Unfortunately for EA and its "talking points," a Maxis developer has stated exactly the opposite.

A SimCity developer has got in touch with RPS to tell us that at least the first of these statements is not true. He claimed that the server is not handling calculations for non-social aspects of running the game, and that engineering a single-player mode would require minimal effort.

Our source, who we have verified worked directly on the project but obviously wishes to remain anonymous, has first-hand knowledge of how the game works. He has made it absolutely clear to us that this repeated claim of server-side calculations is at odds with the reality of the project he worked on. Our source explains:

"The servers are not handling any of the computation done to simulate the city you are playing. They are still acting as servers, doing some amount of computation to route messages of various types between both players and cities. As well, they're doing cloud storage of save games, interfacing with Origin, and all of that. But for the game itself? No, they're not doing anything. I have no idea why they're claiming otherwise. It's possible that Bradshaw misunderstood or was misinformed, but otherwise I'm clueless."

So, it's exactly as many players (and unhappy customers) believed. SimCity's always-on requirement does little more than any other always-on requirement: attempt to prevent piracy. Demanding every player always be online throughout the entirety of their single-player game is ridiculous. The Maxis insider who spoke to Rock Paper Shotgun says that not only is a single-player version SimCity possible, but that "it wouldn't take very much engineering" to make it a reality.

Players elsewhere are also discovering what Kluwe had: that the game runs, at least temporarily, without an internet connection, something that shouldn't be possible, according to EA's claims that its servers handle a "significant amount of the calculations."

Kotaku ran a series of tests today, seeing how the game could run without an internet connection, finding it was happy for around 20 minutes before it realised it wasn't syncing to the servers. Something which would surely be impossible were the servers co-running the game itself. Markus "Notch" Persson just tweeted to his million followers that he managed to play offline too, despite EA's claims.

The Maxis insider points out that the Glassbox engine running SimCity processes the actual simulation client-side, before sending out updates to EA's servers. These updates are then queued in the regional server until they can be processed, which (depending on server load) may take several minutes. This helps explain why gamers are able to run for a limited amount of time without a connection.

EA has remained adamant that a single-player SimCity is logistically impossible, but that claim is suddenly holding a lot less water. This revelation doesn't bode well for EA's leaky Claims Waterholder or any future endeavors it had planned that might have relied on its "our supercomputers do the thinking for you!" rationalization in order to force more "online-only" requirements down users' throats. This online-only requirement is no different than others before it. It may battle piracy, hacking and cheating, but makes onerous demands of its paying customers every step of the way.

Filed Under: game play, servers, simcity, single player
Companies: ea, maxis

Avid Gamer (And Minnesota Vikings Punter) Chris Kluwe Does The Math On How Much EA's SimCity Debacle Cost EA

from the another-pull-quote:-'worse-than-Herpes' dept

Oh, EA. I would imagine that there are more than a few execs and PR people who are hoping their employer is siphoning off a bit of its $5 billion market cap and putting it towards time machine R&D. With this post-facto mulligan tearing a new hole in the spacetime continuum, EA should be able to do a proper game launch and collect some accolades along with a ton of non-refundable cash. (Obviously, the time machine has yet to be built because this post still exists. Mind blown?)

EA's debacle, which makes the Diablo 3 launch look positively competent and issue-free by comparison, has seen the company receive even more criticism than it's accustomed to. Not only have a variety of game reviewers delivered less than flattering reviews, but now public figures like Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe (an avid gamer) are stepping up to pile another helping of derision onto EA's overloaded plate. (Note: all redacted swearing courtesy of Business Insider.)

Don’t get me wrong, the game itself is great. When it works, that is. And oh boy, does it hate working.

At the time of writing this piece, SimCity 5 has been active for almost 62 hours. Of those 62 hours, I’ve been able to log in for around ten. Of those ten, four consisted of massive latency issues and corrupted games, so (quick calculation here), I’ve had access to the actual game for maybe 10 percent of the time I’ve had it. EA’s servers are, to put it bluntly, utterly bug[redacted], and there’s no option to play the game offline.

We're going to do a little math here, because there's more interesting math on the way. Who in their right mind would purchase an item that worked roughly 16% of the time, fresh out of the box, especially if the product didn't even perform at 100% capacity when it actually got going? Thousands of people, many of them not in the NFL, paid for a product with a mere 1 in 10 chance of working as advertised and only a 16% chance of doing anything at all. Understandably, Kluwe and thousands of others are irate.

Making matters worse is the insistence that the "always on" connection is required because so much processing is being handled on EA's servers. Kluwe's experience seems to indicate that EA isn't being completely honest about this in order to justify its online-only requirement.

The fact that EA requires an “always on” connection is ostensibly because so many operations are taking place server side that your computer won’t be able to handle it (which is a blatant falsehood, since when I was streaming the other night, the only times I DIDN’T have latency was when I was disconnected from their servers and my computer had to run all the game operations), but in reality it’s to try to combat piracy.

Now, we have heard from the developers themselves that EA servers do host (and very often, corrupt) players' saved games, making a mockery of such modern inventions like hard drives. But the insistence that a large amount of processing happens server-side has been met with incredulously raised eyebrows, including Kluwe's own. Even if true, the main reason for the server-side processing is to keep client machines from containing enough code to go rogue and starting their own brisk trade at The Pirate Bay.

So, EA's simply protecting itself from the piracy threat by crippling the paying customer's experience. The ultimate aim is to make more money. But EA's anti-piracy calculations apparently never factored in negative reviews and word-of-mouth, both of which can have a deleterious effect on game sales.

Sadly, EA seems to have failed to do some very simple math. Let’s look at an example. We’ll assume that for an amazingly successful game like SimCity, about 20,000 people will end up pirating it (those who have the technical knowhow and Internet savvy to find a working crack). I have 160,000 Twitter followers, of whom around 50,000 follow me for gaming. I just told those 50,000 people NOT to buy SimCity because EA cannot handle its s***, and the game is unplayable. We’ll say half those people listen to me and haven’t bought the game already. Soooo, carrying the pi, we see that EA is already out 5,000 more sales than if they had just created a normal, single player offline capable game with multiplayer components.

Many members of various industries have wrangled numbers in order to equate a pirated copy to a lost sale while failing to realize that a bad review can ALSO equal a lost sale. Because of this faulty extrapolation, the assumption generally becomes "more DRM/enforcement = good." EA is finding out, firsthand, that this just simply isn't true.

Even if Kluwe's back-of-the-internet calculations are completely wrong, EA is still leaking sales. Many have demanded refunds from Amazon (and received them), and many more are lining up at Origin to get their money back. EA is taking a hard line on refunding digital sales, which is only going to hurt it in the long run. It might be able to push back here in the US, but overseas (the market it's currently underserving launching in) generally has stronger consumer protections, which makes its no-refund-on-digital-sales policy null and void.

In addition, more than 1,000 negative reviews are doing even reputational damage at Amazon, which has decided to stop handing out refunds, not by screwing customers, but by pulling the digital version from its shelves.

Beyond the bad math, the inadequate customer service, the decision to make the game even worse until the servers can keep up with the demand, is EA's refusal to allow customers to own the product they purchased. By keeping enough of the code running only on its servers, no SimCity purchaser can ever claim they own the game. All they own is a key to the door. EA still owns the house. And once EA decides the house is no longer worth living in, 5 or 10 years down the road, even the key will be worthless.

Filed Under: chris kluew, drm, simcity
Companies: ea

SimCity: The Backlash

from the still-plenty-of-'online-only'-hate-available! dept

It's not as if EA couldn't have seen this coming. Pretty much everything that could go wrong with SimCity's launch has gone wrong. But EA was warned. A Reddit AMA with the SimCity developers made it perfectly clear how unhappy people were with the online-only requirements. SimCity's closed beta had its own issues, mainly server access (not enough of it).

But EA didn't seem too concerned and went ahead with the launch. Shortly thereafter, everything fell apart. The servers couldn't handle the demand, something which would have been less damaging if there had been any sort of offline option. Much of the processing is handled server-side (along with storage of all saved games) and if customers couldn't find a free slot on a server then they just didn't get to enjoy their $60 purchase.

The backlash was immediate. And immense. Polygon (the Verge's gaming site) lowered its original 9.5 rating to 8.0 because of the online issues. Giant Bomb gave it a rather low 3 out of 5, largely due to the fact that EA made a single player game multiplayer-only to justify its online-only DRM/"social" features. Reviewer Jonathan Cresswell handed in quite possibly the most succinct (but most telling) review of all.

Elsewhere, paying customers have expressed their displeasure. Metacritic's critic score sits at 82. The user score? 1.8. Things are nearly as bad at Amazon, where SimCity currently holds a 1.5 star rating. (The digital version is faring even worse - 1.0.) In a rather unprecedented move, Amazon has pulled the PC Download version completely, citing EA's server issues. When will it be back? Amazon says: "We don't know when or if this item will be available again."

Other game retailers have pounced on the opportunity provided by EA's colossal blunder. GOG tweaked EA with a tweet pointing out that DRM-free SimCity 2000 doesn't require an internet connection (and is only $5.99), resulting in a sales bump that has sent SimCity 2000 to #3 on the "Top Sellers" chart. Another Redditor suggested Steam follow suit and kick off an "offline-capable city sim sale," featuring non-online-only city sims with new deals arriving each day "until SimCity is playable."

EA, for its part, is working hard to add capacity, but much of the effort seems a bit too late. The damage has already been done, and EA has destroyed a lot of gamer goodwill, something it really doesn't have in excess. As part of the effort to extinguish these self-inflicted fires, EA is now shutting off "non-essential features" to ease the server load. One of the first to go is "cheetah speed," the fastest simulation setting. This may do exactly what EA hopes it does (free up servers), but it is going to piss off even more customers, as Kyle Orland at Ars Technica points out.

Presumably this is to give the servers more time to process the thousands of simultaneous city simulations that are all feeding into its global and regional networks. In any case, this is a core piece of the gameplay that's now being hampered by EA's continuing server problems; in my 16 or so hours playing the game, I'd estimate 15 or so have been spent running at Cheetah. Slowing things down, even temporarily, is likely to impact a whole lot of players negatively.

Whether or not this backlash/implosion will hurt EA in the long run remains to be seen. It has made no secret of the fact that it wants all of its games to eventually have some sort of "online component," if for no other reason than to (slightly) impede piracy and eliminate second-hand game sales. The odds are that EA will continue to push the online requirement, passing the costs of any outages along to the customers in the form of useless purchases and higher game prices.

Some gamers are attempting to push back. A petition has been started at change.org requesting EA remove "online only" requirements from SimCity (most likely impossible, but...) and future games. It's well on its way to hitting 25,000 signatures in less than 24 hours (and should be well past that by the time this hits the front page), which should give EA some idea how many people are displeased with the SimCity debacle.

It's not completely unheard of for AAA developers to reverse course on onerous DRM (Ubisoft, for one), but EA didn't become one of the most hated companies in America by catering to the whims of its customers. If nothing else, gamers can take heart in the fact that other developers will view this as a cautionary tale, rather than a blueprint for success.

Now, if you're still waiting for an open server slot, why don't you kill a little time with the included Solitaire game? (Image by Redditor PainLing)

Filed Under: backlash, drm, failures, simcity
Companies: ea

Launch Day Punishment: SimCity's Online-Only DRM Locking Purchasers Out Of Servers, Purchases

from the look-at-all-these-pirates-it's-hurting! dept

A few months ago, the SimCity devs stopped by Reddit for an AMA and found themselves fielding several questions about EA's plans to release the game with an "always online" requirement. Requiring an internet connection to play a game, even in single-player mode, has been utilized by more than one company, often with disastrous results. Still, game companies continue to craft software with this requirement, mostly for anti-piracy reasons, although they often play up the "social" aspects as a sort of (completely transparent) smokescreen.

As was pointed out by several Redditors during the AMA, the online requirement was ridiculous and seriously inhibited playability. For one, no one's internet connection is perfectly reliable. Secondly, SimCity was going further than most games, allowing only server-side saves, meaning that players could easily lose progress if their connections dropped.

Six weeks later, a different Redditor signed up for SimCity's closed beta. Even in this limited release, servers were swamped and EA's infrastructure couldn't handle the traffic, something that didn't bode well for the massive amount of players looking forward to playing the full version when it finally launched. The Redditor pointed this out to EA in a lengthy, well-worded forum post that cited previous issues with other online-only game launches that had gone horribly.

This brings us up to date and, now, SimCity has finally been released. One eager SimCity fan (and Redditor), who pre-ordered the game. thought he'd put a little playtime in before bed, and ran head on into this dialog box:

So, the reality is even worse than previously indicated. Not only are your saved games server-side only and an internet connection required to simply fire up the game, but every game is "multiplayer," whether you're interested in playing socially or not, and every game requires an open server slot.

As the Redditor points out, this simply isn't an acceptable situation:

I figured from everything I'd read that the always-on part of the game simply required an internet connection, not a slot on a server like I'm about to PvP or something. I'd be more understanding if I could just play my private region by myself like I intended.

While many people were aware of the online-only requirement, this aspect of the game seems to have been completely underplayed. Why should a paying customer be forced to wait in line for an open server slot? This is a much more onerous requirement than simply requiring an online connection to verify software authenticity. Sure, it's meant to be a social game where people can visit the cities of others, but there should be some option for those wanting to play a "private" game.

EA had to have some idea of how much its servers were going be hammered after the issues it experienced during the closed beta. No one's expecting launch day to go flawlessly, but if you're going to require an internet connection that's reliant on open slots on regional servers, you are going to make paying customers very angry. Many of the people experiencing these problems paid for this game weeks or months ago and are having their loyalty rewarded with half-hour waits to spin the wheel on possibly accessing an open slot.

Not only are paying customers being locked out of playing the game they purchased, but other purchasers are still waiting for their downloads to complete or have their purchases authenticated and unlocked. The authentication servers are being hammered so badly that, according to TotalBiscuit's "review" video, people with pre-orders are purchasing second copies because these new purchases are unlocking immediately, while authentification of their pre-ordered copies is still seriously delayed.

Now, some people may ask, after viewing this dialog box, "Why not just play on another server with more open slots?" Well, therein lies another piece of bad news for SimCity players. Should you have actually managed to get online and start a city, you'll be exceedingly disappointed (and possibly homicidal) to discover that saved games DO NOT transfer between servers.

This all adds up to another spectacular DRM failure. When discussing piracy, game companies like to point out that a majority of their sales occur shortly after release, making these first few weeks critical to the success of the title. This critical sales period is used to justify DRM measures because, while every piece of software will eventually be cracked, anything that delays this inevitability results in a few more sales.

Sadly though, this same crucial sales period is when EA will be punishing its paying customers the most. By refusing to allow single players to start private, unconnected games (in case of a lost or unavailable connection), it's now racing around putting out server fires. Using the launch day traffic surge as an excuse for unplayable/unauthenticated purchases is not acceptable. EA knew the game would be popular. It even had advance warning thanks to the large number of pre-orders. But it's kind of hard to teach a company a lesson about DRM hurting paying customers when it already has their money.

For EA, this works out nearly perfectly. Sure, it's probably not evil enough to want players locked out for hours on end, but it probably considers these "hiccups" a small price to pay to keep piracy to a (temporary) minimum. Of course, considering someone else (the customer) is actually paying that price, it's really not sacrificing anything at all.

Filed Under: drm, online, servers, simcity
Companies: ea

Redditor Points Out The Flaws In SimCity's Online-Only DRM, Gets Banned By EA For His Troubles [UPDATED]

from the well,-that's-ONE-way-to-handle-a-legitimate-complaint dept

UPDATE:

According to EA's representatives, this ban was the unfortunate result of a gitch in their system which banned several members who had opted out of receiving email from EA. Full response posted below:

Hi Puppier,

I made a post in reply on both imgur and your reddit post, but I just wanted you to know that we've lifted your ban on AHQ. As you know, the system is sending out a lot of emails and it looks like you opted out of receiving mails from us, which for some reason is banning users. There's a few posts on it, for example here http://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Problems/Problem-with-Answer-HQ-banned-because-I-tried-to-stop-getting/m-p/419214/highlight/true#M1430. It's not the biggest thread, but it's the first I could get to.

The team is working to fix the bug, but in the interim I actually have one member sitting scanning our logs for anyone that opts out, so we can unban them as quickly as possible.

Apologies again - as you mentioned. There's a lot of similar feedback to yours that hasn't been removed from the forums and the authors banned.

Feel free to give me a shout with any other feedback you have. I'll personally make sure it gets to the right people to make up for the annoyance.

Cheers,
Chris.

 

Electronic Arts makes some very popular games and some very respected games, but for the past few years, it's been finding itself at the top of Consumerist's annual "Worst Company in America" list. And for good reason.

A few weeks back, we discussed EA's upcoming SimCity game, which is going to be crippled by an always-on DRM scheme masquerading as online multiplayer. Some unsuspecting SimCity developers fired up an AMA (Ask Me Anything), only to find themselves trying in vain to defend a system that maintains your save state online, rather than locally. In addition to "stopping" piracy, this "feature" helps "extend gameplay" by forcing you to redo your moves should sunspots or whatever occur. The Redditors, needless to say, ate them alive and sent their remains back with a message for their bosses: drop the DRM or you won't be seeing our money.

EA, of course, cares not for little things like angry potential customers or, for that matter, being a company people trust and respect. For every step forward, it has taken giant leaps backwards. Just recently, it held a closed beta to do some last-minute bug testing on the new SimCity. All well and good, except that it threatened to ban users from all EA games should they fail to report a bug.

“It is understood and agreed that, as part of your participation in the Beta Program, it is your responsibility to report all known bugs, abuse of ‘bugs’, ‘undocumented features’ or other defects and problems related to the Game and Beta Software to EA as soon as they are found (‘Bugs’). If you know about a Bug or have heard about a Bug and fail to report the Bug to EA, we reserve the right to treat you no differently from someone who abuses the Bug. You acknowledge that EA reserve the right to lock anyone caught abusing a Bug out of all EA products.”

This went over about as well as any banhammer reliant on proving a negative -- the uproar began moments thereafter, leading EA to walk back this threat within 24 hours. EA released this incredulous, self-serving statement that basically said it was shocked (shocked!) that anyone would suggest it would perma-ban its potential customers.

“We have never taken away access to a player’s games for not reporting a bug, and quite simply it’s not something we would ever do… The clause in the EA Beta Agreement for the SimCity beta was intended to prohibit players from using known exploits to their advantage. However, the language as included is too broad. We are now updating the Beta Agreement to remove this point.”

Uh-huh. Nothing you would ever do now that you've been caught.

But EA's not done wielding the banhammer, as one Redditor attempting to login to the beta discovered over the weekend. After waiting over three hours for the software to authenticate, he posted a very valid, very tame and very constructive bit of criticism to their forums. (Original post via Google cache here.)

Back during the Steam Summer Sale, Ubisoft's always-online DRM servers encounter countless errors the inhibited people from playing the game (Story). This is one of several issues game publishers have suffered after having always-online DRM (other than the general player irritation). Although it is annoying that we have to have multiplayer and be online for a single-player game, technical issues also arise, because servers will, inevitably go down at some point.

Frankly, I wouldn't mind being always online if it weren't for all the technical complications, I have purchased the game and as long as I can play it, I'm good. But that is not the case. Instead we wait through countless errors and server delays in order to play the game. If these kind of issues exist during a closed beta, imagine the delays during the actual launch and the days after. Blizzard suffered the same fate after the launch of a Diablo 3 patch (Story).

The repercussions of this? Bad ratings. Although Diablo 3 received generally favorable critic scores, the players rated it at only 3.8/10 (Source). Although you will of course, have buyers, there is always someone dedicated enough to play a game, no matter the costs, bad ratings will turn away even the most dedicated players. And if the issues seen in the closed Beta servers (I've been waiting 45 minutes to log in already and others have been waiting much longer) remain during the official launch, the ratings will undoubtedly suffer. Although I have always been a huge SimCity fan, I am beginning to question whether I will buy this game, and as a result these ratings will decide whether myself and many others will spend our money on SimCity.

As I said, I would be able to tolerate SimCity's always-online DRM if it worked. But from the way it looks right now, it doesn't. If you are not willing to pour enough money into getting large amounts of log in and authentication servers, please remove the always online or add a way for us to play offline in only-offline cities. Other wise, you will turn away large groups of buyers and also large amounts of money.

Although you are trying to prevent piracy, which is something I am firmly am against (piracy), you have caught normal and legal players in the crossfire. The easiest (and best) way to prevent piracy is make a better game. If you make the game accessible and easier to play, you will attract more people into purchasing it. If you don't, you will turn away players and give people "reasons" to pirate your games. I am willing to spend money on SimCity if it is good, many others feel the same way. Don't ruin our dedication by putting us in the crossfire of your "war on piracy".

If you get your authentications servers not simply adequate, but also above and beyond what is necessary, more and more players will buy and enjoy your game. However you must also weigh the benefits. Even if you make a small amount of extra money by instituting an always-online policy, you will have to keep spending money to keep these authentication servers up. This may, in the long run, negate the amount of money you gained from the policy. So make sure you are ready to have servers and keep servers, otherwise you will be in for a lot of trouble.

Thank you,
Puppier

To most people, this would seem like a valid complaint that makes several good points. One, sacrificing your customer base on the altar of piracy prevention seldom makes sense, especially considering the pirated version will be free of all the issues plaguing the paying players. Two, if you can't balance server loads on a closed beta, how on earth are you planning to handle launch day? Considering SimCity will be online only, you'd think EA would have its server issues at a minimum. Paying customers aren't going to be very happy with a $50-60 piece of software that does nothing more than attempt to authenticate for hours on end. All in all, a thoughtful post that highlights what exactly is wrong with the DRM EA has built into the software.

Here's EA's reply. No email. No answer in the forums. Just this.
 

(In case you can't read the fine print, it says "We're sorry, but you have been banned from using this site.")

If EA's wondering how it could have outmaneuvered Bank of America in a race to the bottom, reputation-wise, it needs look no further than this. When an entertainment company is chosen by 64% of 250,000 voters as being worse than an entity that doubled its customers' interest rates for no apparent reason and allegedly cost taxpayers more than $1 billion when it sold toxic mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, there's a serious flaw in that company's relationship with its customers.

Callous actions like this only serve to further cement EA's reputation as one of the worst companies in America. Legitimate complaints should never result in banning. Even if EA isn't interested in hearing the downside of its "always-on" DRM, it should at least have the broad shoulders to take the criticism without behaving like thin-skinned thug.

Filed Under: bans, beta, criticism, drm, reviews, simcity, video games
Companies: ea