You’d think by now that anybody who works for EA would be braced for somebody to bring up DRM software. But, apparently not, as the Maxis guys quickly discovered.
A Reddit AMA with the SimCity team quickly turned into about what you’d expect when this question came up:
What will happen to the game if I am playing and lose my internet connection – will the game still be playable and update the servers when my internet connection resumes or will it pause and wait for the connection?
The answer?
“I actually just ran over to our online engineering team to get the latest info. We do handle “short” internet outages gracefully. Meaning, if your internet goes out while you’re logged in and playing the game, we can can recover gracefully. You shouldn’t notice a thing. “Short” is still being defined.”
As you may have guessed from the header images, that went over almost as well as you’d expect. Reddit being Reddit, there’s a nice big pile of anti-DRM comments for you to browse through, ranging from the polite to the… expected.
It’s a bit unfortunate that Maxis is the one stuck dealing with this crap. Most game developers don’t care, particularly, about DRM. It’s not like SimCity isn’t going to sell a huge pile of copies anyway, and as Redditors note, most of them understand the need for DRM. Just not the need for DRM that’s always connected to the Internet.
For our part, we’ve taken away two important lessons here. One is to never go into an AMA without being prepared for it to go wrong.
The second is that there aren’t nearly enough photos of angry mobs with torches on the Internet.
Thanks to our very own Surly Badger for the tip!
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Hmmm, you’d think people on Reddit wouldn’t be so Internet phobic.
They just only want the Internet on their terms, but the Internet wants to be with them always. What’s wrong, Reddit? Why won’t you accept the Internet?
The ol’ fear of commitment.
Hm…so the internet’s full of petulant, over-entitled kiddies looking for an excuse to justify software piracy? Who would have thought?
It’s hard to believe, I know.
Then again, let’s not forget the great Sony PSN outage of 2011. I would have been a lot more pissed about it if I couldn’t have played any games at all during the weeks of outage.
It’s pretty sad that I didn’t even notice for, like, two months that that was going on. It didn’t affect Netflix streaming and I don’t do multiplayer, so…
Understood, but now imagine that because of DRM, you couldn’t play any games at all … that’s why the whole “must be connected to the Internet” concept seems like a giant clusterf*ck just waiting to happen … especially since “hacker collectives” seem to enjoy shutting down sites/companies they see as infringing upon internet freedom … like DRM loading companies.
Not to mention that I’m just an old fuddy-duddy who believes that when I buy something, it’s MINE.
And also don’t forget what happens when the publisher goes under. So long, ability to play those games!
Did Rampart come up at all?
Not even Woody’s prom date could’ve saved those poor Maxxis guys.
I’ve really never understood DRM rage…
Three causes
(a) Can’t play a game that was purchased legally due to DRM messing with the computer’s CD/DVD/BD drive
(b) Can’t play a game that was purchased legally due to DRM because the game requires internet connection
(c) Pirates will find a way to circumvent all DRM eventually, generally leading to more intrusive DRM that hurts customers that purchase legally
Imagine this then leave … would you buy a car that required a constant satellite uplink to OnStar in order to turn on? Would you buy a car if that company insisted on taking a cut of your eventual resale of that car? Of course not, so why the hell do you think you should allow that with media purchases?
packman_jon’s first point is a fact. DRM, most likely EA’s, broke my CD drive. This and other reasons are why I refuse to get Origin. It’s unfortunate because there are many games I want to play on there. And I will not pirate.
My biggest issue is the always being connected. Hell you could have a peak inside my porn folder and everything else on my computer but don’t force me to have internet connection at all times. Sometimes I don’t want to play with my friends or actually want to stream in HD and not having it buffer every 5 seconds because SimCity is taking up too much bandwidth.
I can understand the need to prevent illegal versions of the game but to go to such an extent drives away PC gamers. Hell I bought certain games on 360 that I would normally buy on PC because of the DRM issues *Assassin’s Creed cough cough*. The one issue that I still don’t see brought up enough is the whole you are buying a license not the actual game itself and thus allows for companies to pull this shit.
Always on DRM for games that don’t need or benefit from it almost always results in a poor customer experience. The Assassin’s Creed games, Diablo 3, and some other random big name Ubisoft titles are the ones I recall seeing the most outrage over.
My favorite example of Anti-Piracy protection gone wrong was when we would LAN up for Red Alert 2 and about 5 minutes into the game everyone’s base would fucking explode. Even though everyone was using disc based copies. Something in the netcode thought there was a pirate version and everybody would have to reinstall and repatch because we had no clue what was causing it and there wasn’t a solution.
DRM hasn’t ever, and won’t ever, fix anything.
The “Always On” DRM sucks, there’s no two ways about it. I understand it’s easier to just dismiss this as “whiners on the internet” and much harder to have an actual conversation about access vs piracy vs drm. So I’m gonna say this really slowly: D R M. Creates. Pirates.
When I have purchased a game, I own it. It belongs to me, I didnt sign a lease, or agree to rental terms and being treated like I did is something none of us should stand for. When the developers themselves have no explanation for why you cant play a single player game with out being constantly connected to the internet, you know some heinous fuckery is afoot. This is how consumer’s freedoms being forced into a death-match with corporate synergistic bullshit. Here, have some quotes from Chief Twat-waffle himself:
“…games are to be thought of as services now” and “need to have a social experience where you’re part of a large community.” Electronic Arts’ games label boss Frank Gibeau has revealed that he’s not let any solely single-player games pass through his gates, ensuring that absolutely every single title the company publishes has an online component.
“We are very proud of the way EA evolved with consumers,” he said. “I have not green lit one game to be developed as a singleplayer experience. Today, all of our games include online applications and digital services that make them live 24/7/365.”
[www.destructoid.com]
Holy shit.
The complete Diablo 3 debacle was well chronicled here on Uproxx. This isn’t about piracy so much as it’s about these corporations doing anything and everything in their power to undermine consumer rights such as first sale doctrine. This is no different from Amazon being able to remotely wipe e-books that you have legally bought and purchased.
haha. “Chief Twat-waffle”
Completely agree with you. After D3 I won’t be purchasing another always online DRM game again. Server updates, Error 37, lag on my 15 Mbps internet connection. No thanks, also great strategy by EA doing multiplayer in every game…because games like Skyrim sell so poorly.
/dismissive wank
Australia gets it…
[www.techdirt.com]
My feelings about D3 are well-documented. Can’t wait for the inevitable console mess. That’ll be a hoot.
It would be nice if someone could come up with a one-time, foolproof way to absolutely prove that you bought a game. Maybe some sort of cooperative ID confirmation program between publishers and retailers, where the DRM would ask for your name and the retailer you bought the game from, instantly check a list provided by that retailer, and disable the DRM forever. But then, relying on retailers to maintain those lists without missing a few names, or without significant delays, would be too risky. There’s probably no perfect solution.