We're talking about the new Sim City, how EA wants us to be always online DRM (Digital Rights Management) for a singleplayer game, it's absurd!
DRM (Digital Rights Management)
Quick info about DRM and the Always Online part in games:
"Many mainstream publishers continued to rely on online-based DRM throughout the later half of 2008 and early 2009, including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Valve, and Atari, The Sims 3 being a notable exception in the case of Electronic Arts. Ubisoft broke with the tendency to use online DRM in late 2008 with the release of Prince of Persia as an experiment to "see how truthful people really are" regarding the claim that DRM was inciting people to use pirated copies. Although Ubisoft has not commented on the results of the "experiment", Tweakguides noted that two torrents on Mininova had over 23,000 people downloading the game within 24 hours of its release.
Ubisoft formally announced a return to online authentication on 9 February 2010 through its Uplay online gaming platform, starting with Silent Hunter 5, The Settlers 7, and Assassin's Creed II. Silent Hunter 5 was first reported to have been compromised within 24 hours of release, but users of the cracked version soon found out that only early parts of the game were playable. The Uplay system works by having the installed game on the local PCs incomplete and then continuously downloading parts of the game-code from Ubisoft's servers as the game progresses. It was only more than a month after the PC release in the first week of April that software was released that could bypass Ubisoft's DRM in Assassin's Creed II, demonstrating its strength. The software did this by emulating a Ubisoft server for the game. Later that month, a real crack was released that was able to remove the connection requirement altogether.
In early March 2010, Uplay servers suffered a period of inaccessibility due to a large scale DDoS attack, causing around 5% of game owners to become locked out of playing their game. The company later credited owners of the affected games with a free download, and there has been no further downtime.
Other developers, such as Blizzard Entertainment are also shifting to a strategy where most of the game logic is on the "side" or taken care of by the servers of the game maker. Blizzard uses this for its game Diablo III, citing "a need for an always-on connection" as a "piracy deterrant" and Electronic Arts also is intending to use this same strategy with their reboot of SimCity." - Wikipedia
Always online is one thing.
But having a Queue system on a singleplayer game? C'mon, this is getting pathetic.
Sure it's "multiplayer" in some way where you have a city next to different players and you can sell/buy from them or even send out help when their city is in need.
But you should have an option to have an offline city in case of horrible accident as losing the Internet for a day or a week! It have happened and it happened to me, I lost the Internet for a week and I had almost NOTHING to play thanks to the "Always online" policy the games usually have now.
(I wonder how players will handle it when they are playing a SINGLEPLAYER game and they start lagging because of the masses of players logging in to the servers.)
Back to the point; having a queue system for a singleplayer and a "touch" of "multiplayer" is getting stupid, thanks for the information Totalbiscuit (YOUTUBE VIDEO), I was THIS close to buy the game. On the bloody release day the servers couldn't even handle the players who have bought the Digital Deluxe edition and waiting for the "pre-order early release".
I even felt it on Origin how it lagged like hell on the Sim City release date.
Yes, yes, I know. Usually the servers crash as hell on the release day, just look at Diablo III, Release of new Expansions for World of Warcraft etc.
Against piracy.
Apparently the DRM is to "defend" the product from piracy, which then again fails so horribly it's not even funny watching them burn themselves and lose consumers.
We've all heard about PirateBay and the "good" work they do (different opinion, I'll stay neutral on this one!) and how it opens the world for certain people for movies, games, music and other files.
But what really grinds my gear is how narrow-headed-sons-of-..... yes, let's just say EA and others "Always online" gaming companies only thinks about money and how to FORCE the online part on consumers. Haven't they even thought for a second to listen to the customers? Maybe it is overpriced, maybe the Always online part is bad for a singleplayer game, maybe shooting the customer down with DLC's aint the best way?
This is also why I got my thumbs up for Valve, they have offline mode (but a shame, not always working as intended, but it's there) so you can play your games.... offline!
I get it that certain games are hard to play offline if they are almost purely Multiplayer, like Team Fortress 2, but at least they try!
Not only that but valve tries to make a way for you to sell your "old" digital games you have on steam to friends or to a random person, which makes a lot of big gaming companies boil of anger, because they want more money.
I could go on but I fear I will go out of context and just "personalize" my attacks directly to EA games and before I know it, I got a black van sitting outside of my house.
So this ends this Month's Rant, Maybe it will be more than just 1 a month, who knows what else will piss me off. Oh right, who am I kidding? EA will... and the DEAD SPACE 3 DLC'S THAT ARE UTTER USELESS!
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