Discussion about Always-On Connection to Origin

[Mark Waybill 242]

I want to be able to play it, particularly if it's one I've spent $60 on.

Plus ten bucks per day for the internet bandwidth

[jdenm8 362]

I think this is rather relevant to the recent Social Gaming approach, I recently bought the new Humble Bundle and tried Sword and Sworcery.

Through the entire game, there's a little tab on the side which opens up and is rather disturbing, urging you to "Tweet this".

I was taken rather aback. I may take screenshots from games, but I'm not sending links to people who don't give two craps about my gaming experiences and I don't give two craps about Joe Bloe on the other side of the world doing the exact same thing.

As for the download, you'll be downloading a oh... let's say 20MB Region preview (Conservative guess), then a 5MB city tile. All the time, you'll be sending updates back to the server. They'll be about 50kb a piece. It will be sending HUNDREDS of those in an hour, basically every time you make a single change and it'll balloon out with larger changes. This'll be a bandwidth hog, I can see it now. Every game that does this is. A whole host of Steam games do it, but it isn't compulsory and they certainly don't send every little change. They don't go "Oh, he's running across a table, I've got to update these 52 objects on the table and send their positions to the server every second or so in the event the game crashes". SimCity will go "Oh, new Residential zones, I've got to update those on the server!". And if you're offline it'll just go "Oh, new Residential Zones, I'll store those and them send them all through as a massive 50MB file when he goes back online instead of uploading the 5MB City File".

From my experience, Always-Online systems suck. There's no way around it. The Developers are taking a problem that's exclusively theirs and making us deal with it. I am not going to buy the new game at this stage and I do not expect my attitudes to change.

I watched Diablo 3 from the sidelines and a lot of people where I live still have incredible lag and disconnection issues. Yeah it's been fixed for countries like the US, but that doesn't mean it's playable in Australia. I fully expect the same things to happen with SimCity and I do not expect EA to deal with it in a timely manner, EA doesn't deal with anything in a timely manner.

  Edited June 4, 2012 by jdenm8  

[Linoa06 1,374]

The internet being a requirement thing is sort of a let down but is it really such a horrible thing? Most PC users are constantly connected to the internet. There's WiFi everywhere from coffee shops to air and rail terminals to even sometimes the planes and trains themselves. It'll be an inconvenience sometimes yes, but very often it won't be.

Exact thoughts from someone who is, obviously, always connected to the internet. There are people who aren't always connected to the Internet. Really. Not everyone has money flushing and gushing, there are people with lower connections and/or whom require to logoff at some point.

No offline, no purchase. And call me old and conservative but I do not see the point in this "social gaming". Game with friends! Play with friends! Shop with friends! Poo with friends! I like my own little piece of lone gaming too much. (And honestly what do I care that I am 548456518441st best Simcity player???)

  Edited June 4, 2012 by Linoa06  

[Jazzmaster 716]

The internet being a requirement thing is sort of a let down but is it really such a horrible thing? Most PC users are constantly connected to the internet. There's WiFi everywhere from coffee shops to air and rail terminals to even sometimes the planes and trains themselves. It'll be an inconvenience sometimes yes, but very often it won't be.

Exact thoughts from someone who is, obviously, always connected to the internet. There are people who aren't always connected to the Internet. Really. Not everyone has money flushing and gushing, there are people with lower connections and/or whom require to logoff at some point.

No offline, no purchase. And call me old and conservative but I do not see the point in this "social gaming". Game with friends! Play with friends! Shop with friends! Poo with friends! I like my own little piece of lone gaming too much. (And honestly what do I care that I am 548456518441st best Simcity player???)

Yeah, I am always connected to the internet, so are millions upon millions. I understand that you feel that this sort of thing is excluding people (it is), but I think that the ultimate bottom line is anyone who can afford a computer can likely afford internet. Also, we don't even know the extent to what the internet requirement means for us, or if there'll be a patch or mod to make an offline mode possible. EA have said that losing connection during the game does not mean you cannot keep playing.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Money is tight for my family these days so I won't buy that game without a discount.

[Shark7 118]

The internet being a requirement thing is sort of a let down but is it really such a horrible thing? Most PC users are constantly connected to the internet. There's WiFi everywhere from coffee shops to air and rail terminals to even sometimes the planes and trains themselves. It'll be an inconvenience sometimes yes, but very often it won't be.

Exact thoughts from someone who is, obviously, always connected to the internet. There are people who aren't always connected to the Internet. Really. Not everyone has money flushing and gushing, there are people with lower connections and/or whom require to logoff at some point.

No offline, no purchase. And call me old and conservative but I do not see the point in this "social gaming". Game with friends! Play with friends! Shop with friends! Poo with friends! I like my own little piece of lone gaming too much. (And honestly what do I care that I am 548456518441st best Simcity player???)

Yeah, I am always connected to the internet, so are millions upon millions. I understand that you feel that this sort of thing is excluding people (it is), but I think that the ultimate bottom line is anyone who can afford a computer can likely afford internet. Also, we don't even know the extent to what the Internet requirement means for us, or if there'll be a patch or mod to make an offline mode possible. EA have said that losing connection during the game does not mean you cannot keep playing.

Some ISPs are no longer offering 'unliimited' Internet though. Some do to a point...IE you get so much bandwidth 'free' but after that you get charged per hour of usage, etc.

And even those of us that do have unlimited don't necessarily want to be connected 24/7...I know I don't. I may be old fashioned but sometimes I even turn my computer off...GASP!

And perhaps its because I'm older than a lot of folks here, but I can remember a time before Internet...even before home computers...and some how the world got by just fine.

[Mark Waybill 242]

I have Telstra broadband which is prepaid. Kist checking my email takes up ten dollars a week. So I will probably only be able to play this game once every year or so, which means my cities will be in real time...

[Jazzmaster 716]

Some ISPs are no longer offering 'unliimited' Internet though. Some do to a point...IE you get so much bandwidth 'free' but after that you get charged per hour of usage, etc.

And even those of us that do have unlimited don't necessarily want to be connected 24/7...I know I don't. I may be old fashioned but sometimes I even turn my computer off...GASP!

And perhaps its because I'm older than a lot of folks here, but I can remember a time before Internet...even before home computers...and some how the world got by just fine.

Yes, and there was a time when automobiles didn't exist. That means we shouldn't build roads and highways, because not everybody can afford to or needs/wants to use a car.

I get it, it's disappointing. But there's not much we can do about it.

[cirugo 1,889]

Some ISPs are no longer offering 'unliimited' Internet though. Some do to a point...IE you get so much bandwidth 'free' but after that you get charged per hour of usage, etc.

And even those of us that do have unlimited don't necessarily want to be connected 24/7...I know I don't. I may be old fashioned but sometimes I even turn my computer off...GASP!

And perhaps its because I'm older than a lot of folks here, but I can remember a time before Internet...even before home computers...and some how the world got by just fine.

Yes, and there was a time when automobiles didn't exist. That means we shouldn't build roads and highways, because not everybody can afford to or needs/wants to use a car.

I get it, it's disappointing. But there's not much we can do about it.

Wrong. We can tell them we don't like it and then not buy it.

[Jazzmaster 716]

Some ISPs are no longer offering 'unliimited' Internet though. Some do to a point...IE you get so much bandwidth 'free' but after that you get charged per hour of usage, etc.

And even those of us that do have unlimited don't necessarily want to be connected 24/7...I know I don't. I may be old fashioned but sometimes I even turn my computer off...GASP!

And perhaps its because I'm older than a lot of folks here, but I can remember a time before Internet...even before home computers...and some how the world got by just fine.

Yes, and there was a time when automobiles didn't exist. That means we shouldn't build roads and highways, because not everybody can afford to or needs/wants to use a car.

I get it, it's disappointing. But there's not much we can do about it.

Wrong. We can tell them we don't like it and then not buy it.

Fair, only I like it and I'm probably going to buy it.

However, you are correct in your statement.

  Edited June 5, 2012 by The Jazzmaster  

[croxis 150]

How much data would one building take? Lets assume a building with 5 buckets: money, people, food, education, and health

160 bit Let's assume we're using TCP so the header is 160 bits.

16 bit We will use an unsigned 16 bit int to represent building type (so over 64,000 possible building types)

32 bit float for the x position

32 bit float for the y position

32 bit float for rotation (could be shrunk)

5 x 8 bit unsigned for bucket type (40 bits, 256 types of resources possible)

5 x 16 unisgned bucket contents (80 bits, buckets can be up to 65,000)

= 392 bits for a building packet, 232 bits of game data

that is 49 bytes, let us round up to 50 for good measure

If your city has 10,000 buildings that is 500,000 bytes or....

500 KB

0.5 MB

Now this is very poor as we can add more buildings into one packet. We can fit 50 buildings just fine in one packet.

1470 bytes for 50 buildings.

10,000 buildings in 200 packets is 294,000 bytes

or 294 KB

or 0.3 MB

[jdenm8 362]

Yes, and there was a time when automobiles didn't exist. That means we shouldn't build roads and highways, because not everybody can afford to or needs/wants to use a car.

I get it, it's disappointing. But there's not much we can do about it.

I know here in Australia, you can buy a laptop now for $350, yet costs for internet decent enough for gaming will mean that in four months you will have paid more for internet than you did for your laptop.

Your car analogy doesn't quite work.

A more appropriate analogy will be a Toll Road. Why use a Toll Road for fun driving (Always-Online gaming) when you have brilliantly fun driving roads right near you (Local games).

Not to mention that that Toll Road only exists in certain places at certain times and you can only drive 100mi at 60mph on it a month before you're either slowed down to 5mph or you're made to pay $5.95 a mile to use it.

  Edited June 5, 2012 by jdenm8  

[site400 12]

You guys might find this article on Massively interesting as it directly relates to the games-as-a-service push that has been happening recently. And, basically, that is what a constant connection to Origin means: You don't own the game, you are paying for a service. It makes perfect sense for MMO's, which I play religiously, but not for single player games with a small online component.

Short excerpt:

Once upon a time, game developers made games, publishers published them, and consumers bought them for a one-off fee.

Some time ago, it was also fairly common for games to ship with functionality that greatly extended their useful lives. Things like the content creation toolsets in the Neverwinter Nights and Elder Scrolls series and the clan server and modding functionality in many FPS games added years of enjoyment onto those titles for millions of players, usually sans an extra fee beyond the original box cost.

Somewhere along the way, though, game devs and publishers decided that their particular brand of entertainment was worthy of recurring revenue. I guess it's harder to make a game than to produce a feature film, write a best-selling novel, or record a multi-platinum album, maybe?

The advent of digital downloads was thus a godsend to this mindset, and while it brought about certain consumer conveniences in terms of acquiring a game client and syncing it among multiple computers, it also brought about a new way for game-makers to control (and charge for) the ongoing post-purchase experience. This model followed on from MMORPGs, of course, and for games with ongoing server maintenance and pro content creation costs (i.e., MMORPGs), it certainly makes sense.

The problem is that once the greed-is-good types realized that they could wring recurring revenue out of single-player games, it opened the floodgates for gamemakers to start labeling all games as "services" instead of products.

Nowadays, every game out there has some sort of half-assed online component. And it's not because these components benefit the end user in any way (quite the contrary in many cases). It's because game companies have decided to launch an all-out marketing blitz on consumer common sense in order to convince us that paying monthly for Call of Duty isn't the dumbest idea in the history of dumb ideas.

http://massively.joy...r-the-consumer/

[Jazzmaster 716]

Yes, and there was a time when automobiles didn't exist. That means we shouldn't build roads and highways, because not everybody can afford to or needs/wants to use a car.

I get it, it's disappointing. But there's not much we can do about it.

I know here in Australia, you can buy a laptop now for $350, yet costs for internet decent enough for gaming will mean that in four months you will have paid more for internet than you did for your laptop.

Your car analogy doesn't quite work.

A more appropriate analogy will be a Toll Road. Why use a Toll Road for fun driving (Always-Online gaming) when you have brilliantly fun driving roads right near you (Local games).

Not to mention that that Toll Road only exists in certain places at certain times and you can only drive 100mi at 60mph on it a month before you're either slowed down to 5mph or you're made to pay $5.95 a mile to use it.

Can you please define 'decent enough for internet gaming'? And how much does that internet actually cost?

I've never had to spend a fortune on the internet for gaming, and the times I've actually played games online, I've had no problems with lag or otherwise. Perhaps the money I spend on internet here is for some reason less expensive than the money spent in other places/countries and there's something I don't quite understand if that's true.

Lastly, I think the car analogy works fine, because there are probably at least as many cars on the road as there are people with internet access. That doesn't mean everyone obviously, and that doesn't even mean it's fair, either.

But I don't know, it's not something I can easily explain. The online requirement just doesn't particularly bother me, that's all I'm trying to say, and I'm not particularly trying to sound confrontational with anyone who is bothered by it. So pardon me, if I do.

  Edited June 5, 2012 by The Jazzmaster  

[Mark Waybill 242]

My laptop cost me 1500 dollars but that was from a grant, so I didn't actually spend any of my own money for it. This game is setting me back 99 dollars. Monthly internet for checking emails, facebook, and rarely anything more bandwidth intensive, costs me over fifty dollars. So unless this game only transmits essential regional/world data and leaves city data to our client machines, it will be costly. Especially considering the very nature of this game as a play-for-hours type of game.

If Maxis don't want our cities growing in real time then I advise them to allow us to handle the city data on our PCs.

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

Monthly internet for checking emails, facebook, and rarely anything more bandwidth intensive, costs me over fifty dollars.

How many GB do you get for your $50.00?

In New Zealand, for $50.00, we get 100 GB of broadband data per month. Last month we used about 75 GB... and that is lots of Youtube, Minecraft, Xbox online gaming...

[Shark7 118]

Some ISPs are no longer offering 'unliimited' Internet though. Some do to a point...IE you get so much bandwidth 'free' but after that you get charged per hour of usage, etc.

And even those of us that do have unlimited don't necessarily want to be connected 24/7...I know I don't. I may be old fashioned but sometimes I even turn my computer off...GASP!

And perhaps its because I'm older than a lot of folks here, but I can remember a time before Internet...even before home computers...and some how the world got by just fine.

Yes, and there was a time when automobiles didn't exist. That means we shouldn't build roads and highways, because not everybody can afford to or needs/wants to use a car.

I get it, it's disappointing. But there's not much we can do about it.

It's a little more than dissapointing...it will end up costing EA sales. And that is what you can do about it...once their sales drop, they'll get the message.

But I think my point was more like this: For years, we've had games sold without the draconian DRM measures, and yet the game companies didn't collapse due to lack of revenue.

Now let me clarify something. If it were a case where I only had to be online once to register and activate the game, I'd not really have a problem with it. However, if its a case of always on, plus having some some code downloaded to my computer to snoop around just to play, then no I am not interested. It just seems like more and more customers are guilty till proven guilty when it comes to the DRM measures.

[~Dee~ 215]

Monthly internet for checking emails, facebook, and rarely anything more bandwidth intensive, costs me over fifty dollars.

How many GB do you get for your $50.00?

In New Zealand, for $50.00, we get 100 GB of broadband data per month. Last month we used about 75 GB... and that is lots of Youtube, Minecraft, Xbox online gaming...

Are you kidding me, 100 GB for 50 bucks?

I pay $79.90 per month and only get 12GB ... yes, 12GB and it is with Telstra.

I watched a few videos last week and I have already used up over half, I have to be careful for the rest of the month.

So if Sim City is a bandwidth hog, I won't be able to play it as often as I would like.

[cirugo 1,889]

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/sim-city-5/1224978p1.html

"The new SimCity looks amazing, and I'm certainly still looking forward to it, but it comes with at least one major downer. As anyone who's played one knows, one of the simplest pleasures of any SimCity game, dating back to the 1989 original, is the consequence-free "What if?" scenario. The kind where you obliterate your city by triggering an apocalyptic wave of fires, earthquakes, tornadoes, and monster attacks, then time-warp it back to pristine condition by loading a saved game. When I asked Lead Producer Kip Katsaelis if the 2013 SimCity would allow that same pleasure in its Glass Box-powered cities, the answer was a simple, disappointing "No." The online connectivity Maxis has built in means that reloading saved games will be impossible, even when no one else has a city in your region."

Another one of the great "benefits" of forced online...

[Tony Bark 2]

On that note, those of you who can't tolerate EA's Origin and online-only games should tap out early before you get excited about this: Yes, you will have to register an Origin account in order to play, and yes, you must be online at all times while playing in order to start playing. EA has confirmed that you will not be kicked out if your connection is interrupted. Moving on.

Update: Maxis clarifies on some misinformation out there: You can have multiple regions going simultaneously, and multiple cities within those regions. You are not limited to a single city, and you do not have to delete one city to start another.

These two. This honestly does not seem that bad as everyone makes it out to be.

Sources:

Gamespy 1, 2

  Edited June 5, 2012 by Zc456  

[+Guest tickleonthetummy]

http://kotaku.com/5915377/like-diablo-iii-sim-city-will-require-an-online-connection

That's me out then! I won't be buying this or anymore EA games. It's such a shame that they have done this.

Won't be back to this site again...

SimCity Is Online Only, But It Promises Not To Repeat Diablo III’s Mistakes

EA's 2013 revival of SimCity will sport one of the more controvutterlyunzippedersial features of modern PC gaming: an always-online requirement, even in single-player.

Developers of the game confirmed this during a recent demo of the new title for Kotaku.

"This is a mutiplayer game," producer Kip Katserelis at EA development studio Maxis said, explaining the requirement. Yes, they even consider single-player to be multiplayer. "we're constantly tracking what you do… and then feeding that back to players." They're tracking who is polluting the most or who is playing better. They're spawning challenges for players. They're keeping everyone connected.

They're basically, like Blizzard, saying their latest game in a series that used to not require an online connection now will, and they, like Blizzard, are saying that it's fundamental to the way they want this new game played. If a gamer plays offline they would become out of synch with the game's perpetual tracking of the cities that, combined, comprise the sense of this new Sim City as one grand inter-connected world.

Sorry if you were hoping to play this on an airplane without Internet.

Asked an open-ended question about why they'd require online, the developers of the new game won't say the reason that's most commonly suspected for this kind of requirement: piracy. They will, however, provide some solace to those of us who fear that strict online-only requirements will cause our games to blink out if we're trying to play while connected to an Internet signal then tends to drop once in a while. The developers say they are programming this new Sim City to tolerate some undefined amount of "minutes" of offline play in the case of dropped connections-presumably an amount of minutes closer in length to a commercial break than a TV show, though they didn't want to say.

But what of the debacle of the Diablo III launch and the fury of players who couldn't play a game they wanted to play solo because Blizzard had trouble keeping its servers up and error-free?

"We've got experience from Spore and Darkspore," Katserelis said, citing other recent Maxis games. "EA is an on online company. We're definitely watching what's going on at Blizzard, and we're putting in backstops and checks to try to prevent those kind of things from happening."

[Tony Bark 2]

Asked an open-ended question about why they'd require online, the developers of the new game won't say the reason that's most commonly suspected for this kind of requirement: piracy. They will, however, provide some solace to those of us who fear that strict online-only requirements will cause our games to blink out if we're trying to play while connected to an Internet signal then tends to drop once in a while. The developers say they are programming this new Sim City to tolerate some undefined amount of "minutes" of offline play in the case of dropped connections-presumably an amount of minutes closer in length to a commercial break than a TV show, though they didn't want to say.

This information we've been given is still very vague and should be taken with a grain of salt.

  Edited June 5, 2012 by Zc456  

[jdenm8 362]

Can you please define 'decent enough for internet gaming'? And how much does that internet actually cost?

At least 95% uptime and speeds decent enough to play multiplayer games from US servers. I pay $109 a month for cable and I don't get speeds stable enough to play on TF2 or Minecraft servers hosted interstate, let alone to some centrally located US servers. My internet goes down every afternoon during the summer from the hours of 11:00am until 5:00pm for periods ranging from five minutes to an hour.

Several other people can vouch for unplayability when I join a game.

Oh yeah, did I mention that my connection is considered GOOD?

I do know that projects like the NBN are coming, but it's not good enough. It's been confirmed that I won't fall into the coverage area for another three years, likely after EA has shut down the servers. I'll also have a full-time job and a University Degree by then so I'll probably not have the time for it anyway. Lost Sale. I'll go play The Sims 2, NFS: Underground 2, NFS: Most Wanted, DeathSpank and SimCity 4, none of which require an always-online connection or that god awful Origin and I can pick up for $15 from one of my many local retailers who compete for business in a competitive market.

  Edited June 5, 2012 by jdenm8  

[Linoa06 1,374]

Yeah, I am always connected to the internet, so are millions upon millions. I understand that you feel that this sort of thing is excluding people (it is), but I think that the ultimate bottom line is anyone who can afford a computer can likely afford internet.

Sadly, while this may be true in your country doesn't mean it is true in others. I sacrifice a lot to have decent internet, and I am having to cut in other fields - I am sure other people have other needs and those people might not have so much internet. I'm sorry, but not everyone really lives in a world of unicorns and fairies. I wish, though. But it's not how it works.

I do not condone excluding a category of people - the poor kind - on false assumptions that "anyone who can afford a computer can afford internet". It's simply not true, or not obvious. It's cool you don't feel bothered by it (well, I quite hope one day you will have to struggle with cash, not exactly against you of course, but perhaps you'll understand my point of view).

There is another argument against excluding the poor -- beyond the price tag of the game itself. But I won't delve into it, because it could quickly devolve into forbidden topics.

  Edited June 5, 2012 by Linoa06  

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I live in Seattle. Redmond/Bellevue/Seattle is the Silicon Valley of the Northwest (and Fremont/Capital Hill/Downtown Seattle is the San Francisco of the Northwest). We pay about $100 a month for internet and digital TV and service only goes down when a pole is broken or being repaired. My internet connection is pretty fast (except when uploading videos to YouTube). Despite my good internet connection, I am extremely hesitant about Origin.

By the way, South Korea has the best internet in the world. They are also advertising tourism lately...

[Mark Waybill 242]

Monthly internet for checking emails, facebook, and rarely anything more bandwidth intensive, costs me over fifty dollars.

How many GB do you get for your $50.00?

In New Zealand, for $50.00, we get 100 GB of broadband data per month. Last month we used about 75 GB... and that is lots of Youtube, Minecraft, Xbox online gaming...

I pay 50 dollars for 3 GB. That expires after a month. I don't usually have to worry about what to do with excess bandwidth...

I don't know what telcos they have in NZ, or whether they have NBN style infrastructure there, but it sounds like you kiwis are getting a pretty good deal. NBN might be coming to my area soon, but by soon I mean within maybe five-ten years? I have paid my 99 dollars for the pre order copy, I expect to be able to play the thing once its launched...

Mind you, that is more of a gripe against Telstra than Origin or EA so hopefully that wasn't too off topic.

[Jazzmaster 716]

Yeah, I am always connected to the internet, so are millions upon millions. I understand that you feel that this sort of thing is excluding people (it is), but I think that the ultimate bottom line is anyone who can afford a computer can likely afford internet.

Sadly, while this may be true in your country doesn't mean it is true in others. I sacrifice a lot to have decent internet, and I am having to cut in other fields - I am sure other people have other needs and those people might not have so much internet. I'm sorry, but not everyone really lives in a world of unicorns and fairies. I wish, though. But it's not how it works.

I do not condone excluding a category of people - the poor kind - on false assumptions that "anyone who can afford a computer can afford internet". It's simply not true, or not obvious. It's cool you don't feel bothered by it (well, I quite hope one day you will have to struggle with cash, not exactly against you of course, but perhaps you'll understand my point of view).

There is another argument against excluding the poor -- beyond the price tag of the game itself. But I won't delve into it, because it could quickly devolve into forbidden topics.

You wish I struggled with money? I like how you think you have any idea what my living situation is. Oh, wait, I'm sorry, you don't.

Your post also conveniently left out the bit where I said I understand that this sort of thing is excluding others. My entire point was that, in EA's eyes (their bottom line) just about anyone with a computer has internet. Now, that's wrong as you did point out, but I wasn't saying it was right, either.

Can you please define 'decent enough for internet gaming'? And how much does that internet actually cost?

At least 95% uptime and speeds decent enough to play multiplayer games from US servers. I pay $109 a month for cable and I don't get speeds stable enough to play on TF2 or Minecraft servers hosted interstate, let alone to some centrally located US servers. My internet goes down every afternoon during the summer from the hours of 11:00am until 5:00pm for periods ranging from five minutes to an hour.

Several other people can vouch for unplayability when I join a game.

Oh yeah, did I mention that my connection is considered GOOD?

I do know that projects like the NBN are coming, but it's not good enough. It's been confirmed that I won't fall into the coverage area for another three years, likely after EA has shut down the servers. I'll also have a full-time job and a University Degree by then so I'll probably not have the time for it anyway. Lost Sale. I'll go play The Sims 2, NFS: Underground 2, NFS: Most Wanted, DeathSpank and SimCity 4, none of which require an always-online connection or that god awful Origin and I can pick up for $15 from one of my many local retailers who compete for business in a competitive market.

Ah. That's actually pretty ridiculous. I understand, now.

  Edited June 5, 2012 by The Jazzmaster  

[cirugo 1,889]

OK, so we were supposed to be bowled over and wowed at E3 and made to understand how great this required internet connection was going to be...I'm not seeing it.

[logintime 93]

More to the point, what does this mean for modding? I'm assuming that an Always-Online format, tied to their servers and the whole global resource format, virtually prohibits player-created mods from being usable. Am I wrong about that?

[PhantomSoul 3]

You know, I find that most people who whine about DRM are the same people who often counterfeit software. In the old days, in order to get an album, movie, or software, we had to get authentic media, be it a record, tape, CD, or DVD, from a licensed distributor, and having that authentic object basically demonstrated that we were licensed to use that product, and the license would pretty much last the life of that authentic product - if your record or DVD got damaged, you had to go out and buy another one.

Now that the world has gone digital, where anything can be copied and distributed pretty much effortlessly by anyone, the concept of authentic media - as well as that license to keep using things for the life of that authentic media - no longer exists. Instead, software has to be checked, at least periodically, for 1) being licensed and 2) verifying the system used to check for licensing hasn't been defeated, which itself is digital and subject to tampering as so. DRM is just one way, to leave a receipt for a piece of software for a specific computer that has been verified so that it doesn't have to be actively checked as often.

Let's face it - gamers are the most notorious group of software users for counterfeiting software. I'm not accusing anyone here specifically, but the stats clearly show that you're out there. Maybe that's why gamers are so loudly opposed to DRM. And, yeah, you're free to not buy the game if that's not cool with you, but let's also not forget that, at the end of the day, a company like EA is far more likely to just not bother with future projects if DRM is rejected than distribute something that can easily be copied and redistributed with basic operating system commands. The days of owning a program or game for the life of a disc that you got it on are over, largely because we don't get those discs anymore.

As for mods, let's not forget that the community content for SimCity 4 is almost a decade in the making, none of which was available at its launch either. As with any software (ask any of your programmer friends), mod-ability is never a high-priority launch feature, and is almost always retroactively introduced, as it was with SimCity 4. Once again, you're free to not buy the game if that's not cool with you, but don't expect future game projects - by any commercial company - to be much different.

As for me, I'm all in. This looks like an excellent game, and I can't wait to get my hands on it. It is kind of sad, however, that with DRM concerns, the lifespan of the game is now determined by EA, namely how long they run their authentication service for, rather than by how well I take care of my disc, but that's just a side effect of this digital internet world that we've created and something we're all going to have to learn to live with, because it ain't going away anytime soon.