ea SimCity requires internet connection to play, will be sold outside of Origi

[djdanster]

The game itself 100% will not cost that much. Stop spreading crap.

Excuse me? Check your facts before telling me to "stop spreading crap". http://store.origin.com/store/eaemea/en_GB/html/pbPage.SimcityUK/

[HawkMan]

Excuse me? Check your facts before telling me to "stop spreading crap". http://store.origin.com/store/eaemea/en_GB/html/pbPage.SimcityUK/

The full game + several environment expansion packs is not the full game, it's more.

[deactivated170812]

Nevertheless, even only "the full game" at 60? costs too much.

[MightyJordan]

Has anyone managed to find a "Standard Edition" of the game yet? All I can find is the Limited Edition, which costs ?45, and the Digital Deluxe Edition, which costs ?65. And it's not that much cheaper if you go outside of Origin for a boxed copy; found it for ?40 on Amazon. That's just a ripoff by PC standards; hell, I've got Rocksmith pre-ordered on the PC for ?28!

[Ionium]

No mac support no care

[HawkMan]

Has anyone managed to find a "Standard Edition" of the game yet? All I can find is the Limited Edition, which costs ?45, and the Digital Deluxe Edition, which costs ?65. And it's not that much cheaper if you go outside of Origin for a boxed copy; found it for ?40 on Amazon. That's just a ripoff by PC standards; hell, I've got Rocksmith pre-ordered on the PC for ?28!

What's wrong with those prices, for a ga,e like sim city they seem perfectly reasonable.

But lucky you're to young to have bought any SNES games I guess.

[HawkMan]

No mac support no care

That's what EA said when they did the market research.

[devn00b]

H.A.W.X. 2 Begs to differ. Seems like this was too much of a challenge for 'coders'.

Crackers never really bothered with HAWX2 because it didn't sell all that well. Why spend a lot of time cracking some thing a relative few will use. As for the persistent connections that sucks but I'm sure someone will either crack out the part where it waits for a response, or just write a cracked server for it (much the way things like EQEMu do to serve up an EverQuest Login Server)

[HawkMan]

Not quite that easy, you can't "just" write a fake auth server, you need the right encryption and code to give the correct responses to what the game asks for.

As for HAWX2, exept it didn't do that bad, and they cracked far less popular games than that so.

[Twisp]

Yeah.. except no.. SimCity != MMO.

Lumping so many generalizations together certainly doesn't do you any good in understanding those people. You say it's not a big deal but it's becoming more and more prevalent because too many care too little about their role as a consumer. If I spend my dollars on a game like SimCity, I should own it. When I can't play said game when my internet is down or on a road trip or under any circumstances that I should be able to as a buyer, what exactly do I own? I own a game that that EA decides when and where and how I can play it. This attitude from developers has come about because of people like you who don't care enough about their fundamental rights as consumers.

Actually this has come about because certain "consumers" think that they're entitled to stuff without paying anything at all.

[Salutary7]

Crackers never really bothered with HAWX2 because it didn't sell all that well. Why spend a lot of time cracking some thing a relative few will use. As for the persistent connections that sucks but I'm sure someone will either crack out the part where it waits for a response, or just write a cracked server for it (much the way things like EQEMu do to serve up an EverQuest Login Server)

It depends largely on how much of the game relies on server-side code. If they choose to, they can absolutely make the game unplayable without access to EA servers.

[Amarok]

It depends largely on how much of the game relies on server-side code. If they choose to, they can absolutely make the game unplayable without access to EA servers.

Pretty much. I don't think most people understand how much work it takes to circumvent some of the copy protection in place. Assassin's Creed 2 took awhile. It was thought to be cracked within hours because the people who cracked it only bothered to play for a few minutes. They soon realized though that key parts of the game's puzzles were stored online. For example if you stood on a button that opened a nearby door the game would ask the server how long the door was supposed to be open, and if it didn't get a response the door would close before you could get to it.

Then there are games like StarCraft where all the fun is playing online and they never actually got that part working AFAIK. I know that during the beta people were hard at work trying to figure out ways to play the game outside of battle.net and they were still trying well after release. Or even WoW, there are WoW private servers and there have been since forever but only very very recently has someone come up with a WoW private server where the encounters/monsters work anything like they're supposed to, and it's 3 expansions behind. It's totally possible for game companies to be an absolute pain to pirates, it's just that usually it involves some sort of pain for the consumer too.

[Bryan R.]

Actually this has come about because certain "consumers" think that they're entitled to stuff without paying anything at all.

Blame it on pirates of course.

You are just as much to blame for this by even coming up with that excuse. Even if pirates cause EA trouble, it's still legitimate owners who suffer and not pirates. But go ahead and be complacent with what's been given to you even though it's less than you deserve.

[Darrian]

Insanity goes both ways.

Crackers keep cracking over and over and over again expecting software vendors to cave in and ....

;)

Cave in to what? Giving the games away for free? No, crackers keep on cracking so that others can download games and not purchase them or just to circumvent the nasty DRM that they're packaged with. They aren't trying to change how the publishers operate.

[giantpotato]

Blame it on pirates of course.

You are just as much to blame for this by even coming up with that excuse. Even if pirates cause EA trouble, it's still legitimate owners who suffer and not pirates. But go ahead and be complacent with what's been given to you even though it's less than you deserve.

You realize that if piracy never existed in the first place we would never have had DRM. Developers wouldn't waste time developing a solution to a problem that did not exist.

This whole thing started with piracy, now it's some retarded cycle

1. Pirate game to protest DRM

2. Develop stricter DRM to combat piracy

3. Repeat step 1

[trag3dy]

You realize that if piracy never existed in the first place we would never have had DRM. Developers wouldn't waste time developing a solution to a problem that did not exist.

This whole thing started with piracy, now it's some retarded cycle

1. Pirate game to protest DRM

2. Develop stricter DRM to combat piracy

3. Repeat step 1

And the lesson learned in that is...?

[giantpotato]

And the lesson learned in that is...?

We can blame this on pirates.

[Roxkis]

Actually this has come about because certain "consumers" think that they're entitled to stuff without paying anything at all.

The irony being that it still doesn't stop pirates. I would even go so far as to say its encouraging people to pirate it as they well get a better version.

Why buy a game that maybe inconvenient for you when you can just get better (no internet required, no need to be logged into other services) version for free?

I wonder how many seeds on the torrents well be from people who bought the game and just don't feel like being inconvenienced.

[McKay]

As usual I shall be cracking my copy to remove the "always online" BS requirement. Being in the Armed Forces I'm forever being moved around the country or world on courses and deployments and such, more often than not these places don't have the internet, so I won't have access to my games?

[trag3dy]

We can blame this on pirates.

so they instead turned the crackers into heroes, and make actually buying the game seem less valuable (hmm i can pirate it and play whenever and however, or i can buy it and be limited to how and when i can play it, hmmmm).

I personally get no cd cracks for all my games that i buy, and even for the games i download on steam, just so i know if i lose my net, or something weird happens that i can still play my games.

DRM is stupid. People who are going to priate are still going to pirate, all this DRM **** does is hurt the actual buyers, and the product.

Pirating doesn't make a game more ****ty, Devs implementing DRM does.

Game devs need to realize that the pirates arent going to see this DRM, only the legit consumers are.

Exactly.

[Sir Topham Hatt]

Why do I use no-cd's?

1: Hassle to insert the cd every time I want to play.

2: I played Red Alert 2 so much that the game shattered in my drive, ruining the drive and the game. Could I get a replacement? No.

Sim City will be no different.

[DrakeN2k]

Why do I use no-cd's?

1: Hassle to insert the cd every time I want to play.

2: I played Red Alert 2 so much that the game shattered in my drive, ruining the drive and the game. Could I get a replacement? No.

Sim City will be no different.

Same , I have installed Sim City 4 so much,I can type the product key just by one glance :p

[migo]

Insanity goes both ways.

Crackers keep cracking over and over and over again expecting software vendors to cave in and ....

;)

No, they expect software vendors to keep giving them new challenges.