The Sim City Fiasco

"Wow" is pretty much all I can say regarding Sim City.





Unless you've been living under a rock (or you're just not interested in gaming), then you know the whole disaster that was Sim City. Launched last week on Tuesday, many who bought the game soon found that they couldn't play, could only play for a small amount of time, and if they did play, they lost progress on their cities. The wonderful world of always-on DRM, requiring you to play online to save your game in EA's cloud servers, as well as playing with others in the same region on the same servers. And if you wanted to play Single Player offline? Forget it, unless you're a modder who can hack the code. Then you can play offline indefinitely. But when you thought the always-on DRM had to be the only problem, issues were discovered with traffic and the like, thanks to bad algorithms, something Maxis has pledged to fix.

But the always-online DRM is something a lot of fans are up in arms about. Why should you be forced to play single-player online? Plain and simple, you shouldn't. When you shell out 60 bucks for a game, you expect to own that game in some fashion. With always-on DRM, you are renting it. There is risk that your server could go down, all servers could go down, losing progress to your save (which isn't saved on your computer - but in the Cloud), and ultimately, what happens a few years from now when EA feels that it's just not worth it to keep the servers up? The servers will go down, ultimately making the game unplayable.

That is why I am optimistic about an offline Single Player being added. Given the disaster of the launch, the massive petitions and protests online, and the damage to their reputation that this launch have given them, one of the only ways to appease everyone is to add it. Saying "we're sorry" and offering a free game won't cut it, and EA HAS to be smart enough to realize it.

Look at it like the Seahawks vs. Packers game at the beginning of last year's NFL season. That game, and the way it ended, was the final straw that led to bringing the regular refs back and getting rid of the replacements. I think Sim City is the final straw that will finally turn EA around and eventually lead to better communication between them and the fans, as well as better quality games in the future.

Merely my opinion, and definitely a hope. EA, it's on you now. Listen to your fans this time, listen to the reviews, listen to the media, and listen to everyone who says "stop with the always-on DRM." It's been hacked, people can change the code to play offline indefinitely. You are not preventing piracy. You are encouraging it.