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SimCity Developers’ Reddit AMA Swiftly Turns Into WTF With The Online-Only DRM?(r/technology)
Let me tell you a story about my favourite game, which is published by EA. The game is C&C Generals: Zero Hour and I’ve been in love with it since it’s release in 2003 and to this date there is still a community of people who play and enjoy this game. The last patch was released 2 years after the game release and marked the last time EA made any attempt to fix bugs in the game so to date any fan has to play with oodles of bugs (mismatches, cheats, etc) while they watch EA repackage the game in the form of ‘value packs’. In fact, they just released a new ‘$60 bundle packs which contains the same flawed gem of a game with absolutely no polish. You think that in selling a $60 pack they might fix a few remaining bugs that cripple the online play experience but they don’t. Additionally the central game server that hosts lobbies is down so often that you often can’t play online at all.
I think some you guys go a bit too far and can be too pessimistic, paranoid and generally hysterical about privacy and data hosted in the cloud but I think the criticism is well deserved here. EA has an awful track record at supporting it’s products and it’s customers. They are using a good game as a vehicle for what will be a failed attempt to create a meaningful online content delivery service. If Valve were to release a new title with some fancy DRM I’d probably just shrug because Valve deserves the benefit of the doubt. Orgin will go away and theres no telling if you’ll be able to enjoy this game a decade from now. The first Sim City was released nearly 25 years ago. You can dust that sucker off and play it in a VM without any trouble. Will you be able to enjoy the newest (likely very good) Sim City 25 years from now? Forgive me for having my doubts.