Reddit communities are a minefield, at least in terms of the larger subreddits; Reddit is a site which has a significant young, male, socially liberal audience that is suspicious of advertisers. On Reddit, companies are seen as inauthentic, because people pushing a product cannot contribute to a community that was created without a profit motive (i.e. Reddit). For many users, this suspicion extends to corporations as a whole, since the profit motive poisons any interaction a company has with consumers; any interaction is dismissed as inauthentic. This sense of cynicism has become pervasive throughout the site, such that any self-promotion is questioned, even when money is not at stake.<p>And EA thought it would be a good idea to advertise on Reddit? I can sympathize with the team members who have no control over the business decisions. I am sure they are great at making awesome games. However, a cursory search of Reddit would show that more vocal Redditors hold extremely hostile views of EA's games and business practices; these opinions cover such grounds as studio acquisitions, DRM, game quality, content distribution methods, DLC pricing schedules, and artistic vision--just to name a few topics of scorn. Given the extensiveness of the Reddit echo chamber, I wonder who at EA made the brave decision to send the SimCity 5 team into it.
The TechDirt article says this:<p>> [Developer] Kip's followup was downright laughable.
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> "We will allow you to play for as long as we can preserve your game state. This will most likely be minutes."<p>Everyone seems to hate on the DRM, thinking that it's just a business decision that is not at all integral to gameplay, but they all seem to be forgetting one key thing:<p>The new SimCity is, at its core, a multiplayer game!<p>Sure, it's a multiplayer game with the majority of the user experience dedicated to non-social, intra-city interactions. But your city lives within a global economy, and if it's possible to mutate your offline state without mutating your online state, then sync becomes a huge problem.<p>Consider the server that models a consistent virtual entrepreneur who's moving or visiting from one city to another (which the new AI actually might do, from seeing the videos). Now, say the destination city goes offline for hours. Both the source city and the destination city could end up <i>believing</i> that the virtual entrepreneur is helping their city grow. If the offline time period is short (i.e. the "minutes" that the developer refers to), then the offline city can "snap back" to the correct state much as laggy players see themselves jumping across a map in a shooter. But if it's a long offline period, they could be snapping back in a very visible and jarring way. And it's near impossible to test all of the edge cases unless you can make assumptions about maximum latency before a disconnect.<p>The developers can only be faulted for not <i>communicating</i> the intricacies of an MMO to their audience well enough. Instead, they allowed their game server to be characterized as a DRM device, and tried to respond to criticisms as if it was just a DRM device.<p>I want to be able to play Skyrim offline. But I have no qualms about WoW disconnecting me if I go offline for more than a few minutes, or if I tried to log on with a stolen or copied account. I'd expect them to do the same to other players who did so. On that note, we should really just be glad that they're not making SimCity a subscription service!
One thing about this DRM method that worries me is what happens in the future?<p>I still occasionally play my ooooold copy of simcity 2000. So if I do like the new simcity, what happens ten years down the line? Will I still be able to play it? Or will I not be able to authenticate/save/access old saves because the official simcity server was taken offline?<p>It seems to me that we are buying digital products with an expiration date. And that seems wrong to me.
Capitalism is the answer to DRM.<p>If the games put out by bloated clueless bigcorps are filled with draconian DRM, then their lunch should be eaten by agile indie startups that know better.<p>If you buy video games, take note: Minimize or boycott entirely games that have DRM. Reallocate that part of your video game budget to buy DRM-free games. Use Gamersgate and Good Old Games; avoid Steam.<p>If you make video games, take note: There's at least some subset of people who hate DRM, and they'll presumably be attracted if you use the words "DRM-free" somewhere in your website/app description/marketing.
Online only DRM depresses me slightly, until the internet is available "everywhere" we shouldn't be restricted to having to be connected to it.<p>I play games on the tube, trains, on holiday without wifi and many other places where I don't have internet access.<p>Some of the most successful gaming devices of the past few years (iPhone/iPad), don't require an internet connection to work, neither do the major consoles. Why should be users be forced into this? Haven't they heard of laptops?