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Is it possible that EA will remove DRM from Simcity?
I havent bought the game and I don't think I will after reading so many negative reviews. I was just wondering, with all bad publicity the game is getting, do you think they can remove the DRM thing and let people play the game offline? If anyone with knowledge about this stuff can answer that would be cool.
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I heard it is integrated with the game where your single player cities are saved on their servers and not your hard drive.
So with out a remake of the game. Likely impossible.
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The only company I've ever heard of removing DRM post release was CDProjekt Red. Why? Because they're an awesome company which the industry should use as an example of how to treat their customer base (like actual people, not criminals).
To large companies like EA we're just $$.
Can they? Yes, though I have a feeling a few of the gimmicky features were built with DRM being 'required' as an excuse such as viewing other cities and such in a region.
Will they?
Hell no. They just want to cash out the game and rake in as much cash as possible while providing the consumer with the minimal experience possible with the least cost for them. Trust me, DRM wasn't made for protecting against pirates as much as it was to cash in on those who play it with cute little micro-transaction scheme and not letting you cheat at all outside what they allow you to cheat on (which btw, just used as a cover to pretend they didn't take it completely out, even if it is limited to one mode).
DRM there is to rake in more cash from the consumer, not to stop pirating. As such, they will likely never take it down if they view they will gain more money off suckers then they will lose of people angry at the fact its always online and they might lose due to not spending money on servers knowing that the numbers will die down and figuring people can't get a refund according to their policy so they just gotta 'deal with it'.
Lol... No.
EA was voted The Consumerist's worst company of 2012 for a reason. I can't recall them ever doing anything that could possibly be misconstrued as a redeemable action.
Nope.
From a technical standpoint it would cost probably more than the whole PR distaster costs them because in a month time no one will give a damn about the tragic launch.
From corporate point of view, the main reason for always-online DRM is that it puts the game in their control. There will be DLC, and expect a lot of it. Offline mode would put the whole DLC operation in risk of being pirated or, even worse, someone oculd find a way to produce custom content. They don't want that.
There simply is no benefit for them to remove the alway online component.
I heard ubisoft altered/removed some of their online only drm. But as others have said the pirates will do this long before ea does.
This is a game i normally would buy, but most likely never will. Have bought one game (Battlefield) that requires their origin client, wont make that mistake again.
They removed Starforce from a number of titles including King Kong and X3 since it installed itself in ring 0 giving full system access like a root virus and was linked to causing DVD drives to revert to pio mode. That was a little more serious then a tempoary setback with server incapacity
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Paradox removed the DRM from Europa Universalis II a few years after launch. Of course, that was very simple DRM that just checked whether you had the CD in your optical drive when the game launched.
Some companies have a reputation to protect and some don't. The Sim City fiasco won't do much to change EA's reputation, as anyone who cares about a company's reputation already would have been at least strongly skeptical of buying a game from EA even before this.
Game addiction or wanting to be part of the hot new thing. Oh well.
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Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
It's far more likely they'll just fix the server scalability issues and get things running as intended.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
no they want to force you to buy the latest versions of their games in 2 years time
anyway tropico 4 and anno 2070 are better and in the first case cheaper
I will never buy another blizzard game after the diablo 3 fiasco. I long stopped buying EA games though,
Why would they?
Knowing gamers history, as soon as they get the servers working and people playing everyone will just forget about this and it'll become a huge best seller (if it isn't one already), only to start the cycle again on the next DRMed title coming out.
What can men do against such reckless hate?
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Deception and fraud...based off the title alone? Nobody likes DRM...but lets not get all batshit crazy and imply that all the warnings in every aricle, all the descriptions on any retailer's advratisieng, all over the the games box cover etc, did not give ample warning about being always online.
Imagine tomorrow you buy a car, say a GM. And in one year, GM goes bankrupt, and because of that you can never drive your car anymore because it's function is online bound to the GM servers. I suppose you would by all right be pissed. People buy SimCity because of the NAME, because of the HISTORY. They assume a game of the same name is the same. That's why Ultima Online was named "ONLINE" and not just "Ultima", so to assure you don't deceive fans of the single player series. It's deception and I am damn sure they knew a lot would but SimCity because of the predecessors and not read some small printed stuff on the backside of the box.
Proof: apparently the masses of customers were surprised and outraged and returned the game, because of the fraud implied in the title. Otherwise we would not HAVE the shitstorm we witness.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Silly rabbit, you should be boycotting EA. When you buy their game you're telling them that you simply lOo0oOve DRM and the other atrocities common with EA games. So go ahead, promote DRM. I know they're not the only ones guilty of this practice, but they are the most famous for it.
There are many other amazing games out there in the world that you can play without shoveling cash into the gaping maws of greedy ass EA.
Your analogy is wrong....lets use the same one, only modify it to reflect the exact scenerio..
Lets say you buy a GM today, you dont need any extras to get it to work.......lets say a month from now you buy a GM, but it requires an onstar connection for it to start....the car itself is the same name as the previous one, just a "2" or whatever....telling everyone beforehand that the onstar is needed, is not fraud.
If you want to argue that that DRM is a piece of shit, we can all agree. If you want to argue that naming the game SC5 (ignoring ALL of the warnings form EA themselves stating that it requires an online connection) is fraud, is batshit crazy.
As far as your "proof", were you this ourtaged and outspoken when Final Fantasy XI launched?.....I seem to recall it doing quite OK as an online only game, when 10 games before it were all single player (let alone 4 games)...
So I am taking Blizzard to court now because World Of Warcraft does not have online in the title and it requires and always on connection.
One of the requirements to run Sim City is an always on Internet connection, if you can't supply this then you do not meet the minimum requirements to run the game and should not buy it.
I was annoyed when other games I used to play got shut down, but these things happen, it's in the terms an conditions you agree to when you play the game.