Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A developer announces always-on DRM will be a requirement for their game, fans lambast them for the decision, and on launch day things go horrible wrong. It happened most recently with Diablo 3, and now SimCity has become the newest victim.
While the level of problems haven’t been nearly as numerous as those that plagued Diablo, many gamers are still reporting plenty of issues. Among them are download problems, games locking up, full save files becoming corrupted, and several other weird goings-on.
Beyond begin a necessity for multiplayer, SimCity also requires an always-on Internet connection to perform the simple act of saving. And that’s there where the real issues lie.
Servers get throttled during the first few days of a game’s release, and it’s common for connectivity issues to arise. But when connectivity and saving are inextricably linked, that is a huge problem. And the fact that SimCity had two major beta tests before launch only makes things worse.
There have also been reports of 30-minute (or longer) wait times in server queues just to play the game. That isn’t to join another player’s city, or to interact with their city, mind you; that is just to build a private region.
To be fair, I have experienced no problems with SimCity thus far. I was able to download the game from Electronic Arts promptly at midnight, and the download took less than an hour.
Since then, I have not encountered any problems constructing a city or saving a game. However, connecting to another player’s region hasn’t been nearly as easy. Mostly the game, which runs on EA’s Origin service, tells me specific players are not available when they clearly are. Not a major annoyance, but still something to point out.
Obviously, there are some problems with SimCity, and the case against always-on DRM continues to build. Sure, it’s a great anti-piracy measure but it comes at the cost of player enjoyment.
At the same time, players that are experiencing these problems have already given EA their $60, which further pushes the issue into a grey area. Hopefully problematic launches like SimCity and Diablo 3‘s will leave publishers and developers thinking twice about DRM.
Have you encountered any problems playing SimCity? Do you think that publishers will ever wise up to the always-on DRM issues?
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Source: Kotaku
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To much sugar. You’re being to nice on EA especially since this mirrors the whole Diablo III fiasco…
seriously, this article is a major understatement. i got a chance to play this afternoon, but my city didn’t save. now i’m trying to login again and all the servers are down/busy. i feel ripped off; my 60 bucks has disappeared and i got nothing in return. i had similar issues with diablo iii, mostly involving a very slow framerate despite my computer greatly exceeding the game’s minimum requirements (i also simply don’t like diablo iii, which is a whole other story). simcity, so far, seems like a decent game; i’m just unable to play it!
Saw that coming and exactly why I’ll never buy it
I bought the game and couldn’t play it yesterday. It forced me to play a tutorial and when you get into that city it doesn’t let you play at all since the tutorial is locked from the server and must be “fed” to your game to go to the next step.
I would play for like any hour. then it freezes and then tells me that windows has stop or isn’t working. anyone else having this problem or problems like it if anyone could help that be great. i really like this game but this is bull if i can’t play or do anything
I turned off V-sync and Anti-Alias and it cured that problem
People who support always-on-DRM by buying the games deserve everything they get. They’re part of the problem, and why companies feel they can get away with every dirty anti-consumer trick in the book.
Why is a game like this always online any ways? The only games that should be always online are mmorpg’s like Guild wars 2 world of war craft and silly Online worlds like Second life. THATS IT! Other then that. We want online but like every thing else WE DON’T WANT IT FORCED DOWN OUR THROATS!
My freind went on a huge rant about how it’s almost impossible for him to play this game. Im glad I had no plans on getting this game.
That is all? wow… i tried logging in for 2 hours.. nothing.. could not connect to the server.. but that 15 minutes that i played the tutorial the tutorial froze and i had to quit the game.. then i did not let me choose servers, it’s letting me wait for 30 minutes to see the could not connect to the server message in-game. wow.. fix it quick guys! get more servers up and running! It is strange that mayor companies do not think stuff like this trough. More then a million players want to play but only half of them can connect.
Pardon my asking, but what is a DRM?