Feedback On Simcity Gets User Banned From EA Forums 386
An anonymous reader writes "EA's latest SimCity game requires users to log on online even for single player. After being unable to log on for three hours, one of its users chimed in with his very polite $0.02 opinion, only to get himself banned by EA admins. Another great victory for DRM."
Update: 01/29 18:00 GMT by S : The player's ban has been lifted, and it seems to have happened for an unrelated issue anyway.
Re:Except it isn't their latest game. (Score:5, Insightful)
Solution is so simple.. (Score:5, Insightful)
STOP buying EA games.
As a longtime Sim City player, I am sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:beta? (Score:5, Insightful)
More like beta user submits valid beta feedback and is banned for their trouble.
That smells the same way asking for someone's opinion then punching them when they give it to you does.
Re:My $.02 (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately for folks, this means fans of the game have to give EA the middle finger and pirate it, or simply not buy the game, but at least they've finally released a new version of the game after years.
There, FTFY.
Consider Me Warned (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I love the SimCity series (Score:5, Insightful)
If you must play this game(and you don't) please pirate it. Please.
Personally, I think it sends a stronger message to tell the company "your product isn't even worth pirating" than to establish that there is in fact demand for it despite the issues.
Re:Except it isn't their latest game. (Score:3, Insightful)
The game doesn't come out until March. Being 'unable to log on' for three hours might be a worthy complaint after that.
"might be" you say... Is there some mitigating circumstance where it's okay for a released game to arbitrarily not work for some purchasers that puts that "might" in there?
Re:I love the SimCity series (Score:5, Insightful)
If you must play this game(and you don't) please pirate it. Please.
I never like it when people suggest pirating software as a form of protest, if you think the DRM is too intrusive, don't buy the game at all. For the bad car analogy, Let's say you don't like On-Star because you think its too intrusive. You see a car you like, but it only comes with On-Star. So to protest On-Star you steal a car. That's not protesting it's an excuse to steal.
If you must play the game, buy it, feel guilty about not sticking to your morals, then attempt to forgive yourself by donating to the EFF or something.
Re:I love the SimCity series (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it would send the strongest message if they could see the following:
- sales rates go up when games have less DRM
- piracy goes up when games have more DRM independent of sales rate
- EA sales would increase if EA stops being assholes
- EA does not see any of this because EA's head is in its ass
Re:Was it EA..... (Score:5, Insightful)
While I do want a Simcity game, as SimCity 4 is 9 years old at this point, I can't see this new product as a Simcity game. There is no local saves. There are preset map sizes (don't mind that that much), but there is a problem here. The player is not able to edit the land. I can't level a mountain to make way for a road. I can't build a system of streams and lakes. They want players to view making a city a puzzle that also takes into account terrain and wondering how to build a road around that mountain. They want the toy (not a game by Will Wright's point of view) to play with the players instead of letting the players play freely with it. Not everyone wants their cities to be compared to the works of others.
At this rate, I doubt it will have any fun cheat codes as was a staple of the series.
Re:Except it isn't their latest game. (Score:2, Insightful)
I.E. Nothing to see here, move along.
I wouldn't go that far. They have a bug in their system that causes people who opted out of email communication to instead get banned. That doesn't exactly inspire confidence that EA knows what they're doing. Regardless of whether the ban was intentional, it's reasons like this that they have such a shitty reputation.
Re:Was it EA..... (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair... This is sort of inevitable with the Civ and SimCity franchises...
There has been a ton of Civ games, and pretty much all of them have been good. Yes, some were better, some were worse, but all of them were good. So what can you really do to improve it, outside of graphics? Why would I ever move beyond FreeCiv or Civ 4? Civ has pretty much covered everything now, and the only thing I really want is the Near Future stuff that was in Call To Power, along with the Religion stuff in Civ 4 and Civ 5 Gods and Kings.
SimCity is worse... How exactly do you make a better version of SimCity 4?
These are OLD franchises, probably among the oldest, if not they oldest gaming franchises that are still being made. Civ came out in 1991, and SimCity in 1989. I still have the original disk for the C64 version.
The always on bit does suck, though. And makes me mad, I would love to play some SimCity, but sadly SimCity 4 doesn't modern hardware/software, and all the clones are pretty bad or boring (CitiesXL, almost good.). I will probably still buy it, though I will grumble the whole time.
Send a letter when you vote with your wallet (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps I should send a letter letting EA know that I voted with my wallet. See, that's a problem with "voting with your wallet" in that there's really no way to tell what someone voted with their wallet for/against. If the game sells badly because people voted with their wallets against always-on DRM, it's more likely that the higher-ups at EA conclude "There isn't a big enough market for city simulation games. Let's just not greenlight any such future games, and focus on Medal of Madden XXVI!"
You could send an email, but realistically, those things will never really be read. An actual paper letter though; that's something someone *will* look at.
Re:Was it EA..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Update: 01/29 18:00 GMT by S : The player's ban has been lifted, and it seems to have happened for an unrelated issue anyway.
Personally, if I had been EA I would have prevented the player from participating in any future *closed* betas (and I wouldn't be surprised if that's what they tried to do in this case). Clearly, that player knew he was in a "closed beta", he mentioned that fact twice at least, but apparently he doesn't seem to understand the meaning of that word "closed".
In a closed beta, the feedback you provide stays private. That's the entire point of a beta being closed. Either you email the company directly, or you post in a private forum (designated only for closed beta players), but you do not post your feedback in their public forum.
Sheesh!! The standard is becoming so high, even that word beta doesn't seem to mean anything anymore.
Re:It's the same for Blizzard. (Score:4, Insightful)
The degree of "play" will depend on the exact title you are using on Steam. For example, some Ubisoft games you'd be out of luck with for offline.
It would be nice if Steam started to play hard with those companies and mandate Steam's DRM only if the game was to be offered on Steam.
Re:It's the same for Blizzard. (Score:3, Insightful)
Steam might play in offline mode. More often than not this is not the case. Believe me, I used to have a very bad internet connection and the times I was not able to play anything from my Steam account when the connection was down and Schteam was telling me to log in far outweighted the times when it happily remembered that I had played just one day before.
Steam is not nearly as evil as EA, but it still has an intrusive and often obnoxious DRM (Along with an atrocious EULA).
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)