9 ms·

Isn't this just a technical error (bug) that is a game dev's (or infrastructure engineer's) responsibility? I understand the frustration at the DRM concept, bu

Isn't this just a technical error (bug) that is a game dev's (or infrastructure engineer's) responsibility? I understand the frustration at the DRM concept, but you can't blame this on the larger entity as a whole when it was likely just a bug in some code or a small oversight. Things were clearly working when it was in beta.

kevinalexbrown 14y ago
You make a really good point. Rereading my comment, it's brusque. I still think there's a point to be made about trust in a larger organization, but as someone who a) doesn't know precisely what the specific problem is and b) doesn't know whether I wouldn't have made the same mistakes, I'm going to acquiesce.
jfim 14y ago
I don't know about this specific instance, but from what I recall from working in the video game industry, devs don't deal with copy protection; it's something that's done prior to mastering where they put your executable through SecuROM or whatever and it spits out a new binary that has copy protection/CD checks/online auth or whatever junk the publisher wants to add.
- mrgoldenbrown 14y ago
  This isn't the case here. The game does significant processing on their servers, to make it useless as soon as they turn their servers off, which AFAIK they haven't promised to keep up any certain amount of time.
  - jfim 14y ago
    Thanks for the clarification; it's pretty awful of them to have them have this copy protection mechanism and fail to allocate enough server resources for people to be able to play the game they legitimately purchased. It sounds as if some random MBAs said that they really need that server-side undefeatable copy protection, then balked at the price of actually purchasing enough resources for it and decided to skimp on that.
    - Cardeck1 14y ago
      No, it actually doesn't sound like some random MBAs.Are you one of those guys that blame MBAs for everything?The truth is we don't know what actually happened there.We'll have to wait for EA's reply on this one.It will be hard for them to recover after a huge mistake/strategy like this.
      - Karunamon 14y ago
        >We'll have to wait for EA's reply on this one. If EA's usual response to criticism means anything, we'll be waiting a loooooong time... >It will be hard for them to recover after a huge mistake/strategy like this. You're kidding, right? They'll just release Call of Modern Madden 5: Battlefield Part 2 and the fanboys will eat it up, horrid DRM and microtransactions and all.
        Fargren 14y ago
        If the reviews and reaction to the last Medal of Honor are anything to go by, people are finally getting tired of that old rehashed formula. The next CoD may not be as successful as the previous installments were.
      - bsg75 14y ago
        It does. Do game developers implement DRM when not required to by the bean counters?
    - fooey 14y ago
      "fail" makes it sound accidental I'd put good odds that server allocation was a very high level decision balancing the expected backlash They knew Amazon rating / word of mouth is going to put a massive hit on the LaunchDay+1 sales anyways, so what do they care if it actually works once you've handed over your cash?
Bud 14y ago
a) When it was in beta, there was presumably much less server load. b) The fact that a small bug in the unnecessary server/DRM part of the game could take the whole game down like this is precisely the point. You can certainly blame the whole entity for deciding to require a net connection and a server even for single-player use of the game.
- daurnimator 14y ago
  but the beta had the same issues, they were never fixed before release.
  - NoPiece 14y ago
    Absolutely right, you could totally see this train wreck coming. http://imgur.com/xddfMvh http://imgur.com/xddfMvh
tsunamifury 14y ago
The point is that its a highly failure prone requirement with dire consequences. Imagine if you were designing a car and the Business Analyst told you that this car needed a constant internet connection at all times or else the engine would immediately cease injecting gas. While you could blame the engineers for all the cars that died in the middle of highways, it'd be far more realistic to blame the Business Analyst for demanding such an arduous and failure prone requirement. Engineers can only make things work to a point and after that some real world limitations need to be taken into account.
eswangren 14y ago
Of course you can; the decision to use an "online always" DRM scheme is made at the top. It's bullshit, the same garbage blizzard used with DIII. It makes no sense for games that can be played single player. Online should be an option, not a prerequisite.
cbs 14y ago
No, its not that simple. Isn't this just a technical error (bug) that is a game dev's (or infrastructure engineer's) responsibility? Isn't mandating the constant involvement of otherwise unnecessary tech that is known to be error prone and unreliable just the result of a poorly thought out buisness requirement? No, its not that simple either. Because they probably did think it out, knew they were choosing the riskier technical option and expect/expected failures to happen. My read of the situation is that they expected the rest of the game to get a better reception overall and blunt the bad PR from the inevitable failures caused by the always-on/centralized aspects.
- Fargren 14y ago
  Also known as the Diablo III strategy.
  - Tloewald 14y ago
    Diablo III was (I think -- not like I've played Sim City yet) worse because the online AH was built into the gameplay Imagine if WoW's loot had been designed so that raid loot would NEED to be traded via a real money AH with Blizzard taking a cut. Of course for all we know Sim City will turn out to have that kind if BS too.
    - fooey 14y ago
      WoW + RM:AH = Titan that poor game's so predestined to be a blatant cash whore, almost makes you feel bad for it
    - throwaway1979 14y ago
      I'm voting with my dollars in this case. I'm a huge fan of Starcraft and I've decided not to get heart of the swarm. The Internet requirements for Diablo 3 and StarCraft are totally excessive. I'm about to go on a flight now and I would have loved to play either one. But instead, Apple gets my time and money this evening.
    - fdr_cs 14y ago
      In Sim City case, part of the simulation is run at their servers. Even while playing a private region, lost of aspects of the simulation are affected by the 'world' (other players). So, it´s not _just_ a matter of DRM: online is part of the game (unfortunately). The point is: did the developers decided to do it that way _because_ EA made online DRM mandatory for them, or they did think this way since t=0 ? We´ll probably never know.
junkilo 14y ago
Doing a massive online game takes a broad skillset and different development patterns than single player. I'd probably place money on the fact they failed the load testing. (Yes, I'm xEA and was involved in the last simcity load test)
PeterisP 14y ago
It's not a technical bug, but it's a deliberately made flaw - and it illustrates what will happen when after a couple of years they'll turn the servers off (The current list http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0L266uiy59kJ:www.ea.com/1/service-updates+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0L266ui... shows even games of 2011 disabled already), leaving the game that you "bought" useless. Digital Restrictions Management = Defective by Design.
- VMG 14y ago
  isn't Steam also DRM and hugely successful and very popular with the gaming community?
  - PeterisP 14y ago
    Steam also presents a risk, but it's at least actively working to make it less bad for the consumer: 1) You can play most of games offline if you have a flaky connection; 2) They don't have a standard practice of turning off servers to 'obsolete' games, unlike EA. The Steam games are expected to work as long as Steam itself works; but SimCity most likely won't work much longer after the next SimCity is released, as we can see from EA current practices.
    - raylu 14y ago
      EA is also actively working on making things less bad by provisioning more hardware and disabling "non-critical" features. DRM is DRM. People only get angry when things don't work, with the occasional philosophical argument thrown in to prove a point after the fact. Steam gets less hate only because their servers have better uptime, but the hate towards EA comes in the form of a philosophical argument about how DRM is fundamentally broken.
      - pdwetz 14y ago
        Ultimately I think users are pragmatic; if DRM stays out of the way they won't care, and that's by-and-large how Steam is for most people. They also seem to focus on value-add items, such as being able to install (easily!) on multiple computers, operating systems, etc., whereas EA and other companies seem to provide more pain than pleasure. If a company appears to be trying to help people, they'll lovingly hand over their money. If a company seems to be only interested in their wallets, twitter and message boards will not be kind.

kevinalexbrown 14y ago

You make a really good point. Rereading my comment, it's brusque. I still think there's a point to be made about trust in a larger organization, but as someone who a) doesn't know precisely what the specific problem is and b) doesn't know whether I wouldn't have made the same mistakes, I'm going to acquiesce.

jfim 14y ago

I don't know about this specific instance, but from what I recall from working in the video game industry, devs don't deal with copy protection; it's something that's done prior to mastering where they put your executable through SecuROM or whatever and it spits out a new binary that has copy protection/CD checks/online auth or whatever junk the publisher wants to add.

mrgoldenbrown 14y ago
This isn't the case here. The game does significant processing on their servers, to make it useless as soon as they turn their servers off, which AFAIK they haven't promised to keep up any certain amount of time.
- jfim 14y ago
  Thanks for the clarification; it's pretty awful of them to have them have this copy protection mechanism and fail to allocate enough server resources for people to be able to play the game they legitimately purchased. It sounds as if some random MBAs said that they really need that server-side undefeatable copy protection, then balked at the price of actually purchasing enough resources for it and decided to skimp on that.
  - Cardeck1 14y ago
    No, it actually doesn't sound like some random MBAs.Are you one of those guys that blame MBAs for everything?The truth is we don't know what actually happened there.We'll have to wait for EA's reply on this one.It will be hard for them to recover after a huge mistake/strategy like this.
    - Karunamon 14y ago
      >We'll have to wait for EA's reply on this one. If EA's usual response to criticism means anything, we'll be waiting a loooooong time... >It will be hard for them to recover after a huge mistake/strategy like this. You're kidding, right? They'll just release Call of Modern Madden 5: Battlefield Part 2 and the fanboys will eat it up, horrid DRM and microtransactions and all.
      - Fargren 14y ago
        If the reviews and reaction to the last Medal of Honor are anything to go by, people are finally getting tired of that old rehashed formula. The next CoD may not be as successful as the previous installments were.
    - bsg75 14y ago
      It does. Do game developers implement DRM when not required to by the bean counters?
  - fooey 14y ago
    "fail" makes it sound accidental I'd put good odds that server allocation was a very high level decision balancing the expected backlash They knew Amazon rating / word of mouth is going to put a massive hit on the LaunchDay+1 sales anyways, so what do they care if it actually works once you've handed over your cash?

Bud 14y ago

a) When it was in beta, there was presumably much less server load. b) The fact that a small bug in the unnecessary server/DRM part of the game could take the whole game down like this is precisely the point. You can certainly blame the whole entity for deciding to require a net connection and a server even for single-player use of the game.

daurnimator 14y ago
but the beta had the same issues, they were never fixed before release.
- NoPiece 14y ago
  Absolutely right, you could totally see this train wreck coming. http://imgur.com/xddfMvh http://imgur.com/xddfMvh

tsunamifury 14y ago

The point is that its a highly failure prone requirement with dire consequences. Imagine if you were designing a car and the Business Analyst told you that this car needed a constant internet connection at all times or else the engine would immediately cease injecting gas. While you could blame the engineers for all the cars that died in the middle of highways, it'd be far more realistic to blame the Business Analyst for demanding such an arduous and failure prone requirement. Engineers can only make things work to a point and after that some real world limitations need to be taken into account.

eswangren 14y ago

Of course you can; the decision to use an "online always" DRM scheme is made at the top. It's bullshit, the same garbage blizzard used with DIII. It makes no sense for games that can be played single player. Online should be an option, not a prerequisite.

cbs 14y ago

No, its not that simple. Isn't this just a technical error (bug) that is a game dev's (or infrastructure engineer's) responsibility? Isn't mandating the constant involvement of otherwise unnecessary tech that is known to be error prone and unreliable just the result of a poorly thought out buisness requirement? No, its not that simple either. Because they probably did think it out, knew they were choosing the riskier technical option and expect/expected failures to happen. My read of the situation is that they expected the rest of the game to get a better reception overall and blunt the bad PR from the inevitable failures caused by the always-on/centralized aspects.

Fargren 14y ago
Also known as the Diablo III strategy.
- Tloewald 14y ago
  Diablo III was (I think -- not like I've played Sim City yet) worse because the online AH was built into the gameplay Imagine if WoW's loot had been designed so that raid loot would NEED to be traded via a real money AH with Blizzard taking a cut. Of course for all we know Sim City will turn out to have that kind if BS too.
  - fooey 14y ago
    WoW + RM:AH = Titan that poor game's so predestined to be a blatant cash whore, almost makes you feel bad for it
  - throwaway1979 14y ago
    I'm voting with my dollars in this case. I'm a huge fan of Starcraft and I've decided not to get heart of the swarm. The Internet requirements for Diablo 3 and StarCraft are totally excessive. I'm about to go on a flight now and I would have loved to play either one. But instead, Apple gets my time and money this evening.
  - fdr_cs 14y ago
    In Sim City case, part of the simulation is run at their servers. Even while playing a private region, lost of aspects of the simulation are affected by the 'world' (other players). So, it´s not _just_ a matter of DRM: online is part of the game (unfortunately). The point is: did the developers decided to do it that way _because_ EA made online DRM mandatory for them, or they did think this way since t=0 ? We´ll probably never know.

junkilo 14y ago

Doing a massive online game takes a broad skillset and different development patterns than single player. I'd probably place money on the fact they failed the load testing. (Yes, I'm xEA and was involved in the last simcity load test)

PeterisP 14y ago

It's not a technical bug, but it's a deliberately made flaw - and it illustrates what will happen when after a couple of years they'll turn the servers off (The current list http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0L266uiy59kJ:www.ea.com/1/service-updates+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0L266ui... shows even games of 2011 disabled already), leaving the game that you "bought" useless. Digital Restrictions Management = Defective by Design.

VMG 14y ago
isn't Steam also DRM and hugely successful and very popular with the gaming community?
- PeterisP 14y ago
  Steam also presents a risk, but it's at least actively working to make it less bad for the consumer: 1) You can play most of games offline if you have a flaky connection; 2) They don't have a standard practice of turning off servers to 'obsolete' games, unlike EA. The Steam games are expected to work as long as Steam itself works; but SimCity most likely won't work much longer after the next SimCity is released, as we can see from EA current practices.
  - raylu 14y ago
    EA is also actively working on making things less bad by provisioning more hardware and disabling "non-critical" features. DRM is DRM. People only get angry when things don't work, with the occasional philosophical argument thrown in to prove a point after the fact. Steam gets less hate only because their servers have better uptime, but the hate towards EA comes in the form of a philosophical argument about how DRM is fundamentally broken.
    - pdwetz 14y ago
      Ultimately I think users are pragmatic; if DRM stays out of the way they won't care, and that's by-and-large how Steam is for most people. They also seem to focus on value-add items, such as being able to install (easily!) on multiple computers, operating systems, etc., whereas EA and other companies seem to provide more pain than pleasure. If a company appears to be trying to help people, they'll lovingly hand over their money. If a company seems to be only interested in their wallets, twitter and message boards will not be kind.