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That's not "silence", that's the power of the "2 week give-a-damn limit". In today's society we're overwhelmed with constantly breaking news from all over the w

That's not "silence", that's the power of the "2 week give-a-damn limit". In today's society we're overwhelmed with constantly breaking news from all over the world. People tend to forget about things after about 2 weeks. There's just so many new things to care about that it's impossible to not move on from old news. Especially when it's just about a game. I'm sure gamers will keep the Sim City fiasco in the back of their minds and pirate later games published by EA but for now, we're really just tired of hearing about old news. Same thing happened with the whole "WarZ" fiasco. That team had false advertising on Steam, a glitched game released, artwork from the walking dead was stolen, bug reporters banned from the forums and censored. It was a lot worse than SimCity, yet 2 weeks later we just stopped caring. It's a shitty game, moving on, lets focus on something more important, like plastic in our oceans.

Goronmon 14y ago
There's just so many new things to care about that it's impossible to not move on from old news. Especially when it's just about a game. I'm sure gamers will keep the Sim City fiasco in the back of their minds and pirate later games published by EA but for now, we're really just tired of hearing about old news. Yeah, I think this about sums it up. When it comes down to it, all that happened is that a company made a bad game. Companies have been doing this for many years and will continue to do so for as long as the medium exists. If anything, this whole SimCity fiasco has made me less of a fan of RPS in general. It felt like half their site was dedicated to bad-mouthing the game and EA for the first week or so after release. And, of course, they need to throw out a piece like this after a while to generate page views and remind us how terribly angry we should be that such a tragedy could have been allowed to happen.
- onli 14y ago
  You misrepresent what happened severely. It isn't the case that this is simply about a bad game. This is about a game which didn't work for the people buying it. Which got great previews and reviews(!) before the issues with their servers arised. And which wasn't even a good game, because it was fundamentally flawed, which at the beginning remained undiscovered. Furthermore, this is not even about the game at all. It is about the crisis management of EA/Maxis, who simply lied (I doesn't care whether she lied or not, in effect it was a lie) when claiming that the Always-On-DRM, which prevented people from playing the game, was necessary to run the game at all because of server-side calculations. I think RPS is right to make a story out of this fact. Companies who get away lying their customers and the press should feel consequences of this. All too often, and in EAs case this seems to me especially true, companies who behave unethical create a growing mass of disgruntled players not respecting, and not buying from, that company anymore, which the company can ignore for quite a while when focusing only on quarterly results (and given the arrival of new players all the time), until the negative image becomes so overwhelming that their customer-base collapses.
  - Goronmon 14y ago
    You misrepresent what happened severely. Whatever you need to tell yourself in order to maintain the level of anger you desire. Nothing I saw from EA seemed out of the ordinary for a company trying to sell the game they made. Unless you expect companies to only promote games that meet certain quality standards when they are released. I mean, look at Aliens: Colonial Marines. From my perspective, it was in much worse shape than SimCity upon release, and I don't see RPS coming out with stories about how the game has disappeared from the limelight. Honestly, I feel like people got so angry about SimCity to deflect their own responsibility for the purchasing decision they made. No one forces people to buy games on release day, and everyone should know that the smartest thing to do is to sit on a new game for at least a couple of days to let any issues arise. That's the responsible thing to do as a customer, and obviously it was something many people chose not to do.
    - wnight 14y ago
      Do you expect me to use a valid credit card when I pay? Because I expect a game that works as well.
      - iy56 14y ago
        No. I validate the credit card before completing the transaction. Maybe you should check whether the game is terrible before you buy it.
        wnight 14y ago
        If "you" didn't lie to some reviewers and pay others I'd be able to. This isn't a case of a game that doesn't age well, the thing just didn't work. Even after fixing the servers it's still defective by design. Worse, EA deliberately lied about this and their coordinated responses show widespread and high-level involvement. Anyways, thank your lucky stars I can chargeback, it's a lot cheaper for you than any of the other (all legal) things I'd do to get back at someone who knowingly sold me a defective product. Hiring a PI isn't that expensive...
    - 14y ago

Goronmon 14y ago

There's just so many new things to care about that it's impossible to not move on from old news. Especially when it's just about a game. I'm sure gamers will keep the Sim City fiasco in the back of their minds and pirate later games published by EA but for now, we're really just tired of hearing about old news. Yeah, I think this about sums it up. When it comes down to it, all that happened is that a company made a bad game. Companies have been doing this for many years and will continue to do so for as long as the medium exists. If anything, this whole SimCity fiasco has made me less of a fan of RPS in general. It felt like half their site was dedicated to bad-mouthing the game and EA for the first week or so after release. And, of course, they need to throw out a piece like this after a while to generate page views and remind us how terribly angry we should be that such a tragedy could have been allowed to happen.

onli 14y ago
You misrepresent what happened severely. It isn't the case that this is simply about a bad game. This is about a game which didn't work for the people buying it. Which got great previews and reviews(!) before the issues with their servers arised. And which wasn't even a good game, because it was fundamentally flawed, which at the beginning remained undiscovered. Furthermore, this is not even about the game at all. It is about the crisis management of EA/Maxis, who simply lied (I doesn't care whether she lied or not, in effect it was a lie) when claiming that the Always-On-DRM, which prevented people from playing the game, was necessary to run the game at all because of server-side calculations. I think RPS is right to make a story out of this fact. Companies who get away lying their customers and the press should feel consequences of this. All too often, and in EAs case this seems to me especially true, companies who behave unethical create a growing mass of disgruntled players not respecting, and not buying from, that company anymore, which the company can ignore for quite a while when focusing only on quarterly results (and given the arrival of new players all the time), until the negative image becomes so overwhelming that their customer-base collapses.
- Goronmon 14y ago
  You misrepresent what happened severely. Whatever you need to tell yourself in order to maintain the level of anger you desire. Nothing I saw from EA seemed out of the ordinary for a company trying to sell the game they made. Unless you expect companies to only promote games that meet certain quality standards when they are released. I mean, look at Aliens: Colonial Marines. From my perspective, it was in much worse shape than SimCity upon release, and I don't see RPS coming out with stories about how the game has disappeared from the limelight. Honestly, I feel like people got so angry about SimCity to deflect their own responsibility for the purchasing decision they made. No one forces people to buy games on release day, and everyone should know that the smartest thing to do is to sit on a new game for at least a couple of days to let any issues arise. That's the responsible thing to do as a customer, and obviously it was something many people chose not to do.
  - wnight 14y ago
    Do you expect me to use a valid credit card when I pay? Because I expect a game that works as well.
    - iy56 14y ago
      No. I validate the credit card before completing the transaction. Maybe you should check whether the game is terrible before you buy it.
      - wnight 14y ago
        If "you" didn't lie to some reviewers and pay others I'd be able to. This isn't a case of a game that doesn't age well, the thing just didn't work. Even after fixing the servers it's still defective by design. Worse, EA deliberately lied about this and their coordinated responses show widespread and high-level involvement. Anyways, thank your lucky stars I can chargeback, it's a lot cheaper for you than any of the other (all legal) things I'd do to get back at someone who knowingly sold me a defective product. Hiring a PI isn't that expensive...
  - 14y ago