Simcity launch turns in to a disaster thanks to DRM

by Ruchira on March 9, 2013

simcity

 

 

 

EA launched Simcity last Tuesday and its been a mess until now. See the screenshot above, everyone is complaining that they cant play the game due to server problems on EA’s side. Days have passed and biggest game company on the world still cant figure out a way to fix the problems. 24 hours is acceptable, 48 hours? Okay! But now 5 days have passed and still there is no fix. As a result of that Amazon now stopped selling the game and started refunding the refugees.
SimCity requires the players to be online all the time as a DRM ( Digital Rights Management ) solution, because then they can iron out the  game pirates from using cracked versions of SimCity.  While this sounds good for EA it can be really annoying for the players because of many reasons

  • Game will be only playable until EA decide to shut down the servers.  

Most of the game data processing is done on EA’s servers, its not like their servers are verifying your serial key is genuine or something like that. Game is saved on their servers etc.  Its only matter of time that EA will decide to stop supporting the game anymore and shutdown the servers. This means that your $60 SimCity wont be playable throughout your life, it wont be preserved for future.

  • Internet blackout? No you cant play SimCity

Its stupid because even if you are playing single player game, there is no offline mode. You must be connected to internet while you are playing. I just simply cant understand why the hell is this. DRM too much?

 

simcity-server-error
The steps which EA is following isn’t good. This can just be a start and think what will happen if EA will include this lame DRM system to all of its future games? Of course there wont be dead servers like this, but still? Bad move EA!

I'm Ruchira Sahan and all posts on this blog are completely my thoughts and writings. I love DIY and Technology. So feel free to contact me for anything about this blog and don't forget to add a comment if this blog helped you! Thanks
Ruchira
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